This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, what's up? Welcome to Throwback Thursday. Also welcome to Side Hustle School. Could say that first. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This segment, Throwback Thursday, is all about taking an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. Now we've been going for a long time. I'm so grateful to our listeners who've been around for a while, especially from the beginning. But if you have picked up at some point in the past 1,510 episodes, then you are very much a part of this community as well. I'm so grateful for you.
We've got people all over the world who are all trying to increase their freedom, create options for themselves, make some extra money, get out of debt, build a bridge to a new future, whatever it is, or even just do something creative. That is what a side hustle is all about, as opposed to looking for investors, as opposed to maxing out your credit cards, as opposed to being a full-time entrepreneur tomorrow when you are an employee today. It's all about doing something accessible, okay? So in this segment, last week we heard from a teacher who buys and resells sports gear, actually goes full-time into that. Today in our latest feature, we'll hear from a Wisconsin native who sells Wisconsin-themed coasters, glasses, T-shirts, other products related to beer.
I guess T-shirts are not directly related to beer, but it's beer-themed products, beer-themed design. You can check him out on his website, it's pretty cool. I will link that up in the notes. What has happened since we first featured him? It's actually a couple, but we're gonna hear from one of them.
His name is Zach. So let us hear from Zach, his updates. I will come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
My name is Zach Wambold, and my wife and I started our business, Milwaukee Beer Gears. That's our side hustle.
We're based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and we were featured on episode number seven, seven, four. We create a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based paraphernalia for beer. So our main product lines are wooden coasters and engraved and glasses, also bottle openers, and then T-shirts and hats. It was just an idea that I had while we were living in Florida, actually, and just wanted to create something on the side that showed our love for Wisconsin and Milwaukee. And we wanted to do something that would be kind of a fun passion project for us.
So beer and Wisconsin kind of marry together nicely, something we both really like, and just being able to highlight and showcase neighborhoods, which is part of our product line, our neighborhood coasters. So just wanted to be able to use some of our passion in those areas into a side project or side hustle for ourselves. We've been really strategic about growing it at a pace that we're comfortable with. We have a two-year-old and another baby on the way, so trying to balance out life and everything else as well. So, yeah, eventually we'd like to see it grow more, but we want to do it at a pace that we're comfortable with.
Since we were last on the show, we got into a couple more stores. We were actually really excited to be part of the Milwaukee airport. So we're gonna be featured in a airport store there, and really saw some good growth, and then obviously the pandemic hit, and that kind of put a pause on a lot of things. So our store revenue was where we were really seeing most of our sales, and the internet business has gone a lot better this year because of that, but not meeting the sales that we were getting from the stores. So that's been the biggest change, is kind of shifting more towards online and trying to balance out that.
We had people reach out and be like, yeah, we're trying to help out small businesses. We want to feature your product or that type of thing. So because we were ingrained in some of those communities, that really helped out as well. - Another thing just from trying to grow your business is making sure that your product is really unique and something that doesn't exist everywhere. I think that's been really helpful for us.
We've been strategic about where we've grown our business by adding product lines that we feel are unique or different. So like this hat that I'm wearing is new. It's a leather patch, like that's not a ton of companies that are doing that in our markets. So we kind of check out the products that are in the shops and make sure that we're providing something that's a little bit different offering so we can differentiate ourselves. And we wanted to offer high-end product line as well.
So there's companies that sell coasters or they do certain designs that are kind of like ours, but we wanted to stand out by having a higher quality product line and making sure that we were able to sell at a higher price point to match the volume that we think we could maintain. So when you're looking at getting into this type of thing, just understanding what your niche is and making sure that you can capitalize on it by knowing the industry really well. So when you're jumping in there, you're not just duplicating somebody else's product 'cause you're really gonna struggle 'cause we've seen that with people that sell candles and soaps and that's like a huge thing where there's 30 different companies that do that type of thing. So to be able to get a foot in and then really differentiate yourself is really difficult in that space. So we wanted to offer something different.
I think that's really important when you're trying to start out as well. [Music]
Zach, thanks so much for the update. Really appreciate that. And by the way, listeners, that website is Milwaukee Beer Gear, MilwaukeeBeerGear.com. I will link it up on the notes page as well.
I also wanted to mention that Zach's wife is Amanda. She's a big part of the business and actually works on it a bit more than he does. So he works, I think, four to five hours a week on the business and she works about 15 to 20. So I would be remiss to not mention her. Now, as you heard on the update, they have had to switch a bit, pivot, adapt, just like so many businesses.
Focusing on online sales though, I think is likely a good idea even as more stores open back up. So in their case, they were really excited about getting in the Milwaukee airport and retail stores were a big part of their business, probably a fair amount from tourists or from people who have moved away and are visiting back. But those online sales, those can happen anywhere, right? As we have seen from lots of other stories. And as the stores open back up and that's great, then you just diversify your income even further.
But I tend to think rather than going from like the 80% retail, retail in person to 20% online, they're gonna be much more successful going the other way, like primarily online, but then we're also in shops, so that when you visit Milwaukee or somewhere else nearby, you can go and check out where these items actually come from. Anyway, I'm grateful to Zach and Amanda for helping us with this segment. This is one of the most popular new features of 2020. The whole throwback Thursday kind of thing. So as you have heard over the past month or two, we're gonna keep it going this year.
Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than a thousand stories. And if you've got a question or a comment, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you'll subscribe and keep listening. It's all free.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
