Southern Couple Rolls Out Sweet Profits With Family Side Hustle

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

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Hey there, greetings and welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, so glad you're here. And guess what today is? True story, this is National Get Over It Day. How about that for a holiday?

You've got Presidents Day, Labor Day, various other countries have their own holidays. I really think this should be an international holiday. Observed by everyone. National Get Over It Day, is there something that you need to get over in your life? Look over here, I've got my 40th birthday coming up next month.

Also a true story, I wish it were not, but somehow like this happened. I feel like just the other day I was a juvenile delinquent and now I'm getting ready to check into the senior center. This human experience really is a blink of the eye. So that's why when I saw this pseudo holiday, I was excited. Over the past few months, past year, maybe past few years now at this point, I've been asking myself that same question, what do I need to get over to move on with my life?

What do I need to do to move forward? What is holding me back now that I'm entering my twilight years? Anyway, I've got one month to go, we'll see what happens. Also, in other news, I really like cinnamon rolls. That's right, we do in fact have an episode today.

It's about a Southern couple who rolls out sweet profits with a family side hustle. This Mississippi husband and wife duo are keeping things sweet, making $15,000 a year on the side selling homemade cinnamon rolls. Hmm, so while I think about what I need to do to get over to move forward with my life, I'm also thinking about, well, having a cinnamon roll. Feel free to join me for one or both of those things. That story is coming right up after a quick thank you to our sponsor.

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The sweet smell of cinnamon wafts through the air as dough rises in the oven. Three kids race around under her legs as Krista Lee preps another pan of cinnamon rolls and then another, and then yet another. What started out as a love of baking has turned into a way to bring in some extra dough on the side to the tune of $15,000 a year for this family of five. Krista has always loved baking, but after some high praise from friends who were big fans of her cinnamon rolls, she and her husband Tyson wondered if they might be able to actually sell those rolls to other people out of their home. At the time, their first child had just been born and Krista was transitioning out of her full-time job in college academics to stay at home.

A little extra income on the side would be a great way to have a financial cushion so that they didn't have to solely depend on Tyson's income from his full-time job at Mississippi State University. To get this cinnamon venture rolling, they had a friend create a logo for them. They then made a Facebook page and an Instagram account and posted that they would be taking orders. In the first week, they sold 11 pans and "Lovely Rolls" was born. That name was a play on the hashtag they had used at their wedding the year before, "A Lovely Wedding." Remember, this is Krista and Tyson Lee.

They didn't want this side venture to consume all their time, so Krista and Tyson decided to sell the cinnamon rolls out of their home to people who'd come and pick them up. Initially, they sold those rolls for $7.50 for a pan of six, an amazing deal, but have since raised the price to $10, which still sounds like a pretty great price for six cinnamon rolls. Things grew quickly once the word started getting out about "Lovely Rolls," perhaps too quickly for the small kitchen they work out of from home. With only one small oven, one refrigerator, and one small freezer, the space could get a little tight, but it smelled so good. After their first year of selling, they also set up at the local farmer's market during the summer, where they regularly sell out of the 80 pans they bring.

This is in addition to home sales of around 50 to 60 pans per week, depending on the season. Now, these cinnamon rolls don't bake themselves. During busy times when the farmer's market is open, Krista and Tyson get up once a week at 1 a.m. to put the dough out to rise, then they go back to bed for three hours, waking at 4 a.m. to keep up with the demand.

For their biggest order ever, at a fundraising event, they had to cook 950 pans. This was, of course, quite the challenge. They began baking at 3 a.m. on a Wednesday morning and didn't finish until Sunday at 7 in the evening, baking in shifts and not sleeping much, but at least they had nourishment. This business currently operates under the Cottage Food Law of Mississippi, which allows them to work out of their kitchen without having to be certified by the health department.

Now, that's great, but it also has a lot of limitations on how they're able to sell the product. They can earn more than $20,000 a year, and there's also strict guidelines on who they can sell to and how they can advertise. They didn't know about this law until about six months into the process, and once they were aware of it, they had to change the way they advertised. They couldn't put much detail in social media posts about price, ordering info, or even what they were selling. So instead, they let the pictures do the talking and had people get in touch for more information.

Despite these limitations, their business still grew through word-of-mouth and community events. They've now come to the point where the Cottage Food Law has hindered how they want to grow. Early on, they realized they really liked the community aspect of having people come to their home and bond over these delicious desserts, or going out into the farmer's market and getting to know more people in their hometown. They wanted to keep this at-home approach and the local vibe of selling from home, but with more room to grow through added sales and online orders. They decided the next step would be to sell out of a commercial kitchen built in their backyard, where they could have more freedom, but still have a home-based business.

A local shop in town has recently done a Kickstarter campaign, so the Lee family thought this could be the perfect way to get the funding they needed. They connected with a local company to get the kitchen planned out according to health codes, and to make sure they were compliant with zoning laws. Once that was done, they put up their campaign on Kickstarter in October 2016. Within a few months, they surpassed their goal of $35,000. Here we are a bit later, and they're now just weeks away from finishing everything up they plan to fully launch as the springtime unfolds.

Since this new kitchen will be certified by the health department, they'll now be able to advertise, and they're also launching a new website with the ability to place online orders. One of our writers here made a note and said she'd be willing to be a volunteer tester, just in case, you know, they want to send some cinnamon rolls to the West Coast. Kristin Tyson, keep that in mind. Lovely rolls grew from just taking in some extra money, selling cinnamon rolls, to actually taking a bigger roll in their community. They're working on a way to sell the rolls at a low rate to organizations, who can then resell them for fundraising.

They also want to teach other people in other locations to do what they've done. Still, the challenge is to maintain the small side hustle feel of the company so it doesn't consume them while still enjoying the parts of it they love. It is indeed a lovely story. It shows that following your passion, at least when it comes to delicious cinnamon rolls, can be a great way to make money and have fun. Awesome, I am indeed a fan of cinnamon rolls.

Love to get a chance to try these at some point. I just wanted to comment on that cottage law thing, which we've talked about in a couple episodes before. A lot of places, states, provinces, cities, local jurisdictions have the equivalent of these kind of laws. To where you're not gonna get arrested if you're making cinnamon rolls and selling them out of your home. But if you're gonna grow that business, then it does need to be certified.

You do need to have inspections, all that kind of stuff. This to me is a reminder that most people who are listening to this, we face very little in the way of regulation in terms of getting something started. It's really not difficult at all for the vast majority of projects we feature on the show. Sometimes you don't need any business license at all. Sometimes you need a license that costs $50 and you can do it online in less than five minutes.

Or in some cases, while it's good to of course do your research and make sure you have what you need before you start. It's actually not that uncommon for something to start up like this where they're just making these cinnamon rolls for fun, for friends and family. Then they end up selling them and they only realize kind of a few months in that oh, there actually are these laws that we have to follow. So I'm not encouraging anyone to go out and break the law. I'm just saying that it's often not that big of a deal to start something.

That's my point essentially. So I will leave you with that. And also don't forget it's National Get Over It Day. What are you gonna choose to get over today? What are you gonna choose to let go so that you can move forward?

Think about that. And I hope you'll join me again tomorrow. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's delicious show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/433. Have a wonderful day wherever you are.

I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.