This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello and welcome. Thank you for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host of Side Hustle School. And this is our segment known as Throwback Thursday. In this segment, we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them.
We are planning to continue this segment throughout 2022. It's one of the most popular weekly segments. And more than 1,800 episodes in, we have lots of people to feature. So today, let's just jump right in. In our latest feature, we're gonna hear from Dean Roller from Sydney, Australia.
My favorite city in the world, perhaps. I really miss going to Sydney. Hopefully I'll get the chance soon. Together with his friend, Andrew Adams, Dean sells toothbrushes. And you might think, well, toothbrushes, you know, that's kind of a low-cost item, but they sell a lot of toothbrushes.
And we first featured them in episode 612, 612. In search of a side hustle, two Australian friends learn to import toothbrushes from the US, earning $30,000 in profit. They've actually gone well, well beyond $30,000 in profit. And recently, their dental empire has expanded beyond e-commerce to include blogging and affiliate income. So let's hear more about that, the World Takeover Dental Edition, or at least the Australian Regionalized Takeover Dental Edition.
Let's hear more from Dean, and I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap-up. [Music]
My name is Dean Rolla, and my business partner and best mate, Andrew Adams, currently live in Sydney, Australia. Our side hustle is selling toothbrushes in Australia with distribution rights that we have from the United States, a company in the States over there. So basically, our side hustle is selling these toothbrushes through distributors, wholesalers, and they have their own channels which they can sell directly to consumers. It all got started as my, through my mum, actually.
She's a dentist, and a patient of hers was a distributor and came across these pretty cool brushes and talked about them and said, "Look, maybe this is something you can endorse "or something you can sell, "but let us know what you think about them." My mum actually passed on to me, she loved them. And it kind of took off from there with a partnership with her, one of the patients. I started selling the brushes directly through her as a rep, they call them, who basically just goes out to other shops and makes it all kind of work. I fast-forward a few years from there. My mate, Andrew, we got together and we just tried to expand the business a little bit more to sell them across more distributors and wholesalers across all of Australia.
This is not the main hustle. We both have day jobs, so Andrew works in disability support and I work in marketing, as well as a couple other businesses that I have myself. And, but it is something that is growing. So since we were last featured, I believe it was episode 612, actually, where we were featured, the last one. Basically, it's what's happened since then.
So it's been pretty, been good actually, like profit has been consistent. We're still making, we're still making money. It hasn't grown too much with the brushes themselves, but what has grown is the money that we've put into a whole other side hustle, I guess you'd call it, but really mouthwatches, the toothbrush that we distribute is being funneled into another project of ours called DentalAware, and that's dentalaware.com.au. It's turned into a big, full-fledged blog, really. We're getting tens of thousands of paid views a month now, and we drive revenue, a whole other stream of revenue, through affiliate sales, deals, partnerships, with people in the dental industry, everything from tooth whitening to different types of orthodontic prosthesis, things like that, that basically people help us, oh, we partner with them, so to speak, and yeah, we generate revenue from that as well.
The biggest challenge we're currently facing, that would be kind of like balancing life, and what this is, I guess it's still technically a side hustle. It is driving more revenue than we were last time we were on the podcast, that's for sure, just both with the toothbrushes and with the consistent revenue we're getting from advertising and affiliate sales through DentalAware. However, it's just balancing life. You know, we've got two little kids, and that's kind of one of the biggest challenges, and just making sure that you've got the time, and you can manage time well. You're doing a much better job of project management, I guess that's what the biggest challenge is.
What advice would we give someone who wants to follow in our footsteps? Really, it is keep your main job. So wait 'til you get to that point where you're making enough revenue that surpasses your current job, that you feel confident, happy, you know, you don't feel any anxiety or stress with giving up that main job, so you can really just take a step into the unknown and have that completely cover what needs to, yeah, what needs to cover for your own lifestyle and your own life. The other biggest challenge I guess we're facing is just time and inconsistent. So which we have been, and we realize that with content marketing, especially with the blog, that the traffic is growing month on month, which is fantastic.
With that comes, you know, more inquiries, more questions to answer, just more things to field, and just more work really. It's not that we're complaining about it because it's working in the right way, but that certainly is a challenge. And what's next for us and our side hustle really is just continuing the growth trajectory that we're on. We're really happy with it. As mentioned, we're growing month on month with the traffic, the blog.
The blog is being more than fueled by the content creation, the research, all the things that go into it. We're just reinvesting the profits that we make from the toothbrushes, and we're very happy to do that. And that's growing, and it's helping us grow the other revenue stream. So really what's next for us is to be consistent, keep growing, and enjoy the journey. [Music]
Thanks so much, Dean.
I really appreciate you sharing those updates with us. Listener's my favorite part of the advice was keep your main job, you know? Just wait till you get to the point where you're making enough revenue that surpasses your current job, and then you have a lot of possibilities, right? It is far less stressful that way when you're not relying on your side business to provide all the income you need to pay your bills and so on. It can just be a fun, creative thing that also pays you.
So that's good. Check out Dean's website at dentalaware.com.au, if you're interested in the dental world, helping thousands of Australians make better dental choices. That's their tagline. But guess what? I was even able to visit his website from outside Australia.
So I guess it's, you know, potentially global. All right, let me know who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than a thousand stories. If you've got a question or an update for us about your side hustle, I'd love to know that too. Just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thanks again for tuning in today.
Hope you'll subscribe and come back tomorrow. New episode every day. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
