This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, this is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School, bringing you today, as always, a new story of someone who starts a side hustle, something that makes money for them without quitting their day job. And I've got a good one for you today. We've been talking about weddings a few different times recently. Now, weddings are a huge industry with a lot of money spent. And if you've been listening for a while, you might recall a couple of stories that have focused on people who've been creative and kind of breaking into that.
Well, listen, the funeral industry and everything associated with dying is also a pretty big industry. Now, this is something that we don't always like to talk about, but dying is, in fact, part of life for approximately 100% of us. So in today's story, two friends create funeral urns that are different and look much better than everything else on the market, at least in Germany, where one of them lives. And this has led to a side hustle that makes close to $5,000 a month while they each continue with their day jobs. This project has also experienced fantastic growth over the past year.
So that $5,000 a month number may continue to go up. I'll tell you all about this project, how they figured it out and how it works right after this brief message from our sponsor. [Music]
Daniel Mack lives in a town bordering Wales in the UK. By day, he's a product development manager for a large building material company. His side hustle is selling handcrafted funeral urns to private customers and funeral directors, along with his friend Marco, who's based in a small town close to Heidelberg, Germany.
Marco is a production manager for a company producing industrial cameras. When he's not doing that, he's into street art, painting, and designing tattoos. One day, he happened to be looking at a funeral director's storefront and was unimpressed with the artwork. There was a big set of funeral urns on display, but they were all boring and had almost no variance in style or color. If you wanted to honor your loved one with something more colorful or creative or just different in some way, there was simply no option.
Marco thought that this was a gap in the marketplace that he and his friend Daniel could fill. And at first, Daniel thought it was a crazy idea, but he agreed to give it a try. So Marco and Daniel sourced some raw materials from a friend of a friend who was a funeral director, and they built a very simple webpage on Wix. The page did not have an online shop, but it did have a request form and prominently displayed a phone number for people to call and ask questions. After doing some research on the keywords people were searching, they spent about $200 marketing the page using Google AdWords to see if there was any interest.
After the research phase was complete, they felt it was promising, so they each invested $5,000 and founded their company. Now here's something really fun I liked about their story. I always encourage you to celebrate your accomplishments. When you first begin making money for yourself that's different from your paycheck, it really does feel different, and you should celebrate that. So for Marco and Daniel, once they got their first customer, they celebrated with a couple of beers, but they then created a list of rewards they'd get for each other if they met specific milestones, sales figures of individual items, website visits, and various financial achievements.
And even though they reinvest much of the income back into the project, this allows them a series of small celebrations for each goal accomplished. Great idea. The side hustle, Mementi Earns, has now been around for nearly three years. They slowly built a list of funeral directors that buy earns for their customers on a regular basis. It was a big challenge in the beginning because the funeral business in Germany is somewhat closed.
If you're not part of the club already, apparently it's hard to join. But luckily the funeral director who made their first raw earns was willing to help them out, and that's led to opening new doors. Last year they sold an average of 10 earns a month, but they're now selling about 40 a month. They have just under 200 products listed and around 600 in stock, and they're doing an average of $5,000 a month in revenue. That simple webpage is now an online shop with photos and a portfolio.
Mementi Earns sells ceramic, metal, wooden, and marble earns. They have a wide selection of colors and beautiful designs, including butterflies, angels, fairies, bicycles, swans, seagulls, lighthouses, religious symbols, and many more. They even sell sets that allow customers to paint on the earns themselves. Daniel is in charge of the online work while Marco is in charge of everything offline. Since they live in different areas, they have a weekly call to discuss steps and issues, along with regular communication on email and WhatsApp.
They outsource their web development, packaging, and shipping. They're now working with a freelancer on an ad campaign targeting funeral directors, and eventually they hope to expand to the rest of Europe. [Music]
Well, you know, some people say never invest in funerals because it's a dying industry, but Daniel and Marco seem to be doing pretty well. There really is room for creative expression in the most traditional and non-changing of industries, and it really makes a lot of sense. Why wouldn't you get a beautiful-looking earn for your loved one?
Why wouldn't you find something that expresses who they were? And I didn't really touch on it in the story, but this is obviously something that is meaningful to a lot of people. And it brings some degree of comfort or peace or healing when you feel like you're able to honor someone in a more individual, unique way. Or at least I think it has the potential to. And as I mentioned in terms of a side hustle, I really do think it's important to celebrate your accomplishments.
I don't think I've stressed that enough recently, get a lot of emails from people who have made their first $1,000 or their first $100 or whatever it is, could be their first $10. And when you haven't done that before, it feels so empowering. So when you experience that, I would encourage you to just kind of hold onto it for a moment, or maybe go out and have the beverage of your choice, or do whatever is a reward for you. Because this is special, you are creating something for yourself. It's not just about money, it's about the fact that you did something.
You saw an idea or you got an idea maybe from the show, maybe from your own observation, and then you went out and made it happen. That is always my goal, that you won't just be inspired because inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. - Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/214. If you're enjoying the show, do me a favor, tell your friends about it. Show them how to subscribe on their phone.
If you use social media, include the hashtag #sidehustleschool. That would be awesome if you have a free moment. But if you don't, you're still awesome. Thank you for listening. I'm Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
