Bright Idea Leads Chicago Woman to Million-Dollar Hustle

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Hello and greetings. This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. I'm excited to be back with you today. Today, I have a story for you about a Chicago woman who sells more than $70,000 a month in custom lighting artwork on Etsy. Now this is a followup to the extended cut episode that we had on Sunday.

Just in case you missed it, once a month, I do this special episode called extended cut, where we kind of dive deep into a specific topic. In the past, I've done things like, here's a simple marketing plan. Here's how you start a website in 90 minutes. Here's a bit more on learning the power of observation, which I often talk about. The skill of being able to identify valuable side hustle ideas, which is in fact one of the most valuable skills that you can develop.

No matter what you end up doing in this whole side hustling world, no matter what your goals are, whether it's to quit your job or just create some extra income or something else. Now I had started working on this story that I'm gonna tell you today, and I got really into it, and I thought this is interesting. Here's a woman who's actually built a million dollar Etsy shop, which of course is very unusual. So what is she doing that's so different from everybody else who sells on Etsy? And how can you learn from that?

Even if you're not interested in making arts and crafts or selling them online. And your side hustle goal is something different. Well, anyway, that extended cut went into the details of her web shop, kind of looking at her about page, looking at her listings, why she had made some of the choices she had. Anyway, that person's name was Jennifer Brown, and today I'll tell you a bit more about her. She is a former plastic recycling sales rep who transforms her love for DIY lampshades, spends $10 on supplies, and eventually creates this seven figure side hustle turned full-time business.

That story's coming up right after this. [Music]

Jennifer Brown has been side hustling since she was 10 years old. Starting with selling Beanie Babies on eBay, to dog sitting for $30 a day. She even tried repainting abandoned furniture from an alleyway. And then in college, she really found her stride.

At a college craft show, Jen saw a liquor bottle with lights inside of it. She was always looking for other DIY projects, so she decided to make one for herself. When she had placed Christmas lights inside a painted liquor bottle, her friends kept asking to buy one from her. So like any good side hustler, she decided to try selling them. Then one day, she tried something else.

Jen covered a balloon in Elmer's glue and wrapped it with yarn to create a DIY lampshade. And that same day, another good friend told her about the online marketplace called Etsy. Now I've talked about Etsy many times on the show, but just in case you're new, it is the world's largest handcrafted marketplace. You can sell all kinds of things there. And that's what Jen decided to try.

Within one week, she had her first sale for $60. She sold a second lamp later in the week for a total of $100. With a $300 rent payment coming up, which by the way is pretty cheap rent, but this was college. $160 was a significant amount of money. And what she liked the most about it or what she was excited about was the potential that she could do this to keep supporting herself on the side.

So Jen started looking around for other things on Etsy that she could create using her own power of observation. And she says the moment she realized she could turn $10 in supplies into a $300 light fixture, she says that was the moment that things started to take off. She saw some wooden chandeliers and much like those liquor bottles, she thought to herself, "Hey, I can make those too." So she began to list more items. And every time she received a customer request for a new color or feature, she would make it for them, take a picture, and then add it as an item in the store. And pretty soon she was getting a lot of sales.

This entire production was being run out of Jen's bathroom. And so she decided to raise her prices. Interestingly enough, the more she raised her prices, the more she sold. So she's actually selling more items for more money, winning two ways. And that's how she decided on a $300 price tag for this particular DIY lampshade, which she continued to sell for many months.

Now this is going really well, but for years it was just a side hustle as Jen worked her day job as a sales rep at a recycling company. In fact, she says it was her day job that made selling on Etsy so easy. At her job, she had acquired skills in sales, marketing, graphic design, and SEO. So it put her leaps and bounds above other home crafters who were selling their wares on Etsy at the time. And Jen was able to do this from home a few days a week, so everybody told her not to quit her day job.

And she didn't, at least for a while. She kept going, working full-time and running her side hustle, until one day a friend asked Jen to question the opportunity cost of continuing to keep both jobs. And at that point she realized, you know, this is a pretty fantastic opportunity. Sales are continuing to go up. I think I'll give this a full-time try.

Now with that, hangout lighting, as it's called, came to become more of a priority. She hired a friend, moved out of her bathroom, and rented a workspace. Now, unfortunately, that workspace had some problems. It was not all smooth sailing. Short version is that the landlord was a very difficult person.

He changed the wording on the lease after she'd signed it. He refused to fix flood issues that destroyed her inventory and even bickered with her over changing the air filters on the workspace's furnace. Eventually she was able to get out of that space and find a better one, but it was an unanticipated hassle. The better news was that Jen continued to sell online, testing every platform she came across, expanding beyond Etsy, trying Shopify, Amazon, Groupon, and even eBay. And some of those have worked great for her and others have failed outright or have gone downhill, which is pretty normal for things like this, which is why it's important to find the right platform, try different things, don't invest your time in something that's not working, put your attention on the things that are working.

Within three years, the Etsy side of Hangout Lighting had grown to $1 million in sales. And as I said on the extended cut the other day, she's now bringing in about $70,000 a month. What started as a side hustle now gives Jen total financial and schedule freedom. Working for herself allows her to spend more time with her family, be in control of how she spends her days and her weeks, and Jen now has a Hangout Lighting Studio. So the next time you're in Chicago, you can come and hang out with Jen at the Hangout Lighting Studio over on West Grand.

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So how does she sell so many items? How is the shop so profitable? Well, that's what I talked about in the extended cut episode the other day. If you haven't been able to download that from Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can just go to sidehustleschool.com/extended. And you'll be able to listen to the whole thing there.

You can also check out her Etsy shop listing, which I referenced quite a bit in that episode, just kind of showing some things that she does differently from other Etsy sellers or from other sellers in general. And I really love to look at things like this and ask that question, like why is this shop so successful? Why is this service doing so well? Why is this podcast more popular than other podcasts? Whatever the thing is, try to figure out what the differentiator is because you very well might be able to use that for your own project too.

And ultimately that's what this is about. I love to feature good stories on the show. It makes me happy to highlight other entrepreneurs and side hustlers. But ultimately my goal is for you to start your profitable side hustle. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.

Today's show notes where we will also link up that previous extended episode are at sidehustleschool.com/182. The weekly recap is coming up tomorrow and a whole new set of stories next week. Thank you for listening. I'm Chris Guillebeau This is Side Hustle School. [Music]