This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau. All year long, I'm taking questions, hearing from listeners about the projects they're starting, developing, growing, et cetera. It's just been so fun to hear what people are working on. I can't wait to see what our final results are gonna be at the end when we look back and say, well, this is what so and so did, and this is where they were in January, February, March, and here's where they are now.
Maybe they went down some different paths. Maybe they learned and shifted or pivoted to something else, or maybe that first idea was the winner, you know? It's just a real-time experiment, the year of interaction, and I am grateful to everyone who is a part of it. So today we've got a question from a listener. She wants to start a bring your own hygiene kit for public restrooms.
How would she get started, and is crowdfunding a good option for this project? Let's dive into that question after the shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
- Hi, Chris, this is Ladesha calling from Pittsburgh, California. I've been listening to your podcast since the very beginning. I do have a side hustle that I would love to start.
It would be basically a little toiletry bag that you would take with you, especially going into public restrooms. I run into this problem many times where there was either no toilet paper, there was no soap, no paper towels, no toilet seat covers. So I wanted to start up a side hustle basically with that in mind, but the two main issues that I'm running into are not knowing where to source product to get this started in the number two funding. Right now I don't have the money to actually start this up. So I didn't know if by crowdfunding would that be an option for me to actually get this started.
Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks so much. [Music]
Ladesha, thank you so much. Thanks for listening in California, Pittsburgh, California, I believe you said. And thanks as well for sharing your idea.
So here's what I think. I think first of all, if you have a clear target market, your market essentially is germaphobes. All right, and I don't mean that in any kind of negative way. I'm kind of a mild germaphobe myself. I'm always carrying hand sanitizer with me.
And these days in the age of the coronavirus or whatever comes next, there are a lot of people concerned about being in public places and having to use the facilities. So totally valid concern. The challenge is though, I think the challenge with this idea, a couple of things. First of all, this seems like the kind of thing that would work if you could sell a lot of them, like a lot of these kits, tens of thousands, because it's gonna be kind of a low price thing. Or if you had some kind of unique advancement you were offering, some kind of unique technological advancement or some kind of way to package this stuff together that nobody's done before, it needs to be something creative and different in this case.
And if you heard me before say, not everything has to be creative, not everything has to be innovative, that's totally true. But for something that's really basic, I think there does have to be some sort of value add. So you have to remember that all important question that I often encourage people to think about, how will I make money from this idea? Not is this a good idea or not, but how will I make money from it? And the items that you mentioned here, Odisha, soap, paper towels, et cetera, those are commodities.
They're very cheap. So that's why I feel like even though there is a market, there needs to be a little bit more development with the product itself. And if there was, then I think that's where crowdfunding can be particularly attractive. If you are able to come up with something, some kind of answer to that, like here's why it is a technological advancement or some great improvement in the packaging of this or some unique application method of it, whatever it is, that's where those kind of crowdfunding campaigns really take off. So it's not just a matter of the sum being greater than the parts with those items.
It's what is the big picture promise pitch and price, like we've been talking about this week in the classroom series. So in short, I think you have the market right. I think maybe even something the market wants. You just need to think about why should they buy it from you and how can you charge a premium price for it? Those are the questions that should keep you up at night when thinking about this particular idea.
And I don't quite know what the answers are. So as I said, that's my concern with just talking about sourcing and whether you should crowdfund or not. I think it's a little bit more of a bigger picture issue. But of course, let us know what you end up doing. I'm always happy to be wrong.
So if that's the case, that can end up being a lesson of its own. All right, thank you again, Ladisha. And listeners, if you have a question of your own, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Really simple, we're gonna feature them throughout the year, just like you've been hearing along with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects. This has been episode 1154.
Much more is coming up. So be sure you're subscribed. Tell your friends it is completely free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. The program is Side Hustle School.
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- From the Onward Project.
