230
9 min 1 sec

Luxury Toothbrush Hustle Produces Polished Profits

Introducing the high-end toothbrush with low startup costs: this man earns $1,000 a month on the side. Total startup costs were just $760!
International Manufacturing Niche Ideas Product

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What It's About

Mornings just got a little bit spiffier thanks to this high-end toothbrush shop.

Business Model
Manufacturing
Skills Required
Research & Experimentation
Complexity
Medium
Profit Potential
Medium

Words of Wisdom

I receive a lot of questions on the Side Hustle Hotline from listeners who aren't sure when to launch their product or service, and Andrew from today's episode had some really great advice:

"Stop perfecting, start selling. Put some real effort behind your product for a few weeks, and see what happens. It will either yield success or failure. Either way, you’ll only get better at getting your message out there."

Fun Fact

Andrew’s dog, Jack, has been the biggest Instagram star, but once actually ate his homework. One day Andrew was testing prototype wooden toothbrushes by leaving them outside in the sun. Apparently, the wind kicked up and knocked the toothbrushes over while he was at work. Jack decided to test out the products himself and chewed every last one of them!

Notes from Chris

Episode 230

It was spring 2015 and Andrew MacDonald got the phone call he knew was coming: the company he was working for was closing. He had been managing corporate sales at the same company for the past six years and had been the one relaying the dreary financial reports to the higher ups, which is why he hadn’t been caught unprepared. Months before, when he had seen the writing on the wall, Andrew had done some job searching, but the results would have required a severe pay cut. So he thought since he was 28 and already had a house and a car, why not start his own thing?

He looked back through his idea book, or as he calls it, his book of cool things, and got to work. He did anything and everything he could think of to get his creative juices flowing, including spending a week in silence at a monastery. In the end, he had 6 ideas that he felt were actionable and then whittled those down further to two ideas: a men’s clothing shop and a high-end toothbrush.

Andrew focused on the men’s clothing shop first because it was the idea he was most comfortable with, and by January 2016 it had come together and was on track to be profitable. So he turned his time attention to his side hustle: toothbrushes.

He spent a fair amount of time thinking about his market, and in the end decided that it was men that were already spending money on nice grooming products. Things like badger hair shaving brushes, beard oil, wood handled razors. These guys were paying attention to their appearance and using the best tools, but then picking up a plastic toothbrush for their teeth. So when imagining the design of the toothbrush, Andrew kept this market in mind.

And it's been working too! He's currently pulling $1,000/month with The Toothbrush Shop, and thanks to the extra income from his toothbrushes, he’s already working on launching his next product.


MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

  • Toothbrush Shop: Upgrade your dental hygiene routine on Andrew's website
  • Shapeways: The product manufacturing platform that helped Andrew go from design to physical product
  • Upwork: The freelancer resource that Andrew used to find the Swedish architect who helped him design his line of toothbrushes
  • Keyword Planner: This tool helps you reach the right customers with the right keywords and helps you to better build your SEO and ad campaigns
SEE ALSO:

Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,

cg-sig-newsletter


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Resources

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Quote of the Day
"It's easy to get stuck in the trap of constantly perfecting your product to where you get that you get tunnel vision and can't see the bigger picture. Stop perfecting and start selling—just put something out there."
—Andrew MacDonald #SideHustleSchool

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To infinity and beyond,

Chris Guillebeau