Wisconsin Natives Hustle Coasters for Love of Good Beer

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

[Music]

If you are proud of your city, your state, your province, some other local area, there might be money to be made. We've seen this in lots of different ways, from walking tours to a designer who brings in more than a million dollars, showing off his love of college towns, that was episode 649 of the show, to many other examples. And in today's story, two Wisconsin natives combine their love of Milwaukee and their love of beer into a circular side hustle selling designed coasters. Their takeaway, don't wait as long as they did to get started. Welcome to Side Hustle School, my name is Chris Guillebeau.

Stay tuned for Wisconsin natives hustle coasters for love of good beer. [Music]

The first thing to know about Amanda and Zach Wambold is that they are dyed in the wool Wisconsinites. Having both grown up in the state, they loved everything about it. And they loved living in Milwaukee. They appreciated the culture and the cheese.

But what really held a place in their heart was the Milwaukee brewery scene. Now, if you're not familiar, Milwaukee is one of America's greatest and oldest beer destinations. It's dubbed Brew City. And it has more than its fair share of craft brewing companies. But if you've ever found yourself sipping a PBR Miller High Life or any number of other popular beers found at college parties, you've had a taste of the city's brewing history.

It was that love of a good brew that inspired them to start a side hustle. When a year into their relationship, they relocated to Tampa, Florida for Zach's job as a data analyst. It was exciting to explore a new city, but they found themselves missing the people and culture of their beloved Milwaukee. As Amanda and Zach put it, there's just something about the Midwest camaraderie, Wisconsin sports fandom and beer-loving people that is like nowhere else. They knew that they wanted to move back someday and thought it could be fun in the meantime to start a business with a Milwaukee/Wisconsin theme.

Tapping into their love of the city and its brew-rich history, a side hustle came to a frothy head. They decided to create laser-imprinted beer coasters featuring maps to the local area, and they would call it Milwaukee Beer Gear. It took Amanda and Zach roughly two years to really get things brewing. By that point, they were already back home. Like many of our listeners, they didn't feel they had the time to allocate to building a side hustle, much less managing one, and they worried that their idea would fall flat like a beer left out overnight.

And let's face it, nobody wants that. But eventually they realized the worst thing that can happen is that they would have gifts for friends. Maybe they'd have enough gifts for friends from now until the end of time, but really, who couldn't use more coasters in their life? In other words, the risks were slow. So they reached out to a friend to help them make some design prototypes.

They focused on areas of the city that they loved in hopes they would resonate with others. Bayview, the Lower East Side, Walker's Point, and of course, the historic Third Ward, one of the hippest areas in the city. Once they had some designs lasered onto cherry wood coasters, launched a WordPress site. They found somebody who could make those coasters, and they figured that done was better than perfect. Overall, they spent $5,000 on initial inventory.

They decided to sell their coasters in packs of four for $24. Initially, most of their sales were from friends and family, but within four months of launching, they made that initial investment back. Drawing on local pride, they used Instagram to get their table-saving coasters in front of their target audience, and they set up booths at local craft and beer fairs since it seemed like a natural fit. They even found some success selling wholesale to some local shops. Less than a year and a half from launching, Amanda and Zach have sold over 5,500 of those coasters.

They've expanded their designs to include the Milwaukee People's Flag, a logo from a local T-shirt company called Milwaukee Home, and even the state map. Now, since no coaster is complete without a nice pint glass, they started selling those map designs on some glassware too, which is now made locally. Now, that's been the best part of the experience for Amanda and Zach, connecting with so many local makers and shop owners, and becoming even more connected to the community they love. They just had their first child this past September, and the side hustle has allowed Amanda to cut back to working part-time. Since neither Amanda nor Zach are especially extroverted, pitching their brand and products to shops and organizations has been the most stressful part of the experience.

But they've improved along the way, and they also know any stressful situation can be dissolved over a good beer. So far, they only have one real regret, and that regret is taking a whole two years to get started. Therefore, if they have any advice for potential side hustlers, it's that you should never feel pressured to get everything perfect before you get going. Sometimes it's better to just launch and get a better feel for your market instead of waiting until all your pints are in a row. [Music]

Awesome, congratulations to Amanda and Zach.

Definitely sounds like a fun project. I just have a couple of quick comments. I took a peek at their website and also their Instagram on the website, which is great overall. They have some really good photography, doing a good job of putting the products front and center, which is exactly as it should be for this kind of project. On their story page, they have a page called our story, and our longtime listeners probably know that I talk about this a lot, but I think their about page could be a little better.

They have a short paragraph about why they're doing it. But in this story that we just told, you can tell they really, really love their city. They really love this culture. And since that is central to the products that they're selling, I wonder if they could pull that out a bit more and maybe include some photos of themselves just to kind of go into some more detail to build a closer connection with their customers or potential customers. And the same thing with their Instagram account, which is Milwaukee Beer Gear, that account doesn't have a ton of followers.

And again, this is a fairly new project, so that's normal, but they have really good photography. So they have really good photography. They're telling a good story. I kind of thought of a couple other projects that we have profiled, including episode 347, which is Philadelphia Lover maps out $35,000 side hustle. That was a woman who was selling some really cool maps, some laser cut, I forget exactly how they work, but some really cool maps, let's say.

And she had an Instagram account called Philly Love Notes. And on that Instagram account, she's featuring her products, but she also just kind of designed the whole account, essentially as a love letter to her city, a city of Philadelphia. And so the account was much bigger than just her products. I almost wonder if Milwaukee Beer Gear could be something like that. And of course, featuring their great products, their coasters and beer glasses, but also just highlighting more stuff around the city.

I wonder if that would help the account grow a bit. Just an idea, but of course they're doing well. They doubled their sales in year two, now turning a profit and not surprisingly, Q4 was the busiest season. So this year as they kind of work up to another big fourth quarter, hopefully they can make even more improvements and continue to grow. All right, listeners, I hope you enjoyed this one.

If you are in Milwaukee or Wisconsin in general, or if you like Wisconsin or if you know somebody there, maybe you wanna check out their business and see what they're doing. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/774. Gonna link up Milwaukee Beer Gear, everything else I mentioned. And yeah, that's a wrap for today.

I'll be back again tomorrow with another story. I hope you'll join me. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]