Cocktail Lovers Earn Liquid Profits from Boozy Pins

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

[Music]

Welcome to a brand new week. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." I'm really excited about all the different stories I'm gonna be bringing you this week. All kinds of fun stuff in the mix. Also, as mentioned briefly, we are taking part in a 30-day email challenge. I talked about this briefly the other day, so I won't say too much more about it here in the episodes.

But just to recap, it's totally free. You join this challenge, you'll learn to grow your email list, you'll get a free 30-day account to try it out with, and someone will win $5,000. So it's a pretty good deal all around. Just come to sidehustleschool.com/challenge and you can sign up. Again, totally free and I'll also be part of providing some guidance to people as they go through the challenge.

All right, now in today's story, an expat couple captures the spirit of their favorite drinks with punny cocktail pins. We can get behind puns and we can get behind cocktails. Two good things for you today, my friends. In this story, the cash pours in. They earn liquid profits and it's last call, or at least it is right after the sponsor message.

I'm glad you're here. Stay tuned. [Music]

Brian Bergus decided that he was going to make his wife a Sazerac cocktail, no matter what it took. Although originally from the United States, the two had been living in Barcelona for the better part of a year. Several of the ingredients for the classic New Orleans cocktail, including Absinthe and Peychaud's bitters, were thousands of miles away.

But Brian was determined. He and his wife Gillian had met in New Orleans during college and her birthday was coming up. It felt special, so he had to find a way. After some searching, he managed to scrounge up a bottle of Absinthe that was bitters and of course, the right brand of rye whiskey just in time. The two sat out on their tiny balcony, overlooking the city, enjoying their drinks.

A few years later, Brian says now that he's not sure if that's when his love of cocktails began, but if it wasn't then, it was shortly thereafter. Cocktails became a meaningful part of their lives. The pair had thought of a couple of different side hustles involving drinks in some way, from reselling antique barware to starting their own gin distillery. But then in March of 2018, they had a new idea, one that would be a lot simpler and cheaper. They were on a trip in Germany.

While perusing the local shops, they found one selling enamel pins. This instantly reminded Brian of one of his old side hustles. Back when he was a graphic designer, he'd created and sold buttons for fun. Those buttons ultimately didn't work out. They just weren't very lucrative, but the pins were a similar concept.

It could be sold for a lot more. If he could apply his old skills to this new hustle, he thought it might become an intoxicating profit center. So when they got home, he began researching the pins to see how they were doing in the market. He found that they were a hot product, with many buyers being hardcore pin collectors. He saw pictures of bartenders with aprons covered in pins, and that's when it hit him.

He could make his pins with a cocktail theme. He did some more research to see if anybody else out there was doing that. It turned out that some people were, but this didn't discourage him. He would just have to find a way to make his product stand out. Brian noticed that the other cocktail pins looked good, but there was nothing about them that truly conveyed how fun the drinks were.

He decided to add more flair to his. Gillian bought into the idea, and one month later, they finished the first pin. It was colored with retro yellows, reds, and blues, and adorned with the phrase, "Call me old-fashioned." They hoped that their fun and punny approach would help them stand out and give a little more spirit to the pins. Now that they had their product, they thought it might be good to actually have a name for their business. They eventually settled on Tipsy Pertuti.

They wanted to include two languages, and besides, Tipsy Pertuti was just fun to say. From there, Brian searched for a supplier. He did a ton of research before picking the perfect one, or so he thought. That supplier turned out to be super slow, which wasn't helpful because he wanted to get started right away. He switched suppliers and found one that was much more efficient, and soon enough, he was holding his very own pin.

So far so good, but then they hit a dry spell, a DUI test. They were cut off, or actually, it was just a shipping problem. They realized that although they'd be sending the pins all over the world, a large majority of their customers would be in the United States, and they lived in Spain. There was no way they could handle the fulfillment from thousands of miles away. There were services available that specialized in such a thing, but they came at a high price.

So Brian did some more thinking. About a year earlier, he and a friend from Louisiana had an idea to sell antique barware. He had even sent that friend some items he found in Spain, but they hadn't progressed any further with the idea. He thought that she might be interested in helping out with tipsy-per-tooty. He reached out to her and she was in.

Brian says that without her help, the pin hustle wouldn't be possible. Six months after stumbling on the idea, they were ready to launch. During those months, they spent about $800 on startup costs, including a business license, a PO box, the material for the pins themselves, and shipping and packaging supplies. By the time they started selling, they had a second pin and it was mid-October. Although they didn't realize it at the time, this aligned perfectly with the upcoming holiday shopping season.

By late December, they had nearly sold out of all 200 of their initial stock, and they needed to put in another order with their supplier. Even in these early days, they've made at least $500 in profit each month, and they no longer have to put any of their personal funds into the business. Although making some extra cash is awesome for Brian, another big advantage of his hustle is that it coincides with some of his larger goals. He's still thinking about opening up a gin distillery. Thanks to Tipsy Pertutti, he's building valuable connections with bartenders and suppliers everywhere.

Cheers, here's to your health, and bottoms up. [Music]

All right, I got a couple of suggestions here for Tipsy Pertutti. I took a look at their website, and I like where they're going with it. They've definitely got some fun designs there. Number one suggestion is more pens, more products.

Right now I see three unique designs. I feel like for some hardcore pen collectors, which as mentioned in the story, there are a bunch of people out there who do that, collect a whole lot of pens, they're gonna want more than three. So I feel like this is the thing where if you're gonna buy one or two pens, it wouldn't be that hard to upsell somebody on a couple more. And then also my second suggestion, sell them in a set. Like they have a link that says collections on their site, but it doesn't actually appear to go to like a box set of all three of them.

So I really, really think that if they have more products and sell them in sets or collections, I'd be super surprised if they don't dramatically increase sales by doing that. It just seems like a really obvious thing. And I know you can't just wave a magic wand and all of a sudden have more pens. I understand there's a design process, manufacturing process, shipping, gotta get them to Louisiana, et cetera. But since pens are what they sell in this business, and it does seem to be working, people are ordering them, why not increase your sales by adding more products and selling them in sets?

So those are my recommendations. And listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. If you have an idea for something, what are you doing about it? What practical step can you take today, whether big or small, to get a little bit closer to making that reality? Today's show notes are at situssleschool.com/814.

Episode 814, I'll include links to Tipsy Pertuti. Also, if you'd like to take part in the 30-day email challenge, you can just go to situssleschool.com/challenge. Come and check it out, it is completely free. So wherever you are in the world, I hope you have a good day. I hope you take the time to do something for yourself and I hope you'll come back and listen again tomorrow.

Once again, my name is Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

- From the Onward Project.