This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there friends, welcome. Thank you for tuning into Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host. And today's episode is part of a new feature we've been doing in 2022 called Your First Thousand Dollars. This feature has been very popular so far.
And as you might surmise from the title, it's all about how someone makes their first thousand dollars. Throughout the archives of the show, I've told you lots of stories of people who have made a hundred thousand dollars or multiple six figures, millions of dollars sometimes, which is all very cool and awesome and inspiring and amazing. But when you're just starting off, that can be hard to relate to. So I thought it would be great to highlight this, the very simple origin story of the first thousand dollars. So with that in mind, today's feature comes from Jodi Bro in Maine.
We first featured Jodi back on episode 1105, Librarian invents eco-friendly dental floss. Jodi is indeed the creator, the inventor of dental lace, which you're gonna hear about in her update. It's actually done very, very well, reached people all over the world. But what about her first thousand dollars? How did she make that happen?
What did it feel like? And what did she learn? Let's hear it from Jodi, and I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap up. [Music]
Hello there. My name is Jodi Bro, and I'm the creator of Dental Lace Refillable Floss.
I was originally featured on Side Hustle School episode 1105, and I wanted to share how we started our business. First, let me say our first one thousand dollars was earned because I had created a totally unique product that without me fully realizing it, people were actually looking for. You see, I really hated plastic dental floss. It was so ugly, and I knew the plastic wasn't good for the environment. So I created a dental floss that is fashionable and eco-friendly.
I called it Dental Lace Refillable Floss. I started with my lipstick. I figured there had to be a way to turn it into a refillable dental floss container. My husband being an engineer and his friends were up for the challenge. They helped me design the container and made prototypes using a three-day printer.
While they were working on the dispenser, I went searching for a floss manufacturer. I started in Maine and then around the US. Honestly, I think they thought this woman was crazy. No one was doing it, and they just couldn't see my vision. Eventually, I realized the container was going to be plastic, and I couldn't find floss, so I started over.
I'm a former librarian, so when I say start over, what I mean is research. I headed to a public library and then spent hours on the web. And this went on for months until one day on Alibaba, I found a Chinese supplier with a refillable container in silk floss. It's actually the design we use today, and that's how we started. But now we've just launched a new dispenser from China and floss from Italy.
It's so fun looking back to the first days of being in business. It was just me in a spare bedroom with piles of boxes around me filled with inventory and labels and packaging. I'd been working on a Shopify online store, not a very good one, I might add. I wanted to test it, so I sent the link to my sister and asked her to make a purchase. And without telling me, she posted the link on Facebook.
Later that day, I went in to work on the website and I could see that there were orders. What the heck, orders? Granted, they were from my mom and a college buddy, but I had orders. I had orders, but no idea how to fulfill them. The product wasn't assembled, it wasn't packaged.
I hadn't figured out how to ship it, so I scrambled. I ran to Staples for Envelopes, I assembled product on the fly, then ran to my local post office with handwritten addresses on the padded envelopes. It went on like this for weeks with a number of orders growing each week. No marketing campaign, no ads, just word of mouth. Just me hustling.
I needed help. My good friend Cheryl, she helped me with the online store and shipping. I purchased a label printer, so I didn't have to hand write the addresses. And then, a well-known author and blogger, Beth Terry, who wrote My Plastic Free Life, agreed to review Dentalase. She posted a positive review and then sales really started to grow.
Other bloggers, like Trashes for Tossers, contacted me and away we went. Then one day, a retailer contacted me. She wanted to carry our line. Line? I have a line?
Once again, I hustled and figured out how to offer our products wholesale. It went on like this for about 18 months. Dentalase Inc. was at home. I'd hired high school students and a retiree to help me assemble product while I shipped from our kitchen.
My husband and I had lost the use of our garage, our dining room, and our guest bedroom. There were empty shipping boxes stacked everywhere. Each day, I would drop off hundreds of orders at the local post office until I couldn't take it anymore. We purchased a facility and hired employees and had been humming along ever since. That's how it all began.
Dentalase Refillable Floss is sold at our retail store, over 300 independent retailers in the US, and we have seven international distributors who serve 11 countries. Plus, we have retailers in 40 countries. We survived the pandemic and look forward to ridding the world of harmful plastic dental floss. - Congratulations, Jody, that's amazing. Over 300 independent retailers in the US and also in 40 other countries, if I heard that correctly, all from following up on an idea.
Even if, as Jody said, other people thought she was crazy. Listeners, if you've got an idea that other people think you're crazy about, maybe consider if they're the ones who are crazy, or maybe no one's crazy, they just can't understand your idea. In any case, thanks again, Jody, for telling us about your first $1,000. Listeners, I hope you found it encouraging. Check out her website, dentalase.com, just as it sounds, Dental Lace, or follow her on Facebook or Instagram, also @dentallace.
Today's show notes, sidehustleschool.com/1899. 1899, what? That's right, we are almost to 1,900 episodes, also, I believe, on the calendar, the Ides of March coming up tomorrow. Lots of stuff in the mix, as always. Thank you for joining me.
Hope you'll subscribe or follow, keep listening. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
