This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau. Hope you're doing okay this week. I hope wherever you are in the world, you're taking care of yourself.
And no matter how busy things are, no matter how crazy things might be, I know things are different all over the world, continue to be. I also hope that you are investing in yourself somehow. You have set a goal that you are working on a project, either improving your existing side hustle, or thinking, hey, what can I create in the second half of the year here? First half of the year is over, can't get that back, whether it was good or bad for you, it was certainly weird for a lot of us. But here we are in the second half of the year.
So what's it gonna be? What can you do during the second half of the year so that you're like looking back, okay, I really used that time well. It's my encouragement to you, and I'm speaking it to myself as well. So welcome to Throwback Thursday. This is our segment where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them.
Last week, we heard from a Washington DC attorney who has a course to help new parents return to the workforce. Now she had had a lot of improvements, a lot of big news since we first featured her. She's actually expanded to, first she had a course for moms, now she has one for dads, and I believe she also has one for parents of special needs kids. And that was pretty cool because that whole course came about through a partnership that came through the show. Like we featured her segment on the show, and then somebody reached out to her and they ended up developing that course together.
So that was cool. And today, in our latest feature, we will hear from a co-founder of a business that provides frozen treats for dogs in the form of healthy yet delicious, supposedly, according to the dogs, ice cream, healthy, delicious ice cream for dogs. This canine loving business was first featured in episode 384. So let's hear directly from him, and I'll be back at the end to wag the tail and wrap us up. [Music]
I am Matt Meyer.
I'm from Longmont, Colorado. I am the co-founder and co-owner of the Bear and the Rat Cool Treats for Dogs with my wife, Meg. And I was previously featured on episode 384 of Side Hustle Score. My wife and I, Meg, we produce and sell a prebiotic frozen yogurt for dogs. It's a healthy version of ice cream for them that includes them in the ice cream ritual, but is actually really good for their digestion and helps settle a lot of digestive issues, actually.
We are made in a real ice cream facility. If you look at our ingredient deck, it is real ingredients for your dog. It's real yogurt. It's real bananas. It's real peanut butter.
And that's actually the one I always recommend to people is the banana and peanut butter. If you can think of smoothie, no sugar, that's exactly what you're getting. If you're thinking like a Ben and Jerry's or a Jenny's ice cream, you're gonna be pretty disappointed. But it's just a basic thing for them that they think they're getting ice cream, but it's actually good for them. And it actually is really good ingredients as well.
This was an idea in my head as a kid. My family would go for cones on Sunday, my brothers and sisters, and our little black poodle. And she would look at us like, excuse me, am I not a part of this family? And my dad, kind of being a jokester, would buy her a little baby cone with vanilla on top. It was the funniest thing that I remember as a kid, like my mom just laughing hysterically and families looking at us like, what a bunch of freaks.
But we really thought it was great. She was a part of our family. But when we got her home, the digestion, the heavy sugar, the cream, all that stuff, it just didn't sit right with her. So fast forward to my wife and I's honeymoon. We had our two dogs and she mentioned I wanna start our own thing.
I mentioned this idea to her. She was fearless and said, let's do it. We started making it in our kitchen and started selling at the local farmer's market. And it just kind of snowballed from there. And we've been in business 10 years was last month.
Prior to this, I was a sales rep for a natural food distributor. And I worked for a couple of natural drinks companies as a sales rep as well. So I kind of knew the ins and outs of grocery, which was very helpful for learning how not only how distributors work, but how grocery brings in brands and just a lot of things that you can learn just being in that world. But yeah, now I've been doing this for the past four years as my main hustle, which has been awesome. I feel super lucky about that.
Our biggest challenge at this moment is making sure our independent pet stores are known as a destination to pick us up. As well, these are the people that carried us first. And just because we have this growth doesn't mean that we forget about them. And they're going through the roughest time right now. I would say in the pet industry, it is such a wonderful industry to be involved in.
There's a lot of wonderful people, a lot of wonderful opportunities. So the pet industry is super fun. If you're looking to follow me footsteps of I want to do a pet product, it's such a great industry to be in. And it's so, people love their pets. So we feel blessed, not only to be a part of it, but to have such a unique product as well.
I was so resistant to working with Meg when she wanted to, suggested this idea of starting our own business. I was so resistant to it, but we really are a good partnership. When we're on together, we really click and add some crazy, crazy things. We're like, did that really happen? Did we really pull that on? [Laughter]
So it's kind of cool. Having a good partner, it has helped that for sure. - Thank you so much, Matt. Congratulations to Matt and Meg on this wonderful business that's had a lot of growth and they have really just kind of seen through a lot. We just gave you a couple of snippets there, but in our longer conversation with Matt, we've heard about a lot of different logistics that they've had to figure out and challenges to overcome and such.
But one thing that I kind of take away from this story is that dog lovers are a passionate market and they're also somewhat price-resistant. And I'm not sure if Matt would disagree with this or not, but my impression is that even in a recession, I think a lot of people are not gonna cut back on treats for their dog or for their cats or their beloved animal companion. Some people might, but I bet a lot of people would have that as one of the last things to go because that's just important, treating that dog or other family pet as a family member. Now Matt also mentioned, so that's good. The challenge though, Matt also mentioned that frozen is a very difficult category.
To produce something frozen and actually ship and distribute it and sell it nationwide is a very difficult category just in terms of logistics. So if you are a pet lover and you would like to offer some kind of special dog treat, for example, maybe think twice about making something that's required to be frozen or refrigerated just because of all the complexity. On the other hand, for Matt and Meg, now that they have this dialed in, like this is their competitive advantage because it is so hard to compete with. So good for them and I'm really grateful to Matt in particular for helping us with this segment. So thanks Matt and Meg, anybody else on the team.
We're gonna be doing these new segments throughout 2020. 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 to get some free dog ice cream, well, I don't have free dog ice cream, but if you go to Publix, Whole Foods, Wegmans, and elsewhere, you might be able to purchase it. For all the other things, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions.
We are featuring them throughout the year and today's notes in particular are at sidehustleschool.com/1265. Thank you so much, everybody. Don't stop retrieving. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
