Librarian Invents Eco-Friendly Dental Floss

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

[Music]

Welcome back. This is Chris Guillebeau, your host for "Saddasil School." I wanna welcome all of our new listeners and say as well, shout out to all of our long-term listeners. You guys are amazing. I hope you're enjoying the newly remixed year of interaction. I've got more stuff to roll out soon, but pretty much what you've been hearing for the past few days, three or four out of seven days, each week, we're gonna have questions and updates from listeners, just kind of a back and forth process, and we'll be able to follow along and see what happens with their projects as we go.

My hope is that you can learn by proxy. So obviously we're speaking to one person's question, but a lot of the questions I've been getting, they're pretty common. So I'm hoping that they're gonna relate to a lot of people's issues and concerns. Okay, today we have a story, a case study. Now long ago in episode 572, we looked at the story of a college student on a mission to reinvent mouthwash.

We've also featured someone selling luxury toothbrushes. That was episode 230. It produced some perfectly polished profits. We should connect these two aspiring silo slurs with today's oral health pioneer, because in this story, small steps and a lucky in-flight conversation lead a retired librarian to found a half million dollar brand of eco-friendly dental floss. Eco-friendly dental floss it is.

And that story is coming up after this. Shout out to our sponsor. Stay tuned. [Music]

In 1998, high school librarian Jodi Breaux was standing in the bathroom, staring into a mirror, frustrated by the ugly container of dental floss in her hand. She was thinking that all that plastic couldn't be a good thing for a person or for the environment.

Over the next few weeks, she found herself ranting about it to her coworkers until someone finally said, "Well, why don't you do something about it?" And she did, although it took her almost 20 years to grow her idea from a mild irritation to an e-commerce reality. As a librarian, her go-to planning method was detailed research. So she studied the ultra-competitive floss market, including every type of possible container. She also started talking to dentists, friends, family, anyone who had listened to her new obsession. Jodi's vision was to design a refillable container that held dental floss made from natural fibers.

She acquired an abundance of information over time and eventually worked with a Chinese supplier. They put together an artistic glass container that could be refilled with 100% mulberry silk floss. It eliminated the waste, the waxy feeling of plastic on people's gums, and it looked a lot better in medicine cabinets than those little gray and white boxes. Between the different batches they tried, as well as various permits and licenses, Jodi spent a few thousand dollars over a few years. The experience taught her that she needed to learn more about the world of business before investing much more.

Once again, the librarian took to her stacks and found a how to start a business book that had been recently returned. She made notes, mapped out her process, and followed the advice chapter by chapter. She also reached out to the local service corps of retired executives group, known as SCORE, and found a mentor who helped her develop a plan. This gave her the confidence a couple years later to invest another thousand dollars into more setup costs, including some branding and a basic website. But her plan wasn't to rely on online sales.

She was going to load her car with samples and a sales pitch and do drop-in calls at natural food stores. Before she could hit the road, however, she sent a link to her new website to her sister. It was more of a FYI, hey, look what I did. But Nancy, being a good sister, posted the link to Facebook. And by the end of the day, Jodi had multiple customers.

By the end of the week, she had orders from across the country. It was a much faster start than she'd anticipated. She had set up a spare bedroom as an office and production location, but wasn't ready to ship orders. In fact, she hadn't even figured that part of the process out. With sales pouring in, she talked to her husband about what they were going to do.

Obviously, she was onto something after many years of slow planning. But she knew if she was going to be selling so much online, she would need to look into FDA registration. That would cost almost $6,000. Together, they decided it was time to take the plunge. They tapped into their savings.

That meant covering that FDA registration costs, ordering more inventory and production materials, and setting up a packaging line that Jodi could operate from the house. With that out of the way, Dental Lace was officially in operation. The name came from a chance conversation she had on an airplane, where a business traveler sitting next to her suggested it. Dental Lace grew rapidly through word of mouth. Get it, word of mouth?

A blogger mentioned it in her book "101 Ways to Go Zero Waste," and the interest led to features in national magazines like Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, and Forbes. Because of the nature of her natural product, the exposure in print and with influencers has been more useful than buying ads. Also, every month, Jodi sends out an email newsletter with discount codes, which also boosts sales. At this point, she still hasn't had time to celebrate her success, because it's been growing so rapidly. Dental Lace made $80,000 in 2017, its first full year, and grew to almost $400,000 in the second year.

This past year, the company earned over half a million dollars. The entire operation still operates out of a house, though it has now taken up more space. And along with her husband, who joined up as CFO, Jodi also has two full-time employees and several contractors. Her background as a librarian and dedication to a cause has paid off. [Music]

When we talked with Jodi about her process, she said, "I would say I'm on a totally different path now." After all that time being a librarian, but years of selling To Kill a Mockingbird to high school football players sure didn't hurt.

Selling Dental Lace is so much easier. As I try to point out from time to time, the skills that you acquire through your life, through the life experience you have, which may have nothing to do with entrepreneurship on the surface, those skills can be valuable in other ways. A librarian is not only good at research, they're also good at customer service. They're good at encouraging high school football players to read literature. They're good at handling problems and issues and things that come up.

They're good at troubleshooting. Later on, when she gets orders before she's ready, she doesn't freak out, she just finds a way to manage it. So whatever you've been experiencing, whatever you've learned, whatever skills you're acquiring, there is more than one way to apply those skills. And of course, that is a key message of everything that we do. So I will leave you with that today.

Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Two more listener questions are coming up over the weekend. You can also find today's notes at sidehustleschool.com/1105. We will link up dental lace, anything else I mentioned in the episode. I hope your new year is starting off well, and I hope you take the time to do something for yourself today.

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

From the Onward Project.