This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey, everybody. What's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. Welcome as well to Throwback Thursday. Now, this was actually going to be tax day. This episode is episode number 1566, going
out on the 15th of April 2021. It's going to be tax day as in the deadline for Americans to file their tax returns. Most Americans filing most tax returns, there are some other Americans, but because the world is still in a topsy-turvy state of affairs and the IRS is behind, apparently they're actually behind in opening all the mail. This is a true story. They're giving everyone another month or so. So it's a free bonus. Nice. Not
tax day, but it is Throwback Thursday, where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them. Last week in this segment, we heard from the founder of Budget Savvy Bride. She recently said yes to serious growth. Today, in our latest feature, we'll hear from the owner of an eco-friendly candle supplier. And guess what? Profits are smoldering. You know what,
I really wanted to say that he has risen from the ashes, but that would be a better fit for Failure Friday, our other weekly segment. Also, once candles burn, you can't really get them back. At least that's my understanding. So that metaphor doesn't work, but profits are smoldering. What has happened since we first featured the growing candle? Well, let's
hear it directly from the owner. His name is Chris as well. And I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. My name is Chris Heilman. My side hustle is who the like the growing candle I wrote about my wife here in Toledo, Ohio. And we were featured on episode 905. We're solving the
problem. What do you do with your candle container after the wax is gone? There's a lot of waste associated with candles. So we decided to come up with a zero waste product that would reuse the container to turn it into a second purpose gift. The growing candle is mine and my wife's primary source of income. Prior to starting this business, I was in sales
for about a decade. And we've been doing this full time since 30 days after starting the business. So we've been doing this full time for almost four years now. Since our first feature, we have continued our growth trajectory. We've been growing anywhere between four to five hundred percent annually, year over year. Since our feature, we've actually featured
on Good Morning to America twice for their deals in steel segment. The first time we sold 10,000 products, we actually sold out in an hour and a half. The second segment was actually three days after the US election. And we sold 17,500, which was a sellout for us as well. It just happened a little bit slower because the election was pretty crazy.
And the coverage associated was crazy, too. When we first started, we didn't have any money to market. We had zero marketing budget. So we just really had to be creative. And Cindy built a system for herself to constantly contact social media influencers and news outlets. And she just kind of worked that system over the course of a year and a half.
And you never know what opportunities are going to present themselves if you don't put yourself out there. And we're really fortunate to attract the attention of Good Morning to America. And it really just turned out to be a great opportunity for us. The biggest challenge for us is the fact that we do our own manufacturing and we manufacture consumer goods. Scaling manufacturing is very difficult and it's remarkably expensive. When
we first chose candles as a product, it's like, oh, candles, that's super easy. It is easy to make a couple hundred candles. But if you're making 1,500 a day every day, it's very challenging. There's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of pieces in the supply chain that if one of them doesn't work, it just messes the whole process up. So I think
that for us right now, our biggest challenge is transferring what we do from a daily basis to our leadership team in our studio. So we can really put our energy towards the sales and marketing growth of the business rather than being bottlenecks in the manufacturing process. The advice I'd give to somebody who wants to either start a side hustle or take their side hustle to the next level, if you are selling some sort of tangible product or even perhaps a service, figure out a way to get your prototype in front of strangers and figure out a way to try to generate revenue as early as possible. For us, we went to craft fairs. So right when we started the business, we replaced my sales income from my previous company by loading up our family or our daughter and going to craft fairs every weekend. And
we knew we could pay our bills doing that. And that was kind of our primary job was selling candles and testing our products with real people while we were developing our website and building our e-commerce business. But it's one thing to have friends and family tell you like, oh, that's a great idea, best of luck. But it's another thing to get it in front of actual strangers and see how they react. It can really give you a very good idea of whether or not your value proposition is where it needs to be for you to take it to the next level.
I think the last piece of advice would be to get comfortable removing obstacles. If there's obstacles in your life, health insurance is a big one or maybe like the financial hurdles of starting the business, maybe leaving a steady job. If those are obstacles or problems, just figure out how to solve those obstacles and problems because that is really what it is about being an entrepreneur. You're just solving problems all day. And for my business partner and I, almost everything that we do, we're doing for the first time. And if you
can solve the problems that are right in front of you, it's going to better prepare you for entrepreneurship and just kind of step into it and make it happen. Thank you so much, Chris. Really appreciate that update. I love the last part especially. Get comfortable removing obstacles from your life. This is some good advice for all of
us. I actually wrote it down myself. I was like, "What obstacles are in my life right now?" Because this isn't something that just applies when you're going to start your first side hustler business. This is something that's probably applicable to most of us, if not all of us, right now. Right now, there are probably some obstacles in your life and there are in mind as well. And I was like, "Well, what can I do to remove those obstacles?"
There's got to be some action I can take. So I appreciated hearing that. Also they went full-time 30 days after starting the business. How about that? Check out the growing candle dot com. If you want to learn more, maybe order some candles yourself. It's also the
growing candle on Instagram. They're going to be featured on Good Morning America again very soon for their third segment. So presumably they'll be posting about that. I'm grateful to them for helping us out with this segment. Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than 1,000 stories. If you have a question
or an update, come to www.sidehustleschool.com/questions. Today's show notes are at www.sidehustleschool.com/15661566. That's all for me today, but I will be back tomorrow. I hope you'll subscribe and join me again. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School.
