This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, hey, what's up? Thanks so much for tuning in today. It's Chris Guillebeau, your host of "Sidus Will School," a daily podcast all about making extra money without quitting your job, becoming an entrepreneur or not. You don't necessarily have to be a capital E entrepreneur, but it is very helpful to create more than one source of income. So that's what we're all about here.
And welcome as well to Throwback Thursday, our weekly segment where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. Now, last week we heard from the longtime parking lot striper, parking lot striper, not to be confused with parking lot stripper, who has also written the definitive how-to guide on the topic. He's been in that business a long time, interesting feature last week, but of course today also interesting. In this feature, we're gonna hear from Vincent Salinto. He is the founder of Mantra Medallions.
We featured him maybe 700 or 800 days ago. So it's been quite a while. Let's hear from him about what's new, what's happened, how has his business changed and evolved. I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap up. [Music]
My name is Vincent Salinto.
I was originally featured on episode 1317 of "Side Hustle School." At that time we were in Jersey City in New Jersey, but we've since moved to Los Angeles. My "Side Hustle School" is called Mantra Medallions, and we sell pocket-sized medallions that have positive uplifting and inspirational phrases on them. So we got started a few years ago because I have a similar medallion from one of my favorite authors. His name is Ryan Holiday. It has the phrase, "The obstacle is the way on it." It's just basically a reminder to lean into discomfort that any difficulty you encounter is more of an opportunity for growth.
So my girlfriend at the time, now fiance Amy, she saw it and wanted something similar for herself. So we talked about what she wanted it to look like, what mantras would encourage her or lift her up, and we just decided to make some. We thought that, you know, if something like that would make her feel good, then it might make other people feel good also. At the time of the original episode, I was working as a bartender, which was good because I could take off whenever I wanted to for traveling or to work on other side hustles. I still do that once in a while for private parties, but my main hustle now is as a freelance writer.
I work for a company called Founder Culture, where we create content and pull stories from all the behind the scenes happenings of different startups, which is cool because it's sort of like being on like a fly on the wall inside these companies, and I'm learning a lot along the way. And also because it's freelance, I still have the same flexibility I had before, but without working until four or five in the morning. When I was first featured on the show, I was still using Instagram DMs to try and reach out to people running meditation or yoga retreats so I could sell medallions in bigger quantities rather than one at a time. At that time, I had just gotten started selling wholesale on a website called Fair and selling on Etsy also. I had a goal of getting into 25 stores by the end of 2020, which I didn't quite reach, but I did get pretty close.
Since then, I've almost stopped using social media entirely, which is maybe not the best business move, but by far the best move for my own mental health. So I check it once a week or about that just real quick, just to see if anyone's trying to get in touch, but that's pretty much it. I've picked up a lot more stores since the original episode. I think I'm in about 50 at the moment. And even though the price there per medallion is a lot lower, selling it wholesale, I do like it better because the orders are in bulk.
It's just as easy for me to mail out 20 medallions as it is to ship out one or two. And then the people buying on Fair are also way more likely to buy again if the medallions sell well in their stores. So I've been really trying to connect with the retailers on there. Instead of using social media, I'm sort of going old school and I've been calling all the stores that bought everything or that I've been calling all the stores that bought wholesale from me through Fair just to say hello, introduce myself and see if there's anything I can do to help them sell more medallions in their stores. And a few of them were caught off guard because probably zero other suppliers that ever called them, but a lot of them were appreciative.
And even if there wasn't anything they needed at the moment, I think they appreciated me reaching out. And it also reminded a few of them that they were out of stock and that they needed to reorder, so that was good. And since I started doing that, I've noticed a few more reorders coming in after that too. In 2021, I had a really good run on Etsy and I had some best selling listings for a little bit. And the listings I was advertising were converting pretty well, but that's kind of falling off in 2022.
So I'm trying to figure out how to handle that situation also. As far as advice goes, one of the things I would recommend is to try and turn complaints into opportunities if you can. Inevitably, if you sell things long enough, even if you have the perfect product, issues do come up. So if anything goes wrong, whether or not it's your own fault, I always go or try to go above and beyond to remedy it. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it's also the easiest, it doesn't really cost anything.
And the times it happens are actually opportunities for you to get good reviews from people and maybe get repeat customers. So if I mess up an order or something gets lost in the mail and I end up having to re-ship it, one thing that I do is always send an extra medallion with a nice handwritten note that says something like, we're sorry your medallion didn't make it to you the first time around. This time we sent it with a travel buddy to make sure it arrives safely. We put an extra in the package and have it for them to share with a family member or friend or even a stranger. One other challenge that we have is figuring out where to drive the traffic that we get.
So do I send it to my website or to the Etsy shop? My website is pretty good, but it's not spectacular. So the conversion rate there isn't as high as it is on Etsy. Etsy also rewards you with more traffic to your shop if you bring customers to their site. And the power of momentum on a platform like Etsy is really important.
You can do well without it, but you can do really well if you can sustain any momentum that you do get. The downside of Etsy is that if you send the traffic to your shop on there, there's also millions of other things for shoppers to look at so they can get distracted and purchase something else instead. So that's just another debate that I'm always having in my head. [Music]
Vincent, thanks so much, man. Really appreciate that update.
I love the strategy of turning complaints into opportunities. Definitely a good tip for many of our listeners. Shout out as well to Ryan Holiday who inspired Vincent's business. Ryan's a good friend of mine. Had the chance to hang out with him several times.
I think he blurbed one of my books. I blurbed one of his. So check out Ryan's work as well, just in case you haven't heard of Ryan, RyanHoliday.com. Vincent's website, mantramedallions.com. Really cool project, as you've heard basically inspirational keepsakes, a commemorative coin that you can keep in your pocket or in your handbag, or maybe just put it up on your desk or your shelf to just kind of remind you of something.
There's a good selection on Vincent's website, mantramedallions.com. Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than a thousand stories. You've got a question or an update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thanks so much for tuning in today. I've got a new episode every single day.
Hope you'll subscribe, follow, come back for more. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
from The Onward Project.
