This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
If you think about family memories, times when you were growing up with your parents, maybe any siblings, and by the way, I mean happy memories, 'cause you know, we all have all kinds of memories, but if you think about happy family memories, what stays with you? Do you remember times of conversation, maybe sitting around a table, maybe going on a road trip, maybe some kind of sporting event, or maybe you remember sitting around playing a board game or a series of board games. I grew up playing video games. The Nintendo Entertainment System was essentially my babysitter for a number of years, but I also did play some board games, especially with my Nana, my grandma. I remember playing Monopoly with her, and Sorry, and Parcheesi, and a whole bunch of other games as well.
Now, whether you grew up with board games or not, they are coming back in a few different ways. We've had a couple of episodes from people who've actually done phenomenally well, creating a new board game or marketing a different game, and that's what today's story is about. So, welcome to Recital School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Every day on the program, I have the privilege of bringing you a different story of real people out there who have jobs and a life, and they're not celebrities, they're not entrepreneurs.
They're just people who are trying to create something for themselves, trying to create a new source of income so that they're not dependent on the income from a job, even if they like that job and have no plans to leave. Now, today's story features two sisters living in New York City who relive their childhood memories and create a personalized board game, earning $16,500 actually, in the first four months. This is a fun story because not only have they done well, they've also learned some lessons about scale and about how to make a product that is personalized, but in a way that's not taking all their time, because in the beginning, it does take all their time. Anyway, I don't mean to get ahead of things. I'll tell you the whole story, but first, here's a quick little shout out for our sponsor.
I really appreciate them. They allow the show to be completely free to you. [Music]
Sisters Cassie and Jacqueline Collier grew up in a typical American household. The family was close, and still is. In fact, Cassie and Jacqueline continue to live together as adults, sharing an apartment in New York City.
Some of their fondest memories are of playing board games with the family. They'd sit around at the table playing classic games, laughing over mistakes or mishaps. Their dad would give them poker tips. He actually used to get paid to play for the house in a local bar. And their mom created sibling bonding games, where they had to compliment each other to receive a prize.
Those same happy memories were the catalyst for starting their very first side hustle, one that is attempting to recreate the magic of that family bonding experience naturally through a board game. But before we talk about that, let's go back a few squares on the game board. The year is 2013, and the two sisters were struggling to find a Christmas present for their mom. They wanted to get her something truly special, 'cause she was, after all, a special mom. After brainstorming ideas, they decided to create a board game that was custom made for the family, one that included lots of in-jokes and anecdotes about all the members, themselves, their mom, their dad, their brother.
And the game was a huge hit. It was as if they had rolled a Yahtzee or got a Royal Flush in poker, the perfect game. Not only did their mom absolutely love it, but it created even more memories. It was like a recursive loop of board game goodness. The impact of that experience stayed with them, and over the next few years, they created a few more games for other close friends.
Okay, so let's pass go and collect $200 and then skip ahead to September 20th. September 2017. The sisters are living in New York City. Cassie is working as a financial analyst for Deutsche Bank, and Jacqueline is a nanny and aspiring actor. While they're at a party, the topic of the games comes up.
A friend suggested they try selling those customized personalized games as a side business. They'd played with the idea before, but the small piece of external endorsement tipped them over the edge. Those sisters decided it was time to roll the dice and enter the board game business. They called their concept The Bundle Game, a completely personalized board game designed specifically for your friends and family. Being board game lovers themselves, they already had a good idea of what would make a compelling game.
However, they still decided to conduct research after making a beta version. They did this by arranging play testing sessions with small groups of people around New York. After the sessions, they got together and tweaked the game based on user feedback. Like a good puzzle, the pieces fell into place, and the vision for The Bundle Game began to form. Once they had a suitable product, it was time for a soft launch.
For that, they simply posted a short pitch on their Facebook pages, and it wasn't long before they had their first customer. A childhood friend of theirs ordered the first official bundle game for a friend's bachelorette party. Shortly after that, several more people placed orders. The sisters felt as rich as the Monopoly Man. However, at this point, things also got a little dicey.
You see, to create a bundle game, customers fill out a questionnaire. They're asked things like, who will be playing this game? What are a few of your favorite memories with these people? What are some of your traditions? Things like that.
