This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up friends, listeners, community. Side Hustle School, thank you so much for being here. My name is Chris Guillebeau. We have just finished week number 36 of season three. This week featured a mochi making empire, cosplay costumes made with 3D printers and more.
Also this week, we had Labor Day in the United States, which the onward project led by Gretchen Rubin has now repurposed as #HappierLaborDay. If you missed any of that, just go and look on social media for that hashtag, #HappierLaborDay. You can see a bunch of posts, comments, photos, et cetera. The whole premise is that work should be something to be celebrated and enjoyed, not deferred or avoided. So if you hate your work, if you happen to be in a situation where you hate your job or your work or whatever you do, it's not your fault.
And most likely you're doing the wrong kind of work. In fact, we could even say it's not your job's fault. It just may not be the right match. It may not be the right fit. I guess it could be your job's fault or your boss's fault.
The point is, work should be something to be celebrated. So if you're not celebrating your work, you gotta find a way to make some changes one way or another, whether it is in the short term, medium term, or at least in the long term. Now, in the spirit of being proactive, let's talk about something that's important to a lot of businesses, especially e-commerce, retail, and any kind of business, business side hustle, et cetera, anything where you are selling a product that could possibly even buy the most remote stretch of the imagination that could possibly be given as a gift. So what am I talking about? I'm talking about the fourth quarter of the year.
This is episode 981. If you're listening in real time, it is the 8th of September. And so especially in regards to holiday sales and promotions, I know we have a long time to go until the holidays themselves. You know, you're like, why are you talking about the holidays now? Listen, I'm just talking about promotion and planning because if you want to plan an effective promotion, you need to plan ahead.
It doesn't do you any good for me to pop up the week before Thanksgiving and say, hey, have you planned your Black Friday promotion? Have you thought about what your big holiday sale is? Because if you're like most of our listeners, your time is limited. That's why this show is so short. It's every day, but it's short because I know your time is limited.
And to plan the right kind of Black Friday promotion or any kind of end of year holiday promotion, et cetera, sale, whatever it is, it will take some time and effort. So let's look at that a bit. Why is it so important? Well, statistics vary, but generally speaking, most estimates are that the range is 20 to 40% of yearly sales for small and mid-sized retailers take place within the last two months of the year. Now, of course, there are some contrarian opinions on this.
I went looking to make sure my statistics were correct and I found one resource that was like, there's no such thing, there is no such thing as a holiday bump and sales are distributed throughout the year, et cetera. I'm pretty sure that's not true, at least for a lot of businesses. Some businesses, some industries may be completely unaffected by this seasonality, but on the other hand, some may see more than 40%, so it is a big deal. And the point is, around this time of year, customers begin to get in a shopping mood and they expect some kind of promotion, especially in the period that begins around Thanksgiving. So that doesn't mean you have to give away the store, it just means you need a reason to get them in the store.
If you are selling anything or if you're planning to launch anything in the next three months, this is important. This is something you should take advantage of and plan for it because it's gonna make your life a lot easier, it's going to convert more customers and hopefully it will make you more money. So what can you do right now? What are a couple of practical things? Well, to start with, you can plan your holiday offer.
You can plan your bonus, your promotion, your sale, your discount, your extravaganza, whatever it is. Identify it now, be thinking about what it could be and make it your best offer of the year. If you're gonna plan a sale or promotion, as I said, customers will be in a buying mood, so this is a good time to do it. And lots of other businesses are making really competitive offers, 10%, 20%, 50% off. The best offer that you can possibly make, this is the time to do it.
Then you wanna set a date. You wanna decide, okay, when am I actually gonna put this offer out? Is it going to be on Black Friday, which is the day after Thanksgiving? Is it so-called Cyber Monday? I think it's a terrible name, but people are still using that 20 years after we stopped saying Cyber, right?
That's the Monday that follows Thanksgiving. I actually think any time in that window is good, could actually begin a couple days earlier. My suggestion is to make it three to five days. So your offer, your promotion, whatever it is, it's not just one day and it's also not too long either. If it's just one day, people could miss it.
If it goes on for 60 days and it's not really an offer or it's not really a discount, it's not a promotion, I should say. So Thanksgiving in 2019 is November 28th. That is the US Thanksgiving. I realized that Canada has an earlier one. But for the purpose of our discussion, November 28th, and then going for the next two weeks in terms of good holiday season promotion time, then as December progresses, there's a natural pause for Hanukkah, which begins December 22nd, I believe in 2019.
Goes until the 30th, of course, Christmas Eve, Christmas. And then once all that's done, it's just in time for New Year's sales. So this is the whole period I'm talking about between Thanksgiving and New Year's, mid-November to early January, it can be really big. So you've got to select your offer, you want to set your date, and then at a certain point, you probably don't want to do this right away. But maybe a week or so in advance of Black Friday or whenever it is that your promotion is going to go out, you want to tell people it's coming.
You want to email your list, you want to however you communicate with your customers, you want to say, "Hey, this thing is coming up." You want them prepared to buy, because even though they're in a shopping mood, they're also going to be hearing from lots and lots of other businesses. So you want them to know, "Hey, we've got something special for you. If there's anything you can do to differentiate it or stand out or otherwise make it noticeable, so much the better." So those are three things for you to think about now. Make it your best offer of the year. What is that promotion or discount going to be?
