Ballroom Dance Enthusiast Triples Side Income with “How-To” Guide

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

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Let's talk today about ballroom dancing. After an initial attempt at baking scones fails to rise, a client services manager for an environmental company finds her passion for ballroom dancing while writing guidebooks for fellow dance students. This ballroom dance enthusiast then triples her side income. Also in this story, you'll get a lesson or a reminder in how you need to pay attention to how something makes you feel. I don't mean anything woo woo here, I just mean something has to work for you.

Just because a coach or expert or anyone else tells you, hey, this is how it's supposed to be. You need to follow this path, pursue this strategy, advance this tactic or whatever, doesn't mean you necessarily need to listen to them. Because again, you need to figure out what works for you. So we'll look at that in the context of the story. Here's a quick thank you to our sponsor, then save the last dance for me.

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Katie Flashner needed a creative outlet, something to help her escape from the drudgery of her corporate day job where she wrote and reviewed indoor air quality testing reports. Sounds exciting, right? That's why she needed a side hustle. She first tried starting a homemade pastry business called Katie's Scones. She soon discovered, however, that even though she loved baking for others, she didn't love the exhausting, constant cleanup.

Then she found a new activity and passion. You could say it made her feel like dancing. These days after Katie leaves the office, instead of heading home, she goes to the dance studio where she spends her free time as a competitive ballroom dancer. And she doesn't hang up those dance shoes after leaving the studio. She also writes about ballroom dancing, earning a side income from the sale of books and guides.

She first began blogging as a way to process all of her new experiences with dance. Her blog grew into a place where other amateur ballroom dancers could get an honest perspective from someone relatable. Once Katie had dance fever, she knew that to transition from blogging as a hobby to a business, she needed help. By her own admission, there was a lot she didn't know, pretty much everything except how to write. A friend introduced her to a branding and marketing strategist.

Over the course of about a year, Katie worked through all the challenges, webinars, and programs her coach had to offer. This enabled her to clarify her brand and think more about products. Speaking of products, she had the blog, but wasn't sure what kind of paid offering she could create. As she discussed her options with friends and that mentor, they kept suggesting that she teach a course or offer some kind of coaching program. She began to get swept up in the other's enthusiasm before stepping back to think for herself.

Katie had never had a strong urge to teach. For her, writing a guide book was the obvious choice because she's a writer. Looking back, she realizes that the biggest challenge came from trying to do what she thought she was supposed to do instead of staying true to herself. Katie learned about the concept of creating a free offer to collect an email list of potential customers and then using that list to market paid offers. She followed this model for the solo practice guide for ballroom dancing.

This guide is more than just a book to read. She added worksheets for dancers to record and track their practice and a few videos to better demonstrate the ideas she describes in the book. She promoted it on her blog and social media pages. And after a while, she began to market the beta offer to that list. That beta offer was the next step and she hadn't even written the guide yet.

She offered 10 spots in the beta group that would receive one chapter a week. They would then have the opportunity to provide feedback. The cost was $54, which was her intended full price at the time, so they weren't even getting a discount. But the beta group sold out in about a week. After gathering their feedback, she added more material to the guide.

When she was close to publishing the final version of her book, Katie offered 10 new spots on a launch team. This option included a digital and hard copy and a chance to be an affiliate. She increased the price to $67 and sold nine of the 10 spots. After that came her pre-order period. And here is where the mambo slowed to a waltz.

She was hoping for 25 pre-orders, but only got eight. In hindsight, she realized her list of potential buyers was probably a bit fatigued. She was working with a list of fewer than 200 people, and she had already sold 19 through the beta group and launch team. It's a small list, but this also shows the power of a narrow focus. By honing in and paying attention to this niche audience, Katie's conversion rate for the solo practice guide for ballroom dancing is currently 25%.

So for every four people who join the list, one person makes a purchase. To move forward, she'll need to increase the number of prospects, people who are interested in learning about ballroom dancing and who might be persuaded to purchase the guide. Her side income for 2018 is $6,300, 6,300. By comparison, last year she made about $2,000, meaning that she has more than tripled it so far this year. What's in the Dancing Queen's future?

Katie is reaching out to dance shops and studios to get her guide into as many ballroom students' hands as possible. And of course she's doing this while she continues to work her day job. At this step in time, her dance card is full. [Music]

All right, so the two steps to develop this kind of project, if you want to develop a really specific ebook or guide or other online resource to a focus group of people, you need to first of all create the right products and then find the right people. You can also reverse that order and say, you gotta find the right people and then create the right product.

But in any case, once you have the right product, like in this case, Katie has spent a lot of time creating that ballroom dancing guide, now her task, like the task that is in front of her, is to find more people. Because if she's able to convert 25% of a list of 200 people, that's an incredible conversion rate. You just have to ask, okay, what if it were 2,000 people on that list? I mean, surely there are 2,000 people out there who would be interested in ballroom dancing who could learn something about this from her. If this year she made $6,000 and she went from 200 people to 2,000 people on that list, well, maybe next year she could make $60,000.

And just to be fair, usually when you increase the audience, like as it goes up, especially when it goes up exponentially when you scale, the conversion rate goes down. But that's okay, because she's not always gonna have a 25% conversion rate. You're only gonna have that with a pretty low number of people on the list. So if she goes from 25% conversion rate to a 10% conversion rate, that's still a great rate overall. And if she's reaching a lot more people in the first place, then she's gonna have more sales, she's gonna make more money.

So my advice to Katie would be, find out where more dance enthusiasts are, and not just dance enthusiasts, but people who want to be dance enthusiasts, but might be intimidated by the process. They don't wanna just walk into a studio for the first time and be the person who's never taken a lesson. They need to learn some of it from a distance, which is why they might be interested in her videos or her guide. It seems like she's doing some of that by reaching out to those dance studios. But again, I bet a lot of her best audience is not associated with a dance studio at all.

They're just all those people out there who one day on their bucket list would like to learn to do ballroom dancing. Or maybe even haven't thought of it until they encountered her guide, her work, her email list, all that set of resources. So if I were her, I would devote my efforts toward focusing on where can I find those people, because I already have the product to serve them. Now I just need to find more people. In any case, congratulations to this ballroom dance enthusiast who tripled her side income with the how-to guide.

Katie, great job. Let us know what turns out in the future. And listeners, thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Many more are on the way.

As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/664. That is for episode 664. Stay tuned for more. Be sure you're subscribed.

Tell your friends it is all completely free. Once again, my name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is Side Hustle School.