Then the sisters used the answers to create unique playing cards specific to the customer. On top of that, they were creating game boards, boxes, and game pieces manually for each order. The process took around six hours per game. So clearly that wasn't sustainable. They knew they needed a manufacturer if they wanted to grow the business.
So after that successful soft launch, they went looking for one. They found one in New Jersey, and they were off and playing again. The external manufacturing meant Cassie and Jacqueline's only job was to create the custom playing cards. Now this got the time per game down to two hours. Still a big investment, but a huge improvement.
By now it was January, 2018. They felt it was time to make a website and decide on pricing. They'd been testing different price points up until then with each new order. They knew that classics like Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit were selling for around $30. They figured since their product was personalized, they could charge a premium, eventually landing on $60, which seems to be the sweet spot.
Sales have continued to come through since then. And since May, 2018, when they began to ramp up, the sisters have done over $16,500 worth of the bundle game. How much do they spend to make that happen? Well, they spend about $4,000. Not pocket change, but $4,000 makes $16,000 pretty good.
And what's more, it's given Jacqueline and Cassie a lot of faith that the bundle game could become something big. So to support that effort, Cassie is continuing to work for the bank with scaling back to part-time, and Jacqueline is limiting her acting roles so that she can spend more time on the business. Their aim is to work on automating as much of their process as they can over the coming year. It's far from game over for these two sisters from New York City. They're on a roll, hitting a streak and finding their stride.
[Music]
All right, lots of interesting lessons in this playful, nostalgic project. First of all, congratulations to Jacqueline and Cassie. It's really exciting to see this take off, and it seems like it is gonna take off. Now, what I think is most interesting of all is they started with this method that clearly wouldn't scale, right? Like they're spending six hours to make each one of the personalized board games, but then of course they adjusted and they found a way to make it scale, and they're still working on that.
Like their goal is to automate it even further while still allowing for the personalization that is such a big part of the product. Now, the reason why I think it's so interesting is most people would do it one of two other ways, and both ways are problematic. And the first way is to say, "Well, you should never start this project "unless you know from the outset "that there's a clear way for it to scale." And this is perhaps the typical startup entrepreneurial model, right? Like from the beginning, think about how you're gonna make, you know, a thousand of these board games a week or a day or whatever. And really the only way to do that is to have, you know, much more significant capital than they were working with, the $4,000 that they had.
So that's not super interesting to me because the people I make this show for don't have a ton of money to invest in their projects, and they are super busy. And everything that I've always done in the world of business is, you know, with startup costs, they're much closer to $4,000 than, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars or whatever else it would take to do it the other way. But alternatively, they also didn't just say, "Okay, well, it's gonna take, you know, "six hours to make every board game, "and we're gonna go and sell these in farmers markets, "and we're gonna sell two of them a week." You know, that's our goal. Like they actually have a pretty clear goal of growing this business. They've already done $16,000 in just a few months.
It seems like if they keep working on the automation, if they keep, you know, making decisions to systematize the business, then they are going to accomplish that first goal, you know, the traditional entrepreneurial goal of really scaling the business, but without spending a lot of money, without taking a lot of risk. And so I think that's so interesting and admirable. And I can't wait to see what happens. So I will keep my eye on the bundle game. I feel like I need to go and order one myself because it's just such a fun idea.
And yeah, we still see what happens, but good work. And remember, listeners, there's something that you can do too. There's an idea out there for you. Maybe the idea also comes from something you did as a kid or something you did with your family or growing up, or maybe it's something that you're good at now or interested in now. Like you never know, there are so many different options and possibilities, which is why the show is daily with a different story every day.
As I said in the beginning, I do feel privileged to be able to bring these stories to you. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/620. I want to give a shout out today to Seth Godin, who is someone that I've learned from for a number of years, especially when I was first getting started with my writing career. And I just saw, I just got in the mail a new book that he has coming out called "This is Marketing." So I usually try to check out all of Seth's work just because he is so prolific and has influenced so many people.
So there you have it. We will link that up as well. And wherever you are in the world, I hope you'll do something for yourself today. And I hope you'll join me again tomorrow. Once again, my name is Chris Guillebeau.
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