Set your date for it, the date range. Again, I think three to five days is a good range. And then prepare to tell people it's coming. So you don't have to do that now, but just prepare for it. Think about the email you want to write, think about how you're going to update your website copy, any special graphics images, and so on.
Just to give you two examples of how powerful this can be, such a simple thing, this season, this kind of promotion, doing a sale, you know, at the end of the year. Scott Keyes, who we featured before, Scott's Cheap Flights. He's actually in the "100 Side Hustles" book, along with a guy that I'm going to introduce you to in just a moment. You're going to hear an audio update from somebody else who was in that book. But every year, Scott Keyes does more than $100,000 from a Black Friday promotion.
And his business is doing really well now, but I mean, a single promotion, more than $100,000. I think he brings in something like a quarter to a third of his annual members, which are his customers essentially, through that promotion every year. And then not quite as epic as that, but for a number of years, I had a business called Unconventional Guides, and we would always do a Thanksgiving sale. Wasn't very elaborate, wasn't really sophisticated, wasn't that, you know, developed or anything. It was just like, put a little bit of effort into it and be like, this is our one sale of the year.
And that would be really significant. I mean, that would do something like $20,000 in additional revenue, like that we weren't expecting. You know, $20,000 to $30,000, and it just kind of depended. But the point is, you know, in an average month, we might not be doing $20,000 in that business, but then, you know, for that one sale, we knew we could count on like a really good bump. All from just sending a couple of emails, basically.
So if you've got a business, if you've got an e-commerce, something, if you're selling anything at all, or if you're preparing to launch something for sale in the next two months, think about how you can take advantage of this time period. This concludes my public service announcement. And now I'm going to bring you to an audio update featuring Brian Thompson, right after this quick shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
Here's Brian, I believe he's coming to us from Austin. - Howdy, this is Brian from Austin, Texas.
My side hustle, permanent140.com, that laser engraves tweets onto plaques, was featured on episode 91. After a good run, the orders dried up. But as you can read in the 100 side hustles book, I launched a new site, lasersmakeitawesome.com, and started laser engraving all kinds of things for events and brands. Last year, I decided to specialize in three items that I make really well. Custom coasters, wooden name tags, and wooden nickels that bars and coffee shops use as free drink tokens.
So I added a landing page for each item and an about page. So thanks to SEO, now I get orders from across the country. Another tweak to the site has really helped. I added a form to my order page that collects more details. So instead of emailing back and forth, now I have everything I need to create an estimate up front.
About 25% of those estimates convert to orders. Some weeks it's a couple hundred dollars, other weeks it's zero, but then I'll get a big order in the thousands. This year, lasersmakeitawesome is averaging just over $1,000 a month. It takes the pressure off of my main income as a freelance copywriter and gives me the flexibility to work on being a better father to my two junior site hustlers, Evan and Ayla, who help with deliveries and shipping. Next, I want to experiment with pricing to see if I can convert more orders.
So my advice, make small tweaks and make it awesome. - Awesome, thank you so much, Brian. I appreciate that update. And I actually had the honor of meeting those junior site hustlers at a book event I did in Austin recently. Really cool to see the whole family.
And it's also pretty cool that this side business is doing a thousand dollars a month on average to relieve the pressure on its main source of income, like he said, which this is the goal of many of our listeners. This is a primary goal of so many people out there. We've got lots of folks who want to go full time. We've got lots of folks who want to go all in. We also have a lot of people that are like, man, it would be pretty cool to earn a thousand dollars a month to pay off some bills or debt or save for the future or just not have as much pressure on my main source of income, like Brian said.
So that's super cool. Once again, his website is lasersmakeitawesome.com. [Music]
I am very excited about all that is to come on the program, including an episode coming up tomorrow that I am especially excited about. It's all about a dance teacher, a tap dance teacher in particular, who launches a toe tapping online course. And this online course is doing really, really well in a pretty niche market, right?
Toe tapping, tap dancing, it's just a great story. So I don't want to preview it too much. Just be sure to come back tomorrow and listen to it along with all kinds of other stuff that's coming up on the calendar. I feel very fortunate to be able to make this program for you every day. And since you're out there, as we conclude the week, I just want to say, you're the reason we make this show.
If you make the commitment to make this part of your routine, I too commit to supporting you in your quest to create that new source of income, that side hustle that you have thought about for a while, but maybe haven't turned into reality until now. We're working ahead on our own to think about how can we make some critical end of year improvements to help you end the year well and begin planning for a big new year as well. But to be fair, I already talked about Thanksgiving. So you're like, wow, New Year's is like so far away. Okay, fair enough.
It's all right. You want to say thank you to producer Chuck Reed, community liaison, Jed Chang, other folks from Cadence 13, our cat herder, Tina Hart, and the official show cat, not related to the cat herder, Libby Gillibow. We're all part of the Onward Project curated by best-selling author Gretchen Rubin. Check out her show, "Happier," as well as "Happier in Hollywood," and the program from Melissa Urban, "Do the Thing." If you're enjoying the show, please tell your friends about it, show them how to subscribe. If you know somebody who needs another source of income, send them to us, we'll do our best to take care of them.
I hope you'll join me tomorrow and every day next week for more stories and ideas. Consider this a short daily investment in yourself. You can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is "Side Us" for School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
