Q&A Halloween Special: How to market spooky savory pastries?

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

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Hey, hey, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. Thank you for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. It's always good to find that thing you enjoy that you would do for free just because it's fun to you.

And you know what? It doesn't matter if it's fun to anyone else. Sometimes I feel like a lot of my work is like that. I really do feel fortunate to be able to write books and produce this show for you, put on events, other fun stuff. But of course it's even better that I have listeners and readers who care.

And sometimes I even get paid, which is also nice. So today's question comes to us in that same spirit, a listener who enjoys making something for free but would also like to sell it. And speaking of that spirit, it's also Halloween this week. Is it Halloween tomorrow? I believe it is Halloween tomorrow.

And in fact, our listener in Canada is making a spooky treat for sale. So she will describe this spooky treat more in her question. Let's see if we can help her out. [Music]

Hi Chris, this is Carolina from Ottawa in Canada. And I've been listening to the show since 2018.

I'm thinking about starting a side hustle that to be honest, I would do it for free. And as a matter of fact, I have been doing it for free as a hobby, but butter is expensive. And I would love to see if this passion won't help me pay for more than just butter. I would love to sell people pot pies for the spooky season ahead of us. People pot pies are cherry or blueberry pies with a crust made to look like a dead person.

I know, it's a bit jarring. That's why I must wait for Halloween season to do this. My question is, how would you recommend that I market this? Be it social media like charcuterie's board do or coffee shops, restaurants to sell like wholesale? Thanks again for all that you do.

- Carolina, what an interesting project. Definitely seems like a Halloween theme. So how can we market this? Well, this is hyper local, right? Like you're trying to sell something to people in a very specific geographic area.

You have to think, how can I reach people there, right? So social media attention can be good, but it needs to be locally focused. So I tend to think of outlets like Nextdoor. Nextdoor is a social app that allows people to connect with those in their local community. It is in Canada in addition to the States and probably some other countries as well.

What about traditional media? Like local TV and newspapers, Ottawa is a small town. So I mean, it's a city, but it's a small town, a smaller city, let's say. So I would reach out to the reporters at those outlets, take some good photos, tell them the story. Like it is kind of quirky.

Like, why do you want to do this? Where did the inspiration come from? And then also I did think about this episode we did this year, 1646 side hustle bread Insta account sells $100,000. So there in that story, like obviously they are using social media to sell something that is hyper local. There are a couple of differences such as they were doing it in Long Island, New York.

So a bit of a bigger area, a bigger market. And then also I could be wrong about this, but I think they were going to different farmers markets and such. And so the combination of the farmers markets and the social media kind of worked together, but there's still probably something to learn from it. So I would check that out, episode 1646. Carolina, we might be a little bit late for this year since Halloween is almost here, but let's see what we can do to plan ahead to have all those butter costs covered next year.

I know butter is expensive and not just cover the costs but help you make some money, even though you'd love to do it for free, which I do respect, but this is side hustle school. I want you to be able to make money. All right, keep us posted. Listeners, if you have a question, a spooky question, or just an ordinary question, sidehustleschool.com/questions, we will continue to feature them along with updates from listeners as they launch and grow their projects. Thank you for tuning in today.

Be safe out there. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is side hustle school. [Music]