This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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All right, all right, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is Chris Guillebeau. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Welcome as well to Throwback Thursday, our weekly segment, where we take a look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them.
Now, last week we heard from a full-time voiceover artist. Other features this year have included a land surveyor who changes careers when he discovers an accidental side hustle, painting, signs, and murals. That is now a full-time six-figure business. And of course, many other episodes as well. Today, in our latest feature, we'll hear from Cecilia Ibrahimi in Nashville, Tennessee.
Now, Cecilia does a lot of things. I have a long list of notes here. I'll try to summarize. She is a musician, a real estate agent. She recently bought a restaurant, as well as something called a salt cave.
So perhaps another episode, we'll come back and talk about the salt cave. What we're gonna hear about here today is her side hustle with a business called Music City Luggage Lockers. And this business offers short-term luggage storage for tourists visiting Nashville. So what has happened since we first featured her? Lots of stuff, it turns out, including a copycat who kind of came along and duplicated her business model for themselves, which cut into her customer base, as you will hear.
But you'll also hear how she handled it. So all of this from Cecilia, brief comments from me at the end. [Music]
Hey everybody, my name is Cecilia Ibrahimi from Nashville, Tennessee. And the name of my side hustle is Music City Luggage Lockers. And I was featured originally on episode 948 on Side Hustle School.
I got started with this side hustle about three and a half years ago as a Lyft driver. And I had a music studio. And I would wake up early in the morning and go make a hundred bucks so I could take my kids out to the movies on Sunday afternoons. And the more I worked on the weekends, the more I saw tourists lugging their luggage from their Airbnb to the restaurant, to the Country Music Association, anywhere they were going, the bars. And I felt a lot of compassion for them.
And I was already a Lyft driver, so I'd passed a million background checks. I had a music studio with fingerprint access, so I knew it was safe. And I talked to my customers about storing their luggage for them. And they thought it was a brilliant idea. And so I dropped them off and then pulled over and I started a .com and a Facebook page called Music City Luggage Lockers.
And it was born from there. A lot has happened since I've been on this show. And I'm glad to report that Music City Luggage Lockers is still alive and well. And as we moved forward, I moved from my music studio to a restaurant where I bought a restaurant in Midtown. So I went from the neighborhood of Germantown to the neighborhood of Midtown.
And then I bought a salt cave in Green Hills. So we moved the business to Green Hills. We weren't as busy because we were further from the epicenter of the tourism, but we still made a little bit of money. And then, boom, the pandemic happened and all of the high-touch businesses, which I've been doing for years, had to get shut down. And so last July, I reopened Music City Luggage Lockers and because I'm a realtor also, I get free office space downtown.
So I stepped into there and I said, "Hey, I'd like to rent an actual room from you and see if I can open one of my other businesses up." And they were open to the idea. And then I think within about three weeks, we blew up. We served almost 150 customers a day, which is a ton of tourism. And the building I was in was a professional office building with lawyers. And we had tourists coming in and out of there and opening their suitcases in the lobby.
And this was a high-security office building downtown. So they made me move. They invited me out of my lease, which sucked, for simplicity's sake. So I found a place one block away and business was amazing for about two or three weeks. And then suddenly on our busiest day Sunday, I showed up for work and there was a guy in the lobby.
And apparently he saw like all the business I was doing and decided to copycat my business. And so he was a better marketer than me. And he took probably 85% of my customers. And I spoke with the management about, how certain businesses cannot co-exist and things like that. And they didn't care.
And so I just made the decision to pivot because I love my business. I've always loved serving my tourists here in Nashville, Tennessee. And I really care about what I do. And I'm actually the first woman in Nashville to start this business, this side hustle and the second person in Nashville, three and a half years ago. And so we just decided to go 100% mobile.
And I have a public storage building now that's insured with video cameras everywhere. And I just pick up their luggage. I take it to the storage room, which is right downtown and market the luggage, take pictures of it. And I'm still making money, so I'm happy. The advice I'd give someone who wants to follow in my footsteps, first and foremost is I do love healthy competition.
I am totally okay with healthy competition. I think the first job I even tried to do as a child was pony rides. That's not an original idea. I just happened to have a pony in a front field and some markers and a piece of paper and was able to put the marker for the paper out there and get customers. So I am not at all opposed to copycatters.
I'm not opposed to people that can take an idea and absolutely help more customers and more people in more areas. That to me is vital for the whole intention that I started this business was to serve my customers and to make their experience here in Nashville, Tennessee better and more seamless for them as they come and visit our great city. So for me, the advice I would give is find your own passion and find that thing that you love to do and find that niche where you feel in your heart that you want to serve your community and solve a problem and hopefully turn it into something bigger or just be satisfied with serving that community and that niche only. [Music]
Thank you so much Cecilia. Really appreciate those detailed comments.
I love that you're doing so many different things. I'm the same way. And well done on handling this copycat. Definitely annoying, but I'm glad that Cecilia was able to pivot. And it sounds like she's actually found ultimately a better solution in terms of being completely mobile, a very hands off in the business as opposed to something that is much more customer intensive and relying on lots of contacts and back and forth and such.
So well done persevering. Thanks again Cecilia. Listeners, check out her website, musiccityluggagelockers.com. If you happen to be visiting Nashville, don't go to the copycat, go to her. She has a special online where they will pick up, hold and drop off up to six bags for a flat rate of $75.
Pretty cool to have it all kind of tied together if you are staying at an Airbnb or, you know, otherwise on a vacation where you've got a lot of stuff, you're gonna need a place to put it. So it's an interesting little business in terms of a solution to a problem as well. Okay, that's all for now. Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than a thousand stories. If you've got a question or an update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions.
Thank you again for tuning in. Hope you'll take care of yourself. Check on somebody you know and come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
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From the Onward Project.
