14 Year Old Cooks Up A Storm With $250 A Month Condiment Business

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Hey there, it's Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. I'm excited to begin a new week. This is a big week for me. I've got the World Domination Summit beginning in Portland for our seventh year. We've got all kinds of people coming to town.

Tonight is our volunteer orientation. We have some meetups and activities beginning tomorrow. On towards the end of the week, we have academies, which are half-day workshops, and then all of this culminates in one really big weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, all day. Now, obviously, a lot of folks are listening to Side Hustle School from all over the world and are not in Portland this week. So not to worry, of course, the show will continue every day.

I've got some good stories this week. Today's is about a 14-year-old side hustler who was given a school project and decided, instead of just creating a business plan, she would actually create a business. I love this story. I'll tell you how she cooks up a storm with a spice and condiment business right after this. [Music]

When most eighth graders are handed a school project, they hope to come out with a good grade, a little praise, and maybe enough time left over to hang out with their friends.

But Emily Rudnick in Denver, Colorado isn't most eighth graders, because when she was handed her school project, she came out with a full-blown spice business and more than $250 a month in her back pocket. See, over the course of the past few years, Emily has spent literally hundreds of hours in her kitchen laboratory with her father, David, creating spice blends. They'd been playing around with ingredients, trying to come up with a hot new seasoning that could kick the competition. The first few iterations of the product were a bit lacking, though. After cooking one of their first attempts, the whole family had to vacate the house for a day and leave all the doors and windows open.

There was no chance of a burglar strolling in with the sinus-burning effect of what they'd left over. Perhaps if she'd not found a successful recipe, she'd have found herself making a replacement for pepper spray instead. After realizing it was tricky to go it alone, Emily and her father called in help from another local business, the Sabre Spice Shop, where they learned more about the art of making spices and began to perfect the recipe for the spice that bears her family name, red spice. Then came the day where at her hometown school of Aspen Academy, Emily was asked to put together a business plan and to compete in the school's own version of Shark Tank. But never wanting to take the easy road, she decided she wanted to return with a fully-fledged business and a product to sell.

After receiving the assignment, she contacted the staff of the Sabre Spice Shop once more to enlist their help in turning her and her father's hobby into a viable side hustle. And it was here she learned her first real lessons in business. The shop's co-owner, Janet, offered Emily a beneficial exchange. If she could make the product more accessible to people and reduce the amount of money she spent on making each vial of the spice, she'd put it on the shelves in her stores. Going back to the drawing board, Emily managed to find a similar blend of spices that more people could eat without their eyes watering and bring the cost of each mixture down to $2.74 to make.

That same recipe now stands on the shelves of the shop, retailing at $6 a bottle. After $250 in startup costs for her spices and materials, and 45 days after receiving the assignment, Emily returned to her school with the business plan in hand and 250 bottles of red spice that she'd handmade for people to buy. Her teachers were impressed, but they weren't surprised. They knew this fiery 14-year-old was always capable of something magical. Next, Emily knew it was time to take red spice to a wider market.

But to do that, she was gonna need more money, and she didn't wanna take any more from her current investor, her father, David. So she decided to crowdfund her project through Kickstarter and get the capital that she needed. After a few weeks of word of mouth marketing, as well as getting her story featured in the local newspaper, Emily's Kickstarter reached more than $2,700 in funding. And interestingly, her Kickstarter page essentially served as an e-commerce site because a lot of people pledged to the campaign to purchase the product. Emily is now making at least $250 a month from red spice, but so far she's investing it all back into her business or her college fund, and even though the school project is long over, red spice continues to heat up.

In fact, there's now three red spice products, the original five spice product from her project, a slightly hotter tin spice blend, and a cooking rub. Now, if you were to follow in Emily's footsteps, she has a word of advice for you. She says before charging for your product, give it out for free in gift baskets to friends and get their feedback, and then adjust your product from there. She says not only does this get people talking about what you're doing, but it allows you to have a much better product once you start charging for it. The overall goal for red spice is to replace salt and pepper on your kitchen table, but between now and then, she's focusing on getting the product in local restaurants, reaching out to farmer's markets, and creating more bottles to put on more retail shelves.

This is a side hustle with a real kick. [Music]

Side hustle school listeners, I hope you're enjoying this show. I hope you appreciate the values and perspective from each story. How should you live your life? By seasoning the moment.

Don't herb your enthusiasm. Spice up your hustle. Mustard up your courage. When the time comes for you to take action, season the day. I want to hear a story of your success.

I want to know what you're doing to create something for yourself, something you can point to and say, "I made that, I did that." As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes, including more info on red space, are at sidehustleschool.com/191. That's 1-9-1. If you have a question for the show, give me a call on the Hustle Hotline 8449 Hustle. I'm Chris Guillebeau, spicing it up for side hustle school.

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