This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hey, hey, what's up, my friends? Thank you so much for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host of Side Hustle School, bringing you different stories, questions and answers, tips, interesting case studies, all kinds of fun stuff over the past 1,635 days. Today is 1,636, all focused around this question of making extra money without quitting your job. How can you start an income generating project using the skills you already have, or perhaps pursuing an interesting idea, which is kind of what we're looking at here.
Today is our Throwback Thursday segment, where we take a look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them, perhaps transitioned or changed in some major way. Recently, we have featured a tea blend that uses adult language, the designer who makes clothing for dachshunds and they're humans, let's see what else, neuro gum, like energy gum, like an energy drink, but in the form of gum, and a UK blogger who lives in a van. Last week, we heard from a maker in Chicago who sells faith-based jewelry, especially rosary beads. So a quite eclectic range of stories per usual, which is something that we try to do here on Side Hustle School, tell you things that you're not gonna hear about somewhere else, okay? So today in our latest feature, we're gonna hear from the co-founder of a company.
It's actually a company now. Of course, it started as a side hustle, just three guys, but they set out to make a device called the step in pull. Okay, this is a device that allows public restroom users to open the door with their foot, okay? So here's a crazy thing. Guess what happened to their business at the start of the global pandemic?
Well, their business actually increased a tremendous, tremendous amount. It's actually 70X, like their business increased 70 times and it was doing pretty well before. Like I'd actually seen these devices in different places as I was traveling, I was like, oh yeah, that's the step in pull, we did a story on them. And then of course, you know, more than a year ago, this pandemic strikes and all of a sudden everybody's like, you know what, it's not a great idea to actually open the public restroom door with your hand, right, that you've just washed your hands and like, what's the point there, right? So the step in pull, what happened since the past year in particular, let's hear directly from Mike, one of the co-founders and I'll come back at the end to wrap us up.
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- Yeah, my name's Mike Sewell and me and my two business partners, Ron P. Lime, Kelly Coddington. We own a Springfield, Missouri based company called KRM Innovations Incorporated. And we are the inventors and producers of a product called Step in Pull, hands-free door opener. We were previously featured on Side Hustle episode 975.
Step in Pull started out as a side hustle for us. We all three worked for a large wireless company. And back in 2007, one of my jobs was to manage the facility in which we worked and I noticed in the public restrooms that people would use the paper towel to pull the door open. So me and Ron and Kelly put our heads together to come up with a better solution and decided using our foot, using the foot would be a great option. So we went through several design protocols and came up with pretty much what's still the current Step in Pull design.
And fast forward to last year, the demand rose sharply and so much so that I ended up leaving my 29 year career with a wireless company and came on full time with Step in Pull. Last year in 2020, we experienced a very sharp demand which started actually the week of March and it was due to COVID, as you can imagine, with COVID and the concern about contracting the virus and surfaces, as well as people wearing masks. There was a lot of demand for our product, for Step in Pull to avoid touching those door handles. So we had a solid business from 2007 that grew year over year, but in March, we sold more in March than what we sold the entire time we'd been in business since 2007. It was just insane.
It was about a 70 time increase in demand. We're in a good spot with we, you know, we had to make a lot of changes to the business when this first started last year with a sharp increase because we just weren't ready for that type of scale of production and volume. So that was a good news. And we've got all of our business processes lined out to the point where we are looking for additional products to sustain our revenue level. And still we're seeking other opportunities to sell like products or products that are within the sanitation or hygiene category.
When we entered 2020, because it was a side business, we had not invested in really any of the types of systems that a big company would. And for example, all of our sales were tracked on the spreadsheet. In fact, one big spreadsheet that one tab had the sales and invoices and other tab was the expense spreadsheet. And another was a cashflow spreadsheet. So there wasn't QuickBooks.
It was very much a family brand business. We did our own shipping. We did our own customer service, answered emails on our own. And so when the increase happened, as I stated earlier about 70 times increase in March, it was sustained through at least three months. We brought on a business consultant.
He helped us get everything into QuickBooks. He helped us get a CRM in place, helped us set up a phone system, a virtual call center environment so we can handle the volume of calls and order processing. He helped us find some grants that were available for website development from the state of Missouri, helped us find ways to save money on our shipping. Just so many different things. He really, from the outside looking in, helped us evaluate what we were doing and really fine tune our operation to run efficiently.
I would advise people to find a product that fits into some skillset or some interest that you know or that you're passionate about because of the amount of work and effort that it takes. You definitely want to have a product or a service that you can get behind for the longterm. But I also advise that if it's a product you're selling, even a service, it's really important to make sure you set that retail price or that service price correctly from the beginning. It's a lot easier to go down in price. Sometimes it's harder to go up in price.
And what I mean is you need to look at the full cost of doing business. [Music]
Thanks so much, Mike. Really appreciate you sharing those updates. And indeed what an incredible story, what an incredible product to have had in place just as the global pandemic began. But as I think I mentioned in the introduction, you know, this is something that was needed long before then.
It's just that people started paying a lot more attention to hygiene and sanitation. And hopefully that will continue for, you know, a long time to come. One of the interesting, I guess, byproducts or secondary effects of COVID-19. Anyway, listeners, I hope you enjoyed this story. Check out Mike's website at stepandpole.com.
So that's just like it sounds. Step in, like the letter N, poll.com. I don't know if they have social media, but I also don't know if you really want to follow Step and Poll on social media. Like this is a great example of an awesome product that you don't necessarily need to get daily updates, you know, through your Instagram feed about. But who knows?
Presumably you could learn more at their website. So Throwback Thursday, one of our most popular new features of 2020. I guess it's been a while since 2020, but we are keeping it going. We continue to get good feedback on this feature. So let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of well over a thousand stories at this point.
If you have a question, if you have an update for us about your Side Hustle, 'cause the whole point here is to be inspirational and also practical to kind of get you thinking, what is the device you can create? What is the service you can offer that is relevant now and might even be more relevant in the future? That's what it's all about. So if you'd like to say hello, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. And also I hope you will subscribe and come back tomorrow.
Thank you again. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
