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Side Hustle School

Ep. 3126 - STORY: Nerdy Kickstarter Campaign Raises $1 Million

Side Hustle School

Chris Guillebeau / Onward Project

Business, Entrepreneurship, Careers

4.83.3K Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This Ohio man loves board games so much that he made his own—and when he tries to raise $6,000 through a Kickstarter campaign, he ends up with much more than he ever imagined.  

Side Hustle School features a new episode EVERY DAY, featuring detailed case studies of people who earn extra money without quitting their job. This year, the show includes free guided lessons and listener Q&A several days each week.

Show notes: SideHustleSchool.com

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Lemonada.

0:10.9

NERDICSTARTA RERD Kikstarter campaign raises $1 million.

0:15.2

One million dollars.

0:16.5

This Ohio man loves board games so much that he made his own.

0:20.3

He first goes out and tries to raise $6,000 through a

0:23.4

Kickstarter campaign and he actually fails because this first campaign raises more than $100,000.

0:29.5

And then as I gave it away in the headline, he then goes on to raise more than a million

0:34.2

through Kickstarter for his board games. Very cool project, not a fluke,

0:40.5

since he did it multiple times. And he generously offered to share some tips. He gave us all the

0:45.7

details about how this developed. This is one of our favorite stories from the early years of the

0:50.2

podcast. We are bringing it back. Every Wednesday, we're doing a little bit of a remix.

1:00.3

So let's look at this one, nerdy Kickstarter campaign, not raising $6,000, actually going far above and beyond. The first one did $100,000. He went on from there. Let's hear the story of Travis

1:05.4

Hancock. It's coming up after the break. Life in general can be chaotic. Do you ever experience chaos in your life or your

1:14.6

business? I certainly do. I was recently on book tour and trying to manage a whole bunch of other

1:19.8

stuff at the same time. And so I'd get ready to go out and speak with a crowd and audience of

1:24.9

awesome people, perhaps including some of our listeners out there.

1:28.4

And then I'm also thinking about other things I need to do and just trying to manage and keep up

1:33.0

as much as possible. One thing I don't have to worry about, though, is order fulfillment,

1:38.1

because Shipstation handles that. And Shipstation can help you handle it. If you have orders to

1:42.6

send out, well, let me tell you,

1:44.2

you can automate shipping tasks. Automations allow you to smoothly print shipping labels.

1:49.1

You can scale your business. You never need to upgrade. Shipstation grows with you. They have helped

...

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