Texas Banker Teaches Classes on Painting Your Pet

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

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Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau. Now, we often talk about online classes. I've presented a number of stories of people that have done really, really well with an online class. There are all sorts of benefits that can come from being able to reach people virtually, but guess what?

Local education can also become a big business, even in a niche market or a small town. And that's what we're gonna look at today. In this story, a former banker in small town Texas hosts a pop-up art classes where the paint flies and the creative ideas flow. She does this because she loves it, but it's not a small success money-wise either. She's now earning $10,000 a month in sales from these classes, the majority of which is profit.

I'm gonna break down all that for you in the story, how she gets the idea, how she makes it happen, and what those numbers look like. That story's coming up after this. Shout out to our sponsor. Stay tuned. [Music]

In 2012, Chelsea Roberts was working as a banker while going to school to get her MBA.

One night, she felt inspired to create a piece of art to represent a vivid dream she had. Chelsea wasn't an artist. She'd never even taken a single class in art, but she happened to have some random house paint lying around. Feeling motivated, she sat down and created her very first painting. It turned out she loved the process.

She soon began learning the fundamentals of shading, lighting, and realism, occasionally sharing her work with friends. One of those friends asked if Chelsea could show her in a group at her church how to paint like her. This first class was small, just 10 or 15 people, but it was a good experience. In fact, she found that she enjoyed teaching so much that she decided to leave banking and become a sixth grade teacher. At the time, she was living in the small city of Texarkana, Texas.

Word about her art skills started to spread. Soon, other groups contacted her and her class size grew to 30 to 40 people. She had no way of knowing what to charge, so at first she kept her prices very cheap at just 10 to $15 a person. Still, that meant that when she taught 40 people, she can make $400 for just an hour or two of work. But it was still a side project for Chelsea since she was teaching just a class or two a month.

A few years and a couple of moves later, Chelsea found herself in a town about 30 minutes outside Dallas. Her experience helped her land a job in one of the best school districts in town. She loved that job, but she also wanted to create something that she would have full control over. So she looked around at what other painting class companies were offering and decided she could do better. She wanted to focus on mediums that were stress-free, easy to learn, and easy to transport.

She also thought she might have more success with classes now that she was much closer to a large city. And that's how her business, Color Hype, came to be. Chelsea puts a lot of emphasis on hands-on learning, which both kids and adults love. Among others, she has an acrylic pouring class, which can get colorful and messy, and another class that uses different media, like boards, succulents, stickers, and honeycomb tiles. She even hosts a popular paint-your-pet class, which is just as it sounds.

You go and learn to paint a portrait of your pet. These classes are held at local venues like breweries, wineries, or food halls, where Chelsea will buy the first drink for everyone to support the venue. She posts Facebook ads on mom's group pages and attends lots of networking events in the area. She is always on the hunt for new venues. Even with Color Hype's rapid growth, she didn't plan to quit her full-time teaching job.

But besides touching all the primary colors, this work was bringing in some serious green. In May 2019, she realized she was making enough money to focus on Color Hype full-time. So she left her high school teaching job at the end of the school year, and since then has seen her sales jump to over $10,000 a month. Materials costs are around $2,000 a month for all of her classes, and after those materials and other expenses, she's bringing in an average of $6,000 a month in net income. Having people wanting to create and have fun with their friends is a delight.

She says she doesn't merely offer a class, she's providing an experience. These experiences are now expanding. She recently licensed her Color Hype brand to a friend back in Texarkana, who now uses her methods to teach classes there. Chelsea takes a percentage of the profits from each class and is looking to license others in cities around the country. She's also signed a partnership with one of the largest apartment complexes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to teach classes at those locations.

That's especially great because the events sell out quickly, and she won't have to do anything to reach this new market. This project works so well because Chelsea responded to what people were enthused about in her initial classes and then expanded upon those aspects. Having that MBA and experience in banking didn't hurt either because long before her painting business, she understood profitability and marketing. Next, she's working on hosting her first art tour to Italy and hiring some additional help. This passion project has become a true masterpiece.

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Well, there are a lot of painting classes out there, but most of them are not bringing in $10,000 a month, especially started on the side by one person. So congratulations to Chelsea. She's obviously got some stuff figured out. Now let's talk about the types of classes she has. She has three of them, and I think this is important.

She has three types of classes that keep people coming back. She's got this one with alcohol inks, one with acrylic pouring, and then of course the paint your pet. She said, "I knew I had to give my customer a choice. When they come into an inks class and enjoy it, they realize what they haven't been to the other one." So then they're gonna sign up for that. I think that's critical because if someone is a loyal customer, if they have a good experience, they'll wanna take all of them.

Then they'll invite their friend to come to one of them. So offering this simple choice increases her signups, but notice that she doesn't offer too many classes. Three is a great number here because if she had 15 classes, that would just be overwhelming. I was actually at a farmer's market recently, and there was a guy who was selling homemade hummus, and he's like, "Do you wanna sample some?" And I'm like, "Sure." And he's like, "Well, we have, I think it was about 15 different flavors. They were just all laid out of this really long table." And I was thinking, "Wow, sure, it's really good, but how would I possibly choose?

I'm not gonna try 15 samples." So then if I picked one, I might worry I'd be missing out by not getting the other one. I would just feel overwhelmed. And maybe it doesn't matter too much when it's something like hummus, but when it is something like a class and experience where you're gonna invest your time, I think it's really important to guide people to a simple choice where they have some empowerment over it, but they're not overwhelmed. All right, that's my encouragement for you today. Congrats again to Chelsea.

Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. To find the show notes for today's episode, perhaps learn more about color hype, just come to sidehustleschool.com/1054. That's episode 1,054. How about that? All right, more is coming up.

I hope you're subscribed. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the "Onward Project."