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#270 - Spanish Language Learner Earns $350,000 Helping Fellow Students

2017-09-27

After returning to Canada following a stint in Argentina, this eager student creates a language-learning platform that earns $350,000 in year one. 

Side Hustle School features a new story EVERY DAY of someone who started a hustle without quitting their job. You’ll learn how they got the idea, how they overcame challenges along the way, and what the results are. You need a hustle! Share: #SideHustleSchoolShow notes: SideHustleSchool.comTwitter: @chrisguillebeauInstagram: @193countries

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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Hello and welcome. I'm critical about this. Is us all school and, coming to you today from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Hum of the Liberty Bell, the National Constitution Centre and some of my favorite amish bakeries. The Redding terminal market honest bakeries are not a sponsor of cyclical school, but how I would They were tomorrow because onto Boston and in London from their having so much fun, eating listeners and readers. But hey. Let's talk about today, story, it's a very successful one, one that illustrates how far the side of the world can take. You yesterday story was two. It was about a guy who makes eighty dollars a month, nothing wrong with that. That's totally respectable, but story started one year ago in his eyes, he brought in three hundred and fifty thousand dollars no joke and the it reminds you have. You started your side also, yet will come back to that at the end, but first a quick shot out to today's non Amish, bakery sponsor so
Lord, for this podcast comes from C d, W and Adobe at C D, W, We get your organization can be demanded, the marketing as I might office, they want their adobe update now with a dull. These value incentive plan deployed by the experts had seedy w. You can quickly and easily manage software subscriptions for the whole de Acrobat, an created cloud, all included guys come out, don't hurt me airport satisfied digital workforce. You need a doctor. And I d orchestration by C D. W people who get it find out more at sea data, You dont com, Slash Adobe, as a marketing consultant for start ups, Sean Kim had the freedom to work anywhere. He wanted to use this opportunity to temporarily move.
A city, he'd laundering, divesting winos, arrays Argentina, while there he explored every facet of latin culture, made local friends and started thinking up Spanish, though a few months wasn't it to become fluent shines. Intentional engagement with locals, using Spanish rather than English, allowed his language skills to reach a comfortable conversational level. Eventually, though it was time for him to say goodbye to the city. He fell in love with any return to Canada when he was back. He resumed speaking only English and slowly felt the spanish girls. He learned and Buenos Aires slip away Disappointed that he was for getting a language, he worked so hard to learn Sean downloaded a popular which one app. It was convenient and inexpensive, but after the one on one count social education had received. It felt impersonal. He quickly. It wasn't gonna help him refine the spanish language skills because it lacked the diner Of a real relationship frustrated, he called up hispanic teacher from Argentina. The two spoke in spanish
and catching up after a long time away. The difference was dramatic. Conversing with a native speaker cause Sean's brains rebuild his Spanish very quickly around that time. Of shines had recently begun, taking spanish lessons with a private tutor. He found on Craigslist the tomb for coffee at Starbucks every week, but aspirin wasn't really seeing the results expected. The lessons were kind of dull the teachers. We established a relationship with him and it wasn't sheep Sean's for incomplete but his language learning was one day and suddenly at clicked in an instant Sean, clearly saw the problem, learning languages, difficult without having friendly native speakers as teachers. It's also expensive to hire personal tutors and you have to find the right one. He also saw the solution His solution, relational learning from native speakers, is the most effective and fun way to learn language, and he knew how he can help us do it without breaking the bank. This insight led him to a phrase that would define his business Language is our learned with humans, not algorithms, and with that right are why p, the language learning platform was born.
With the problem and solution so clear at least to him. It was time to If his idea would go anywhere, so he put together a test for less than three dollars shine built a website. A brief email, auto, responder and run a few facebook adds to see how people respond, It is on his landing page to collect emails. That would connect him with potential customers for a Skype or phone call. He also offered a free trial, spanish lesson for submitting your email address to the forum he made sure to highlight his new brands. Values convenience, including twenty four seven act MR tutors, from anywhere in the world quality Teachers Charlotte pick every single one and affordability. Each thirty minute lesson breaks down to about five dollars. Even sought more targeted traffic by posting valuable comments to questions on Cora Quicksighted. Not we talked about for a couple of times if you're not familiar with it, all link it up in a shone out. You can check it out most of the court. We're about learning languages and olive shines. Helpful answers ended with a quick linked to ripe and the mention of a trial lesson in twenty four hours he had over fifty people sign up for the free spanish lesson there,
