This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Pump it up, a project manager elevates female fitness. What's up, Side Hustle School listeners? This is Chris Guillebeau. So excited to welcome you to the program today. Today features a transformation story that leads to a side hustle and then a full-time business that goes on to earn $10,000 a month.
That is correct, $10,000 a month when diet and fitness fads run their course. This Aussie, who's living in Canada, builds a tribe of over 16,000 followers. How does she do it? Well, she partly documents her own personal journey. And I'm actually gonna have some comments about this principle or this practice in general at the end of the episode, so do stay tuned.
I'll also tell you a couple of other people who are working in the fitness space that I respect. So stay tuned for this story. Let's say thank you to today's sponsor and then on with the show. [Music]
27-year-old Lucy Dunn is a free spirit. In her heyday, she spent years partying hard and traveling the world not knowing what the next day held.
As an Aussie now living in Alberta, Canada, Lucy found herself working full-time as a lead project manager tasked with providing signage solutions for corporations across North America. Like most jobs, it had its ups and downs. That job kept her busy and she was making ends meet. But there was one area of her life that she wanted to improve, her health and fitness. Lucy had acquired a new habit of binge eating and it didn't help that she was smoking up to a pack of cigarettes a day.
But it wasn't until she was having trouble fitting into regular size clothes at retail stores that she knew something had to change. In the health and fitness world, there is a lot of noise. So instead of looking to experts, Lucy decided to do it her own way. She said farewell to hours spent on the dreaded treadmill and stair climber machines and introduced weightlifting and other activities that didn't feel like such a chore. Instead of denying herself the things she loved and meticulously counting her calories, she began to adopt an everything in moderation mentality and focused on macro ratios more than calories.
Over the next three years, trips to the gym and meal times stopped being something she dreaded and more importantly, she was seeing good results. By 2015, she had lost 65 pounds and felt she could finally stop hiding behind large purses and photos. Lucy was so proud of what she'd accomplished that she decided to document the rest of her journey on Instagram. And that's when everything changed. Each day, Lucy would share a bit more about her journey.
Because of the transparency and authenticity of her posts, she began drawing the attention of other women who were looking to improve their health and fitness. The response was outstanding. Lucy began receiving over 20 messages a day from women all over the world. They were sending her photos of their transformations, all thanks to the fitness tips she was sharing. Clearly she was onto something.
Her journey was inspiring others on their path to living healthier lives. And when her list of followers grew to 9,000, she couldn't help but think, maybe there's some way to kick this up a notch. By then she knew what worked best for herself, but she wanted to get a better idea of what would work for others. So Lucy decided to get certified as a personal trainer and nutrition coach. Before she knew it, a new transformation was underway, this time in the form of a side hustle.
Lucy Dunn called this side hustle Dunn Bells. So what would the business actually be? Lucy decided to offer custom nutrition plans with short, effective workouts. Specifically, she offered two different programs, a 21-day program for $65 called Number 21, and a more extensive eight-week program for $149 called Elevate. That program included access to a private Facebook community.
If you think her diet plans will kill you softly, she's got news she doesn't believe in excessive food restrictions or in spending excessive hours in the gym. One of the biggest hurdles Lucy came up against was determining the right prices for those programs. In the beginning, she wasted whole days going over market research and playing around with prices. And she says now that you should definitely not do that because you can always go back and change your rates. In her words, it's better to just move forward with something and then see how your audience takes it and make adjustments from there.
Don't let price hold you back from launching. With that avid Instagram following looking for her help, she started with them. In the first month, she had roughly 20 clients enrolled in each program, and with each month that passed, her programs were selling out faster than she could open them up. In the beginning, Dunn Bells was earning $1,000 a month. Gradually, the monthly earnings bumped up to $2,000.
