This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. Hello, my friends. This is Chris Guillebeau. We have just finished week number 26 of season three.
Week 26, season three, on into the 900s in terms of our episodes. We've done so much, but yet we continue to uncover amazing stories. This week featured eco-friendly candles, a software engineer who sells 64,000 copies of "Anne of Green Gables," among other eBooks, the "Revenge of Bat Houses," our second ever "Bat House" feature in a relatively short period of time, learning more about "Bat Houses" than I ever imagined, and of course, more. Now, I'm in the midst of hosting the ninth and penultimate World Domination Summit in Portland, Oregon. Our team has been preparing for a year.
We've got a lot of people in town, but of course, the show goes on because if you're not here in Portland at WDS, you're like, "Well, I don't care. "Tell me about Side Hustle School." My answer is no problem. I can do that. We have recently announced several new stops on the 100s Cytosils Tour, including Chicago, Calgary, Salt Lake City, and a rescheduled San Francisco event, perhaps a couple of others as well, and those will begin in just over a week's time. Coming up really soon, if you're in one of those cities, you can check out all the details at sidehustleschool.com/tour.
By check out the details, I mean, you can go and sign up. It's actually completely free, and I would love to see you. All right, today I want to address the common experience of attempting a project, whether that's a new service, a product, a reselling hustle, something else, whatever it is, and encountering the reality that it just doesn't work, okay? That happens sometimes. You try something that just doesn't work.
So then what? How do you regroup? What do you do next? Do you just give up forever? Or could there possibly be another option?
So let's break it down a bit, and I'll actually talk about a real example. People often ask me for my failures, my mistakes, things I have tried that haven't worked super well. And sometimes I talk about things from years ago. But let's talk about something that's actually very recent. I recently did a promotion for my email list service.
Now, I'm very happy with this email list service. I recommend them all the time. I recommend them without any benefit to me. But they had a particular promotion. I forget the details.
It was basically like you can get a 30-day trial, and during that trial, you'll get access to a bunch of trainings, et cetera. And I thought it was a good promotion. I thought it was a good offer, helpful training, et cetera. So I partnered with them on that. And we sent over, I think, about 350 referrals for that.
But I was really surprised that ultimately the conversion rates, the number of people who stayed on with the service after the free trial was really low. It's actually fewer than 30. So just under 1%. Now, often in some industries, 1% is a pretty good conversion rate. But long story short, without getting too much into the weeds, I expected a much higher conversion rate, especially among those people that I had sent over because for the most part, I thought they were qualified.
I thought that the service was doing a good job with the training. This is a valuable service that I use myself. I think everybody needs to have an email list if you're trying to build some kind of side of solar business. But basically, it didn't quite work as I expected. I mean, that's the bottom line.
I really thought it could be a lot better, but for whatever reason, I was wrong. I even talked it out a bit with one of the people with the company to make sure the statistics, the reports, the analytics were correct. Now, in the end, it didn't work out the way I hoped. I'm not quite sure why, but I also decided to just not worry about it. I just kind of move on.
It would be possible to just spend a lot more time looking at those reports, trying to understand, actually, is this being tracked properly? And if it is, why are so many people not appreciating the training enough to stay on? I just don't have time for that. I just don't have time or interest in that because I know that I can be much more effective doing things that work better. And I have pretty limited time and capacity for those kinds of promotions in the first place.
And so, if they work, that's great. If not, I'm just gonna move on, keep focusing on the work that's in front of me. So, the wrong thing to do in these situations, let's say it's something totally different, let's bring it back to you. You can't just keep trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results, right? That's the definition of insanity.
So you either have to try something different within the same broad lens of the same kind of service or product, or you have to try something different entirely, like an all new product or service. This is why starting without much risk is important because the stakes are low. The stakes are low. In this example, I tried to do this, I did some promotion for it, I sent some emails, I mentioned it on the podcast. But ultimately, I'm not spending any money at all and I'm not spending a ton of time or energy on it.
Even if I did spend a little bit of money, and if I did spend more time or energy on it, I would still probably walk away with the same evaluation and the same next course of action. Okay, didn't work out super well, let's try something else. All right, so that's why I encourage you to make a list of all your ideas. Make a list of all the different things you might wanna try at some point. You can't do it all at once, but if you do something for a while and it doesn't work, then move on to the next thing.
Don't get stuck, don't feel like a failure, it just didn't work. There's something else out there for you. And ultimately, the people who are successful in this world are able to just move forward and are able to say, okay, I'm gonna do this for a while and then I'll do something different. And if I hit something, if I find the mother load or the thing that's really working, then great, I'll stay with that. Being adaptable and being able to regroup from a mistake or a misstep or even a failure is critical.
