This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, hello, welcome to Side Hustle School. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. Coming to you from Amsterdam today, where I am jet lagged, but powering through per usual. Today's Side Hustle story is about a series of hip hop glitter pendants that begin their life as a side hustle entirely through social media, especially Instagram and the video streaming network Periscope. And as you'll hear, it then transitions into something bigger and better and earns more than $60,000.
That is coming right up, but I wanna begin with a shout out to a new show on the Onward Network that is debuting today. And if you're not listening in real time, well, that show is still available. Now, this new show is called "Happier in Hollywood." It is both funny and interesting, and you can subscribe in Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. This show is hosted by veteran television writers, producers, and showrunners, Liz Kraft and Sarah Fain, who've been friends since high school and worked together for nearly two decades. Liz and Sarah have survived and thrived in Hollywood's male-dominated entertainment industry.
They say that along the way, they've learned a lot about kicking ass, kissing ass, and office yoga. So once again, that's "Happier in Hollywood." I have subscribed myself and will be listening, and I'll be right back with today's story. [Music]
Today's hustle story is actually a two-for-one. It begins with Oliver Kolemanis, who's an IT director for a law firm in Florida. And one day in 2015, shortly after the social network Periscope launched, he was watching a channel and saw a guy showing off some flashy wooden pendants that he had handmade and was selling.
This channel was called "Big Head Custom." And when Oliver saw them, he immediately wanted to know how to get one. But when he asked the guy what his website was, he learned that he only sold through social media, mostly Instagram and Periscope, and built through PayPal. And using social media for lead generation is one thing, but actually selling products through Instagram and Periscope can be pretty tough. We have seen some successes in people doing it, but there's usually so much back and forth that has to take place to purchase a simple item. So when he heard that, Oliver immediately saw an opportunity.
As an IT director, he knew he could make this guy a website so that Big Head Custom could take orders online. The guy who is making these is known as Chris Dee. It's kind of a hip hop thing, no last name. So Oliver wrote to Chris Dee, offered to make him a website and manage his e-commerce in return for a percentage of the profit. At the time, Chris Dee had 99 problems and the lack of a good web presence was at the top of the list.
He said yes and Oliver officially joined the Big Head Custom team. Now that's where Oliver comes into the story, but Chris Dee has his own story about how and why Big Head Custom even got started. Chris is a long time hustler. Among other things, he has sold used cars, designed screen printed and embroidered t-shirts. And in his spare time, when he's not streaming on Periscope, he's even working on a bottled water business.
A few years ago, Chris started seeing artists and musicians wearing these big blinged out pendants decorated with glitter to make them flashy. He was so intrigued that he did some research to figure out how they were made and decorated. It turned out most of those pendants were made of clay and hobby store glitter. And the problem was that a thin clay pendant easily broke and that kind of glitter rubbed off on your clothes, not an optimal situation for the best dressed wrapper. Chris, who had been an artist his whole life, was sure there was a better way to make pendants that wouldn't break and wouldn't lose their shine.
He started tinkering around in his workshop and eventually settled on a wooden base with the design painted in metallic car paint and glossed over to a shiny finish using a proprietary process. He had created a superior product. Now he just had to figure out how to sell it. Despite his familiarity with the music industry, Chris was not a digital native. He actually had no idea what a hashtag was or how to effectively leverage social media.
He signed up with all the social media accounts, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and he didn't have a lot of success. He tried to focus on Instagram, but he would get maybe five likes when he posted photos of his custom pendants. So he changed tactics. In his words, he decided to go old school. He started giving away the pendants for free to influencers and other people with a lot of followers in hopes that they would pose with it on their accounts.
And this slowly started to work. Instead of getting just five likes on a post, he'd get 50 or more likes than a hundred or more. He finally began to see a handful of orders coming in. When that video streaming service Periscope launched, he was an early adopter and was able to build a following a bit quicker. But there was still the problem of all the back and forth selling pendants via text message and phone calls, lots of emails.
That's when Oliver entered the picture, got him set up with the website. Oliver did that with a free template using Shopify. He did a bit of work with search engine optimization, but for the most part, he let Chris do his thing on social media. With a new website, Chris didn't have to talk on the phone with somebody who wanted to buy a pendant. And as he said, "I could now get orders while I was sleeping," which created a noticeable increase in sales and decreased the amount of time I was on the phone.
So in 2015, with the website up for only about half the year, Chris and now Oliver cleared $40,000 in hip hop pendant sales and they continue to improve over the next year. Oliver installed a live tech support app on the site where customers could chat with either Oliver or Chris to get support if they needed it at some point in the buying process. It was a pretty easy thing to do. I'll include a link for the tool they used in the show notes if you want to try it yourself. Oliver says he felt it gave the company a polished professional look by making it look like there's a whole team of customer service representatives waiting to help out the customer.
Now there's still a fair amount of process in the production of the pendants. The website ordering process is much more efficient, but it still takes the same amount of time to hand make each pendant. The only difference now is that they can be created in batches, which is a lot faster. And that allowed Big Head Custom to bring in $60,000 in 2016. Chris Dee is still enjoying the hustle.
He appreciates that with Oliver's help, it's pretty much on cruise control at this point. Chris spends a couple of hours a day working on the pendants and social media. Oliver spends less than 10 hours a week managing the technical side of things, including the order process. They're both continuing with their day jobs and other projects. And with this one, they both get to do what they do best and they get extra income from it.
[Music]
I hope you enjoyed this story. One of my favorite Jay-Z lyrics is everybody can tell you how to do it, but they never did it. That quote illustrates the hard knock hip hop life. And I think it also relates to our purposes. My whole goal for the show, as you know, I hope it's fun, I hope you like it.
But I also hope you'll hear something that you apply yourself so that you can create an asset just like the ones you hear about every day on the show. Ideally something that makes money for you while you sleep, like the hip hop pendants. But whatever it is, something that uses your creativity, something that you're proud of, that you have ownership of, even if you like your day job and never plan to leave, you also have this other thing. And that is the message that I talk about every day. We are now approximately 138 days into this process.
If anything, I feel more inspired than when we started because I keep finding great stories and also I keep hearing from you, the listeners. I know that many of you are working on projects like this or maybe not exactly like this, but some kind of income generating project. And that makes me really excited. But enough about me, this is about you. Inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better.
Show notes for today, including hip hop pendants and links to that website chat tool I mentioned are at sidehustleschool.com/138. If you have a comment or question for the show, give me a call on the Hustle hotline. It's 8449 Hustle. Be sure to check out that new show I mentioned, Happier in Hollywood on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen. I'm Chris Guillebeau.
This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
