This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hello and welcome. You are listening to Side Hustle School. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. Now, it's not just intangible items like tutoring lessons or website help that you can DIY. In today's story, you're gonna learn how a couple goes to a baseball game and comes away with a profitable side hustle.
This hustle involves overseas manufacturing of a physical product that is then shipped to the US and then reshipped to customers. Now, one thing I want you to know before I even tell you the story is that in this story, and really in a lot of stories, the idea is more important than the logistics. And we'll talk about the logistics, but the thing is, with a lot of hustles, you can figure out the logistics as you go along. But if you don't start with a good idea, it doesn't matter how smooth your operation is. So today you'll hear about how a good idea went from idea to action and is now earning a solid income.
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Bob Bintz is a huge baseball fan. Whenever he gets the chance, he attends Phillies games at his favorite ballpark in Philadelphia. The love of the sport has transferred to his family as well with his son and daughter both actively playing on local teams, even now that they've grown up. For many years, the only holdout was Barb, Bob's wife. She didn't dislike the sport, but she was more interested in the social aspects of talking with people and cheering on the team while it games.
One day, Barb went to the ballpark wearing a homemade white sweater with red stitching on it that looked like a baseball. Before they'd even left the parking lot and taken their seats at the ballpark, at least 10 women had approached her to ask about it. Several of them said they wanted one. Where could they buy it? Thus was born the ballpark sweaters side hustle.
There was clearly an interest and with Bob's frequent visits to the park, along with Barb, who is now more excited about it, they had an instant market just waiting to be served. Now, Bob wasn't totally new at this world of side hustling. In fact, he'd started a number of things. He had a number of websites related to fantasy sports. He even hosted a weekly 15 minute show on ESPN radio.
And on another project, he'd already been working with a virtual assistant from Bangladesh, which was ideal because to make this project profitable, he knew he'd need to have relatively low manufacturing costs. They started with an order of 200 sweaters. It seemed like a reasonable number, not too many, not too few. It took a few months, but eventually a stack of boxes containing baseball sweaters showed up at the door from China, where the assistant had arranged for them to be manufactured. The first sale came at the very next ballgame when Barb wore the new prototype and walked around the parking lot outside the stadium.
Two women who were tailgating bought sweaters right there. Within 45 days, they'd sold the rest of that initial order and then placed another, making a few adjustments based on what they'd learned from the first batch. These days, the business brings in consistent sales without any real advertising. And it's not just a business, it's also fun. As Bob and I emailed back and forth, he mentioned that the ballpark sweaters hustle has improved his family's life in several ways.
The extra money is nice, of course, but it's also given Bob and Barb something to work on together. Ballpark Barb, as she calls herself, handles the design and administration, while ballpark Bob handles the marketing. Lastly, there are two other important benefits. First, Barb is more interested in attending the games now that she has a financial incentive to do so. And second, every night they go to the stadium, they sell at least one sweater that covers their beer tab.
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So what can you and I learn from this fun story? Well, first up, people are passionate about sports. They want to show their pride, their loyalty. If you're a fan of a sports team, it can be almost like a tribal affiliation. And if you're passionate about sports, it pretty much requires that you spend money on it.
So you're kind of used to it. I mean, technically you can be a fan of any particular sport, any particular team without spending money. But if you're making a product that serves sports fans and it's a good product for them, there's no resistance to it. There's no explanation required. So for Bob and Barb, they already were part of this market.
They were big fans of the team and the market was right there waiting for them. Now as to how to make sweaters, obviously they didn't have a background in that. They just figured it out. Now I don't mean to suggest that this is as easy as some of the other projects that we look at on the show, but the point is it's certainly not impossible. Now Bob mentioned that he had made a few adjustments after the first order.
This is totally normal. In fact, it almost always happens this way. As your idea encounters the marketplace, you gain knowledge about your customers. You have a vision, you have an idea. And even if it's a good idea, that idea can probably be made better as it spreads beyond yourself and to the people who are actually engaging with it, purchasing it, consuming it, being part of the process.
And I wanna make sure that I walk the walk as well. I mean, this is how I do my process too. So I spent about five months putting the show together before anybody knew about it. And now that it's out, I'm actually going back to everything and revising. And as I understand more about what people need and what they respond to, I'm actually recreating a lot of what I initially designed.
And my goal in doing that is to make sure it's helpful. So I've got the next two months or so outlined, but it's not tightly scripted yet because I wanna make sure it's helpful. And I adjusted as I go along to make sure I'm doing the best job I can that I'm truly meeting people's needs through the show. Well, so far this week, in addition to today's story, you've heard about a hospital administrator that has made at least $30,000 helping people with websites. And tomorrow, you're gonna hear one of the stories that convinced me to start this show in the first place.
I'm not gonna tell you any more than that, but it's like this. If you don't like tomorrow's story, you should probably unsubscribe from the show because tomorrow's story is just an amazing classic side hustler narrative. And I do think you'll like it. And I look forward to featuring your story on the show at some point. And your story is probably not gonna develop the same way that you heard about today or that you heard about yesterday.
But there's a theme to all of this. There's an arc to all of it. And if you listen to the stories, you begin applying them to your own hustle. I really do believe you'll see results over time. Remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better.
You can say hi to me on social media @chrisguillebeau or 193 countries, 193 countries on Instagram. I'm Chris Guillebeau, you're listening to Side Hustle School and I'll see you tomorrow.
