Financial Planner Sells Sartorial Storage Solutions

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Hey everyone, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Thanksgiving week, Thanksgiving week 2020 at least for us in the United States. Today in the program, we are going to Texas where a financial planner in search of extra household income combines his love of woodworks and menswear.

I'll actually have more to say about Thanksgiving in a couple of days. Just wanted to note that. Thanksgiving week. Now the word of the day is sartorial. This is a word that when I read it, I was like, I think I know what this word means, but I'm not sure I could actually define it, you know, which means I actually don't know it.

And so I went to look it up and do some research. Sartorial, S-A-R-T-O-R-I-A-L. And the definition is it relates to tailoring clothes or a style of dress. The term is used by menswear enthusiasts to describe a lifestyle relating to a love for classic timeless garments made with a high level of craftsmanship. And this is relevant because the financial planner in Texas you'll hear about in the story is handcrafting sartorial storage solutions.

He had that phrase on his website and it was like, what exactly does that mean? So that's what it means. And I'll tell you the story, how he got his idea, how he made it happen and what we might learn from it in just a moment. Story's coming up after this quick message from our sponsor, stay tuned. [Music]

Financial planner, Justin Truitt loves woodworking.

He picked up the hobby when he and his wife bought their first home and needed to furnish it. Uninterested in paying top dollar for furniture, he decided to build what he needed in his spare time. By the time he was done, he not only had the furniture, but also woodworking skills that he could use for the rest of his life. When Justin's wife quit her teaching job to be a stay at home mom, he knew they needed a new source of family income. The financial planner in him knew this was the sort of advice he would give his clients, to replace one type of income with another.

Although he wasn't sure he could replace his wife's salary completely, he decided to start by selling the wooden accessories he'd been making in his spare time. There was also a way to blend his woodworking hobby with his passion for menswear, something he wouldn't have tried otherwise. Etsy was the obvious choice for Justin to experiment with selling this handcrafted work. So he began by listing just a couple products, including a wooden rack for pocket squares, which he had made for himself. He also thought a wooden tie rack would do well.

So he used scrap wood and tie pegs to piece one together. And just like that, Dapper Woodworks was born. Things were quiet for a month, but then seemingly out of the blue, the first sale arrived. A customer had purchased a pocket square rack and Justin was delighted. He remembers being so excited that he wanted to ship the rack he had already built for himself, until his wife stopped him with the question, you're gonna sell that one?

That was when he realized he needed to perfect the craft of each item he was going to sell. He immediately headed back to the workbench to create a brand new one for the customer. Around the same time, an acquaintance introduced him to the owner of an e-commerce store that overlapped nicely with what he was making. This store sold luxury suit hangers, as well as other high-end men's accessories. The store owner had been looking to add custom-made products such as wooden tie racks to his store for a long time.

So far, Justin had simply been making items that fit the needs of his few customers. This was the first time he'd be coming up with standardized designs for a broader market. Having a retail partner was good, and Etsy was an ideal way to get started. But Justin knew he had to set up his own website to sell items directly to consumers. Pricing on Etsy was a race to the bottom, and he was now targeting the high end of the market.

Moreover, building his own site on Shopify allowed him better control over his brand with greater customization over the products and sales page. In April 2018, Justin started focusing his efforts on marketing. He sent out free products to a few influencers on Instagram who he thought would be perfect customers. While some of them liked his products and posted about it, it turns out he didn't get the sales he thought he would. What he discovered was that he was better off targeting micro-influencers who had a good eye for photography.

So it wasn't so much about the number of followers, it was about the relationship with those followers as well as the quality of photos. This paid off over the long run as Justin built relationships, and they've been happy to work with him even as their accounts grew. Today, he spends most of his spare time trying to build brand awareness through online and in-person networking. Coupled with some experiments in Google AdWords, Justin has seen his side business grow. In 2019, he generated over $32,000 in revenue with $7,000 in profit.

This figure is set to increase in 2020, even as the economic outlook has declined. He's got projections of $50,000 in revenue and $20,000 in profit. And all this came from investing around $100 in scrap wood and metal pegs to make his first product. These days, his products are completely different from when he started, and he only got there with small improvements over time. He says if you have an idea, you'll never be able to improve it until you test it in the real world.

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So it's always good to think about the values you want to communicate with your business. And when you're building a website, or when you're writing copy, or even thinking about how things are visually presented, I'm gonna think about what are my values for this. And I think for this kind of business, the values you want to present are pride and appearance, nostalgia, perhaps, a bit of a sense of old-fashioned, individualism, perhaps. Like I want to have this item that has been crafted specifically for me. And in fact, on his website, go check out dapperwoodworks.com, on his website it says, "Current lead time is four to five weeks on custom orders." And the interesting thing is that that is featured.

It's not buried somewhere, like you see it very clearly. And so I actually think that he thinks his ideal customers are not deterred by that. And it's a feature in some ways, right? If they wanted a tie rack or pocket square holder tomorrow, they could get it from Amazon. You know, that's not his market.

So that's an example of how you use language that reflects those values. It's also interesting to me that sales have not declined, you know, during the work from home pandemic age. I actually heard somebody predict that when this is over, men will want to dress more smartly. They'll actually want to dress up more because they haven't been able to. Now, I wouldn't know about that.

As someone who doesn't go to a job, I don't own any pocket squares, let alone a pocket square holder. I'm not an expert, but I did think that was interesting as well. Anyway, pretty cool business. Congratulations, Justin. Listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.

Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1422. Go check it out for links to anything I mentioned in the episode, and be sure you come back. Much more is coming up. Happy Thanksgiving week. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is "Siduscle School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.