This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
You've heard of the hero's journey, but do you know the hero's journal? Hero's journal, whoever came up with this, well, you're gonna hear exactly who came up with this in this episode, but this guy nailed the branding. What a smart idea, especially with all the different journals that are out there. We've talked over the years about lots of different kinds of journals. There seems to be a relentless, endless market, bottomless market for journals, but this guy wanted to do something a little bit different.
He's actually also one of our long-time listeners who was part of the community for a couple of years. So I was especially proud when this project first came out. Greatest title ever for a journal, perhaps that's debatable, but I would argue it. The hero's journal, welcome to Side Hustle School. This is Throwback Thursday.
You're gonna hear an update from Nick. He's gonna talk a little bit about this product, how he came to make it in the first place, some of the things that happened along the way, perhaps a lesson for somebody out there. So I'm excited to hear from him. Hero's journal completes epic quest. Let's pass the microphone to Nick.
[Music]
My name's Nick Vidalaro. I'm located in Seattle, Washington area. My side hustle, which has turned into my main hustle, is called the hero's journal. I was featured in episode 1004. So the hero's journal is a daily planner that reimagines your goal as a quest, and it helps you feel like the hero of a story as you progress on your goal journey.
So since the last time we were featured on the podcast, so many things have happened. At the time, me and my co-founder were working at the same local startup here. We knew that we wanted to go full time with the journal, but we weren't really quite in a place yet to do that. So it was kind of like December of that year, where it was 2019 and we were kind of looking at each other during the holiday rush, packing orders, sitting in our living room with orders literally up to like our shoulders. And we were just kind of like, this is impossible.
We're gonna have to quit our jobs to do this full time, which was really exciting, but also pretty terrifying. So we actually both quit our jobs and started being full time entrepreneurs with the hero's journal on February 1st, 2020. So just about a year ago. So a lot has happened since then. We moved into a warehouse and office space.
We expanded our team from just the two of us to roughly about nine people, some contractors, and some people that are kind of more full time. And we ended 2020 with seven figures in revenue, which we're really proud of. Our biggest challenge is not being a one hit wonder. And I guess what I mean by that is when we started the hero's journal, the idea was all rooted in storytelling. It was all rooted in everyone's favorite fandoms and kind of relating that to the personal narrative that we all tell about ourselves.
So yes, it's about organizing your day, but it's also about really tapping into that imagination, tapping into that fandom, that storytelling bone that I think everyone has. And so our first journal that we put out really reflected our favorite fantasies, which was kind of like high fantasy type stuff. Think like dragons and caves with treasure in them and castles and that kind of thing. And we kind of realized that's not everyone's go-to fandom or go-to storytelling. So the big challenge that we're kind of spearheading right now is trying to replicate that secret sauce, that special ingredient that existed in the first journal and kind of a new trope.
And so we're moving from high fantasy to like a wizard school format to hopefully engage some people where that is their kind of ideal fandom. And it's challenging because you have to create a story that is told in the journal that doesn't take away the experience from the user. You still have to keep their personal story and their goal, their organization at the center of what you're creating while also delighting them, putting a smile on their face by kind of giving nods to their favorite fandom throughout. So I think that we're trying to avoid having our first thing to be our best thing. And we're wanting to prove to ourselves that we can replicate this concept in different tropes to engage as many people as possible.
I was sitting at my day job using a day planner that was also kind of a goal setting journal that I had been using for a couple of years now. I had just finished watching "Lord of the Rings" and I was sitting at my desk and I just realized how uninspired I was. I was very organized and I was kind of on top of things, if you will, but I was kind of, I just felt like I was lacking this sense of imagination in my life. And so I really thought that there should be a planner that takes on a story structure to it. And I had no intention of creating it in the first place.
I honestly Googled for one, I searched Amazon for one. And when I realized I couldn't buy one, I just kind of thought to myself, well, hey, like I think I can make this happen. I think I can create it. And if I want to use this, odds are someone else out there who has kind of like a hybrid brain, like I do, will probably like it as well. It's worth saying this here.
If it wasn't for Side Hustle School, I would not be here. I listened to Side Hustle School religiously every day for about two years before I ever had the idea for the journal. And I think that there's something about just listening to people, normal people, make an income on the side in a very doable, a very achievable and a very like low pressure way, if that makes sense. I feel like we always hear stories of the extreme cases, of like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or like Steve Jobs. Like you hear of all these legendary entrepreneurs or you hear about these huge companies.
And there's such a big gap between, I think what people are able to do. And I think Side Hustle School really helped shape my imagination and helped shaped my understanding of what was possible. So I don't think that the journal would ever be here if I wasn't listening to Side Hustle School so consistently. Like that idea would have never popped into my head at my day job if I wasn't constantly thinking about Side Hustles. If all I was thinking about was the next billion dollar idea, I probably wouldn't be where I am today, doing this full time.
So I guess I just wanna say thank you to the Side Hustle School and the community and the consistency that it's been going for, years and years now. I would definitely attribute some of the success and some of the inspiration to many, many of the podcasts that were produced years ago. [Music]
We first featured The Heroes Journal many years ago, but guess what, my friends? If you go to, what is the website? Let me just double check.
TheHeroesJournal.co, that is TheHeroesJournal.co. In fact, you can see new journals for 2026, presumably on into the future as well. You can also check out SideQuest Decks, Habit Tracker Bookmarks, Heroes Planner, and much more. Trusted by 100,000 heroes. Wow, that's some great sales numbers.
Well done, Nick and co. Congratulations on this project and also the sustainability of it. Listeners, I hope you learned something from Nick's update and just from this project in general, as I said, pretty incredible branding, wonderful title. Let me know what you think, who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than 3,000 episodes so far. And of course, much more is coming up.
You can access all of those episodes, download or stream completely free at sidehustleschool.com and subscribe or follow for new episodes. They come out every day. That's it for now, but more's on the way. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
