Engineer Stumbles Into Custom Cartography Business

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

[Music]

What's up, friends, listeners? Hey, listen, I'd love to wish you a happy Thanksgiving. For anybody listening in real time, it is Thanksgiving week. This episode's going out on Thanksgiving day, at least U.S. Thanksgiving.

I am most thankful and grateful for you. Now let's just jump right into side hustle school, 'cause that's what it is all about here. Maybe your idea is waiting for you to find it. But instead of trying so hard, you need to let it come to you. What do I mean by this?

Well, I recently had a situation where I was finding some friction in what I was trying to accomplish. And whenever that's the case, the most common responses are to choose between pushing on it, you know, trying to force it a little bit, trying to make your original plan work, or abandoning ship, where you give up completely. Now, often in these situations, there's another approach that can work better. This is the approach called, let's just hold on a minute and see what happens. Or let's see if there's a different solution that I haven't considered.

In my particular struggle recently, I ended up finding not only a different solution, but actually a better one, a more favorable one, that I probably wouldn't have stumbled upon if I had chosen either of the other two approaches. And of course, in today's story, you'll hear a specific application of this. In this story, after encountering resistance with his initial attempts at e-commerce, an engineer discovers a custom cartography business designing beer mugs with maps on them. There's often more than one way to accomplish something. So stay tuned for this story.

It's coming up after this shout out to our sponsor. I'm thankful for them as well. [Music]

Ever since he was a child, Curtis Singer has had an entrepreneurial spirit. It all started before one of his parents garage sales. Curtis decided to collect some sticks from the yard, whittle them down and sell them as air fresheners.

As he grew up, he began wanting to delve into more profitable ventures because even all natural preservative free air fresheners couldn't cut it in the market. So as an adult, Curtis decided to try his hand at e-commerce. The first online store he opened was centered around home brewing and beer accessories. However, this was a pretty competitive market. He struggled to find ways to differentiate himself.

So he decided to close it down and move on to the next idea. He then tried selling cold brew coffee filters that would fit inside a mason jar. While the product worked pretty well, this time he struggled to find an audience. He thought he could build it up if he invested more time and money into marketing and began a strict social media regime. But Curtis wanted his side hustle to be just that, something he did on the side.

By then he was working as a mechanical aerospace engineer. He loved his job and just wanted to diversify his income. Because that job is 100% based on program funding, he was looking to create more stability in his life. And he didn't want to spend a long time on something that didn't have much promise. At that point, Curtis decided to stop forcing it.

He'd been putting so much pressure on himself for so long to find a viable idea. So instead of jumping into another attempt right away, he decided to volunteer his time at a maker's space in his area. A friend of his was starting up the space and needed some help. While there, Curtis worked on establishing a process for the laser engraver that the shop had. As a consequence, he was soon trying to find all kinds of things that could be engraved just for fun.

And in that search for finding cool things, he stumbled upon an open source data map. Over time, he was able to work the map into a file format that was readable by the laser. And that's when it hit him. He wasn't looking for a new idea just yet, but a new idea had appeared before his eyes. He could create laser engraved pint classes with maps on them.

Curtis loved going to local breweries to chat and share stories with his friends and an essential part of stories was location. He envisioned people sipping from a pint glass while looking at the map on that glass, being reminded of an experience they'd had. From there, he started creating his first prototype. It took a while to figure out how to get the maps to completely wrap around the glass. When he finally got it down, he designed a pint glass with a map of Denver on it.

This project had little to no startup costs because he was able to use all the materials and machines at the maker space. And the first customers came from that space too. Curtis posted a photo of the glass on a beer lovers of Colorado Facebook page and was stunned at the response. With a hundred likes and 20 people in the comments asking where they could purchase it, he felt like he had just been on the Ellen show. He knew he needed to open a new online store and fast.

He decided that Etsy would be the quickest and cheapest option. So he made that store in about five minutes and called it outward cartography. He posted his Denver pint glass and also included a second listing with a custom map option. That way even people with no connection to Colorado could submit whatever maps they wanted. Over the next few months, these custom map pint glasses were ordered over 100 times.

And in his first year, Curtis profited about $850. At that point he was doing everything for the business from designing products to engraving, packing, shipping, following up with customers. But as business continued to hum along, he began to outsource different parts of work so he no longer had to do it all himself. He also hired a virtual assistant that helps him process orders on the backend. This frees up his time to do more marketing and attend local festivals.

This year he's on track to earn close to $20,000 from outward cartography. In addition to the pint glasses, he now sells engraved flasks and bottle openers. One of his next goals is to develop a website separate from his Etsy shop. With that, he'll include some custom software that allows the customer to design their own map, choose the product and order it directly from the site. He puts in about 10 hours a week on the project and plans to pull that back in the near future.

Curtis still loves his day job, but this side hustle has allowed him to no longer live in fear of being laid off. He's even used the extra money for a down payment on a house. Once again, happy Thanksgiving to everyone near and far, even if you're not in the States or Canada, which had its Thanksgiving last month. I'm still grateful for you and I'm so glad to be able to make this program every single day. Now, is your idea waiting for you?

If you're struggling, I don't think you should give up, but when you are trying to force something, maybe you should look at it from another angle or just pause for a bit and see if something else comes to the surface, just like what Curtis did. You could also think of it as kind of an active pause where you change your routine or put yourself in a new situation, like what Curtis did in volunteering at the makerspace. The idea didn't completely come out of nowhere. It arrived as he learned a new skill and surrounded himself with other people who were thinking creatively. So, consider that active pause.

I might say more about that in the upcoming weekly recap. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. To find the show notes for today's episode, including links to outward cartography and anything else I mentioned, just go to sidehustleschool.com/1062. That is for episode 1062. All right, my friends, I'll be back again tomorrow for a big Black Friday.

Actually, we just have a regular episode, but it's gonna be good. Don't miss it. My name is Chris Guillebeau for "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.