🐧 Remote Side Hustle Launchpad: Lessons Learned

‍Today, in 10 minutes or less, you’ll learn:

• 🥳 How we sold out a beta program in 48 hours
• 🧑‍🎓 The surprising benefits of a rebate incentive; how we used student feedback to design our course
• 🧑‍🏫 How our course boosted student confidence by up to 124% in key skills; why live sessions transformed our cohort experience

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🚀 Lessons learned from Remote Side Hustle Launchpad

We recently wrapped up our first official cohort! 🎉

I can still hardly believe it.

It honestly took me some time to process everything…

… but I finally distilled down my 6-month journey going from ideating to launching this cohort-based course.

In this newsletter, I’m going to breakdown exactly what worked and didn’t work for Remote Side Hustle Launchpad.

Here’s why I started this course in the first place:

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What is Remote Side Hustle Launchpad?

Remote Side Hustle Launchpad is a cohort-based course we launched in May 2024, which helps busy professionals go from zero to launching your service-based side hustle without adding unnecessary stress.

It’s the system I used to generate over $100,000 through side hustles taking 10 hours/week.

Why did I build it?

I truly believe (remote) side hustles are a gateway drug to designing your own money path.

Side hustles go beyond just making money.

They helped me gain crucial skills and confidence that I apply to my entrepreneurial journey.

But before I shipped my first cohort, I started with a beta program:

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November 2023: Beta Program Launch

In late 2023, I saw an uptick of interest on my Linkedin and newsletter posts on side hustles.

So I decided to test a hypothesis that given rising economic uncertainy, tech professionals in their late 20’s and 30’s wanted to launch a side hustle to diversify their income.

My steps were simple:

• I shared program details in my newsletter ad slot, which linked to a Google form.
• Once I got entries, due to limited seats, I prioritize students that fit my profile (worked in tech, late 20’s and 30’s).
• Then I sent an acceptance email with a Stripe payment link for the deposit ($74 USD).
• After collecting deposits, I set up 15-minute 1:1s with a handful of Beta students and sent my first course discovery survey to start identifying pains.

Results

We sold out seats quickly:

• 68 people signed up for the initial 25 seats (expanded to 40 seats)
• 40 students paid to join the Beta Program
• $2,960 collected in terms of deposits (large chunk was later rebated)

What worked:

• Fast and easy to experiment - despite being super manual, my test validated demand in 48 hours.
• Providing a rebate incentive - charging upfront and rebating at the end of the course seemed to set the right expectations. I learned about this model from Julia Menez, founder of Geobreeze Travel, in her Fincon talk.

What didn’t work:

• Manual process - this took time to setup, email back and forth, and check in on payments.

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January 2024: Running the Beta Program

On January 8th, I kicked off our 5-week Beta Program.

This was my first time running a cohort like this. And boy, did I underestimate the time commitment. The workload hit me like a ton of bricks.

Was it worth it?

Yes, getting TONS of student feedback was incredibly valuable. I would not have been able to launch the first official cohort without it.

But if I could go back, I would have simplified the experiment and brought on extra help.

Every week, I spent 20+ hours:

• Publishing new content - Creating Canva lesson slides, recording video lessons, editing using Camtasia, and uploading to Google Drive
• Creating Notion worksheets for students to implement the lessons from the videos
• Creating surveys to collect feedback from students
• Engaging in the Telegram community and sharing announcements

Results

• 43% or 17/40 students completed 100% of content feedback forms and testimonials to get the rebate
• 4.3 course rating
  • 4.5 content helpfulness rating
  • 4.1 skills development rating

What worked:

• Got tons of valuable feedback - Like an avalanche. Learned heaps. Still utilizing their insights to this day.
• Simple video lessons & actionable workbook - Students appreciated that my videos were simple and easy-to-consume. They liked implementing lessons with the workbook exercises.
• Garnered testimonials from happy students - Students who found value in the course shared their experiences, which is foundational to any course launch.

What didn’t work:

• Lack of live interaction - Students requested live sessions, which were not planned for the Beta Program. Later, I added live office hours.
• Telegram community was not very engaged - I spent so much time creating lessons and workbooks, I neglected the online discussions. In the official cohort, I made sure to carve out more time for this.

