“Teachers Against Humanities” Card Deck Unites Educators

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

Welcome, friends. Hey, what's up? It's Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. So glad you're here. So glad you're listening to this daily podcast, bringing you different stories of people who are doing some pretty awesome stuff. Today's project is pretty awesome.

It's also brand new. It just came out two months prior to the time I'm recording this episode. In its first month, it made just over $1,300 in profit, went on to do several thousand dollars by the second month. I really like these kinds of early-in stories because you can clearly see the origin of the idea as well as the pathway to execution. We're not looking back on something that happened a decade ago or something that makes a huge amount of money, something that just started but is making real money. Now, this story also features a teacher. You may recall that the day

before yesterday, I told you the story of tote bag titans, teacher's custom bag shoulders, $110,000 in profits. Well, our teachers out there are resourceful. They are doing all kinds of fun stuff and working hard. I believe this one also, I'm just looking at my notes here, I believe this guy also took some steps or inspiration or direction from the Side Hustle book. And I mentioned that not because I'm like, "Oh, hey, you should go and read my book." I mean, it would be cool if you read my book, but you don't have to. Honestly, it's not a promotional

strategy. It's just my motivation as an author and with the show is to be able to contribute something of value. So I'm always just really happy myself when I know that one of the resources has helped somebody do something significant. And as I try to say, whenever that happens, whenever I get an email or hear a story from someone who's like, "Hey, I applied something that you taught or wrote about and this cool thing happened," I always try to say, "That's awesome. Super glad to be part of that, but you're the one who did the work." So in this story, a UK-based teacher does the work.

He turns his wit and sarcasm about his job into an expansion card deck for the popular cards against humanity's game. Let's say thank you to our sponsor. They allow us to keep the lights on. Then I'll tell you all about how he made this happen. Teachers around the world face exhausting challenges. Their roles include part educator,

part administrator, part organizational specialist, and part babysitter. Sometimes even when they teach older kids or adults. Many develop a facetiousness that helps them cope with the expectations placed upon them, even when they find their job rewarding. Stephen Lockyer turned his wit and sarcasm to cards against humanities, the irreverent card game. He played often with fellow teachers, and each time they finished a game, someone would inevitably say, "There really needs to be an expansion pack for teachers." Stephen had a notebook full of side hustle ideas. He'd

always been a dreamer, but he'd never acted on those ideas because he was usually so wrapped up in his day job. But that idea of a teacher expansion pack wouldn't go away. Why hadn't someone made this already? It seemed too obvious, but he couldn't find anything like it online. Then around October 2018, Stephen was just finishing up the side hustle book. Wait,

that's my book, From Idea to Income in 27 Days. He decided it was finally time to follow through on an idea. He opened up that notebook to look over his ideas, but he already knew which one he wanted to try. That idea would be teachers against humanities. He knew that cards against humanities welcomed user-made expansion packs. He knew that cards were probably something he could learn to

design on his own, and he figured it was a fairly simple idea to execute on. He also wasn't short on ideas for what to say on his cards. Cards Against Humanity has a whole series of questions and answers, and he came up with 54 questions that said things like, "What did you bring to after-work drinks?" And, "I don't need help with well-being. I've got..." Fill in the blank. He then created 54 answers that said things like, "The newly qualified teacher." In other words, "What did you bring to after-work drinks? The newly qualified teacher." And, "An additional

responsibility. I don't need help with well-being. I've got an additional responsibility." If you don't get those jokes, I assure you that most teachers will. Creating the cards themselves was just about as simple as coming up with the ideas. He didn't hire a freelancer or go to an agency to figure out the design. He just opened up Pixlr and Photopea. These are two free browser-based

design apps. I'll link them up for you in the notes. And he got to work. To prepare the cards for printing, he used Microsoft Word and Mail Merge. It was about as low-tech as you could go for graphic design, and yet the cards looked fantastic. To find a printer, he just went to

the store and bought a nice-looking deck of cards. He then called up the manufacturer and asked who they used as their printer. They told him that he phoned the printer and was surprised to find that they were responsive and didn't have a very large order minimum. Next, and he's almost done now, he created a simple Shopify store. He wrote up some basic text, uploaded images of his mockups to the Teachers Against Humanities product page, and made that site swagnanimous.com live.

He started this in October of 2018. It was now November of 2018, just one month after starting, and it was also time to launch. Stephen told some of his friends about his hustle, but he didn't want to attach his name to it. Rather than leverage his network of teachers, he wanted to see what would happen if he just put Teachers Against Humanities out into the world. Would people really want it enough to buy, not just because they were his friends?

The site went live. He tweeted about it, one of his friends retweeted it, and then Stephen went to sleep. He figured it would be a few days or even a couple weeks before teachers around the country started to hear about his creation, if in fact they heard it all. But when he woke up the next morning, he realized it hadn't taken that long, not by a long shot. Without the physical cards even printed yet, Stephen had sold 62 packs overnight at 12 pounds a piece. That's about $15, and I'll just use dollars from here on out to be consistent.

He called up the printer and placed his first order for a couple hundred packs for only $260. Pretty cheap, and also notice a key point. By the time he sold them, 62 packs, he hadn't actually printed them. So he only spent the money once he had the sales. Those sales climbed steadily, and that next Sunday morning, he woke up to a huge surge.

He did some digging in the analytics and found that a well-known teacher in the UK had made a Facebook post about teachers against humanities. Perhaps he did that because his name was one of the answers in the decks. By the end of November, Stephen's first month of real site hustling, he had profited over $1,300. And then by January, he had earned $4,000, enough to cover his 2019 vacation. He attributes this rapid success to three things. The first was

that initial Twitter post. The second was that well-known teacher's Facebook post. In fact, by including him in the deck, he almost guaranteed that he would post about the product organically. The third factor was the approaching Christmas season. Schools in the UK are all about secret Santa's and white elephant parties, and his teachers against humanities pack was a perfect gift, especially for fellow cheeky educators. Good British word there, cheeky.

Stephen is now on fire and highly motivated. This year, he's planning to launch two subscription services. The first is post against humanity, a monthly cards against humanity deck service that will feature different themed decks, not all of them teacher related. And the second subscription will be teach treats, a monthly box for teachers who want to treat themselves. The extra money has been great. But for Stephen, the best part is knowing that he finally settled on an idea,

figured out how to make it work and followed through all the way to sales. Now he's excited to do it again and again. Well, this is in many ways a lesson in figuring things out. I really like this part about how to find a card printer. He just went to the store and bought a nice looking deck of cards. And he looks

at the name on the back or, you know, otherwise figures it out, calls up the company that made those cards and then ask them who they use as their printer. And then he finds the printer. And also before that, when designing the cards, he just used that free browser software. So he really is spending almost nothing on this project, at least until he actually prints the cards, which he doesn't do until he has orders. So fantastic work, so resourceful. And this

project also would only be possible with the benevolent approval of cards against humanities. So just to make a note about that, you can't actually go and create a knockoff product or an expansion deck, you know, for just about anything. It has to be something like this popular card game that actually enables and encourages that. All right, I hope you enjoyed this story. I enjoyed working on it. Stephen, congratulations. Look forward to hearing what

happens with the other products you got coming out post against humanity and teach treats. Let us know. We'll do a little follow-up at some point. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes. All right, sidehustleschool.com/761.

We'll include links to his product along with all the other resources and tools I mentioned. And perhaps even more, you never know. Episode 761 is wrapped. I'll be back again tomorrow with 762. I hope you will join me again. Just remember there's something out

there that you can do too. Okay, that's why I'm telling you these stories. Once again, my name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.