Designer’s Love Of Color Earns Greenbacks

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

[Music]

If you ever like to take personality tests, it can often be a fun way to learn something about yourself, gain some insight, perhaps share with your friends, et cetera. Just as you have a Myers-Briggs type and an Enneagram number and a core tendency from Gretchen Rubin's Four Tendencies model, you might also have an ideal color that can make you feel better about yourself and attract more compliments. Do you know what it is? Well, this was interesting for me to learn about and business-wise, it's a topic we've never covered in 1,144 episodes, once again, proving that there is something for everyone. In this story, after going through a tough divorce, a mom and designer is tickled pink when her new blog on stylish colors puts her bank account in the black.

She actually earns six figures with this project while working her day job. And also, because I'm sure you're dying to know, my Myers-Briggs type is INFJ. On the Enneagram, I am a 348 in that order, three most dominant than number four and number eight. And I am a rebel in Gretchen Rubin's Four Tendencies model. And I once had a friendly argument about that with Gretchen saying, you know, you're sure I'm a rebel because, you know, this and this and so on.

And she said, well, this is exactly what a rebel would do. And so I was like, okay, I will accept that. All right, as for the story, it's called "Designer's Love of Color Earns Greenbacks." That story is coming up, stay tuned. [Music]

- Jin Thoden found herself going through a difficult divorce. The night she moved out was one of the hardest of her life.

Everything felt dark and colorless. She sat alone in the townhouse where she'd lived for years, surrounded by moving boxes and wondering, what am I going to do? But like many strong women before her, it didn't take long for Jin to start figuring things out and begin building a new life. One of the things she decided to overhaul was her wardrobe. Because she felt off color much of the time, she investigated ways to make herself feel better and eventually stumbled upon the world of color styling.

It's a concept that suggests everyone has colors they look especially good in and it can make them feel great. The information she read suggested that Jin's ideal color was coral pink. So she went shopping for a blouse exactly that color. The next day, she wore it to work and received a ton of compliments. It boosted her self-esteem and made her feel a little lighter during that dark period in her life.

You might say now that it became the red letter day in Jin's side hustle story. She decided to start a blog based on color styling. She registered the domain name OutfitIdeas4u.com and began writing posts on outfit ideas, color analysis and how other women can go about selecting the perfect colors for themselves. Everything she'd learned so far, she put down in black and white on the blog. From her day job as a user experience designer, Jin had experience with both SEO and video production, both of which helped to bring traffic to her new site.

She soon began acquiring email subscribers and had over 2000 people signed up a year later. On top of that, she was constantly being emailed for color and outfit advice. Jin realized this was a golden opportunity. She distilled all the questions and responses into an ebook and published it for sale on her site for a mere $7. And soon enough, sales trickled in.

Then she asked herself, if that worked, what else can I sell? And the answer, at least at first, was more eBooks. She created guides on wardrobe design, different body types and more. A year into the project, she was starting to see some real income, enough to make other side hustlers green with envy. But Jin's passion for color selling was just getting going.

It was about to get, wait for it, red hot. And just wait, there's more. She noticed a gap in the market. She believed she could fill. The market of color fans.

These fans would be similar to paint swatches, but all the colors fan out so you can easily compare them. That way anyone could hold it up to their skin to see what looked best. Jin felt it would be the perfect product for her audience. So she looked into having them print it. This is where she told her first white lie, which actually, to be fair, wasn't really a lie, but we liked the pun.

The fans weren't ready or printed yet, so Jin sold them through a pre-sell link. What followed came completely out of the blue. She sold $5,000 worth of fans in just two days. The benefit of the sale was more than money. It also gave Jin the green light, uh-huh, that's correct, to turn her project into a real business.

After two years as outfit ideas for you, she rebranded to yourcolorstyle.com and compiled her eBooks, blog content, and color fan product into a fresh new design. She wanted to focus more on the transformational power of color. And her goal was to help women everywhere who might be feeling blue to brighten their day and shine with confidence. Jin kept growing the site with more content. She found a new printer for her color fans so she could increase the profit margin and made more physical products like color palette cards and color wheels.

Most of the growth came about through trial and error and via a mix of channels. SEO has worked wonders. It's responsible for one third of her traffic. Social media and YouTube, where she started posting videos, is responsible for another large chunk. Without a doubt, however, Jin puts the biggest traffic source down as her email list.

She continues to funnel as many website visitors as she can to her newsletter. The rebranded site now turns over a tidy profit of $150,000 a year. A fantastic success by any standard. But guess what? Jin is still a regular white-color worker at her day job.

And she's actually delegated much of the running of the business to a small team. A style assistant, virtual assistant, and project manager. This frees up her limited free time to produce content and be creative. Plus, she actually enjoys her job and says that the extra money earned allows her to pay for her kid's college tuition without taking on additional debt. Next up, she plans to offer a business training program so that stylists from anywhere can learn the science of color and then offer that knowledge to their own clients.

For her, the experience has led to a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. [Music]

All right, I hope you enjoyed the episode, including the significant number of puns and color references. I think we had at least 14 in there. So shout out to our writer, Mike Binkovich, as well as my wonderful content manager, Tina Hart. And if you hate puns, well, sorry about that.

We just try to keep it fundamental. All right, so how can you learn your color? I actually was kind of wondering this myself because it's like, I think my favorite color, pretty sure is a blue, like it is within the spectrum or shade of blue, but there are a lot of blues. So maybe it's sky blue or turquoise. That would just be my guess.

But I haven't gone through the process. I don't have a color fan that can hold up to my skin. I did look at Jen's website and she has an online quiz. So here's a little business note. She has an online quiz, but you have to give your email to take the quiz.

And I have mixed feelings about this because her goal is to grow her email list, which I totally understand. That's a good goal. But personally, I think it's best to make that an optional element, like let people take the quiz, make it optional at the end of the quiz, to get, I don't know, your detailed results or to learn more or something else. And that way people don't feel trapped or coerced. There are definitely two sides to that issue.

So I'm not saying I'm totally right. I just think it might be better to give to the audience, give to the community and then allow them to sign up at the end to get something else. Regardless of that, it's a wonderful project. I'm so glad she's been able to be so successful and kind of reinvent herself along with her brand. If you too found it inspiring, remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

Today's show notes, including links to Jen's website, anything else that I mentioned in the episode, a list of every color in the world, just go to psilosolschool.com/1144, 1-1-4-4. I hope your year is starting well. I look forward to bringing you many more tips, stories, question and answer, throwback Thursday episodes, all kinds of stuff throughout the rest of the year. So be sure you're subscribed. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is "Sawtos of School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.