This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Welcome to Throwback Thursday/Where Are They Now, where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them. So far in these features, we've had a New York City musician with a blog teaching jazz that becomes a multiple six-figure business, and a Denver woman who leads food tours for up to 700 people a month. She's doing pretty well, too. Now today, in this latest segment, we'll hear from someone with a sleepy idea. Wait, that sounds bad.
How about someone with a savvy idea to make dreamy profits in the form of satin pillowcases? Yeah, I think that sounds better. We first profiled Dale Janae long ago on the show, and then again in the 100 Side Hustles book. What has happened since? Well, let's hear it directly from her.
I'll be back at the end to wrap us up. My name is Dale Janae, and my side hustle is Savvy Sleepers Satin Pillowcases for Hair and Skin. We're based in Dallas, Texas, and I was featured on episode 143. Savvy Sleepers are a line of satin pillowcases and luxury sleep products that our main product really is the satin pillowcases that are anti-aging. They're healthier for skin and hair, and they're a luxurious nightly treat for a lot of women or men who just really are wanting to take better care of their hair, prevent breakage and split ends, and also they're very soothing for skin.
So about 10 years ago, I had started a fashion blog in San Francisco where I was living, and I was working my day job and then vlogging at night, and it resulted in just actually not sleeping much, and my aunt was a hairstylist and told me, "You really should be sleeping on a satin pillowcase." I couldn't find a brand or quality of one that I liked, and so that spawned the idea of Savvy Sleepers and coming up with the most luxurious quality, but also a product that is fun, and I could make my own online store and brand, and that's how it evolved, and we launched at the end of 2012 online. I had no experience sewing or developing an actual textile product, and so thankfully San Francisco I had met a lot of different people, and luckily a lot of them were in tech or they had had experience creating products, and so they gave me a lot of advice and said, "Go to Shanghai where near where a lot of the textile and fabric mills were where silk and satin are made," and so I flew there with one of my really good friends and my sister, and he's fluent in Mandarin, which was obviously a huge bonus, and through a connection of a manufacturer there, that's how I was able to go out, look at all these different types of satins, different blends, materials, and then he translated because we were really out in the middle of nowhere, so that was a huge help, and so I've been with the same manufacturer ever since, and they've always done the highest quality and have a really good relationship, and we email back and forth every week. So yeah, since the last show a lot's happened, at least personally. I've had two daughters in the last five years, and I'm due next month with another girl, so that's been the biggest change is learning how to manage my time and make family life work with a business, and so some also just make big changes with growth, or about living in Dallas. I've had the opportunity to meet a lot of other beauty brands, there's a lot of just female business owners, and so through networking I've done a lot of different types of collaborations and grown the business, not only through the online store, but also doing collaborations with beauty boxes and brands like Sunday Riley, or we did an eye mask with a local esthetician here.
The biggest challenge about having kids and running a business is you have to learn how to manage your time so much better, because you need to have those hours where you can go in and get as much as you possibly can done, and so as we've grown I definitely feel like I'm at the point where our team is either going to need to grow as well, or we're going to have to move to some sort of fulfillment warehouse where other people are fulfilling our orders rather than our small team, and that's just part of, I guess, it's a good problem to have if you're growing that much. So the best advice I would give if you're wanting to develop a product is to focus on the quality of that product, because we've all bought bad quality on Amazon or especially online stores, it's hard to tell always from photos, but if you have something that you believe in and your quality is really good, that's going to stand for, it'll just make a big difference and people will be happier, they're not going to return your product, and that just makes, it makes you have more integrity and honesty behind your brand because you know you're selling the best of the best, and so there's been even, it could be something as small as a hair tie or maybe we're trying different fabrics, but we just go back to what we've known as the best, and one other tip I would say is especially in the beginning don't waste your time and money on either services or you know you're going to get pitched a lot of different types of services or ideas you can do for marketing your company, but I mean in the beginning the first couple of years I hired a PR company for a few months and it was $5,000 and they literally just got us on a little local TV station that I could have done myself by calling, making like five phone calls and just being persistent, and so that's one you know you don't want to waste money when you don't need to especially on PR or marketing, and also like another example is trade shows we used to do and those were so expensive and I was trying to reach buyers and it ended up being just you know through blogging and doing our own in-house PR we were actually able to get into articles recently and then one update that just happened is Macy's reached out to us a few months ago and they found us through a women's health article online and the buyer reached out directly and so now we're sold on Macy's.com which is something we're really excited about. If you're having trouble maybe creating a flyer or a logo or little things there's so many sites now like Fiverr is so easy you just need to you know get photos edited and you might spend all day trying to do that when someone you know could do it for $10 and get it done for you in a couple hours and it just takes a huge weight off your shoulders when you're working on starting your business. Very cool well thank you so much Dale and listeners as you heard her business has grown a lot since we featured her I actually have a savvy sleeper pillowcase myself that I use so I think of her all the time I hope that's not too weird Dale I mean it's a pillowcase. Now here are two of my favorite parts of her update I loved it when she said the biggest challenge about having kids and running a business is you.
You have to learn how to manage your time so much better because you need to have those hours where you can go in and get as much as you possibly can done. I have heard similar statements from other side hustlers other people we featured over the years and I'm always impressed with parents who are able to make this work often while working another job and taking care of the kids and you know maybe some other responsibilities too but somehow finding a way to invest in themselves for the long term through an income generating project and my other favorite part was where she said don't waste money on unproven PR services and she explained that in more detail than I will so I'll just say I agree and I've mentioned that a few times before on the program that it's kind of a common thing for people to invest in a service like that and not see a great return so don't waste money on that. I am really grateful to Dale for helping us out with this segment we're going to be doing these new segments throughout the year so let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than 1,000 stories. 2020 is our year of interaction if you have a question if you'd like to update us about your hustle or if you'd like a free Western heavenly bed oops it looks like we just moved the last one of those out of the warehouse so no Western heavenly bed but for anything else come to sidehustleschool.com slash questions today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com slash 11 25 1 1 2 5 be back again tomorrow with a question from a listener maybe even an answer to this is Chris Guillebeau for side hustle school From the Onward Project
