Welcome to Side Hustle School. Welcome as well to our weekly segment known as Failure Friday.

It's all about what can we learn from something that doesn't go well. In fact, it's usually something that goes very poorly.

A mistake, a misstep, a disaster, and of course, failure. So just like I throw back Thursday segment,

you get to hear directly from a side hustler or entrepreneur, a small business owner, somebody out there

who has struggled to get something off the ground. Or in some cases, their business is going along

just fine and it's already off the ground. But then it comes crashing into the ground. Or maybe it's

not quite that bad. But the point is they encounter some significant obstacle along the way. How do they

respond not just to the immediate situation, but usually what is the long-term lesson? What do they

take away from that experience? I know that experience produces confidence even when the experience is

a negative one. So I like to just kind of share these stories as a lesson for all of us.

And without further ado, today's short story features Thomas from Maryland. He started a membership site.

I think it was started during the pandemic, not totally sure on that point. But his membership site

is going along really well. But unfortunately, he took his eyes off the ball. That sounds like a baseball

pun. I don't think it actually has anything to do with baseball, but it just seemed to make sense because

he stopped paying attention. So let's hear more from him. I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap-up.

Hey there. For the past few years, I've worked remotely for a company, but have also been trying

to branch out on my own. A membership site that I started seemed to have the most potential.

I opened the site for a hundred initial members and the signups went pretty quickly. Then I closed

it down for a while, which seemed to help increase the perception of scarcity every time I opened it

back up again. For our one-year anniversary, I held a big sale and was floored by the response.

I thought I'd unlocked the secret. People like sales, at least, as long as they don't happen too

often. And the deadline produces built-in urgency. I could do no wrong, or so I believed back then.

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