Former NFL Player Sells Ice Shakers for $20,000/Month Income

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

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"Twas the night before book launch," a poetry reading from side hustle school. "Twas the night before book launch and all through the land. "People waited at bookstores, their wallets at hand. "Some had shopped online and awaited the mail. "They knew this book would help them not fail.

"From idea to income in 27 days, "a step-by-step process to get through the maze. "The author was packing, the cat was napping. "It was time to begin a new phase." Greetings, friends and listeners. It's Chris Guillebeau here with you. There is, in fact, a side hustle story today, not just a poetry reading.

That story is about a former professional football player who creates a $20,000 a month revenue stream that all started during a trip to the gym on a hot Texas day. That story in just a moment. [Music]

Chris Gronkowski's side hustle started last year on a 100 degree day in Texas. That's Fahrenheit, by the way. In Celsius, it's a lot of Celsius.

He was headed to the gym with his plastic shaker water bottle. By the time he arrived, condensation was everywhere. His car's cup holder, his hands, and his clothes. To add insult to injury, when he took a sip of the water, it was warm. This was a crisis, so when he got home from the gym, he went straight to his computer, hoping to find and purchase an insulated shaker bottle to replace his uninsulated plastic bottle.

But he couldn't find anything that fit his needs. Well, guess what? Chris was already working with a manufacturer for his day job, Everything Decorated, an online shop that personalizes just about everything. So once he had a basic design in mind, he reached out to that manufacturer contact to see about getting a prototype made. It took a couple months of tweaking, but he finally got a prototype that was good enough for production.

Another two months after that, and he had his first shipment ready to sell. In total, it only took him six months to go from idea to ice shaker, an insulated stainless steel bottle that can hold ice for over a day and doesn't create condensation on the outside. Side note, idea to ice shaker sounds pretty cool. If only I'd had that phrase when choosing the subtitle for the side hustle book, which is from idea to income in 27 days. Next time, it's gonna be ice shaker.

While the prototyping process was going on, Chris was also getting his marketing in place. He used Shopify and he hired someone to build out the site for him. In total, he spent about $4,000 getting things up and running, just waiting for products to sell. Now, this is where Chris's past career comes into play. I haven't mentioned this so far, but Chris is a former NFL player who played fullback for the Dallas Cowboys, Indianapolis Colts and the Denver Broncos.

And because of that, he already had a pretty decent following on social media with 20,000 followers on Instagram and over 45,000 followers on Twitter. Chris was able to effectively market to his own accounts while building up followers on his new company accounts. It also helped that he had a brother, Rob Gronkowski, who had 2 million followers and was happy to help spread the word. Now that part may have just been good luck, but Chris was also smart because he wanted to sell on Amazon, but he set up his Amazon seller account ahead of time so that he wouldn't be marked as a new seller once he had products to sell. He wanted to look like he was an established seller who had been there for a while.

So when he only had prototypes and wasn't trying to actually sell them, he put together that account and made the listings just so they'd be there. But that same day, somebody came and bought three. Now he had a total of five prototypes, so he had to ship three of his five samples to the buyer. He knew he had a great product, but that instant sell gave him an extra boost of confidence. The first month he launched, he brought in about $3,500 in revenue, 3,500.

That rate continued for a couple of months and Chris said he was a little disappointed at first. He thought he was instantly gonna sell a ton of products the day they launched, but he realized you need to build some customer trust before they want to buy your new product that they'd never heard of. Even if they've heard of you, they don't necessarily want to buy the product. But he said once we had about 30 reviews up, our sales really started to increase. So that made a big difference and when we talked about six months into this project, he was bringing in $20,000 in revenue each month.

His company's social media following has also grown to more than 5,000 on Instagram, number 17,000 on Twitter. Now, even though his ice shaker side hustle has taken off so quick, Chris is still putting all his profits back into the company. He's added two color choices to the original cup and he's also working on another version of the cup based on customer feedback. In addition to the extra income, which will probably end up being something like six figures net in year two, if not year one, Chris also likes that the product is in the fitness industry, which means he just gets to be himself while he's taking photos and videos to promote his product. Self-marketing, a hot Texas day and a big side hustle success.

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Awesome, from idea to ice shaker. I especially love that tip about Amazon, about if you want to sell on Amazon or somewhere else, register that account sooner rather than later. And in the case of Amazon, it's so he wouldn't be marked as a new seller, which as a buyer, you might be skeptical about. If you're just kind of browsing and you see something you want to buy, but you wonder, is this legit? Should I just click away and purchase something else?

And I think this is good for other stuff too, not just Amazon. So if you have an idea, especially if you have a brand name in mind or something that you might call your side hustle, why not think about where you might want to use that one day, even if you don't have any immediate plans and go and register those accounts. There's usually no cost to do that. It just takes a minute or two of your time per account. And that way you kind of leave your options open for later and perhaps it might even inspire you to take further action sooner.

Well, as always, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/261. I'm Chris Guillebeau. This show is for you. It's called "Side Hustle School," and I'll see you tomorrow with another story and a big day.

Bye for now. [Music]