This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Whatever the case may be, welcome back to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Today I have a listener success story for you. I always love hearing how our listeners are taking action, starting projects based off of ideas they get from the show.
We get a lot of these reports these days and I would love to have one from you at some point. I also wanna mention that sometimes your idea doesn't come along right away. Like sometimes it comes through repetitive listening and observation. In the story that you'll hear today, it's about a music therapist who writes custom lullabies for restless children and of course gets paid for it. She had listened to the show every single day for quite a while before the idea actually showed up.
And you know what, I think that's okay. I think that's normal actually. Sometimes you're acquiring knowledge or you're even learning a skill without realizing it. It's kind of like taking an antibiotic. If you're sick and you take the antibiotic, you don't necessarily notice it right away.
But presumably if it's doing what it's supposed to do after a few days or however long, you are gonna realize, hey, I'm better. And then you need to continue that course of antibiotics until it actually reaches its conclusion. The temptation is always to stop. You're like, oh, I feel better. I don't need to take this anymore.
But the point is it's actually helping you even if you don't notice. So I think that's how knowledge can be as well. Whether it's in this world of how to make money with different projects or any other number of topics. I often say that listening to the show is an investment in yourself. So my hope is even if you don't realize it, if you don't notice it right away, it is gonna make a difference in your life over time.
Or at least that's my goal. So in today's story, I'll tell you about that music therapist who creates a custom lullaby hustle. That story is coming right up. [Music]
The birth of your first child can be a huge turning point in life. And that's how it was for pediatric music therapist, Stephanie Lievel.
After her daughter was born, Stephanie decided to leave her well-paying hospital job and take more casual work booking acts for a music venue. Although this new job was more flexible around her life and child, the pay just wasn't the same. So she began to look for another way to make up the difference. This exploration brought her to the Side Hustle School Podcast. What? That's us.
Listening from day one and never missing an episode, Stephanie constantly tuned in to hear people's stories and get ideas on how she could make money from the skills she already had. After a few months of listening, she was struck with her own idea. Over the years, she'd spent countless hours trawling the internet looking for the best kids' music. She found it took a lot of work to find something good. Stephanie figured if she had that problem, other parents might have it too, so she worked out a way to solve it.
She would create a resource that was backed by her own experience as a music therapist and share the best music for different problems kids were facing. So in August, 2017, Stephanie created that website, Music for Kiddos, using Squarespace. She wasn't interested in learning the ins and outs of website maintenance, she just wanted a website she could easily edit. After around half an hour of getting used to the system, she was able to create a simple but elegant website in the space of a weekend. With her website in place, Stephanie began to publish content and share it on social media.
Her blog posts were made to fit specific Google searches, like "Best Music for Kids" or "Relaxing Songs for Kids." The shareable nature of these posts also helped her to gather her first Facebook fans. Then to get people on her mailing list, she began a song of the month club where she sends people the best songs she's found that month in exchange for them signing up. Stephanie also began to create giveaways for people. She'd highlight a product that was usually a bit more expensive than what the average parent would buy, like a percussion drum set, then post it on her page. She would then share that link in various Facebook groups for parents.
This helped her to generate lots of likes for her page so that she could begin to develop her own products. The website, giveaways, and some stock images she'd bought meant that she was able to start this project for around $500. As more and more of her blog posts went up, Stephanie began to notice a trend. Parents gravitated toward the music for helping children sleep. Perhaps the parents wanted to sleep as well.
With her years of experience and expertise as a music therapist, she had created and used lots of music for that very purpose. This made Stephanie think, "Why didn't she record the music herself and sell it to these parents?" She already had a custom lullaby she'd written for her daughter, which gave her a great place to start from. Conveniently, her husband was a sound engineer. He had enough recording equipment and software to help her edit, so she grabbed her guitar and began recording some samples. When they were ready, she sent them to her friends to ask if they liked the idea, and not just if they liked it, but if it was a product, would they be willing to pay for it?
