Geologist Rides Away From Full-Time Work

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

[Music]

Welcome to a brand new week of Saracel School, the last week of November, 2019. I'm so excited to bring you a new batch of stories this week, or could I say a crop of stories, a flock of stories, a group, a gaggle. Well, whatever it is, there are some good ones. And as a reminder, every story is about somebody who has a job, who's trying to create some extra income for themselves, either to replicate their salary and eventually leave that job, or just because they want some security. Security is critical in this day and age as you'll hear in today's story.

Now in this one, a Canadian geologist escapes the cycle of full-time employment by starting a mobile bicycle repair business, proving you can walk the walk if you talk the torque. It's also a lesson in defining your target market because the overwhelming majority of bike shops target the high end client. This guy decides to do something very different. He now earns a full-time income in a seasonal business because as it turns out, most people in Canada don't ride bikes in the winter. Lots of lessons here.

How does he do it? And what does he learn along the way? It's all coming up in the story. Stay tuned. [Music]

Andy Tong was looking for a way to make some extra money.

As an oil and gas geologist, he already worked full-time in a role with rock solid demands. But even though Andy loved geology, he loved cycling even more. You see, Andy was a bicycle fanatic. Zipping around on two wheels was something he'd loved ever since he was a kid. And in the decades since, he'd learned almost everything there is to know about bikes.

Beyond just riding them, he also knew how to maintain and repair them. So when that idea of earning some extra pocket money entered his mind, doing something with bikes didn't seem like a terrible way to proceed. He already had plenty of tools and an SUV with a bike rack. That combined with his passion, gave him the idea to offer bicycle servicing to customers in his home city of Calgary, Canada, complete with pickup and delivery. Getting started was easy.

He placed a single ad on a Calgary-based buy and sell website and received a call almost immediately. Then he hopped in his SUV, drove to the customer's house, picked up their bike and brought it home. After making the necessary repair, he returned the bike to the customer and collected a check. Over the course of the next month, he acquired three customers from that single ad and made over $500, while charging significantly less than the local bike shops. But it wasn't a perfect process.

First, his tools and parts were good, but not exhaustive, meaning he wouldn't be able to service every kind of bike. Also, picking up the bikes, bringing them to his house and returning them took a lot of time. Juggling it all along with his day job proved too difficult. So with 500 bucks in hand, he parked the idea in his bike rack for two full years. Now at that point, two full years later, Andy unexpectedly lost his day job.

His company was restructuring and there was no longer a place for him. Instead of feeling panicked, the gears in his mind began turning. He revisited his old bike service side hustle and thought it was an idea worth pursuing again. After all, he wondered if he was able to make $500 without too much effort, what might be possible if he truly committed? So like a mountain biker facing down a steep drop, he grabbed the handlebars, placed his feet firmly on the pedals and clipped in.

This time he decided to make some changes, the biggest one being mobile servicing. Instead of bringing the bikes back to his place, he'd work on them at customer's homes. This would cut his time and gas bill substantially. He also committed to purchasing more tools so that he could service all different kinds of bikes. For marketing, he used the same method he did two years earlier.

He bought classified ads on local websites and Facebook groups. He also put an ad in his local community newsletter. And just like the last time the work rolled in, it turned out that a lot of people had bikes that needed servicing. Within a few months, Andy was generating consistent revenue, all of which he invested into more tools and parts. His goal was to turn his SUV into a one-stop bicycle service shop, capable of solving any problem or fixing any broken bike.

As his workload got busier, Andy made a strategic decision regarding which customers he'd serve, or at least focus on. He noticed that the vast majority of bike shops focused on high-end clients. These are people who spend thousands of dollars on gear and typically return their bikes to the same store for regular checkups. Instead of tackling this market, Andy focused his service around the more casual rider, the types of people who buy bikes from department stores like Walmart and Costco. These companies sell a huge amount of bikes every year, but don't have service departments.

Andy decided to fill that gap. After a year, he invested in a new van, something large enough that he could stand inside so it could act as his mobile workshop. He built it out with his tools, parts, racks, and workbench. This allowed him to work faster than ever before and therefore serve more customers. It was so successful, in fact, that his only regret was that he hadn't purchased the van sooner.

Serving lots of customers is important in his business because one downside of bicycle servicing in Canada is that it is highly seasonal. Literally, people don't ride in the winter there at all. So Andy has to generate as much money as he can during the bike season, which lasts around five months. That also means he has a lot of downtime for the other half of the year. Now you're probably wondering how much can someone truly make from such a seasonal business.

It turns out it's quite a lot. Andy has doubled revenues every year, usually makes around $10,000 profit each month during the bike season. At his current growth, he expects to get to $100,000 a year within the next two to three years, all while effectively taking half the year off. No doubt he'll keep the wheels rolling. [Music]

All right, so what can we learn from Andy's story?

Well, there are a lot of lessons. I think it is so smart to focus on people who purchased bikes at Walmart and Costco. That was my favorite part actually, because I bet there are so many bikes, from places like that, just sitting around in garages or apartment bike racks. But the person who bought it is probably a person like me, likes the idea of cycling, but isn't super into gear, doesn't know how to repair stuff. There's a lot of people like that.

There are a lot of bikes like that, a lot of people like that. Now of course that means that Andy needs to have a lot of customers, since presumably these kinds of repairs are simpler than high end projects and the budget of the customers is most likely lower. But he's optimized as he's gone along, invested in better tools, got the van, made his service fully mobile and has established a name for himself in the area. So pretty cool to be on track to earning six figures, working only five months of the year. Which leads to my question for you, would you like to earn a full-time income in a seasonal business?

And if so, what would you do with the rest of your time? That was my biggest question as I worked on this story. It's like, okay, he's got the five months, but then what else does he do? I guess he can do whatever he wants. So think about that as you think about your ideas or as you work on your projects.

Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes, all right, sidehustleschool.com/1059. I'll include links of anything I mentioned in the episode. And I also hope you'll subscribe and come back tomorrow because more is coming up. Thank you so much for listening.

My name is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.