Hey there, what's up? Welcome to Side Us All School. My name is Chris Gillibot, your host.

Today's episode is part of a feature we're doing called Your First Thousand Dollars.

This feature, you might guess, it's all about how somebody made their first thousand dollars.

How did they get going? How did they go from idea to income? Maybe how they grew the business a

little bit after that, but mostly about how they got started, because so many people out there

are trying to, in fact, get started, making real money, and a thousand dollars is real money.

It often turns into two thousand, five thousand, ten thousand dollars from there.

So this has been a really fun series to work on. And with that in mind, today's feature comes from

Ruth Hetland. The first featured Ruth back on episode 1599, Pastor keeps the faith with

clergy subscription boxes. Ruth is, in fact, a Lutheran pastor. She started this very

cool business, a subscription box for fellow pastors and clergy ministers of all kinds.

Now interestingly, this story is quite similar to one we featured three weeks ago

from a woman who sells boxes for military spouses. So different market, but very similar strategy.

They each use the same pre-launch strategy that the first person, her name was Becky Hoy,

mentioned in the previous business, and that Ruth describes here just a bit differently.

So the key point is that each of them wanted to start without spending much money at all,

so they used a pre-launch strategy to effectively sell a product before they had it.

And this can work for much more than just subscription boxes. So keep that in mind,

as you hear Ruth's update, I'll come back to the end with a quick wrap up.

The most wonderful time of the year is also the most hectic time of the year.

Everybody puts off shopping until the last minute, that includes me.

And if you have an online store, you know the feeling of getting hit with a ton of orders all at once.

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