to gauge just how interested they really were. He set up a calendar for the schedule their own lessons. He figured that if they took the initiative to set dates and times through a simple system, he could easily automate the process for smooth scaling in the future. However, if they didn't want to go to the effort to schedule their lessons should know that the eye I probably wouldn't go anywhere a few days later ripe had more two hundred and over fifty scheduled trial lessons. It was definitely working and people were scheduling. Those lessons themselves. So now, it's time to ramp up over fifty lessons were scheduled, but shine didn't have commitments from a single teacher hopes he caught up his friend and Tudor from Argentina and explained his new idea happily signed up and recruit a few ever Tudor friend. Stop at the trial. Lesson is well. Sean's idea was that if those first customers like the lesson, he would offer them a paid plant, while the success was fresh and their minds they made to pay for spanish. One was ninety five dollars a month from now thirty minutes of lessons per day or hundreds have Five dollars a month practice sixty minutes a day compared to finding a Craigslist tutor for twenty five dollars. An hour is
rising model would be a no brainer at the lessons were funded helpful. Ten days into wanting ripe Sean had tuna seiners over thirty successful trial, spanish lessons completed and of those thirty eight signed up. Pay plan. The idea was validated. China tributes this early, so ass to his willingness to build the business by hand. He didn't start by creating a complex emo sequence or developing a scheduling system that could accommodate thousands of teachers. He knew he could operate and install new systems, an automated things took off, but he wanted to be Bob manually with each step of the journey. It's been just over a year now, since ripe launched in the business has helped over a hundred thousand people learn spanish English, french, german, Mandarin and French. The success stories are piling. The user base is growing and get this. The business has generated over three Fifty thousand dollars in sales, more than thing shine, believes rights. Growth is a result of treating customers like family. In fact, he's recently taken a step back from focusing on growth,
It is currently refining his language learning processes to give customers the best possible experience and his words. Don't have to answer to investors or board members that solely want to push growth for the sake of growth. We answer to our customers will get back to growing revenue We want to make sure the product is exactly what we envision it to be. Our customers deserve that. Three fifty thousand dollars and sales in your one. They have certainly had a lot of growth and presumably shy Customer first mindset will continue to help custom. All over the world learn languages easily and affordably in just like any other, I saw is creating even more freedom for himself along the way, as a bonus he's also become much more proficient in Spanish. Well. I just love this story and tremendous success that it represents. I like to highlight stories like this because aside, I saw a candle. And to make a hundred thousand two hundred thousand dollars even more a year. It doesn't always worked out that That's. Why tell different kinds of stories, not everything that you,
I'm gonna work. Some things will work better than others, but the point is when you begin to explore and expand You never really know. Maybe you could have a huge success too. I also admire shines independence, stance on how they want to answer to investors, are board members they answered and our customers he's really. Turn on just building the best possible product and creating the best customer experience for people, which seems quite evident from all but who are signing up. If you think about it, it's a perfect bridge between these two models. One is you download an app and you might be able to learn some? Capillary threat- you might learn some other things, but it is pretty impersonal and then the other solutions. Paying someone locally meeting them at a coffee shop that has benefits, but it also has cost as well and why the cost is financed. Like it costs a lot more to do it that way than to you shine system? That's probably a big reason why his system is resonating with people, so much and before I sign off, I wanna give a shudder to another friend whose name is Benny Louis he's the author of a book called fluent in three months. I've been a long time since first meeting him in Thailand, maybe eight or nine years ago,
So as a language learning model, that's helped a lot of folks swelling up his book and blogging assurances wealth. Speaking of shone out, you can find links to write to pour out too that book. I just mentioned anything else. I talked about outside us all school dotcom, slash to seventy six to seven zero, As always, my friends, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Are you working on it Let us all gonna be us! that more often going forward, because now is the time for action. Thank you. Listening I'll, be back tomorrow. I'm critical about precisely.
Transcript generated on 2020-08-06.