Raver Turns LED-Powered Gloves Into Bright Future

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

[Music]

Subcultures have their own terminology, practices, means of recognition, and they attract people who want to belong to something. A subculture could be a lot of different things. It could be fans of indie music, anyone who enjoys a certain activity, sports fans, especially if you're a fan of a less popular team, or perhaps a team in a different area than the one you live in. On that last point, a while back, we had a story, episode 667, about a guy who was a Seattle Seahawks fan and moved to a part of the country where a few other people were. You knew that there had to be some fans somewhere, but most people were fans of another team.

So he created an app that allowed displaced fans to find a bar or other venue that would show their games. So in other words, he found a way to capitalize on an opportunity no one else was paying attention to, bringing people together who had this shared sense of identity and were otherwise feeling a little bit isolated. Now this is also true in the arts world. So today we're gonna look at a raver turned salesperson who falls in love with an underground art form and then turns it into a successful side business. This art form is something I was unfamiliar with, so I had to watch some videos to make sure I knew what I was talking about.

Then on his website, I noticed this explanation, or it's actually more of like a background statement. We'll talk about the specific art expression in the episode, but he said, "Many art forms have evolved from a shady underground. Art often attracts deviants, people who don't fit into society's standard mold. So art becomes an outlet for them to express their genius, their creative imagination, and their dissatisfaction." I liked that, but how do you market to fellow deviants? And how can you express your creative imagination in a way that makes money?

Well, that's what we're all about. Here on "Saddestle School," my name is Chris Guillebeau. So glad you're here, this episode, this story, all the details are coming right up. [Music]

27-year-old sales executive, Andrew Chao, fell in love at a rave. But it wasn't with a person, it was with an art form called Gloving.

Gloving involved performers, called Glubbers, wearing gloves with LED microlights, using them to share their own light show. The art form first emerged in the underground rave scene in the mid-2000s, when performers would use glow sticks to create art. Then someone had the idea of taking gloves and putting a small LED light in each finger, which opened up an entirely new world of possibilities for moves. Andrew was entranced. He immediately spent much of his free time studying and practicing the art form.

Online message boards were popular at the time, and he would spend hours on forums dedicated to the rave culture. However, rivalry and bullying on the message boards would soon push Andrew into his first side hustle. You see, the glow stickers outnumbered Glovers at both the raves and also on the message boards, and that larger group was hostile to the smaller one. Fed up with the negative vibes, Andrew started Throw Life, a new forum dedicated to Glovers. The website grew quickly, attracting thousands from around the world who created an online community that was active 24 hours a day.

But like many love stories, Andrew's relationship with Gloving would not be without difficulties. The quick success of his new forum, and the responsibility of managing it, became too much for the then 19-year-old, and he decided to shut it down. Andrew soon got into the sales industry where he excelled, but he never forgot about Gloving. A few years after shutting down the forum, he tried to relaunch the site. He created a beautiful design with the latest message board technology, and he wrote to the thousands of people who'd been active before.

But nothing happened. He quickly learned that most of the discussion forums had been replaced by Facebook groups, and the relaunch of Throw Life was a failure. While this project didn't work out, Andrew was excelling professionally. Now working in enterprise sales for a large multinational telecom company, he was soon earning $80,000 a year selling fiber optics. But his love of Gloving was never far from his mind.

He continued to spend most weekends at large raves. He also still believed that the niche art form would one day be a billion-dollar industry like street art or skateboarding. He didn't know what he could do or how he could do it, but he wanted to be part of the industry's future. That's when he decided to relaunch as an e-commerce brand. This time, Andrew started small, really small.

His first product was the tiny batteries that power the colorful gloves. He went on Alibaba.com and found a supplier. Soon he had thousands of batteries on the way to his store. While waiting for this delivery, he set up a simple Shopify store. The new venture, now called Throw Lights, cost less than $1,000 to get off the ground.

Then he set out to promote. Andrew intentionally priced his batteries low in order to build traffic to the site and build a database to market future products to. But that wouldn't be enough. While he had a large email list from the old forum, it was outdated and many of the emails he sent bounced back. He was basically starting from scratch.

So to increase interest, Andrew began participating in those new Facebook groups he'd learned about. He shared insights on the culture and also information about what he was doing with his new project. He also told friends and old industry associates about the new project. In between all of his efforts, orders began to trickle in. Then in a short period of time, Andrew's side hustle was earning hundreds of dollars each month and then more than a thousand.

He consistently worked to expand his product line, sold exclusively on his website, and he soon began offering gloves, bulbs, t-shirts, and accessories that became popular in the Gloving community. This consistent work paid off when CNBC featured Andrew in a June 2019 Millennial Money segment. And he also used this to seize an opportunity. While the segment's focus was supposed to be on what Andrew was earning from his day job and how he managed his money, he was intentional about focusing his answers around throw life. And this redirected branding effort worked.

He earned a good amount of screen time for his colorful, TV-friendly underground art and soon got a call from an angel investor who saw the segment. Since then, Andrew has raised $150,000 for his venture and he recently left his sales job to focus on it full time. But of course, it all started with a side hustle that enabled him to turn his dreams into reality. He says that the best part of the experience has been the phenomenal relationships he's made plus the opportunity to be around an art form that he loves. Through all the ups and downs, he credits his success to mindset.

Before what he learned through experience, Andrew didn't have the skills or the habits he needed. He became much more conscientious about building a strong community to surround himself with, and he became more intentional about what information he consumed. His advice for anybody out there hoping to follow in his footsteps or just do their own thing, start somewhere and don't be afraid. Along the way, you will mess up, but that's okay 'cause you might also wildly succeed. So just go for it.

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Well, this morning as I've been working on this episode, I was watching all these videos about Gloving and Glow Six, you know, the Evil Empire competition. I just learned about so many different things when working on the show. I was also thinking recently about this episode I did a while back about needle felt art, which I also had no idea about, but then once I learned about it was like, oh, that's kind of fun, that's cool. So if I ever stop making side hustle school, I've got no shortage of hobbies to pursue. Got this long list of things I wanna go and learn more about.

Also, I wanted to say it's cool that Andrew was able to raise $150,000 for his venture from an investor. But I also think, you know, like most of the stories, the vast, vast majority of stories that we feature, you don't need to have outside investors. So maybe in this case, it made sense for him and that's totally cool. But he started this business with less than $1,000. So so many of the projects, side hustles, businesses, you know, et cetera, that we feature do not require significant startup costs.

And often the person who starts them doesn't want investment because they're like, I wanna just own this myself. I don't want somebody else telling me what to do. I wanna build this project for myself. So just a little reminder there that it's okay to do it your own way. Another reminder, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

I hope you'll take this story or yesterday's story or what you hear tomorrow in the weekly recap and use it as fuel for something that you're working on. Maybe it'll give you a practical idea or maybe it'll just kind of encourage you along the way to know that there are other people out there in the world who are all pursuing a dream. If you have a dream of your own, but some of the people around you don't understand it, well, that's okay because it's your dream. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/973. Once again, my name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the "Onward Project."