Role-Playing Pastor Rolls The Dice On $2800/Month Hustle

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Hello and welcome. This is "Side Hustle School." I am Chris Guillebeau, and I've got a great story for you today. If you're just joining us, I want you to know that we have a global community out there, all kinds of awesome people from all different backgrounds all over the world, really, who are all listening to the show and not just enjoying the stories, but also asking themselves, what's my project? How can I do something like this? And so now that we've been going almost an entire year, one of my favorite things, and it's happening more and more, is hearing listener success stories.

These days, about 25% of the stories on the show come from listeners, many of whom have started their projects this year, as they've listened to the show, as they have learned from what other people have done, and I just think that is fantastic. So if you're in that group, good work. If you're just joining us now, or you're still in that planning stage, no problem, welcome, and I hope something will help you as we move into 2018. Now today's story features one of our listeners, a Presbyterian minister, who in some ways had been side hustling his entire adult life, but was also about to burn out. Mostly because his side gigs were all labor intensive and low paying.

Luckily, stories from a familiar podcast showed him how to save time, sell products, and turn his passion for role playing into real profit. That profit is approaching $3,000 a month, which of course is a wonderful supplement to his income as a minister, and I will tell you all about it in just a moment. Gonna do a quick shout out to our sponsor, and then we'll jump right in. [Music]

For David Dearest, his full-time job as a Presbyterian pastor has always been a labor of love, but it's never been quite enough to help him pay his bills. In order to stay in service of his local parish, David has spent his adult life side hustling around his church duties.

He's been a dog walker, handyman, house sitter, and a blogger, just to name a few. Although all of those hustles were good for a while, they never quite provided him with the consistent support he needed, and were also a huge strain on his time. On the verge of burnout, David decided he wanted a side hustle where he didn't have to exchange his time for money. Talking about this problem to a member of his church, that parishioner recommended that David check out a podcast. You might be familiar with this podcast.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that you are, since you're listening to it. That parishioner said it was filled with stories of people who'd achieved the same goals that David had, and it just might help him find a profitable idea. When David got home that evening, he downloaded an episode and was instantly hooked. After just a few episodes, he figured out what he needed to do. Instead of selling his time, he was going to sell a product.

Over the next few weeks, David took a look at all of his skills and interests, trying to find the right fit. He didn't want to sell a product he knew nothing about. Instead, he wanted something that he could sell with confidence. Ever since he was young, David had been interested in role-playing games, like Dungeons & Dragons. He found it to be a fun way for an awkward teenager to meet like-minded people to talk to, and he's been playing ever since.

He also figured it might be a good place to start in his hunt for a new side hustle. One day, while he was thinking, "What should my hustle be?" he paid a visit to his local role-playing group and got to talking with a friend who was showing off some new custom dice. He told his friend he had dice envy and was instantly struck with an idea and a name for his side hustle. Dice seemed like a simple product to sell with low startup costs, and David understood the market. He knew what kind of aesthetic they preferred, and he shared a vocabulary with them.

Getting straight to work, he put together some simple sketches and ideas of what he thought would make a good-looking dice, something that was different than what he'd seen before. Now, David wasn't a designer, so he sent them to a friend who was. That friend turned his idea into an Adobe file that could be sent to a potential manufacturer using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. To find a manufacturer, David says it was less of a scientific process and more of a Hail Mary. He went to the directory Alibaba, found someone who made dice, put it in order, and hoped that he wasn't about to get ripped off by someone on the other side of the world, and he didn't.

That manufacturer came through. The language barrier between America and China can make working with manufacturers there a bit tricky, but David says he's been surprised that they actually get most things right in the first message, and they're pretty thorough in their pre-production checks. While he was waiting for his product to arrive, David took Dice Envy online, setting up a site through Squarespace. He also made a Facebook page and began preparing some eBay listings, hoping to give himself the best possible chance of reaching the most potential people. Oh, and he also got set up with one of our sponsors, ShipStation.

With ShipStation, he's able to track all the orders, shipping, and the stock he has in one single app. That means he doesn't have to worry about a product selling out on one platform, but people still being available to purchase it somewhere else. For the branding of that Squarespace site, David relied heavily on Fiverr. That's Fiverr.com we've talked about several times before. It allowed him to find cheap and quick responding designers who created what he called good enough artwork for his new website.

I do think that's a key point, by the way. With Fiverr, you're gonna get cheap and quick, but it's not necessarily going to be the best design. Just a little side note there. The total startup cost for David came in at around $3,000. This included his initial investment in the dice, creating the website, legal fees, and some advertising for the initial release of his first set.

This was a bit more money than he was hoping to spend in the beginning, but it's more than paid for itself because within three months, Dice Envy began earning $2,800 a month. That's net income, not just revenue. David spent about $3,000 to start this project, and now it's making about $3,000 each month. Now, what's been challenging about this? Well, I mentioned David tried his hand at advertising.

That actually didn't go so well. During the initial launch of the product, he left an advertisement running for one week too long. He ended up spending more on the ad than the entire launch had made. Oops, not left in with less product and less money to go around. He says deliveries can also be a stressful part of the business, especially when it's coming from the other side of the world.

Knowing how much to order and when to order it is still an art form that he's trying to master. But again, this is pretty new. His next challenge is to implement a subscription box system for people to get new dice every month. And he's also hoping to sell in-person at 2018's largest gaming conventions. He also has a personal project coming up.

His wedding is on the horizon. David is using his extra cash to pay for the ceremony, and he's also enjoying finally being able to do more stress-free work as a minister. This role-playing pastor is pretty glad he rolled those dice. [Music]

Awesome, congratulations to David. You know, we can't make this up over here.

Our listeners are the best testimonials of how this show is working for people, and not only that, but how people are taking action. So please let us know what you're up to if you have a story like this, or even if it's not this developed or this successful yet. I would love to hear about it. Send us an email at podcast@sydussleschool.com. You could also record a voice memo with your phone and just email it to that same address, podcast@sydussleschool.com.

Or if you know for sure that you might wanna be featured on the show, come to sydussleschool.com/about. If you scroll to the bottom, you'll see a little link that says submit your side hustle story. And by the way, I think this episode also demonstrates the distinction between a side hustle as just another job, something that you do because you need extra money, but it's gonna burn you out like David saw in his example, and a side hustle as an asset, something you're creating that has the potential to work for you and to make your life better. It doesn't always happen as quickly or as successfully, but I really do believe if you listen to these stories and you think about how can I apply this to my life, and then what are the simple logistical steps I have to figure out to make this happen for myself, I really believe you can have a story like David's. Like I said, a lot of the stories on this show now are coming from our listeners.

I hope that as we go into 2018, we can feature it more and more like them. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes where you can see links to David's site, every resource I mentioned, learn exactly how he's selling, come to sidehustleschool.com/349. If you're listening in real time, I hope you're having a wonderful holiday week. If you're listening later, well, I hope it's a good week too.

I'll be back tomorrow with another story. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]