This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, what's up everybody? I hope you are doing well. Welcome to Side Hustle School. Welcome as well to Throwback Thursday. My name is Chris Guillebeau, I'm your host.
This segment is all about taking an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. And we have had more than 1600 days of the podcast since January 1, 2017. Haven't missed a day. Thank you so much for being out there. And there've been so many wild stories.
It's been really fun to go back and say, okay, how has this person changed or adjusted or tweaked? How have they managed certain challenges? How have they grown? What's gone well? What hasn't gone well?
Recently, we featured an American living in Spain who sells premium cocktail pins. We've also had a British travel blogger who's living van life, living large in the van, as well as the co-founder of Bean Goods, which sells Dachshund themed apparel for dogs and humans. Humans usually do most of the shopping. Now, today in our latest segment, we'll hear from Jama Daikas, who operates two tea blends, one of which features some adult branding. Now, you might wonder how could tea have adult branding?
Well, you'll have to go and see for yourself on the website if you're interested. But let's hear directly from Jama. Let's hear her updates, and I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
Hi, I'm Jama Daikas. My company operates out of Reno, Nevada, and my tea brand Blend B was featured on episode 823.
My side hustle has actually turned into my full-time hustle. I'm 100% owner of two loose leaf tea companies, Blend B and Modest Mix. Blend B specializes in creating custom tea blends, where customers are able to create blends directly on the website. And Modest Mix is my fun, empowering, cheeky tea brand. I use a lot of adult language on Modest Mix.
So the marketing and demographics between Blend B and Modest Mix are very different, which is why I chose to keep the two brands separate. Since I was last featured on the show, I've grown my wholesale marketplace. I've also mentored and helped over 10 other woman-owned tea companies launch, which has been really exciting. I craft bulk tea for other companies. So I've become more of a tea manufacturer in some ways, and I can package the tea and dropship for other companies, or a lot of the companies are buying in bulk and packaging themselves.
And with Modest Mix, I partnered up with Hello Abound and Fair. Those are two online wholesale marketplaces. They help me reach physical retail stores, and Modest Mix is now in close to 100 boutiques nationwide. With both companies, I've been doing a lot more wedding favors and corporate gifts as well. And my sales have gone up about 70% in 2021, just from 2020.
And 2020 was a great year for us. We are now averaging around 35,000 a month in sales and that may not sound like a lot to some, but that's a lot of tea, especially since we handcraft every blend to order. The biggest challenge that I'm currently facing is the ability to grow my team. With COVID-19, we had to switch around how we work in the shop. And currently I have three full-time employees, but to distance we have to come in at different times of the day.
And this has made it difficult to expand further as the shop is really only set up for one tea maker at a time. I'd love to start expanding our team. And now with the vaccine rollouts, there's light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully we can expand our team very soon. The advice I would give someone who wants to follow in my footsteps is to be diligent with the quality of ingredients you use, especially if you're focusing on tea.
When possible, purchase from small fair trade farms and ideally purchase as much as you can locally. Though, unfortunately we grow little to no tea leaves on US soil. Also, I see a lot of companies with really expensive, really nice packaging, which will sell for sure. Though you have to consider the amount of money being put into packaging is being taken away from the quality of the actual tea. So you can either have a really high price point, market yourself as a luxury brand.
That's totally up to you. Personally, I prefer a higher quality ingredient and a lower cost packaging to keep my price point where I want it. Another tip, be diligent on your keyword and key phrase research. Be sure to write blog posts that incorporate the keywords and key phrases exactly. The blog post doesn't even have to be visible on your website.
You can keep it hidden, though it'll help drive traffic to your brand. And this can be old school SEO, but it has definitely helped me grow. I was instructed also not to put sales links within the blog post when starting off. Just use really well-founded information and cite it, ideally from .org and .gov sites. Your customers will probably find you organically and word of mouth when you do this.
And then you don't have to spend a ton of money on pay-per-click advertising. I tried pay-per-click and it wasn't successful. 90% of our traffic is organic and we're rated number one on Google for custom teeth lens and never spent a penny to get that spot. And honestly, my business has grown more since I've been taking more time for myself. I'm promoting health and I have to stay in alignment with my mission.
Walk the talk. You know, I once read that you can't be sad when you look up at the sky, lift your arms up and smile. Your brain apparently switches to happy mode. Even if you're not feeling the best. Even if you're feeling really happy, try and look down and get all curled up.
Your body doesn't even wanna do it. So take some deep breaths in through your nose, out through your mouth, lift up your arms, smile at the sky. Then you can start tackling the big projects. Rinse and repeat. [Music]
Awesome, that is fantastic.
Congratulations, Jama. Thank you so much for the updates. And honestly, $35,000 a month in sales. That's just tremendous. You know, so many of our listeners are starting their first side hustle.
They're just at $500 a month or $1,000 a month, a couple of thousand dollars a month sometimes. Or a lot of them are trying to figure out, you know, what their first idea is. So that is a huge inspiration, I'm sure, to many people, including myself. I also love how 90% of our traffic is organic. In other words, 90% of our traffic is coming from people who are just searching various T-terms in Google.
So it's definitely worth it to put that kind of work in on the front end. It takes some time, of course, but it's an investment in building up a sustainable business. So I'm grateful to Jama for helping us out with this segment. Check out her website at blendb.com, or you can see it on Instagram at blendb. Her second brand, the one with the more cheeky adult language as she called it, that is modestmix.com.
All right, that's it for today. We're gonna keep this feature going throughout the year. Thank you so much for being part of it. If you have a question, if you have an update for us, anything like that, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. You can also follow me on Instagram at 193 countries, 193 countries, or on Twitter @chrisguillebeau.
Just my name, last name, G-U-I-L-L-E-B-E-A-U. Last but not least, today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1622. 1-6-2-2. Wherever you are in the world, I hope you have a wonderful day. I hope you come back tomorrow.
You are listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