By October 2017, she was making $5,000 a month. Less than a year later, her side hustle is now her full-time gig, and she's earning more than $10,000 a month. When we asked her about standing out in a saturated market, Lucy said, "Just because someone else is doing something doesn't mean that you won't have something unique and valuable to add." She also stresses the importance of knowing your strengths and not being afraid of outsourcing to make up for the things you're not good at. For example, she hired a developer through Upwork to create her website because she didn't want to learn how to make websites, it's not what she was good at. True to form, Lucy is already looking down the road at what she'd like to do next.
And she's currently in the process of building an ambassador program called Fire Tribe. It's a global lifestyle platform where women can connect and elevate together. She's not planning on racking this full-time hustle anytime soon, so we can't wait to see what happens. [Music]
If you want to get in shape, what do you do? Well, here's a quote from Seth Godin, really like this one.
He says, "If you want to get in shape, go to the gym every single day, change your clothes and take a shower. If you can do that every single day for a month, pretty soon you'll start doing something while you're there." Not a bad idea. I mean, it's funny, but it's also true. That's how I feel sometimes about going for a run. If I can just put my shoes on and go outside, even if I just walk around the block, you know, I tell myself if I can just do that, I'll be fine.
Most of the time I do it, I actually end up going for a run. So there's a free tip. I need to sign up for my eight week program, pretty basic. Just start doing something. But if you want to know what to do, that's where people like Lucy come in.
Now I want to talk about this concept of using your personal journey as a narrative. It is a pretty common concept, especially in the personal fitness, the wellness world. If you look on Instagram or elsewhere, you know, people are sharing their story. Like here's my story. I used to kind of be down and out and out of shape, or I had this problem.
And then I was able to change my life, transform my life through this process that I'm going to show you. Where I was able to change my mindset and my habits. And this is a teachable, coachable process. You can learn it as well. So the thing is, this can work, and it certainly does work for people like Lucy.
But a lot of people try it, this whole like documenting my personal journey thing. And it doesn't usually stick, at least not in the business sense, because they either don't focus on others enough. Like it is about them, but it's also about them in the context of someone else. Like you have to be able to see yourself in what somebody else is doing. Or, or let's say and or, they don't make it a real business.
Okay, so it's not just about like, hey, look at me, I'm able to do all these pushups. It has to be, hey, look at me, I'm able to do all these pushups and you can too. And let's talk about somebody else I met who wasn't able to do pushups. But because they did these really simple exercises, or they went to the gym and took a shower every day and went home, they learned how to do it. And they gained that skill.
And then by the way, if you want to get support in making this happen, making this part of your life, then here is my coaching program, my training program, the routine, whatever it is that's for sale. So those are the key differentiators. Not just about my story, but how my story could potentially connect to you, or how you could find inspiration, aspiration in my story. And then also, okay, great, there's the story. What is the product?
What's the service? That's where the actual business stuff comes in. And those are the kind of things that are not hard to learn, but you do need to learn them if you're gonna try to have this kind of business. Okay, last but not least, I wanna give shout outs to a couple of friends of mine, people that I think do this very well. In addition to Lucy, be sure you follow her as well.
We're gonna link up her social media on the show notes. But I wanted to mention Jill Coleman and Steve Cam. Jill is JillFit on Instagram and Twitter and elsewhere. And Steve is Nerd Fitness on Instagram and Twitter and elsewhere. Both of those folks are also doing good work in the wellness space and have inspired me.
So be sure to check them out. We're gonna link all that stuff up. The show notes page is sidehustleschool.com/580. That is 580. And speaking of wellness and going to the gym and getting fit, this certainly applies.
Don't forget, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. I hope you will do something today to care for yourself, whether that is in the wellness world or the side hustle world, or just kind of thinking about your dreams. What are your dreams and how can you transform those dreams into goals, which then transform into strategies and plans and actions and kind of stuff that we work on through this process together. And one day you're gonna hit that thing. One day you're gonna achieve that goal that you have set.
That is my wish for you. That is why I make the show every single day. And I will be back again tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
