This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
A failed app becomes a successful consulting business. Welcome, friends. Welcome to Side Hustle School. Welcome as well to Throwback Thursday. Every week we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them.
Now last week in this segment, we heard how a side hustler who once flipped storage unit finds gradually specialized in rare historical items. They now supply props and artifacts to small museums and exhibits. So that was quite an evolution. And here, this is almost a failure Friday story. It's a segment we used to run, looking at things that didn't work out so well.
But it's also an evolution story because we're gonna hear how a side hustler starts an app or creates an app, builds an app. The app doesn't take off, but ends up turning that hard-won experience, the side hustler does, that is, into a consulting service for other early stage founders. So there's a silver lining to things, right? You gotta experiment. You gotta try different stuff.
Let's hear the story from Gabe. I'll come back at the end with a few words of wrap-up. [Music]
I spent two years building my app, pouring in every spare hour outside my day job. It was supposed to be a niche productivity tool for freelancers. Kinda like a lighter version of Trello or Notion, tailored just for solo creators.
I designed the interface, hired a contract developer, and launched on Product Hunt, hoping to ride the wave of indie app buzz, but it flopped. We got about 600 signups in the first month, but barely any stuck around. User feedback was polite, but lukewarm. Cool idea, but I'm already using X, or love the concept, but this doesn't fit into my workflow. At first, I was crushed.
I'd snuck about $8,000 in my own savings into the project, not counting the thousands of unpaid hours. I seriously thought about walking away from tech altogether. But here's what happened next. I wrote a long blog post breaking down why the app failed. I shared everything, the mistakes I made and product market fit, what I learned about onboarding, why we burned too much time on features users didn't want.
That post blew up on Hacker News and LinkedIn. People started reaching out, not to use my app, but to ask for help. Early stage founders, solo app makers, even a couple small SaaS companies wanted to hop on Zoom calls, pick my brain, or hire me for short consulting gigs. At first, I charged $100 an hour just to see if anyone would pay. Within two months, I was fully booked.
Six months later, I'd raise my rates to 250 an hour, packaged some services into flat fee projects, and earned well over $20,000 consulting on the side. The consulting work turned out to be way more rewarding than running the app ever was. I got to help people avoid the mistakes I'd made, guide better product decisions, and see ideas improve in real time without carrying the full weight of execution myself. One of the biggest lessons I learned is that failure doesn't kill credibility. Transparency builds it.
Because I was open about what went wrong, people trusted me to help them avoid similar traps. These days, I still consult part-time. I haven't launched another app yet, but when I do, I know I'll approach it with way more experience, and a stronger network than I had the first time around. [Music]
Well, you heard it from Gabe. Failure doesn't kill credibility.
Transparency builds it. I love that. And I also love the process of trying something and then seeing it lead to something totally different. You got to explore your curiosity. You need to follow your ideas.
And also, don't be afraid to stop something and start something new. Lots of lessons here, right? Lots of important foundational side hustle school episodes all delivered through this one short story. So thanks, Gabe. Thank you listeners for being out there.
New episodes every day. Thousands of episodes available for free in the Side Hustle School archives at sidehustleschool.com. Let me know what you think, who you'd like to see featured from that set of archives for an update. And of course, much more is on the way. New episodes, seven days a week.
My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
