This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey, hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome to Throwback Thursday. Well, first of all, welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host. And this is our weekly segment where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them. Now last week we heard from one of two Canadian co-founders who worked
together in an advertising agency. They were also both moms of young kids. And they decided that children's books need to be able to deal with real issues, in a sensitive way, of course, but without skirting reality. And that was the mission that serves as a foundation for their project, Children's Books About Real Life. Now that was last week. In our latest
feature, we'll hear from an Italian-American who sells a line of imported housewares from his homeland. I actually know Nathan and his family pretty well. They took a year off to travel the world. I think he'll mention that a bit in his update. And as part of that, that's how they got into this whole Sadasil, which is now pretty much a main hustle. It's
doing very, very well, while of course dealing with various challenges, you know, just like we all have this year. So what has happened since we first heard from him? Let's hear directly from Nathan. I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. Hello, I'm Nathan from Portland, Oregon, and my side hustle is Datera Cucina Italian Cookware.
This is a line of Italian cookware that I designed and have made in Italy. And I was originally featured on episode 170 of the Side Hustle School, I think back in 2017. Our side hustle had grown out of the fact that we had taken a year off, a year sabbatical after about 18 years of working in our own company. We sold everything in Portland and backpacked around the world with our two kids who were then 6 and 10. And we traveled literally all around the world, starting in Japan and ending up in Italy. And we were inspired by
that and I love that travel aspect. And we met other people who had figured out how to have a nomadic lifestyle with also having income and whether that's a remote or whether it's, you know, phoning in at all hours because they're still working in the US but remotely. Or in our idea, we wanted to do sort of a location independent business, something that could run where we didn't have to be real time with whatever was going on. So after quite a bit of research and talking to other people doing things, we decided that Amazon's sort of FBA program, which means fulfilled by Amazon, was a good program for us to try. Since COVID hit, that has certainly turned our world sort of flipped it because certainly 75% of our effort was our main brick and mortar business. And maybe 25% was this. Well, the
brick and mortar is a business to business sale. So we sell coffee wholesale to restaurants, coffee shops and hotels. Well, guess who isn't open the last six months? Okay, so that business, you know, certainly is down 80, 90%, which is would be devastating. But on the other hand, this business, which is direct to customers, people are stuck at home, more people are cooking, we've seen a good growth, we've seen 80% growth in this business in a month over last year type of thing. So it's not like we're making millions, but we certainly have
seen a very healthy growth. So much so that because of how long it takes and how hard it was to get product out of Italy as COVID hit. We're out of stock right now on our two main sellers. We only have about a week more, they're here in the States and landed all the rest, hopefully, they'll be in stock within the next week or two. But we've had problems with that because of how much that's grown. And that's to me, a lot of the power of a
side hustle is that it diversifies you and diversifies you in a way that creative energy can go one place when you're tired of another, also that, you know, income and just stability can be there. You have to be something you like and want to do, and you're interested in. And then determine how your product or your idea or thing can be helpful to a specific market. And so think of it as instead of like making the best, I don't know, the best paper clip out there, and it's a cool paper clip, and you're really excited about it, think about who would want that and how do you how does that help them. And then you'll have a lot more reserves, and passion and just ability to go after that. And it won't just
be a thing that's a flash, you want to have something and think of it as a brand is a long term, if it's not something that you think of, oh, you know, this is going to help people in 10 years and 20 years. I think that that's that's a little different path than what our footsteps are trying to be. I believe everybody comes to points where they just get like frustrated and overwhelmed. But also like, they come up against something that they can't figure out how to deal with. And it can be a regulation, it can be you got to get a license for doing this, or you got to register your business in this part of the state, whatever it is, try to really keep in mind that, even if it seems impossible, other people have done this, and it is doable. Even if you just have to push and push and push till you find
your right spot, other people have done it. So it totally why not you and you really have to keep that mindset because it can be done. And almost every obstacle can be overcome. Awesome. Thank you so much, Nathan. Really appreciate that. And here's a fun fact for
our listeners. Prior to selling this line of Italian housewares, Nathan and his family experimented with water filters. And we went into that a bit in the original episode. And helped them learn the basics of fulfilled by Amazon, which they then took and applied to this business turned out that this business is the one that really took off. But they've learned the basics by selling something else. So sometimes you just kind of experiment.
If you're interested in fulfillment by Amazon or something different, you just kind of jump into something and then perhaps it leads you to the next thing or the next thing after that. Anyway, if you're interested in cooking at all, I would encourage you to check them out to Tara Kachina. So you can just go to that website that Tara Kachina.com D A T E R R A C U C I N A.com or just search to Tara Kachina on Amazon. We will link this up in the show notes page as well. 2020 has been our year of interaction. If you have a question, if you'd like to update us
about your side hustle, tell us about something that's going well or something that's a challenge. We'd like to hear about both those things. Just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions and that notes page for today is at sidehustleschool.com/14121412. Thank you so much for joining me. Be sure you're subscribed because much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is side hustle
school. From The Onward Project.