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March-April 2024: First Official Cohort Launch

After taking a short break, I got back into the trenches.

First, I decided to ship the course with a two pricing tiers:

• $197 - public sale
• $158 - waitlist sale (20% off)

Then, I brought on Thao as a part-time Course Specialist to help me with course design and execution.

Still, this ended up being 100+ hours of work.

I worked on two workstreams in parallel:

Product

• Overhauled the course content - prepared slides, filmed videos, updated workbook, compiled resources, and more.
• Setup Kajabi course and community - went with Kajabi due to strong positive reviews from other course creators.
• Designed the first live experience - prepared live session slides, scripts, and comms.

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Marketing/Sales

• Launched a product page on the Kajabi platform, adding collected testimonials
• Drove waitlist demand through lead magnets - Launched an email minicourse. Hosted my first masterclass.
• Launched a 5-day sales email series - Sent emails to everyone on our course waitist, email minicourse, and masterclass lists.

Results

• 29 students signed up (2.0% conversion rate from product page)
• 144 unique checkout page views*
• 1,417 unique product page views*

*April 1 to April 27th

What worked:

• Most sales came from long-time newsletter subscribers - This was doubly true if they also joined the waitlist. Seeing this, I felt very grateful to have invested my time and energy into the newsletter.
• Waitlist converted at >10% - By far my best performing list. My waitlist was the best signal I had of whether someone would be likely to buy or not.

What didn’t work:

• Free masterclass & mini-course lists drove límited sales - Honest, people on these lists were not far enough along in their buying journey.
• Pricing the course low - I’m glad I made the first cohort accessible. But I’ve also seen how pricing higher has helped other online courses attract more committed students, which helps strengthen cohort experiences.

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May 2024: Running the First Official Cohort

On May 6th, we kicked off the 5-week cohort with our first-ever live Welcome Orientation, where we introduced students to their program, their instructor, and to each other. 🥳

Each week, we focused on different accountability challenges:

• Week 1 - Submit workbook for choosing your niche.
• Week 2 - Submit workbook for designing your offer.
• Week 3 - Create your list of referrals/website or share notes from your calls with potential clients.
• Week 4 - Write your discovery call script or share notes from your calls with potential clients.
• Week 5 - Share your Student Showcase, which is a deliverable you create in the course (website, pitch video, etc.)

Here was our weekly schedule:

• Sunday - new module video lessons are dripped
• Wednesday - live office hours and breakout sessions
• Next Sunday - challenge deadline with winners announced

In the end, several students completed the course, with multiple students either closing a client or talking to prospective clients.

After the course ended, we moved all students to our alumni community, where they can access recorded live sessions from current and previous cohorts. In the future, we’ll experiment further with our community activities.

Results

• 20%-124% increase in confidence in various marketing, sales, and product skills reported by students who finished the course.
• Several students getting their first client or job offers.

What worked

• Overall course experience - Students liked the bite-sized content, added examples in videos & workbook, live office hours, and accountability challenges. I feel confident that with some changes, we can create a top 1% learning experience.
• Instructor feedback - Students loved getting nuanced, honest feedback on their work during Office Hours, as well as for challenge submissions in the community.
• Real learning outcomes - I’m proud of our students for putting in the hard work, which led to building real-world skills and confidence to carve out a new income stream for themselves.

What didn’t work

• Lacking peer feedback - Students wanted more feedback from peers and live discussions with other side hustlers. In Cohort #2, we’ll test adding accountability buddies and fireside chats.
• Felt a bit rushed - 5 weeks was a tad short for most students to getting their first client. In the next cohort, we’ll add 1 more week and see what happens.

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Summary

So there you have it.

My reflections on the past 6 months of building, testing, and iterating Remote Side Hustle Launchpad.

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🌐 Beyond your borders

🤑 Michael Lewis on Writing, Money, and the Necessary Self-Delusion of Creativity (link)

✍️ Our portfolio of writing businesses recently crossed $10,000,000 in lifetime sales. (link)

💎 The incentives in private equity are completely messed up. (link)

👫 A Couple Won the Powerball (Lottery). Investing It Turned Into Tragedy. (link)

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