This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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What if solving your own biggest frustration could become a $360,000 annual business? That is what Brandon Pierce discovered when he turned his music teaching headaches into a software platform that ended up supporting his family's dream lifestyle in Costa Rica. Hey, friends, what's up? Chris Guillebeau here, your host. Welcome to Side Hustle School.
Welcome as well to Weekend Workshop. This segment's all about helping you learn the key steps to a new side hustle, one step or concept per week. We are using the book Side Hustle from idea to income in 27 days. It is available wherever books are sold. And for the first half of the year, we went through the 27 steps of the book.
In the second half, we're looking at more detailed case studies as well as from the $100 startup, my previous book, so you can hear how people apply the framework. All right, let's talk about this idea and discovery. Brandon Pierce was a piano teacher in Utah. He was facing the same challenge that plagues most music instructors everywhere, which is that he loved teaching music, but he also spent countless hours on administrative tasks that had nothing to do with actual instruction. Scheduling lessons, rescheduling when students canceled, sending payment reminders, tracking which students owed money, the business side was consuming his time and energy.
And this frustration reached a breaking point when Brandon realized he was actually spending as much time on the admin as he was on teaching. And he also realized this wasn't just his problem. Every music teacher he knew struggled with the same disorganized approach to running their practice. Now his background was not just in music, it was also in programming. So instead of continuing to struggle with the administrative chaos, he decided to build a simple system to organize his practice.
He created Music Teachers Helper, initially with no intention of turning it into a business, he just wanted to solve his own problem. The software handled student scheduling, those automated payment reminders, tracking lesson attendance and so on. And for the first time in his teaching career, Brandon could focus much more on what he actually loved the most, which was teaching music. After using his homemade solution for several months, Brandon made the critical transition from just solving his own problem to recognizing the market opportunity. And he realized that if he was struggling with these admin tasks and other teachers were also looking for help, there might be a real business here.
Okay, let's take a quick break and we'll return what happened with Brandon's Music Teachers Helper business and how might you apply this idea or the framework of this idea to an idea of your own. Stay tuned. [Music]
Brandon expanded his simple personal tool into a comprehensive platform. Music Teachers Helper became a one-stop solution that allowed teachers to create professional websites, handle scheduling and billing and focus on teaching, which is what they wanted to do. Now his pricing strategy also reflected the value he provided.
Instead of charging a small monthly fee, Brandon created tiered pricing from a free version for limited use up to $588 a year for teachers with larger student bases. This higher price point reflected the significant time savings and professional advantages the program provided. Three years after launching Music Teachers Helper, Brandon's life looked completely different. The recurring subscription model meant predictable, growing income and the automated nature of the platform meant he could work from anywhere with an internet connection. So what did he do?
Well, Brandon moved his family to Costa Rica where they now live, where he manages the business remotely. He employs 10 people worldwide working only about 10 to 15 hours a week himself. Sometimes they go off to Guatemala to do visa runs. And at the time I first read about Brandon and his family, they were thinking about moving to Asia. And they could do all this because the business was bringing in over $360,000 a year customers commit to long-term subscriptions.
So not only is this income substantial, it's also predictable. And in fact, given the sticky nature of the service, the income is actually more likely to increase than decrease. So if you like this idea, if you think that's pretty cool, the approach works across a lot of different professional service areas. If you were a fitness trainer, for example, frustrated with client scheduling, you could build something similar for other trainers. A therapist struggling with appointment management, similarly could create tools for other mental health professionals.
The key is identifying problems that affect an entire professional category, not just individual practitioners. So in Brandon's case, he transformed from a piano teacher struggling with paperwork to a location independent entrepreneur supporting his family's adventure lifestyle from Central America. And the difference wasn't learning complex business skills, it was recognizing that his biggest professional frustration was actually his biggest business opportunity. So, hey, how about you? What administrative headache in your worker industry could become someone else's automated solution?
And I'll leave you with this. As always, it's better to have a simple idea you can start immediately than a brilliant idea that never launches. Thanks for tuning in today. We'll be back next week with another weekend workshop and by the way, this was episode 3,200 of the podcast, 3,200 episodes. The show comes out seven days a week.
It is always completely free. You can subscribe or follow wherever you listen. My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
from the Onward Project.
