Breast Cancer Survivor Creates Seatbelt Covers for Patients

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

[Music]

Not everything has to scale, not everything has to grow, not everything has to be complex or complicated. In fact, if you have never started any sort of business, or let's say if you've never sold anything online or otherwise, it's probably better to start very small and simple. And then what you need to do is just apply some business basics, the things I talk about every day here, to get that project up and running. So it all starts with an idea. What are you gonna sell?

What is the product or the service? And then it's all about implementation. What do you need to make that idea happen? What are the very basic, very minimum things you need to do to have that product out the door? So today's story is an example of that.

A breast cancer survivor makes a seat belt pillow for herself and then turns it into a handmade business. So very practical, helpful item, simple project, and it's doing well for her while also helping other people at the same time. So I'll get things and I'll tell you more about how it works after this brief message from our sponsor. Just about 30 seconds, stay tuned. [Music]

In September, 2014, Rachel Park found a small lump in her breast.

She took proper action and went to the doctor to have it checked out. Her fears came true when the doctors confirmed she had breast cancer. Now I'll give you some good news right up front. After a long process of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, Rachel was eventually declared cancer free. Woo hoo!

But while she was undergoing treatments, she wasn't able to work full time in her job as a tech consultant. She also found it difficult to just sit around and do nothing. So her mind drifted back to a project she'd started after college, selling fashionable made-to-order ties. She'd already put that project on hold after her diagnosis, and she certainly had no intention of starting another side hustle during this time. Yet she found herself struck with inspiration and a desire to take her mind off her treatments.

Her aunt, who was also a cancer survivor, had made Rachel a padded seatbelt pillow as a gift. It was a nice gesture and provided comfort, both physical and emotional. Rachel thought this would be something she could make for other cancer patients. She had always loved fashion and learned to sew at a young age. So she was able to take her sewing skills and an eye for design to fill the void of not working.

So much of having cancer is spent feeling helpless. This also created a healthy distraction from her treatments. At first, she made seatbelt pillows once in a while for friends. For example, she had a friend who had just had a lumpectomy, and Rachel knew the seatbelt pillow would make a difference for her. Then, using the skills from her career background in tech to approach her product development like a larger project, she made a small sample batch of seatbelt pillows and worked with her surgeon to beta test them.

Her surgeon offered it to various patients with the understanding that Rachel could receive feedback in return. She then took that feedback and adjusted. Once she found a design she was satisfied with, she launched a website and started selling the pillow, which she called the Park Puff. Her startup costs were very minimal. She was able to find nice fabric and supplies at an affordable price.

She registered the domain survivormoda.com to highlight being a cancer survivor and her love for fashion. She also purchased the domain parkpuff.com so that customers could find her in more than one place. And that domain just redirects. If you go to parkpuff.com, it leads to the main site, survivormoda.com. When Rachel first launched the Park Puff, she kept the price fairly low.

She wanted to make it an affordable project that could support many patients. However, she quickly learned two things. One, she wasn't making enough money to cover the materials and the time she spent hand sewing each seatbelt pillow. Number two, she also discovered that it wasn't really patients who were buying them. For the most part, family and friends were buying them as gifts for people they knew who had cancer.

And that was a key point. With all that new information in mind, she raised her price, yet sales remained solid. Rachel currently makes and sells about 20 Park Puffs per month, which makes it manageable to keep up with once she started working full time again. Thanks to that beta testing effort, a majority of sales come from referrals. She also had a fellow cancer survivor and friend feature her product in a gift guide.

Finally, Rachel had the opportunity to partner with the foundation. And all of these efforts together have allowed her to bring in at least several hundred extra dollars each month. The Park Puff provides comfort in an ordinary way for people who have been through a tough journey. It supported patients with different kinds of surgeries and can be useful for multiple phases of treatment. It has become the small but important item that people didn't know they needed.

And as for Rachel, her biggest challenge has been learning how to manage her time and energy. She constantly reminds herself to grow with her business rather than trying to create more work or spend more money than necessary. She still hand sews each product, each Park Puff, and provides handwritten notes to accompany each purchase. In the future, she may look at manufacturing options, but for now, she likes doing it all herself. [Music]

All right, so what can we learn?

As I said, if you haven't done online business before, if you've never sold anything, just start simply. And to start with a simple product, you just need, A, that product, B, the market, someone that you're going to sell that product to, and then C, some way to sell it to them, like that's it. These are the three things. You need something to sell, someone to sell it to, and some way for them to purchase it, which in Rachel's case, and the most common, is a simple website with a means of taking payment, which can be as easy as just including a link to your Venmo or PayPal, if nothing else. Nothing wrong at all with something simple, especially a practical, helpful item like this.

Oftentimes, these things can grow into something much bigger, and it's also okay when they don't. There are all kinds of reasons to start a side hustle. That's why it's so important to think about what are your goals. I want to encourage you to not sit on your ideas. If somebody going through chemotherapy can find a way to launch your project, so can the rest of us.

So congratulations, Rachel, and thank you for letting us share your story. Listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes, including links to everything I mentioned, are at sidehustleschool.com/1032. One, zero, three, two. We are just trucking along.

I'm excited about the new month coming up, and a whole bunch of stuff that we've been preparing for the end of the year. I'll look forward to sharing that with you soon. My name is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.