This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Greetings and welcome back. This is Side Hustle School. I am your host, Chris Guillebeau. I have the privilege and honor of cheering you on in your side hustle, providing a story for you every day of how a regular person, usually with a day job or otherwise just kind of live a normal life, finds a way to enter the world of entrepreneurship, not by taking a huge risk, but by using the skills they already have, maybe learning something new, expressing their creativity, but also making money. And today's story is pretty cool.
It is about a stay-at-home dad. And in addition to his other responsibilities, this stay-at-home dad starts a coffee roasting hustle. It actually ends up bringing in a good amount of money. And he also has a very unconventional method of roasting, or at least powering the machine he needs to do the roasting. This is the story of a Canadian, a creative outlet, a batch of coffee that burst into flames, and even a stationary exercise bike.
That whole story is coming up right after this. [Music]
Michael Russo first started roasting his own coffee in 2015 because it was impossible to find a fresh roast where he was living. At the time, he and his family were in Perry Sound, Ontario, about two hours north of Toronto, and about an hour from the closest fresh roasted coffee. As a stay-at-home dad, Michael had long wanted a side hustle that would serve as a creative outlet and also be manageable while the kids were sleeping or otherwise engaged. And that's how fire bean coffee came to be.
Released how the idea came to be. Michael started simply by hand spinning a half pound of green coffee beans in a metal bowl with a long metal rod over a maple wood fire. Or at least he thought it would be simple. The first batch actually burst into flames. Oops.
But after a bit of trial and error and a lot of practice, he eventually got it down and could make each batch light, medium, or dark. He also did some research on how coffee beans should be roasted. He fell in love with both the process and the history. Splitting the wood, stoking the fire, spinning the beans, Michael was in it for the creative hands-on experience. And as an added bonus, he got fresh roasted coffee out of the deal.
He started just by selling the coffee to friends and family, but even doing that, he soon outgrew his hand spinning capacity. When he and his family moved back to Whitehorse in the Yukon territories, he kept up with the coffee roasting and the sharing, but he knew he needed a larger, more efficient setup. Around that time, he looked upon a brand new cast iron pizza oven. Now you may wonder, what does a pizza oven have to do with roasting coffee? Well, Michael outfitted it with a metal drum and then connected the drum to a heavy duty chain, which linked up to a stationary exercise bike.
Using the stationary exercise bike to power the cast iron pizza oven, with 15 minutes of cycling, he could now roast six pounds of coffee, plus get some exercise. Once he had this new system set up, he began to scale up. He decided to split his marketing time between social media and grassroots marketing. And for him, that grassroots marketing meant donating to silent auctions for community events, selling at farmer's markets and holiday shows, and just giving coffee away as gifts. It also meant being conscious about who he's connecting with and where he's selling his products.
So for example, he's careful to only pitch or sell his coffee at farm-oriented local or organic retail stores. He's noticed that those kind of customers value the local high quality handmade coffee he makes. And since he was just starting as a side hustle, he would rather focus on fewer high value customers and partners and spread himself too thin, trying to sell to anyone and everyone. A smart approach that you probably heard from other side hustle school stories. Now this is going pretty well.
Michael's main consumable costs are for the coffee itself, firewood and the bags, which he hand stamps with his logo. His website is run on Square. I'll link that up. He accepts payments through his website, as well as cash, check and e-transfer. Now from this simple bootstrap user powered approach over the past two years, Michael has gone from roasting one 150 pound sack of beans every two months to one sack every 15 days.
Now the retail price is about $55 Canadian for three pounds. So this has actually turned into a pretty lucrative side hustle for Michael and his family. He's essentially making a full-time income from what started as a hobby. Still, as much as Michael appreciates this extra income, he also greatly appreciates the creative outlet and the fact that he created something out of nothing. The ability to work from home with the kids around not only saves on daycare, but it also means he gets to teach his kids about the coffee business and maybe even put them to work.
He also really enjoys surprising people with great coffee made with low-tech equipment. [Music]
Well, this story was a bit of a personal throwback to me. I never actually roasted coffee. I looked into that, but I never made it past the distribution phase. Long ago, I imported coffee from Jamaica, repackaged it in the kitchen of my apartment, shipped it all over North America and discovered the side hustle way for myself.
I'm still a lover of coffee myself. I just don't sell it anymore. And I like the story because you might think, well, there's already a lot of people selling coffee, making coffee, roasting it, distributing it. And that's true, but there's a lot of different kinds of coffee. There are a lot of different kinds of coffee drinkers.
I have no idea how many roasters there are in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. We're definitely a coffee capital, but Michael's been able to take advantage from a different perspective because where he lives, there are not a ton of roasters. There's not an abundant supply of amazing, organic, well-roasted coffee. So that's been able to work well for him. Congratulations, Michael.
Do you like coffee? Do you like tea? Do you like something else? What are you into? What do you like that other people like?
What do other people compliment you on? What do they ask you about? These are the kinds of things you should be thinking about. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Check out today's show notes.
We'll include a link to Michael's site as well as some info about that payment system square at sidehustleschool.com/187. If you've got a comment or question for the show, or if you want to give a shout out to someone who's helped you along the way, give me a call and leave a message on the Hustle hotline that is 8449HUSTLE, or you can record a quick little voice note with your phone and email that message to podcast@sidehustleschool.com. Hope you have a wonderful day wherever you are. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]
