This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey there. What's up? Welcome back. You're listening to Sidus Will School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. And one of the things I really enjoy is hearing your feedback. And I'm sometimes
behind on my email responses, but then I fly around the world usually once a month. And I tend to spend six or seven of my 12 hours on a long haul flight going through my inbox, kind of digging things out. And when I read, I look for themes. I'm looking for common questions, common responses, different stories of yours from all the folks out there who are working on their hustle. And that really informs the whole direction of the show and what we do next. And I think you're gonna like
today's story. It's about a Gallup coach who creates personalized mugs based off of people's strengths finder profiles. He was really creative in how he came up with this. And I'll tell you all about it in just a moment. Today's story comes from Scott Macas. By day, Scott works as
a regional sales manager for a landscape supply company in the Northeast US. In the evenings, he moonlights as a Gallup certified strengths coach, helping people understand their talents, find new jobs, and create businesses that complement their strengths using Gallup's strengths finder assessment. But his side hustle isn't just coaching. It's also selling a creation of his called strengths mugs, which are coffee mugs with a list of people's top five strengths. Scott got the idea for strengths mugs when he was looking for gifts for his coaching clients. He
started by ordering them from a generic design it yourself website, typing in the strengths, making sure they were centered correctly and free of typos. And naturally, he ordered one for himself. After putting his own mug in the passenger seat of his car, he would look at it every day on his way to work and feel a sense of pride. Now I would love to tell you that a month later, he decided to turn this into a hustle, but it actually took two years. So after looking at that mug every day for two years, Scott finally took action and decided to see what else he could do with it. He found a local print
shop with the capability of printing and fulfilling custom orders. Then he created an online store specifically targeted to people who'd taken the strengths finder assessment. Scott launched his hustle on a Friday afternoon around 3pm, right before wrapping up for the week. He started with a Facebook post on Gallup's called to coach Facebook group, where he was a member. The group had about 5000 people in it. And he posted on it occasionally before he knew he created something
special when he got his first order just minutes after posting a picture of his mug with a link to the store. Scott then tweeted best selling author Michael Hyatt, because he knew Michael had taken strengths finder. And Michael then ended up buying mugs for his entire team. When he posted this story with a link that led to more sales from Michael Hyatt's followers that evening and throughout the weekend. And that was a great start. It gave him the early encouragement he needed to
keep going. But he had a big fear. And that big fear of Scott's was that Gallup wouldn't approve this idea and would actually shut him down. He'd been worried about this before he started, but he didn't ask for permission first, he just decided to go for it. Now he says one of his own strengths finder strengths is self assurance, which probably helped him out a bit. Thankfully,
Gallup didn't shut him down. They began a conversation. And a couple months after that launch, Gallup asked him to sign a licensing agreement, where he puts a trademark symbol next to each strength on the mug. And he also has to provide them with a sales statement and pay a royalty fee, which is a percentage of sales. But the company has been his biggest supporter.
In fact, last fall, they even began linking to his website from their own online store. Since launching the hustle, StrengthsMugs has earned more than $25,000 in sales. It has about a 50% profit margin after the cost of the mugs, advertising, those royalties, and basic website upkeep. So we can safely say it's at least $1,000 a month in net income to Scott. His biggest challenge with StrengthsMug has been keeping up with demand during the holiday season since that local print shop started falling behind. That's a good problem to have too much
business, of course. But he says it was actually pretty stressful knowing that people wanted their mugs by Christmas. And he was at the mercy of that print shop. He sold 433 mugs in November and December. And fortunately, most of them arrived in time. But that print shop actually had him stop
taking orders on December 13, because they couldn't keep up. So with that in mind, this year, his goal is to have a new plan in place to make sure he doesn't miss out on any of those Christmas sales. He also hopes to expand StrengthsMugs into Australia and the UK, which are two markets that are both familiar with the StrengthsFinder concept. He says the best part of the experience has been the satisfaction of seeing excited people taking pictures and sharing photos of their mugs on social media. So what can we learn from this fun story? StrengthsFinder and other training
courses create self-identifying personas where people find a source of identity, recognition, and affirmation. If you think about some other popular tests, like perhaps the Myers-Briggs test, for example, if you're not familiar, I've never taken the Myers-Briggs personality test. I think there's a free version. I'll link it up on the site. People tend to get really excited about their Myers-Briggs personality type. They put it in their social media profile. There are shirts you can buy.
It's kind of a big deal. And StrengthsFinder in particular is especially interesting because it's so personalized. There's not just four or six or eight types. Every mug order is different because there's only a 1 in 33 million chance that someone has the exact same five strengths in the same order as someone else. So if you're into this culture, it's fun to have a mug on your desk or in your car that reminds you what you're good at. Now, of course, the rebel in me can't help but
respect Scott's decision to ask forgiveness rather than permission from Gallup when creating the mugs. I'm sure I'll get complaints about this, but just imagine if he had done it the other way. It honestly may have never even gotten off the ground. And that's because corporate structures, even if they're good corporations, they often default to saying no to strange requests. If there's not a process or a system for it, if it's something that's unfamiliar to them, their default answer is no. So you want to find a way to make it easy for them to say yes
and show them how it'll be a win for them too. So what Scott did essentially, after he created the mugs, he wrote to them and said, "Hey, this is already happening. I'm a big fan. This is going to be good for you too." And that's how he positioned it. And as I said, I'm not sure he would have had the same results if he went to them first before it was done.
So good work. Others may disagree with this, Scott, but I agree with you, and the results speak for themselves. And to you over there, it may not happen exactly like this for you. But when you listen to these stories, you begin applying these lessons to your own hustle, you will see results. Remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. If you want to check out the show notes for today's episode,
learn about those drinks mugs, go to sidehustleschool.com/47. I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School, and I'll see you tomorrow with another story. [Music]
