1368
8 min 36 sec

Mother Of Five Sells Pretty Old Books

When a stay at home mom hopes to avoid returning to full-time work outside the home, she starts selling vintage books packaged by color—and her dream becomes more than a pigment of her imagination.
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What It's About

A stay-at-home mom flips the pages of her story selling Pretty Old Books on Etsy.

Words of Wisdom

Jessica share's some encouraging thoughts on her side hustle journey, “I have managed to grow this micro-business by putting myself out there and connecting with people through Instagram. I'm so glad that connection has translated into an engaged email list as I totally own that and don't have to worry about following anyone else's rules.”

Fun Fact

The most expensive vintage book ever sold is Leonardo da Vinci's Codex of Leicester, also known as the Codex Hammer. It was last sold in 1994 for the jaw dropping price of $30.8 million.

Notes from Chris

Episode 1368

Jessica Dollar is a mother of five. She’s often short on time and, as her name would suggest, sometimes she’s short on money. In 2018 the latter point became a larger issue for her family. She liked being a stay-at-home mom, so, to avoid getting a job outside the home, she looked for ways to generate income while juggling the demands of motherhood. A side hustle was the obvious choice.

But Jessica, like a lot of people, had no idea where to begin. She researched ideas and tried out a few. However, nothing really clicked. She’d heard the advice to follow your passion or find something you’re interested in. But those concepts didn’t present anything obvious for her. After some more exploring, she read about people having success selling books online: specifically, vintage books. Through that avenue, Jessica came across Etsy, the platform for creators to sell various handcrafted goods.

It all stemmed from this idea: What if she combined basic vintage bookselling with colorful decoration? Jessica’s thinking was that, for many people, books act as much as decoration as they do reading material.

Paging through the site’s listings, she didn’t notice anyone else doing it. For some, that might have turned them off. Perhaps no one was interested in color-matched vintage books? For Jessica though, the lack of competition was exciting. As a contrarian, she loves going against the grain. (And if it failed, she’d only have her shelf to blame!)

She took a one-hundred-dollar voucher for Goodwill gifted to her by her in-laws, and went shopping. She scoured the local stores, looking for suitable books to create her first batches. She’d search for old books in different shades of one color, bundle them together and sell them as one product. She found a few suitable sets and listed them on her new Etsy store called, cleverly, Pretty Old Books.

Three days later, her first sale came through. Jessica was having breakfast with a friend and heard the cha-ching sound from the Etsy app. It was an exciting moment for two reasons. First, she’d taken a chance on an idea and followed through with it. Second, it proved her hunch was right, there were people out there interested in buying Pretty Old Color Matched Books!

Which was good news, because, in 2019 Jessica’s husband lost his job and has been out of work ever since. Pretty Old Books has provided an income to keep them afloat through what's been a very difficult time. And, although the struggle is real, Jessica has had a lot of fun along the way learning about running a business.

She handles everything from inventory, packing, shipping, newsletters and social content. It’s all been frantic, fun and most importantly of all, profitable. In 2019, Jessica earned over fifteen thousand dollars from her side hustle and is on track for around twenty thousand in 2020. This should be helped along by her new Shopify store and special membership club she’s offering to her existing customers. She intends to provide exclusive offers and special discounts.

Jessica’s success shows that with plenty of shelf-awareness, good things are bound to happen.

 
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Quote of the Day
"I have managed to grow this micro-business by putting myself out there and connecting with people through Instagram. I'm so glad that connection has translated into an engaged email list as I totally own that and don't have to worry about following anyone else's rules."
—Jessica Dollar #SideHustleSchool

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To infinity and beyond,

Chris Guillebeau