This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
How fat skincare line steers to grade A paycheck. Hey, what's up, friends? In today's side hustle school story, you'll hear about an ingredient called tallow. It comes from animal fats and is often used in making soap. What's now also being used by a side hustle started skincare line.
Because, you know, if you're gonna go paleo, you might as well use the same moisturizer and lip gloss that the cavemen used, right? These skincare products are a huge success. They're gonna be stocked in Target before much longer, but the mechanical engineer who invents them had some big missteps in the beginning, including a trademark lawsuit and betting on a big order from Whole Foods that never materialized. So lots of good stuff in this one. Of course, I'm gonna tell you how she got the idea, how she made it happen and what transpired along the way.
Oh, and of course, what the outcome was. All that is coming up very soon. Stay tuned. [Music]
For years, Cassie Burnboth has been on a mission to eat a clean diet. And after completing her first Whole30, shout out to Melissa Urban, she began paying closer attention to the ingredients that she put in and on her body.
She took inventory of her skincare products and noticed that many were filled with chemicals and ingredients that were just not aligned with her values. Eager to find more natural options, Cassie expanded her mission to find products that fed her skin with healthy ingredients, just like the ones she was feeding her body. As part of her research, she looked to the past for fundamentals of healthy living and early beauty remedies like using pressed plant oils and animal fats. This is where she came across something called tallow. Now, if you've never heard of tallow, it's derived from the fat of grass-fed cows, mutton and bison.
It contains a lot of natural nourishing benefits as well as abundant natural activators like vitamins A, D, E and K, which are all necessary for skin health. For centuries, humans used tallow in moisturizers and healing balms, but somehow the skin treatment routine of the Paleolithic caveman and cavewoman had been lost to history. The more Cassie learned of this fatty wonder ingredient, the more convinced she was that this was the missing mammoth from her skincare products. Excited about this new discovery, she started searching for products that fit the criteria, but to her dismay, she couldn't find any. Rather than settling for something else on the market, you know what she did?
Cassie decided to use her skills in mechanical engineering to engineer the perfect skincare product. She started by incorporating tallow in various oil-based recipes she found on Pinterest. She tried a lot of different recipes, used her friends and family to test the products, and as time went on, Cassie could tell a difference in her own skin. Other people who had eczema and psoriasis issues also tried it and saw a difference. She believed it could be the next big thing, so she decided to take the next hooved step in creating her own skincare line.
She announced to her close friends and family what she was going to do, and they were completely supportive. They were like, "Yes, that's amazing, Cassie, good for you." Actually, that's not what happened. She was met with widespread skepticism and ridicule. In fact, she heard things from her family, like, "Do you really think people are gonna pay to put animal fat on their face?" Which I suppose, in some ways, is not an unreasonable question, but the point is her family did not support her. Fortunately, Cassie didn't listen to the naysayers, even if she was related to them.
She followed her conviction and began to render products. Dipping into her savings, she invested $10,000 of her own money to support this endeavor. After much preparation, she was ready to launch her skincare product line FatCo to the world. She made an e-commerce website on Squarespace and started selling. Proving her family wrong, even her boyfriend at the time, people and cows were jumping over the moon for Cassie's products.
Within the first nine months of launch, she had managed to scrape in nearly $200,000 in revenue. She didn't quit her job as an engineer in the automotive industry to focus on her growing hustle. While most of her sales were organic, and let's say grass-fed, Cassie began attending trade shows to share her tallow or her talent with the public. Trade shows became a worthwhile investment as she was able to connect with customers and other companies on a larger scale. And FatCo stood out in the crowded field of trade show booths.
There was nothing else like it out there, and she had recently become Paleo certified. Not to mention FatCo's philosophy of nose to tail, which is the practice of using every part of the animal, down to bones and fat, set them apart even further. After showcasing at the Natural Products Expo, Cassie received attention from Whole Foods. Now wait for the plot twist. She began having conversations with her product team about selling FatCo in their stores.
The partnership looked promising, so she wanted to be prepared. After a year of manufacturing products on her own, she decided it was time to hire a factory and begin outsourcing. She wanted to be ready when Whole Foods gave her that green light. But sadly, the green light never turned on. And she found herself with this huge investment in outsourcing with nothing to show for it.
In the long run, all was not lost. She continued to attend more trade shows and connected to other suppliers. You can now find FatCo products like facial cleansers and deodorant on Amazon and at Thrive Market with more partnerships on the way. FatCo has gone from concept to reality and is currently grossing more than $500,000 a year. It wasn't an easy stampede to profits, however.
While FatCo is a healthy, fat-producing side hustle today, it hasn't always been the smoothest ride. In fact, FatCo wasn't even the first name of her company. When she first launched, she called it Fat Face. It turned out that was the same name that a UK-based clothing company was using for their skincare line. This became a huge hassle.
Cassie had to hire a trademark lawyer to try to fight it, battle back and forth with the other company. And after nearly a year of what seemed like never-ending conversations and legal bills, Cassie agreed it was best to rebrand and give up the name. So that's when she chose FatCo and switched everything over. It was an expensive switch, but she says it's much better in the long run and she loves the new name and rebranding. Having learned from the missteps, she adopted a theme of slow and steady wins the race.
She took time to perfect the right recipes before launching on a larger scale and now recommends that instead of quitting your day job early on, you maintain that steady income to support you and keep testing products in your circle before going to mass market. Still, it's working out okay. For Cassie, she saw an opportunity to create something that wasn't on the market and bring it to life. And thanks to its organic paleolithic principles, FatCo has grown fatter than she ever imagined. Later this year, you'll be able to find it stocked on shelves in Target.
You'll also find Cassie taking on another new role of becoming a mom. [Music]
All right, let's talk about tallow. Or actually, let's talk about FatCo since I don't know much more about tallow than what I said in the episode. But it is interesting. What I wanted to pull out was this whole thing about the lack of support that she had from some of her friends and family.
I was reading in the notes we have that she even had ridicule from women in her life about the name. Her friends thought she was crazy for taking her savings, the $10,000 and putting it in. She had a $100,000 a year job that she quit and walked away from. And so it really took a lot of convincing and she had to have this perspective of, I really believe in this. So I don't care what you think or whether I care or not, this is the decision I'm making.
You know, this is the path I'm choosing. So as a rebel, as somebody who's kind of like, you know, all or nothing, I totally respect that. From the side hustle perspective, I also agree with the analysis she has now where she says, you know, actually you don't have to do it that way. Maybe it is good to keep your day job, to have that steady income, you know, to test a bit before going forward. Which is a lot of what we talk about here on the show.
You don't have to take a huge risk if you believe in a vision, but you're being held back because you can't fathom, you know, making that leap or quitting that big job or whatever. Well, you don't have to. And in fact, she didn't do that until she had that first year with $200,000 in sales. So it's not like she even, you know, took the risk before there was some sort of validation or verification that there was interest in this product. And of course, the common lesson of so many of our stories, you never know what you can find to make money with.
You never know what your market could be. I had never heard of this kind of product before, but now obviously it's doing really well, reaching people across the country and presumably beyond. So congratulations, Cassie. Good work sticking with it. And for our listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.
What does Cassie's story stir in you? To find the show notes for this episode, go to sidehustleschool.com/878. You can learn more about FATCO and anything else I mentioned in the episode. Let's see what else. Oh my gosh, the "100 Sideless" book is coming out really soon, just a week.
I've got so much to be done in the next week, but I'm really excited to have this book out. And I can't wait to tell you more about it coming up very soon. All right, thanks so much, my friends. Be back again tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
