This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Side Hustle School listeners, welcome back. Welcome to a brand new week. In fact, with a different story every day of someone who's creating a bit more freedom for themselves, creating extra income, maybe quitting their job and going full time into it, but maybe not. As you know, if you've been listening to the show for a while, there are all kinds of reasons to start a side hustle and really very little downside. So it's different from other entrepreneurial ventures.
Now this week's set of stories, once again, should illustrate a range of different goals that people have when starting their hustle. And today's story and tomorrow's as well, in fact, are all about two people who've actually created a lot of scale in their business. And with today's in particular, it's about someone who actually sees her side hustle kind of as a mission or a calling, like something she feels like she has to be doing and would probably do it even if she didn't get paid as long as there was a way to make that work sustainably. But fortunately, she doesn't have to make that false choice because it is a profitable project. She's actually employing a number of people right now.
She has bought an entire building for this project, but it really all started with the needs of her family, as I'll tell you about. So I'm calling this story a full-time mom ships $35,000 a month in frozen bread on Amazon. And I'll tell you the whole story right after this. [Music]
Stacy Schalman had a full and busy life, spending at least four hours a day on baking for a child with a specialized diet. She also worked as a personal trainer and group fitness instructor.
And with all those commitments, she didn't have a great desire to add something else to it. But sometimes in life, you find your mission, and other times your mission finds you. Stacy says she's not passionate about many things, but she is passionate about her children and their health. And through a long process of trial and error, she came to believe that diet can cure where pharmaceuticals can't. Maybe not for everyone, but at least for her family.
And the major problem controlling diet, at least for Stacy, wasn't the availability of different foods. It was the ability to control the ingredients that go into making food. She remembers sitting on her kitchen floor, exhausted and in tears, thinking how much she would appreciate it if there was somewhere she could go to buy the things she didn't have the time or energy to make herself, but that her family needed. Understanding this problem and cracking this puzzle started as a revelation, then led to a hobby, and then to a profitable side hustle. This mysterious location would have to be somewhere where she trusted the person, somewhere that understood how serious ingredients were to her children, somewhere where she trusted them more than an FDA label, and somewhere where she fully understood the whole baking and manufacturing process.
Well, of course, the only way to control each aspect of that was to do it herself. Stacy called her project and her new mission, Liberated Specialty Foods. And the promise was to provide processed food that can be consumed by those on special diets. Her motto was beyond paleo. She said, not only are we gluten and grain-free, we also avoid potato, rice, artificial preservatives, artificial sweeteners, and a number of binding or leavening agents that other special diets approve.
In other words, this food was legit. Stacy wanted to sell her products on Amazon, and that was a learning process. She listed some new products, she tried test ads, she talked to other vendors, adjusted her marketing, and at the same time, she was trying to break into retailers, both local and large, including the special diet giant known as Whole Foods. Now she learned two tips from this process. First, there's a lot of turnover among buyers.
If you don't get a positive answer at first, wait two months and try again, because there might be a different person there. Oh, and second, always show up with food. As she experimented with new products, she also learned a key consumer lesson. People want healthy food, but not food that tastes healthy. Nothing baked will ever sell, she says, unless it tastes great.
As her sales grew, Stacy hired her first employee, a family friend, and then another. She and her husband purchased an old church out in the country and began renovation to use as the location of what's now the first commercial bakery of its kind. Just two years later, they now keep 14 other bakers, very busy, and they ship $35,000 of great food each month to customers on Amazon, where they are consistently in the top three frozen bread sellers. Side note, apparently there's a lot of frozen bread sold on Amazon, which is not totally surprising because there's a lot of everything sold on Amazon, and a lot of chain stores, including Whole Foods, stock or products. For Stacy, here's the biggest surprise.
She said, "I was afraid that adding "a more than full-time business onto a frantic life "would be more stressed than I could handle, "but actually I'm happier than ever, "more productive than ever, "and I also feel like I'm a better mom." [Music]
So as I say often, a side hustle doesn't have to be a mission. It doesn't have to be your calling. Like there's nothing wrong with just doing something to make extra cash, 'cause there's a lot of value in that too. But I also think it's pretty amazing when your mission, your calling, whatever that is, and your ability to provide for yourself and your family overlap. And in fact, wouldn't it be great if it could be both?
And that's what you see in a story like Stacy's. And she said her advice when you're starting something like this, whatever your vision is, most important, know what makes you special. For us, it's quality. We could outsource a lot of our baking and never be sure of what we were shipping, but the only way to truly guarantee quality is for us to have total ownership over it. So that's also interesting because you know from other stories that other people have made a different choice.
They have been able to outsource something, even a kind of critical task, and it's worked out okay for them. And they don't feel like they're sacrificing quality. But to me, that just goes to the first part of her advice, which is know what makes you special. And for them, they have focused on owning each part of the process to ensure that absolute quality that their customers expect. Anyway, congratulations to Stacy.
Next time you're shopping on Amazon, or perhaps even at your local grocery store, take a look at Liberated Special Chief Foods. And you can also learn more on the show notes page. Those notes today are at sidehustleschool.com/177. If you have a comment or question for the show, give me a call on the Hustle Hotline 8449 Hustle. I hope you find the liberation you're looking for.
I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School."
