This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, hello. Thanks for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host of "Side Hustle School." We have been going for almost 1,900 episodes here, 1,900 episodes in a row, 1,895 today. And so one of the things we started doing last year was a new segment called "Throwback Thursday." Conveniently, it happens every Thursday. And what we do is we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them.
And you get to hear directly from Asaita Slur himself or herself, themselves. Last week, we heard from Peter Quinn, creator of amazing Instagram videos made with Adobe After Effects. Peter recently worked on a video with Snoop Dogg, among other things. He has an amazing Instagram account, Peter Quinnstagram. And today in our latest feature, we're gonna hear from Chris Devore.
We first featured Chris in episode 999, "Wildlife Biologist Shoots and Scores with Pond Hockey Gloves." That was our first ever episode on the topic, "Pond Hockey." And now I'm realizing it was our last episode on pond hockey. It was our only episode talking about pond hockey, which is basically outdoor hockey. And I guess I should say our only episode until now because Chris has some exciting updates for us. Let's hear from him a little bit more about his business, what's going on, and I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
My name is Chris Devore.
I run a small business called Third Assist Hockey Company. I'm located in the hockey hotbed of Cookville, Tennessee. And I was on episode 999 back about two years ago. The story of getting started actually, I believe it was somewhat featured on the original episode. So it's funny, it was its own side hustle that I was working on in college.
And I found a really cool manufacturer of hockey gear. And so this original side hustle was a camping business. And this manufacturer said, "Hey, we can make your camping products. By the way, we also make hockey gear, sports gear, baseball gear, whatever." And being a hockey player growing up, and growing up in Alaska, I was always interested in the concept of warmer hockey gear for playing outside. And so I reached back onto this manufacturer.
I said, "Yeah, I can realize you can make the blankets that I'm looking for, but show me one hockey gear you can make." And that's kind of how it started. So they came back to me and said, "You know, we can insulate it with this material, this material, this material." And one of them, they came back and said, "We can line them with wool." And I was like, "If you can make a vintage glove that is lined with wool, I'm intrigued. I'm willing to pay for sample. I'm willing to see it." And they ended up making a sample that was pretty decent quality. And I put it online just to see if there was any interest in just putting it online made of websites.
I knew how to do that. And I heard back from a number of people saying, "What are these in stock?" And so that told me that I should buy at least a small quantity and see what happens. And so that started in 2014 and been going since. My main hustle, or I won't even call it a hustle, my main profession is being a wildlife biologist. So I'm a wildlife biologist.
I've been one for the last 10 years. And this is something that I do one day ends 'cause there's a great work-life balance with my current job. And when the day ends, I can focus on this and I can pull off both without being too stressed the majority of the time. And it's a really fun side hustle that continues to grow a little bit every year. So I was looking up, when I was last featured on the show, I was looking that up and I think we primarily just touched on the gloves.
And the gloves is kind of what got it rolling, got the balls rolling, got everything started. And since then, I was in Maine during that last episode and I actually applied for a couple of young entrepreneur grants. I was able to get one, which was fantastic, a huge boost for that season. And with that little grant that I was able to get, I started to focus on hockey sticks. So I was able to find the one remaining manufacturer of wood hockey sticks in North America, made a contact with them.
It took a lot of digging and went back and forth that seemed to work out quantities and they were able to produce raw sticks for me. So with these raw hockey sticks, I was able to start customizing them. I created an Etsy, so I expanded from my website. So I was able to get into sticks, which has grown. Then I can go further into that.
In addition to the sticks, the sticks provided more of a year round hustle, if you will, but you know, pond hockey, as you can imagine, is mostly October through February. And so I was able to expand into sticks with the extra revenue that came from that. I was able to expand into sweaters and it's continued growing a little bit every year since. If someone wanted to create a similar side hustle, the way that I would go about it is that it's a pretty daunting task. When you think about like, I need to create a product, I need to create a website.
Oh, by the way, I need email marketing. So if you can break down that whole process into a lot of small little steps, kind of from a project management standpoint, that's the way that I look at it. If you can break down the idea of starting a small side hustle into 30 steps of like, "By the way, get the domain, let's figure out shipping." And you can address one of those a day. You could get it started in 30 days. If you break it into chunks and look at it from a task standpoint, you can definitely knock it out.
But I think the idea of actually starting business and looking at a business, for example, like mine, which isn't huge by any means, but it's still daunting nonetheless. So yeah, just break it into those little chunks and knock out one a day and you'll be creating momentum as you go. Something like side hustle school for me, just even though I have my own side hustle going, every episode I feel like I'll hear one thing where I'm like, "Oh, I could probably apply that." And so whether it's side hustle school, whether it's reading books, whatever it is, I feel like you can always take away some nugget that you can apply to your own venture. [Music]
Hey, thanks so much, Chris. Really appreciate you sharing those updates with us.
Thanks as well for recommending side hustle school. We do appreciate that. Listeners, check out Chris's website at thirdassist.com. Thirdassist.com, just like it sounds. They've got gloves, they've got hockey sticks, custom pond hockey jerseys.
That's what I'd love to have and more. Also, let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives in more than a thousand stories. As I said, almost at episode 1900, very soon. If you've got a question or an update for us, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thank you so much for tuning in today.
Take care of yourself out there and do come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
