Aussie Couple Logs Six Figures Selling Wellness Diaries

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

[Music]

If you are feeling exhausted and burned out, how can you adjust and align? Maybe the answer is to go out and do more. Start another project, take on the world. Or maybe that's just my answer. Okay, so do as I say, not as I do.

Now, in this episode, by the way, this is Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host. In today's story, a former marketing executive and her partner develop a self-care diary to help others prioritize health and wellbeing. This Aussie couple then goes on to log six figures selling these wellness diaries, and they're just getting started. They're on year number two right now, so we'll hear how they got started, how they got this idea, how they made it happen, and what they have learned along the way.

At the end of the episode, I'll include her top tips on avoiding burnout while working a full-time job and launching a side hustle. I know this is gonna be helpful to somebody out there, probably to a lot of people, so stay tuned. [Music]

Burnout, the struggle is real. This is exactly what happened to Alex Phillips. In 2015, Alex was working full-time as a senior SEO account manager for a digital marketing agency in Melbourne, Australia.

She was also doing some freelance work for a small business and trying to build her own side business as a lifestyle and wellness blogger for millennials. This was simply a case of too many goals. As a type A personality, Alex was driving herself too hard towards self-destruction. Her burnout manifested itself both emotionally and physically. She realized she needed to change her trajectory.

It was that experience, along with her partner, Tom's desire to start a business, that was the catalyst for starting St. Belfort. Named for the street where their idea was born, Alex and Tom created a diary that helps you stay grounded, organized, and mindful. Alex knew that there were many others like her who struggled with prioritizing their health and wellbeing while trying to do it all. These people tend to neglect their health in favor of an aggressive live-to-work mentality.

Alex had a strong desire to reinvent the diary by creating a journal that included an empowering set of wellness lifestyle tools. But she had no plan of how to do so. In fact, when Tom proposed the idea to Alex, neither of them had any experience in the world of printing. The couple first defined their shared mission, which helped them to focus on the best set of tools to include in the planners. They brainstormed and researched a ton of other diaries, planners, and journals for inspiration.

They surveyed family friends and friends of friends for input. And then they created a short list of features to build into their diary. These features included a weekly meal planner, a savings planner, a mission statement, a habits curator, and a bucket list to help you plan the experiences and adventures you want to embark on in the next year. Alex was friends with a designer from her full-time job, so they collaborated on the design of her curation 2018 diary during its development. They initially decided to go with a local printer to avoid logistical challenges, but the cost was high, so this year they've switched to overseas production.

Now, when starting out, they had zero audience or customers to market to. In hindsight, Alex says they should have launched their website and social media pages earlier to establish more of an audience pre-launch. Still, they had some advantage because of her professional background in digital marketing. She focused on Facebook groups, email marketing, and search engine optimization. They also reached out to influencers and bloggers to ask them to share the St. Belford brand

and write diary reviews. These reviews from legitimate bloggers have not only helped from an SEO perspective, they also generated a lot of referral traffic and conversions. This year, they began to switch to focus more heavily on emails. By looking at last year's statistics, they can see this method has a proven conversion rate. To entice email signups, they started a drawing to give away a free diary each month.

In the past six weeks alone, St. Belford has more than doubled their email list. All right, let's talk about money and challenges. Startup costs were $15,000, and the first year's sales were about $46,000. With all their costs, they made some money, but not a lot.

This year, however, they're planning to generate revenue of more than $160,000. Now, the process has not been completely stress-free. After two customer reports of a printing error, Alex emailed all their customers to alert them to the issue. They offered to send a new diary at their expense if the customer had any problems. Fortunately, there weren't any other reports, but customers did email to thank them for their honesty.

For Alex and Tom, the best part is receiving feedback from customers who love the planner and love how it's enabled them to make positive life changes. All right, I promised you a few tips on avoiding burnout. These come straight from Alex because I couldn't tell you about avoiding burnout. I kinda lived my whole life at the edge. So we're gonna go with what she says.

Alex's top tips on avoiding burnout while working a full-time job and launching a side hustle. First, listen to your body. Do a little mindful self-check to see how you're feeling. If you notice a cold or a headache coming on, give yourself permission to rest. Pushing yourself too hard is reckless, and you'll be worse off in the end.

So she says. Establish a morning self-care ritual to start the day fresh and in the right frame of mind to make the best decisions. Write it down and commit to it every day. Healthy habits are our superpowers. Plan your week in advance and value your time.

Listing out your biggest priorities gives direction and allows you to mindfully distribute your time and not overcommit. This can also involve planning out your meals for the week. Thinking about what you're gonna need helps you make more mindful, nourishing choices. And last but not least, when you make mistakes, be kind to yourself. Making a mistake is an opportunity to learn.

Mistakes form part of our story. And don't forget to give yourself a pat on the back because when you are your own boss, there are no performance reviews. Once again, those tips are from Alex. We're gonna link up these unconventional diaries on the show notes page. That show notes page is at sidehustleschool.com/683.

That's for episode 683. Also, whenever I think about these kind of things, I always think about my friend Laura VanderKam's time tracking method, which I probably talked about more than once on the show. It's a really great way to kind of keep up with your hours, see how you actually spend your time each week so that you can make better choices, better priorities to suit your life. So we're gonna link that up on the show notes page as well. Again, Laura VanderKam's time tracking method.

And of course the curation diaries from St. Belfort. That's it for me, but I will be back tomorrow. New episodes coming out every single day. I wanna support you on your side hustle and I also want you to be well.

So take care of yourself out there. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.