The response she got was heartening, so she decided to pursue the idea further. Stephanie's lullabies are all customizable, and the amount of customization depends on the package you buy. For $29, she can seamlessly edit a child's name into a pre-existing lullaby. For $49, you can have the song edited to include specific references to your child's likes, dislikes, and personality. Or for $200, you can have a lullaby written completely from scratch to fit your child perfectly.
Stephanie decided on these prices based on earlier recommendations from her friends, and by asking herself the question, "If I was to be overcome with orders, would the amount I'm charging justify an entire day working on them?" Side note, I think that's a great question and a great way to think about how to price your services. Ask yourself, "If I had a ton of signups, would I be charging enough to justify spending a lot of time on it?" Okay, so to market the customized lullabies, Stephanie began to reach out to Instagram and Facebook influencers who had children. She would pre-record a lullaby based on the names of the kids she could find on their feeds, and then send it directly to those parents. Not everyone was interested, not everyone responded, but the people who listened to her lullabies have loved them. One Instagrammer received her custom lullaby while she was at Disney World.
She then made a live video promoting Stephanie's work to her followers. This mix of emotion, customization, and influencer outreach helped Music for Kiddos earn $1,000 within the first month of launching in November 2017. If you're looking to create a musical venture, Stephanie recommends that you invest in your sound quality and editing. Bad sound can make or break a project like this, so spending a little extra cash to get a sound engineer to work on your audio is a worthwhile investment, especially if you don't happen to be married to one. So as mentioned, this is a brand new project.
Stephanie is hoping to use the momentum she's built to help her make more sales and grow her business. She's also creating a gift certificate option for people who want to buy lullabies before the baby is born but don't know the child's name yet. It might be a sleepy side hustle, but it's paying real rewards. Here's a quote from comedian Ray Romano. Everyone should have kids.
They are the greatest joy in the world, but they are also terrorists. You'll realize this as soon as they are born and they start using sleep deprivation to break you. All right, so maybe some of those parents need a custom lullaby. Congrats to Stephanie. Well done on identifying a need that matches up quite nicely with her skills.
That is what it's all about. That's what we're trying to help people with on side hustle school. So to make $1,000 your first month of doing this, that's fantastic. Can't wait to see what happens next and just wanted to make a couple quick comments on her price tiers. So she chose three different prices.
She says she got that idea from reading the side hustle book. It's usually one of the first things I recommend in situations like this when you're creating a new service, give people a choice. Don't give them too much choice, but give them a little bit of choice. So three pricing options are usually ideal. And in her case, she went for that price of $29 for just kind of inserting your kid's name or the $49 that allows you to customize it a bit more.
And then the $200 for the completely customized made from scratch, lullaby. She shared with me two observations that I thought were important. She says, interestingly, I've sold more of the $200 ones than I expected to. So that's good, of course. And also most of my sales are for the $49 version.
Well, listen, if you do your three prices right, that's exactly how it's gonna work. You will be surprised that some people choose the highest option, which obviously is going to increase your average order size significantly. But then also what that middle price will do is serve as an anchor that kind of encourages people to upgrade from the lowest price. So I suspect what a lot of people are thinking when they look at this, they say, okay, $29, $49, $200. Well, $200 is too expensive for me, but maybe I can go a bit more than just the basic customization with my child's name.
Maybe I actually want the $49 version. And it seems that's what's happening. So if she had only done a $29 version to start with, she never would have found out that a lot of people were willing to pay a bit more. And in fact, some people are actually willing to do that $200 option. Lots of insight there.
If you pay attention to that, you can almost certainly make a lot more money with your new service. So I hope that helps somebody out there too. No need to pay us a commission for that, by the way. I just want you to succeed. So if you like what you hear, just tell your friends about us.
This daily podcast is free and listener supported. And listeners, don't forget, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. If you'd like to see the show notes for today's episode, just come over to sidehustleschool.com/397. That's three nine seven. Let me know what you think.
You can follow me on social media. You can send me an email from the website, or you can send us a voice message with a question at 8449 Hustle. That's 8449487853. Thanks for listening as we kick off a brand new month. I've got a lot of great stuff coming up soon, and I hope you'll join me for it.
I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