And just to state the obvious here, if you try something and it doesn't work, great, join the club because that's what happens with all of us. If everything you try is working, you're probably not trying enough, you're probably not taking enough of a risk, having just said, to limit your risk, you should probably have some risk of failure or some risk of something not going well. Otherwise, I would suggest gently that you can probably step it up a bit. [Music]
All right, let's go on to the audio update. This one features someone we had on the program back in episode 378, high-risk pregnancy becomes healthy baby and side hustle.
So let's hear from Pari Jhat. - Hi, this is Pari Jhat Deshpande from parijhatdeshpande.com. I was featured on the side hustle podcast on episode 378, and it has been amazing since that episode has come out. For one, the biggest change in my business has been that I published a book called Pregnancy Brain, a mind-body approach to stress management during a high-risk pregnancy. And that book went on to become an Amazon bestseller soon after publication, and also recently won an award for one of the best pregnancy books by Book Authority.
I have done several book signings around the area, and the book has also become featured in several training programs for OB-GYN and maternal fetal medicine fellows around the country, which has been really, really exciting. So the book has been really well received by patients and providers alike. Since then, I've also grown my private practice and my referral program by connecting with many different providers around the country to work with women who are preparing their body for pregnancy, who are going through a high-risk pregnancy, and who are looking to release trauma from their bodies from the infertility, high-risk pregnancy, or preterm delivery experience that they may have had. It has been absolutely amazing, and I can't wait to see where this goes next. [Music]
Awesome, congratulations, Parijat.
I'm so happy to hear that things have been amazing. Congratulations on all that has happened since we last featured you. It's really fun to hear these updates, and in the new 100 Side Hustles book, we've actually got 100 stories, 100-100, of people featured in the first year of the podcast, along with all kinds of photographs and descriptions, and really some nitty gritty details about their business, how much money it costs to get started, how much money they're bringing in, all that kind of stuff. You've not had a chance to pick it up yet. 100 Side Hustles is at your local bookstore, or of course, you can get it from your favorite online retailer.
Now everyone, if you'd like to hear more about Parijat, check out her work. Her website is parijat-ponde.com. Now that's P-A-R-I-J-A-T-D-E-S-H-P-A-N-D-E.com. She's got a name kind of like Chris Guillebeau, so we're gonna link that up in the show notes, just in case you missed it and you wanna follow along. [Music]
Like I said, I've been hosting the World Domination Summit this weekend, but as much fun as that is, I'm looking forward to the next phase, having a bit more time in the summer to just not really relax, 'cause I don't relax, but to have more time to do some focused, creative work, really kind of look ahead to the fall and say, how can we level up again?
We always try to level up every year, every quarter. I mean, even week by week, I wanna make sure that we're bringing you better and better stories, more actionable help, more tips, more resources, et cetera. So that's my plan, to take some time this summer, and as of course, the show continues to come out every day, doing more events, as mentioned, Chicago Calgary, Salt Lake City, et cetera. And then, who knows what will happen next? But of course, I promise to take you along for the ride.
I'm so, so grateful to our wonderful community, so, so grateful that I'm able to make this program for you. Now, if you're listening, in fact, you are the reason I make this show. I said in the very first episode, 911 days ago, that if you make the commitment to make this part of your routine, just a quick little 10 minute daily investment in yourself, I too, commit to supporting you fully in your quest to create that new source of income. I was on the road for book tour for a while, like I said, I'm going back out, and every night, pretty much, I hear stories of our listeners who are taking action and creating just really fun, meaningful projects for themselves. So I appreciate them, I appreciate you, and I also appreciate our producer, Chuck Reed, everybody else from Cadence 13, our content manager, Whitney Karinic, our community liaison and director of Trucker Hats, Jed Chang, Cat Herder, she's also in charge of all the ambassadors, all the volunteers at WDS, more than 80 people, Tina Hart, and the official show cat who's kind of at the meow house this week, boarded, just kind of hanging out in her cat condo, that would be Libby Gillibough.
All of us at Team Side Hustle School are part of the Onward Project that is curated by bestselling author Gretchen Rubin, my hero, check out her show, Happier, as well as Happier in Hollywood, and Do the Thing by Melissa Urban. You can listen to all those shows in Apple Podcasts, at Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. Now, speaking of Apple Podcasts, I always appreciate those who just take a moment to give me a quick little rating or review, doesn't take too long, and it does help other people discover the show. You can also tell your friends, or even better, show them how to subscribe. If you know somebody out there who needs another source of income, send them to us, we'll do our best to take care of them.
I often say that inspiration is good, but action is better. What does that mean? It means that I hope the stories are inspirational to you, but I also hope they kind of nudge you a little bit to take action to do something for yourself. I look forward to hearing about you doing that, and I hope you'll join me again tomorrow and every day next week. Our episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern Time.
My name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
