This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, Side Hustle School listeners. Welcome back, my name is Chris Guillebeau. Got a great story for you today. Let me first tell you about a life philosophy that I live by, at least one of them. And that is I refuse to put together IKEA furniture.
Really not just IKEA furniture, but anything that requires assembly. I am just terrible at that. I have no mechanical skill. So not only am I not good at it, I have learned through much trial and error, well, mostly error, that it is also not good for my mental health. So I just don't do it.
I love this advice I heard once from Chris Brogan, a friend of mine. He said, "If you don't like the menu, leave the restaurant." And what he means by that is, lots of times in life we're in situations where you find yourself doing something you don't really wanna do, but you're like, "Well, I'm here," or "I've already started down this road, so I need to keep going." And Chris says, "If you walk into a restaurant, maybe you're even sitting down, you look at the menu and you realize you don't like it, you should get up and leave. And if you're reading a book and you come to page 30 or maybe page 50, whatever point it is, maybe it's just the first chapter even. If after you've read for a while and you really don't like the book, you should just stop. So one of the ways that I apply that philosophy is to the assembly of furniture.
I just don't do it. But obviously IKEA furniture is tremendously popular and I really enjoyed working on today's story. It's all about a university employee who uses her logistical savvy to deliver IKEA goods at greatly reduced prices. And of course she makes money doing this. I'll tell you all about it right after this.
[Music]
Peg Donovan has been employed by the University of New England for 15 years. She began as an assistant to operations manager at the College of Pharmacy. Now managing operations in the halls of academia can stretch a person's skills. You'll learn about events management, budgeting and forecasting, security and facilities coordination. And in fact, your duties might even include ordering and supervising the arrival and setup of furniture as Peg did for the faculty offices when they were new.
This kind of logistical savvy and a sharp eye to see how to fit things in tight spots served her well when she assembled her own side hustle, delivering IKEA goods to customers in Maine and New Hampshire, had a substantial discount to them, but a profit to her. Whether you love IKEA or hate it, it's probably fair to say that the majority of us have owned at least one IKEA item, if not many more in our apartment, our house, our dorm room. And if you've had this experience, you may know that getting the goods, which are often packaged in large heavy boxes is a challenge of its own. Well, when the store is hours away, it's even more of a challenge. And Peg knew this from experience.
Her own trek to get to IKEA's Portland, Maine location took almost five hours. But there wasn't a great alternative because shipping rates were very expensive. To ship an item from that IKEA store in Portland, Maine, elsewhere in the state, began at $229 for flat pack delivery or oversized items. In fact, their most popular item, a Billy bookcase that retails for $70, you've probably seen these many places, maybe you've owned one yourself, it actually costs three times as much to have it delivered to Maine, which is basically like building a bookcase out of credit cards. So Peg's hustle idea came to her in a flash.
One day she was wrapping up a meeting at the university and she mentioned she was gonna make the trek to IKEA. Several coworkers asked if she could pick something up for them and Peg instantly saw the angle. She used her operations management moxie to size it up. She figured she could drive to IKEA, charge a 25% delivery fee, she would save people money and make money for herself on the side. Thus was born her side hustle and she called it spin delivers.
Now I don't think there's a real spin, by the way. Spin is a take on the Swedish origins of IKEA and she just thought that would be fun. Over the next few weeks, Peg used her operations management experience to create her own operations management company. She signed up with Squarespace, she designed and published a quick website, began posting on Facebook and she got some free exposure from an article on her business and a local free newspaper. Startup costs for this hustle were moderate but she did invest in a used van that cost about $5,000.
Aside from the van, everything else including the website, business cards, some administrative costs were just a few hundred dollars and she began getting inquiries. Some people didn't have a car big enough for furniture boxes, some people didn't wanna drive the long hours and pretty much nobody wanted to pay those inflated shipping fees. Even so, Peg says she was still surprised when Spin's deliveries got its first order for one of those $70 bookcases. Watching the payment come in through PayPal was exciting and then as the word got out, more orders began to arrive. She started this hustle October of last year, first month's profit was just $25 but now she's up to a profit of between $800 and $2,000 a month.
When she started, she was going to IKEA once a month, now she's going three times a month and by popular request, she'll even assemble the goods for an extra fee. So her customers don't even need screwdrivers. That is an add-on service I would definitely pay for. Peg doesn't mind the drive and she likes the shopping but her biggest delight is actually making the deliveries. When she gets to meet her customers who can't believe how easy it is to get IKEA merchandise into their homes without driving the five hours.
Of course, these happy customers only come through great service. Peg and Spin delivers are focused on the customer experience. She sends texts, she emails, sends invoices and confirms delivery times. If you take a look at the Spin delivers website, which of course we'll link up, you can see testimonials from pleased customers, you can read about the delivery options and timings, check out the frequently asked questions and of course get in touch if you're in the area and you need a cheap bookcase delivered. Peg had no idea when she started that there are actually other people around the country and probably around the world who are operating similar services.
Her advice to anyone who'd like to pursue this kind of project themselves is that you're gonna need a big, reliable vehicle. In fact, she says it should probably be bigger than you think. She also says if you work regular hours at your day job, be prepared to give up part of your weekend for this project. And speaking of that, Peg works 45 hours a week at the university, spends an average of one hour a day processing orders and answering questions on the site and of course a chunk of hours on the weekends as she heads out to pick up items and then make deliveries. She says she's always wanted to own a business and make her own decisions.
But until she thought of this opportunity, she wasn't sure what it would be. The success of Spin Delivers has given her the confidence to explore other ideas as well. So much so that she now has two other side hustles in progress. Neither of them requires screwdrivers, but that's okay. It's clear that she already has all the tools she needs.
[Music]
You know, despite my aversion to IKEA furniture assembly, this really is a great example of a side hustle because it is something that a lot of people want. And she's figured out a way to save those people money while making money for herself. And it's also a replicable project. If you live in an area that has enough people, but no IKEA or anything else that those people would want, somewhere there's at least one way to provide a solution and to profit from it. So I have a feeling I'm gonna use this example quite a lot in the future when people ask me for a good story.
And by the way, Peg charges a 25% fee. So I could get this wrong. There might be some variance to it. But generally speaking, I assume if someone buys an item that costs $100, Peg is then making $25 off that item. Now that's great, but I think it's even better to position it as a 200% savings for the customer because it is so expensive to have it shipped or otherwise delivered.
So just think about that $70 bookcase with a $220 delivery fee. If the 25% fee is $18, well, all of a sudden you realize paying $18 is a lot better than paying $200. So you're happy to pay that. When you're doing any kind of service like this, it's always important to focus on that value proposition for the customer, why this is gonna be good for them. Obviously Peg doesn't need my advice because she's doing great.
But as you're developing your hustle, think about the difference it's gonna make in someone's life and then focus on that value as you think about your fees and how you'll profit from making someone else's life better. I'll talk about that a bit more in the weekly recap on Sunday. For now, thank you for listening. I hope you're working on your hustle. I'm excited to hear about it.
As always, remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. If you wanna learn about spin delivers or a couple other services like this, come check out the show notes for today's episode. Those are at sidehustleschool.com/145. That's for episode 145. You can also get access to free resources, leave a comment or question for the show, or see where I'm going for next month's Side Hustle School Workshops.
I'm Chris Guillebeau, I'm cheering you on. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
