This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Feeding the neighborhood one block at a time. Welcome, friends. Welcome to Side Hustle School. Welcome to our first $1,000 segment. It is a weekly feature, in fact, called Your First Thousand Dollars. And as you might guess or know, or at least surmise, it's all about how
somebody makes their first $1,000 with a new side hustle, a new money-making project. Today's project is kind of a B corporation, meaning it's a not-for-profit, but also a for-profit, or let's say they're doing something good, but they're also getting paid for it. And I think it's possible to do both of those things. So we're going to learn how a backyard gardener in Brooklyn joins forces with neighbors to create hyper-local produce boxes, quickly earning that $1,000 with minimal overhead. Her name is Allegra. As noted,
she lives in Brooklyn, New York City. Let's hear the story from her. I'll come back at the end with a few words of wrap up. I'm Allegra, and I live in a small Brooklyn brownstone with an unexpectedly productive backyard garden. For years, I grew far more herbs and vegetables than I could ever use.
Tomatoes, basil, peppers, the works. One summer, my neighbors started dropping hints that they'd happily pay for some of my surplus rather than making the trek to the farmer's market on Saturdays. That simple comment sparked the idea. Why not pull produce from a few neighbors and sell curated, hyper-local boxes? I approached two friends down the street. One had a knack for growing unusual
peppers. The other had a plot filled with kale, zucchini, and edible flowers. We agreed to gather our best produce weekly and package it into small seasonal boxes that we'd sell for $15 each. I wanted to keep the overhead low, recycled cardboard boxes, no fancy labels, and local pickup only. Another neighbor two blocks away offered her front stoop as our pickup spot, which was perfect for a short window on Sunday afternoons. We created a form on Google,
shared it on our neighborhood Facebook and Nextdoor group, and crossed our fingers. To our delight, 10 people signed up the first week. We sold out, netting about $150. Not mind-blowing money, but it was a start. We soon realized that if we expanded the circle of growers, each of us wouldn't have to supply an entire box alone, cutting down on stress and risk.
By week three, four more growers joined. Each contributed whatever they had extra, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, microgreens, and our variety went up, attracting more customers. We stuck to the $15 price point, ensuring each box had a balanced mix. After subtracting small costs like box tape or a few short notice runs to a local supply store, we still pocketed several dollars of profit per box. Multiply that by 30 or 40 boxes a week, and those little margins added up. What helped most was word of mouth. Families chatted in the local playground telling
each other how fresh our produce was compared to supermarket veggies. A few people asked if we'd ever do special boxes for dinner parties or curated ur bundles, which pushed us to experiment. By the end of the second month, we typically sold 50 boxes every Sunday, clearing around $400 in weekly profit split among us. Within a few more weeks, we'd pass a thousand dollar mark in total earnings. We insisted on zero frills packaging and local pickup to keep costs low. Our packaging was
basically old Amazon boxes with minimal labeling. Customers were excited to reduce waste, and we saved a fortune. Because everything was walking distance, no one minded hauling a box home. It was a green grassroots feel that fed our neighborhood vibe perfectly. The venture remains modest by design. We all still have day jobs or other responsibilities, and we don't want to scale
into some massive operation. We prefer a tight-knit community approach. No wasted produce, minimal overhead, and just enough profit to reinvest in compost, seeds, or small improvements. Hitting that first 1K felt satisfying, and we're still having fun. Alegra, thanks so much for telling us that story. I think it's so great to find a way to do something that's making your neighborhood
better, or making some people better off. It could be people who are all the way across the world from you, but they share a common interest, and you found a way to create a project that helps them, and nothing at all wrong with charging for that. Just to be clear, I'm not talking about giving things away for free. I like to do that too. I mean, the podcast every day is free, but it's also okay to build in a revenue model. That's my encouragement for somebody out there who's
pondering their first or their next side hustle, whatever the case may be. I hope you do one thing today to get closer to a goal. You believe in sidehustleschool.com for some resources. A new episode every day. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. I really appreciate your ratings
and reviews, and I hope you'll continue to listen. My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.
