Yoga Mat Reseller Changes Lives While Earning $4,000/Month

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

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Hey there, what's up? Welcome back to Side Hustle School. I'm Chris Guillebeau. Have a really great, fun, and different story for you today. It's a social good story.

It's about somebody who's changing the world. And because it's Side Hustle School, they're not just changing the world, they're also making money doing it. Which is, of course, the best of both worlds. This story is about a London fundraiser who creates a female-led social movement and happens to earn more than 3,000 pounds or about $4,000 a month from it. I'll tell you what it's about and how she does it.

But first, as I was working on the notes, I really liked some advice that she had about focusing. So I just wanna share this with you right off the top so you don't miss it. She says, "I would suggest when you're starting out, "focus on one strategy at a time. "I try to focus on about a million things at once, "but it's so much easier if you spend one month "contact magazines, for example, "or a month doing social media, "or a month working on an AdWords campaign. "And it may sound like you're all over the map, "but you'll actually be able to see "what's working and what isn't.

"I thought that was interesting and counterintuitive, "perhaps a bit contrarian, and I love contrarian thinking. "So I wanted to make sure you didn't miss that." [Music]

Until two months ago, Laura Sin Gupta was working on the fundraising team for an environmental charity in London. She also had a dream, perhaps a dream much like yours, since you're listening to Side Hustle School. And that dream was to create a different source of income for herself, perhaps even one she could rely on for her primary income. But it wasn't just about money, Laura had two other important motivations.

The first was she wanted that new source of income so that she could travel. She's always been restless. She loves heading out with a backpack by herself. She thought if she could create a location-independent business, she could fulfill her travel work dream. But that's not all.

Second, she wanted to create a female-led social movement. She was inspired by companies like Tom Shoes and several others, but they all seem to have male founders. And she thought, why not start a female-founded and led business that focuses on empowering women worldwide? On a recent trip to her homeland in Calcutta, India, she had an idea. As a yoga lover for the past six years, she was starting to get frustrated with the depth of her practice.

She wanted to feel connected to something deeper and bigger than just the physical postures. This frustration made her look at what yoga actually meant to her, which was a devotional practice, both toward herself and to others. That's when she had the inspiration of somehow connecting the East and the West through yoga and creating what she thought of as a giving loop. Unfortunately, she had just the right product in mind. The product she wanted to sell was cork yoga mats.

So first of all, why cork? Laura believes cork hugely outperforms its rubber and plastic counterparts. Cork is grippier, it's more natural, and it's antibacterial. So in other words, it's a superior material, or at least some people believe it is, and whether it's superior or not, at least it's very different from other yoga mats. Laura wanted to find a way to combine a huge popularity of yoga in the West with her desire to create futures for vulnerable communities.

At the time, her family in Calcutta had been working with an organization that supports survivors of human trafficking. Laura then developed a partnership of that organization. The partnership provides jobs to the women who end up making the yoga mat gift bags. This is what she was thinking of with the giving loop. For every natural cork yogis mat purchased, she provides a contribution towards a training course for one woman or girl.

And for every cork yogis bag purchased, cork yogis provides jobs creating steps toward financial independence. All right, that's the social side of things. What about the business side? When Laura started the business, she didn't know what she was doing, but of course that didn't stop her. She did a big pre-launch campaign to get her name out before she had received her first batch of stock.

She wasn't actually thinking anyone would buy them, but she made five sales. Now that was a small problem because she didn't have five yoga mats to send out. But still, she was excited, she was thrilled, she thought maybe this actually won't fail. Or in other words, maybe it'll actually work. So she wrote to each of those five buyers and asked if they could wait a bit.

She took out a loan to buy her first batch of 100 mats. She used free tools and learned to do everything herself rather than paying for help. She says it was a steep learning curve, but she's learned so much. You might think it's a bit of a stretch to think that you two could establish a location independent income like Laura's, but you really do need a flexible mindset. You might even have to bend over backwards to find your side hustle, but it's worth it.

Before I sign off, I wanna give a shout out to someone else doing a social good project, another female-led social movement that is also a business from San Diego. Jenny R. Inamini has started this social good project called Solo Eyewear, and it's focused on providing eye care to people around the world who don't have access to it. And they do this project not through the lens of a charity, at least not explicitly, but through a business that was started as a side hustle. So it's a great story as well, and I'll also include a link to Solo Eyewear on the show notes page.

Speaking of show notes, those are at sidehustleschool.com/196. I hope you enjoyed this episode. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. I'll be back with you again tomorrow. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.

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