This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, Side Hustle School listeners, friends, and community. Welcome back. This is Chris Guillebeau with you here. Hey, for those listening in real time, guess what today is? It happens to be February 14th.
You might be listening to this later, of course, but maybe you know February 14th is also known as, well, again, you probably know. You might love this day. You might hate it. You might be indifferent. For some people, it might be known as Happy Independence Day.
Whatever it is for you, today's story is a romantic one. It's a profitable romantic one, of course. It's about a government contractor who's disappointed in the marriage proposal she receives. How about that? She actually decides she can do better, not necessarily in terms of the marriage, but the proposal.
So she then goes out to help guys and women put together proposals that are guaranteed to be memorable. She ends up making a lot of people happy, and she also makes a lot of money. This special V-Day episode of Side Hustle School will unfold for you right after we thank our sponsor. [Music]
From Michelle Velasquez, her career in life turned into something she never imagined. This former government contractor started a side hustle helping people create over-the-top marriage proposals.
This then became a business operating in a dozen cities and earning multiple six figures a year. It's also now spawned two related side businesses that are also profitable. It's been quite a journey, but it all started with her own wedding proposal, one that Michelle describes as lame. Her aspiring fiance thought she would like going on a cruise at Niagara Falls, and she actually hated it. He thought they'd fit right in with the other passengers, but it turned out they were all at least 40 years older than them.
She liked the guy well enough, but thought, surely there's a better way to do this. With so much writing on the right marriage proposal, Michelle sensed there might be an opportunity. Her goal was to become a marriage proposal planner, a position that didn't really exist five years ago when this was starting up. She put out the word that she was for hire, and if you were planning to ask somebody to marry you, she'd help you do a much better job. Start-up costs were something like $100.
Her first client paid a whopping $30 to help him draft an email to his future father-in-law to ask permission to marry his daughter. But things grew from there, with another client paying a couple hundred dollars, and then another signing up for a higher fee. Fortunately, her day job as that government contractor allowed for some flexibility, so she took advantage of it. During slow periods, she'd work on the business, she used her lunch breaks to make calls to clients, and then worked every evening before bed. Yeah, it was intense.
It took a lot of time, but that was the point. She wanted to build something for herself. All right, so what does Michelle actually do? Well, her side hustle is called the heart bandits. The heart bandits provides proposal packages, templates effectively, and complete custom proposals that range from $1,100 on up to the tens of thousands of dollars.
The packages or templates are more affordable and begin at a few hundred dollars. Whether you choose a package or a custom proposal, Michelle will arrange unforgettable experiences that can include a helicopter tour, a picnic in Central Park where a street musician approaches and just happens to sing a song only for the two of you, an improv troupe that acts out a scene which ends in your proposal, and much more. In fact, since starting five years ago, Michelle has coordinated thousands, yes, thousands of proposals. A couple of her favorites include turning a major nightclub in Las Vegas into a flash mob with a singing choir complete with slideshow, LED gloves, and CO2 cannons, as well as recreating the city of Paris by building a nine-foot Eiffel Tower made of moss, hiring an accordion player, setting up a Parisian cafe, and even a tower of macaroons. She makes this happen by coordinating all the logistics so that the proposer, who is not always a man, by the way, can focus on, well, proposing the main task at hand.
With those thousands of proposals under her belt, Michelle is clearly bringing joy to a lot of people. And by the way, I did ask, so far, no one has said no. So if you're worried about your proposal being accepted, maybe you should talk to her. And in addition to the joy, happiness, true love, macaroons, et cetera, is this a profitable project? Well, of course it is.
This is side hustle school. So what did that look like? Well, in year one, she hustled. She had to get off the ground and figure things out. At the end of year two, she had made $50,000.
At the end of year three, it was $120,000, and she quit her job. Year four was $240,000, and last year, at year five, was $450,000. That's right, nearly a half a million dollars. This is no longer a side hustle. It's a booming business.
She actually handles most of it herself with just one employee. I'll tell you about that person in a moment. And she works with local vendors in all the different cities where the heart bandits operates. In addition to asking her if anyone had ever turned down one of their proposals, I also asked her what went wrong. Like surely somewhere along the way, something didn't work.
And she said, well, it's like this. If something ever goes wrong on our end, the client never knows about it. We take care of it, we fix it, so that everything is seamless in the client's eyes. However, dealing with some clients, not all, but some, can be a pain. Sometimes they're late.
Sometimes they cancel or reschedule at the last minute. Sometimes they get too drunk to propose. Or they get drunk and end up proposing anyway, and then their proposal video doesn't look that great. One time they were filming and got photobombed by a grumpy Santa Claus. Always gotta be on the lookout for grumpy Santa at the end of the year.
But perhaps most interesting of all, Michelle said she's had multiple clients hire her to propose to one girl, but then end up using them to propose to someone else. She also says, we don't ask any questions about that. Hmm. Well, I mentioned she has one employee. Remember that lame marriage proposal that Michelle herself received that kicked all of this off?
It turned out that she liked the guy enough to say yes, despite the poor proposal performance. And in the fourth year of her side hustle, he too quit his job to work on the project full-time. It seems like he's made up for that initial lame attempt. All right, well, happy Valentine's Day or happy Independence Day, or happy let's get this day over with until tomorrow comes a long day. Whatever it is for you, take care of yourself out there.
I did like the story because it's obviously a service with a pretty clear market. It can be a desperate market with people who are like, man, I don't know what to do. There's so much writing on this. I'm not creative. I don't know how to sing and dance.
I can't thank through what might be an amazing memorable experience. And here's somebody who specializes in this, who can do this for me. She has a clear track record of doing it for a lot of people. Now, by the way, also, Michelle has a great website. The hearts bandit site is very well done.
I'd encourage you to take a look at it. We'll link it up in the show notes. It's just super clear on what they do. There's some really nice visuals, there's video. You can see all these different packages and it's also easy to sign up, which is always important.
Don't make it hard for people to give you their money. Don't make them jump through hoops. You should have a button on your site that says click here to give me money. I mean, maybe you don't phrase it exactly like that, but that's the intent. So she does all of that very well.
No wonder business is booming. Congrats to Michelle and to her husband, who in his own way kind of kicked off this idea several years ago. I hope you too enjoyed this story. Remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Those show notes that I mentioned are at sidehustleschool.com/410.
That's 410. I'll be back tomorrow with, guess what? Episode 411, 411. Thank you for listening. You're a rockstar.
I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
