This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Welcome friends. Thank you for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. We are now in season six of this very podcast, which started, I guess, something like 1843 days ago. Today's episode 1843, which is always a nice reminder for me of how many days it's been.
Now, as we enter this season, we have been looking for ways to evolve and bring you more helpful, insightful, interesting content all within the constraint of a brief daily episode, because of course I know you're busy. So this feature, or this episode rather, is part of a new feature we just started a couple weeks ago. It's called Your First $1,000. Now this has been fun to work on. As you might surmise from the title, it's all about how someone made their first $1,000.
How did they get to that point? How did they really get going? Okay, not their first $100,000, which is cool, right? But that would be a very long story. And so we really want to focus on these origin moments.
I have learned just in my own life, in my own business, like once you begin to earn some real money, by real money, I mean $500, $1,000, whatever it is, the steps required to go to the next level, whether that's $1,000 to $2,000, or even to $5,000 or $10,000, they're often easier than that first real paycheck, okay? So that's why it's so key. And also you're more motivated at that point because making money feels encouraging. All right, so last week in this new series, we heard from the creator of Metaphor Dice, the writing tool that plays like a game and helps you think more figuratively. Today's first $1,000 feature comes from Frank Mortimore in New Jersey.
We first featured Frank way back in episode 1597. The B-Man of New Jersey buzzes into money hive. That's correct. Frank is the self-described B-Man of New Jersey. He is a beekeeper.
He sells honey, among other things. In fact, he describes his business as turning $5 bills into $20 bills, as he'll explain. Now that's of course much better than going the other way. So let's hear more from Frank. He's also got several informative and entertaining lessons for us.
[Music]
Hi, I'm Frank Mortimore and I'm a beekeeper. This is my origin story about how I turned my love of stinging insects into a profitable side hustle. When I started in beekeeping, I wanted it as a hobby. I was doing it for fun because I wanted something to do outside, something that would relax me. And beekeeping is what I call forced zen, be present or you're gonna get stung.
And then as I got into it, I actually became the president of my local beekeeping club. And one of the responsibilities of being the president was that I had to go around and give informative talks to the general public. I would go to civic groups, I'd go to fairs and schools, just to teach people about bees and the importance they have in our environment, as well as some great fun facts about honey. Well, after a few years that I had enough surplus honey that I thought, hey, you know, I could start selling it. You know, initially you need honey for the bees, then I needed honey for myself, and then I had this extra honey.
So I thought I would launch my sales at an earth fair that happened in late spring here in Northern New Jersey. So the origin story of Frank's honey is filled with lessons that I learned that I needed to do in the future to be better. One of the first mistakes that I made was that I did not bring a tent. And I learned why vendors always have tents because when you're standing out in the sun for eight hours, you develop a little bit more than a good sun tan. So I set up my table and I had plenty of beekeeping paraphernalia to show people 'cause that's what I had been doing in all my talks.
But this time is when I had my honey. My next mistake that I made was that I didn't bring enough tasting spoons. And so what I quickly found out is that people, when it's free food, always wanna taste the honey. So the last mistake I made was I didn't bring enough change. I charge $15 per one pound jar of honey, and I only had about $25 in change for the first few customers.
So thankfully my wife was gonna be coming to the fair later. So I was like, "Help, please bring me the rest of the honey that we have. We need to bring it all." As well as, "Can you go to the bank and get a bunch of $5 bills? And then please stop at the grocery store and get more spoons so we can have plenty of people tasting." Those lessons were learned and were applied after this show. Next up was that as people came by and they were tasting the honey, I really enjoyed seeing the excitement on their face because they really enjoyed the product.
And as a beekeeper, I take great pride in that because of how much time and effort I go into the honey. So the line at my booth just never died down. And I always call selling honey of changing $5 bills into $20 bills because people pay with 20s. And so they pull out the 20, I give them a jar of honey and a five. And what I do is I keep the $5 bills in a jar on the counter so I can do it quickly.
And then I take the 20s and I just stuff them into my jean pockets. So I wasn't really counting the money. It was kind of like that old Kenny Rogers song, "No one to hold them, no one to fold them." And so I thought I would just count my money later. So as I'm just doing this all day long, I feel my pockets getting heavy, but not really stopping to think about how much money's in there. So at the end of the day at five o'clock, I only had like a half dozen jars of honey left.
And also I had developed quite a sunburn and packed everything up and headed home. And that's when I decided it was time to count it. So I pulled out this big wad of 20s and then started laying them out on the table, counted one after another. And even though I should have figured it out based on how many jars of honey I had left, so how many I had sold, it never occurred to me that I would make over $1,000. And sure enough, I surpassed that in the first day.
And so because of that, that was the starting point of when I came up with the name Frank's Honey, because that's what everybody was calling it all day long. And since that day, Frank's Honey has grown to also include other products such as lip balm, 100% beeswax candles, and hand cream. And also from all the experience I gained of talking to the general public and selling my products, I was able to write my first book, "Be People and the Bugs They Love." And all of that was thanks to my first time trying to sell and not giving up and instead learning from my mistakes so I could turn Frank's Honey into a very profitable side hustle. Thanks a lot to Frank for telling us his origin story of turning $5 bills into $20 bills. The next time you find yourself selling honey at a farmer's market, be sure to bring a tent and sunscreen as well as plenty of spoons for tasting.
Check out his website at frankthebeman.com. Pretty memorable there, frankthebeman.com. In fact, his book "Be People and the Bugs They Love" is really buzzworthy. What can you say? It's just too easy.
If you've got a question or an update for us about your side hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thank you so much for tuning in today. New episode every single day. We're gonna continue this segment once a week, but of course much more in the other days as well. So I hope you'll join me every day for a short, brief, action-packed episode.
All right, that's it for now. My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
