This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, thanks for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host of "Side Hustle School." Excited to bring you this episode, episode 1850, 1,850, and this one is part of a new feature we're doing in 2022 called "Your First Thousand Dollars." Now, as you might surmise from the title, it's all about how someone made their first thousand dollars. How did they get to that point? Not their first hundred thousand dollars. You know, that's pretty cool, but it would be a long story, okay?
And here at "Sidal School," we're all about helping people get started, helping ordinary people create really meaningful projects that bring money to them and not just money, but security, confidence, a creative outlet, you know, something entirely new and fresh. And something that I have learned is that once you begin to earn real money, the steps required to go to the next level, whether it is that $2,000, $5,000, or the $100,000, which we often feature here on the podcast, those steps are often easier than the first real paycheck. So I wanna get you to that first real paycheck. And last week we heard from Frank Mortimer, also known as the B-man of New Jersey. Frank has a business he describes as turning $5 bills into $20 bills, also known as selling jars of honey.
And today's first thousand dollar feature comes from Jess Dollar. Her name is Dollar, how about that? That's pretty cool. Jess Thousand Dollars in Athens, Alabama. And we first featured her project back on episode 1368, Mother of Five sells pretty old books.
That is in fact the name of her business, Pretty Old Books. So let's hear about Jess's first $1,000. How did she make it happen? What did it feel like? What did she learn?
As it turns out, she's got several lessons for us. I really love this update. So I'm gonna turn the microphone over to her. [Music]
When I started Pretty Old Books in 2018, I had one product and one platform in mind. I was going to sell vintage book sets by color for Home Decor on Etsy.
I researched the heck out of how to succeed on Etsy as a vintage seller. I looked at all of the other shops in that category and copied best practices from all of them. I spent loads of time making sure I was following all the advice out there on how to start a thriving shop and it worked. I had my first sale within a few days of opening my Etsy shop and it's been continuing to this day. I learned from that experience that preparation and research are vital to success.
No surprise there. The amount of great information you can get for free on how to sell on any of the major marketplaces today is limitless and there's always more to learn. However, the opposite is also true. You must start early before you know what you're doing. I didn't wait until my shop was perfect and my photographs were beautiful to open up for business.
I started with what I had and began the endless process of improving over time, which I still do to this day. Another factor that went into making my first $1,000 was being ready to pivot and expand into spaces I didn't anticipate. This first happened for me very soon after starting my Etsy shop. I had an Instagram account for my shop and would do book haul videos showing all the vintage books that I found while I was outsourcing. Someone messaged me about one of the books I showed and asked if she could buy it.
I had no intention of selling individual books as part of my business strategy, but I was not going to turn down a sale so I figured out how to invoice using PayPal and sold her that book. That quickly turned into hosting Instagram sales of individual books through my stories, which eventually became half of my monthly revenue. This got me to my first $1,000 faster than if I had just insisted on staying with Etsy selling book sets by color. I pivoted again when I started a Shopify store. I envisioned my Shopify store as an extension of my Etsy shop and Instagram sales, a way to make it easier for my existing customers to buy from me and for me to save money by not paying PayPal fees.
But quite suddenly, Shopify became my number one source of sales because of their Facebook integration and that meant that I was now making most of my sales to strangers rather than relying on Instagram and email list followers. And I was doing it with less effort. I want to reiterate that this was a complete accident. I had no plans to sell products through Facebook shops or Facebook marketplace, but because of the Shopify integration, my sales suddenly exploded and changed how I ran my business. My most recent pivot came when I moved from Nashville, Tennessee to a small town in Alabama.
This move caused a big change in the inventory I was able to source for my shop, which corresponded with my increased sales through the Facebook Shopify integration. I now find and sell many more individual books than book bundles. So in the almost four years I've been running pretty old books, I have added platforms and different products. While these were all intentional choices, the consequences and outcomes were unknown. I had to work with what I had and what I had worked because I was flexible enough to adapt.
The bottom line is that I made my first $1,000 by doing contradictory things, have a research with follow through on a plan while also adjusting on the fly according to what my customers wanted. This path has led me to where I am now, making most of my income selling a different product on a different platform in a different state to different people than when I started in 2018. So if there is one lesson I have learned from running pretty old books, it's that there is no one way to do things. In fact, contradictory advice is often the best approach to take. Pick a course of action, research it, execute it, but always be willing to adjust when opportunity arises.
Always ask yourself, is there a better or easier way to do this? Am I giving my customers what they want or what I want? Your first $1,000 will come faster if you have a plan but aren't married to it. - As I said, lots of great lessons there. Thanks so much, Jess.
And notice listeners, what the great Bob Ross might call happy little accidents. Notice that throughout her story. And not just the accidents, but also how she responds to them. Because she pivots in the first place with these Instagram stories that are kind of taken off and actually producing sales that she wasn't expecting. And then Shopify.
And then she moves from, I believe it was Nashville to North Alabama to a small town. And she has to make some changes there because of supply. So all along the way, she's making these adjustments. And as she said, I didn't wait until my shop was perfect. I had to work with what I had and what I had worked.
I mean, I love that. I wrote that down as I was listening to it myself. And also I made my first $1,000 by doing contradictory things. Pay attention to this. Listeners, pay attention to that.
Pay attention to customer demand. In these situations, sometimes it's good to just say, I know what I want to make and that's how it works. And I'll find the right customers for it. In other situations, it's much better to say, what do my customers want? There's a range of things that I could probably provide to them.
So why wouldn't I give them what they want the most? If I want to find momentum as opposed to inertia, as opposed to plateauing. If I want to find something that's easy that kind of flows, well, if I've got something that people want, that's a lot easier than trying to sell something that I have to persuade them about. Anyway, I could say a lot about that, but Jess put it much better than me. Thanks again to Jess for telling us about her first $1,000.
I hope you found it encouraging. Check out her website, prettyoldbooks.com. Prettyoldbooks.com, where she offers vintage books for everyone, love that too. Or follow her on Instagram @prettyoldbooks. That's it for today.
If you've got a question or an update for us about your hustle, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. There's also a notes page, sidehustleschool.com/1850. I'll be back tomorrow. I hope you subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. Join me again for another short action-packed and hopefully helpful episode.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
