Mental Health Counselor By Day, Headband Artist by Night

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

[Music]

How does an Etsy seller go from earning $500 a month to earning more than $3,000 a month? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. As our show has evolved, we have gotten a bit pickier about some of the things that we feature. I wanna make sure that we are always bringing you, our listener, with real value and Etsy sellers with handmade items like jewelry or something else we're gonna talk about headbands today.

They are one of those categories where the standard has been raised a bit. We have leveled up and that's not to disrespect anybody who's making $500 a month. I think that's amazing. I mean, that is the goal of Side Hustle School that anybody who listens and applies will be able to make at least $500 a month. That's the promise that I make in the Side Hustle book.

That's what we did for all our workshops last year. So that is a great starting point, but through our archives, there's lots of different ways to learn about that and get going. So what I'm more interested in these days is not just how someone can make a few hundred dollars a month selling on Etsy, but how they can ramp up or stand out or otherwise go above and beyond. There's a lot of directions mentioned there, but you know what I mean? How they can actually be more successful, make more money.

So in today's story, a mental health counselor moonlights as a headband artist going head and shoulders above the rest and earning an extra $3,000 a month from her headband sales. How does she do it? Well, she learns a few things along the way and changes course, which is often a good strategy. So how does she do that? How does she change course?

Well, stay tuned, and I will tell you. [Music]

Brittany Lepowski was busy. The overwhelmed grad student was trying to balance her school course load, a part-time job, some semblance of a social life, going to yoga, and all the errands associated with adult life. And like most adults, she had to wash her hair in between all these activities. But that didn't mean she looked as put together as she would have liked.

All she ever really wanted to do was to be able to go through her daily activities while looking effortlessly adorable. Who wouldn't, right? Not an unreasonable ask, especially once she started her side hustle to help her accomplish that very feat. Busy bee crafts became Brittany's answer to a question she had only half asked herself, which was how do people wash their hair every day? Maybe some of the answer comes from the recent surge in dry shampoo sales.

It wasn't until she was in Virginia to visit a friend that she sees the moment to start her project. Brittany noticed a cute headband in a small shop, and then she noticed the $20 price tag. Her first thought, "I can make this." She immediately went home to start researching supplies to make her own headbands. She invested $300 of her savings into materials, taught herself how to sew, and got to work. She knew from personal experience that good headbands, and by that she means the kind that stay on your head, were hard to find, so she tested hers until she created the perfect design.

Then she made an Etsy account to start some sales and bring in the money, and she waited. She waited and waited. Sales trickled in, but not as the steady stream of secondary income she had imagined. Still, Brittany stuck with her labor of love. Slowly, she began to bring in an average of $500 a month.

Some months were better than others, but that also made Brittany get a little overexcited, in her words, and buy too many supplies for her side hustle needs. Since she wasn't selling a huge amount, she didn't need the world's largest supply of fabric. She also said she had to learn supply and demand the hard way, after she found herself with credit card debt and a big pile of fabric that didn't sell. But still, she did learn, and she did eventually pay off that debt. She also noticed that she got a lot of customers through word of mouth, and that a lot of those customers turned into repeat customers.

Since she didn't want to invest money into advertising, she got creative with where she posted about her business, like in certain Facebook groups. Surprisingly, her most successful lead generation came from a sub-fan group for the podcast My Favorite Murder. That podcast is related to crafts, so it's natural that Brittany would find herself there. But as a bonus, she ended up gaining a lot of customers, and in turn, anybody that they would talk to about Busy Bee Crafts through it as well. Once she began to connect more with her customers and listened and paid attention to what they were looking for, she saw her income skyrocket to $3,000 a month.

She learned to ask lots of questions and Instagram stories. She began to do polls on new fabrics and ask for opinions on what her customers would like to see added to the lineup. The biggest change to Brittany's side hustle model was creating seasonal collections with limited availability. Now, this is important. At the end of each season, she offers a sale price before retiring the collection.

She says that because it gives the customer a sense of urgency, and they know that the products really are limited because she's a one-woman show, they're more likely to act on the headbands and products they want. Now, even though she's now averaging that extra $3,000 a month in side hustle income, hasn't always been easy. She has made mistakes and had to overcome obstacles, like spending too much money on supplies, as discussed. She also has to balance her side hustle with her full-time job as a service coordinator for people with mental illness, and she has to keep up with orders and postage. It's definitely been a journey, not an overnight success.

Still, over time, Brittany learned to order a limited amount, seek her customers' opinions, and set up a separate business bank account to keep track of finances. It's a constant give and take, but at least she knows she looks pulled together in a great headband while she does it. Since her beginnings as a humble grad school hustler, Brittany has added different headband styles, hair ties, scrunchies, kid sizes, and those seasonal launches to her product offerings. And while the extra monthly income is great, especially now that she has a wedding to plan, another new project, she says that nothing beats hearing positive customer feedback. She now knows firsthand that you don't need a business degree to make a business work, she's definitely getting ahead in life.

[Music]

All right, so as I hope I made clear, nothing at all wrong with earning $500 a month. That is definitely a great start for lots of people. But the key to growth, the key to going beyond that point, is really understanding what people want. Not just any person or group of people, but your ideal customer, the people who are your prospects, especially when it comes to something like this, where there are lots of people selling handmade items on Etsy. So how do you figure it out?

Well, two ways, basically. You figure it out if you're experimenting, and you figure it out through engagement or customer contact. And you can see how Brittany pursued both those strategies in terms of trying different things, eventually developing different styles, different other alternative hair products and so on, but also through that engagement of posting in the Facebook groups and then posting the polls, asking people about fabric, asking people what they want. And you can't always necessarily get all the information from asking people what they want because they don't always know, but that's where the additional experimentation comes in. So I think it's a combination of both of those things.

You continue to experiment and iterate, and you also continue to engage. And the interaction or synergy between those things, at least in this case, and lots of other stories that we've examined, that's what helps people go from the initial success, whether it's 500 or $1,000 a month or whatever, to something that grows, in this case, $3,000 a month. In another story, it might be 5,000 or more. So your task, if you're just getting started in the side hustle world, is to build that first project, get to your $500 a month. And if you've been doing this a while, your task is to take it to the next level.

Okay, I've got my initial success. I've learned some lessons, figured out some stuff. What am I gonna do next? That is my encouragement, my question for you to think about today. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

Our show notes for today are at sidehustleschool.com/714, episode 714. You can also join the waiting list for our upcoming Side Hustle Society relaunch. Really excited about that, and I hope to welcome you into the community as well. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back again tomorrow.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.