Cyclist Puts Wheels in Motion on Bike Box Biz

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

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Here is an interesting thought exercise to try. I do this myself all the time. All you have to do is ask yourself a question. What would you give up to have more of? You can insert whatever variables you want.

You could say, for example, would you give up more money to have more time? Or vice versa. Would you be willing to work long hours three days a week to have the other four off? Those are just a couple of examples. You could do this exercise with just about anything in your life, not just work.

You could do it with relationships. You could do it with your hobbies, with whatever else you're involved in, however you like to spend your time. And just by asking yourself these questions and thinking it through, what would I give up to have more of? If I do this, give up this, sacrifice this, gain this, et cetera, it helps you make different choices. Or if nothing else, it helps you know yourself better.

When you know yourself better, then you can usually make different choices. So give it a try sometime. What would you give up to have more of? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

In today's story, when a triathlete ships a road bike around the world, little does he know that the box it comes in would take him on a journey of its own. It's a very active, well-traveled box. Anyway, this story comes to us from Costa Rica, but it doesn't end there. These bike boxes go all over the place and bring in an extra income that's largely passive. So I guess the boxes are active, the income is passive.

Cyclist puts wheels in motion on bike box biz. That's the story. It's coming up after this message from our sponsor. [Music]

In his day job, Richard Bexon is the chief operating officer of Namu Travel Group. The company specializes in personalized boutique experiences in Costa Rica, Panama, and Nicaragua.

But getting people and items from one place to another isn't just his job. It's also his passion and his side hustle. You see, Richard is part of a triathlon and cycling club of around 200 people. They train together and travel to competitions all over the world, or at least they used to. One day, after looking online for a new road bike, he found one he liked in the UK, which happens to be where he's from.

But he didn't know how to get it to Costa Rica, which is where he's been living for the past 16 years. So he did some research and ended up buying a solid plastic bike box. After the bike arrived, safe and sound, a friend asked to rent the box. Richard didn't have any use for it, so he let his friend have it for free. But then he began to wonder if this was a common need.

Might there be a market for these bike boxes? He spent two weeks putting together a Shopify website. He connected it to a calendar app and was good to go. In fact, his total upfront costs were $150 to buy another box and another $30 a month on Shopify. After just two days, he made his first sale to a Canadian guy who rented a road bike for two weeks.

Richard was over the moon. He'd done a lot of work to get the business started, and that first sale proved to him that he was onto something. He might say the wheels were turning. Richard soon acquired 14 boxes. Customers make bookings online, they get a confirmation message by text, and they collect the bike boxes from his business partner's house.

He typically brings in around $800 a month, about $700 of which is all profit. Most of the process is automated, so it only takes him about two hours a week. Best of all, this side hustle has reignited his entrepreneurial spirit. It's given him a chance to play with new technology platforms. He's even been able to use some of these in his day job.

For example, he used a Shopify travel page integrated with Facebook to sell some hotel credits at work. But even though Richard thinks of his bike box side hustle as a pretty basic business, there have still been some bumps along the road. First, he tried marketing through Google AdWords, but in a story we've heard many times, it didn't work so well. After he got enough likes on his Facebook page, he realized it was cheaper to generate leads and sales there instead. Now he sticks to Facebook Marketplace and spends $30 a month on Facebook ads.

These are targeted to foreigners in Costa Rica and some locals as well. Another problem came when he bought some low quality boxes. They just weren't good enough for transporting the bikes. Eventually, he tried over 10 different vendors until he found a reliable German company that makes and ships them from China. Right now, Richard's biggest struggle is the same one so many people are facing.

That's right, COVID-19. With the travel industry on pause because of the pandemic, people aren't renting as many boxes to take their bikes around the world. He knows that the travel rebound will be slow, but he also believes that things will bounce back eventually. So for now, he sold a few of the bike boxes with a plan to buy more later and things get better. Whatever happens next, he's happy to keep pedaling.

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So Richard's business is a practical solution to a problem faced by any serious cyclist or triathlete who needs to transport his or her bike. I assume you could buy your own bike box, but that's a whole commitment of its own. So as I said, a practical solution, maybe we could call it a hub and spoke problem. Well, also fun fact, nobody knows for sure how many bikes there are in the world, but estimates put the number at around 1 billion. No kidding, 1 billion, almost half of which are in China.

It's also estimated that four bikes are made every second and one bike is sold every two seconds. There are a lot of bikes in the world folks, especially in China. So I guess being in the bike box business is not a bad thing at all. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes.

All right, sidehustleschool.com/1438, 1438. I hope your holiday season is going well, at least as well as possible with all the stuff happening. Do ask yourself, what would you give up to have more of? What would you be willing to trade? By asking yourself those questions, just might help you first of all to know yourself better, but then maybe even make some different decisions.

I'll leave you with that for today, but I will be back again tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.