This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hey there, side hustlers, friends, and listeners. Welcome back. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I have the privilege of bringing you a different story every day. And today I'm thinking back to Teresa Greenway's story.
If you've been listening for a while, you might remember that one. It was especially popular. It was episode 237. And I've actually been telling Teresa's story on tour because it's one of my favorites. Teresa is a woman who creates a series of bread baking courses, in particular, sourdough bread.
And long story short, last year she ends up making $85,000 through this series of sourdough bread courses. It ends up changing her life. She actually gets out of poverty, puts a down payment on the first home she's ever owned, all kinds of amazing stuff, all because of her side hustle. I've got a similar story for you today, at least in terms of the content. It's about a former construction inspector who creates a series of online courses to help people who want to enter this industry.
Now, industries like inspection tend to have a lot of barriers to entry. Not just anybody can be an inspector. You have to go through all of this process. And you could probably argue that some of these barriers to entry are good, like it's important for safety, it's important for quality control, and so on. And you could also probably argue that some of these barriers are set up simply to protect the interests of the people already in those careers.
That's also a common characteristic in a lot of barriers to entry for certain careers. But regardless, the point is it takes some effort to enter a field like inspection. So it's not surprising that there's a demand for knowledge, tips, and hacks to fast track that process. So today you'll hear about the former construction inspector who earns close to $200,000, helping students pass exams. Stay tuned for all the details coming right up.
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Gabriel Kramer's side hustle story began in 2011. A former high school teacher who had burned out due to the lack of support from administrators, an all too common story, Gabe had begun a new career as a construction inspector. He'd heard about this career from a cousin who helped him get a job as an entry-level inspector. To advance in the inspection industry, you have to earn certifications by passing exams. The more certifications you have, the more money you can make.
From his education background, which included a master's degree he had studied for online, Gabe had good study habits. In his first year inspecting, he studied for and passed several exams. And that year, even beginning in that entry-level role, he earned more than he did as a teacher. Over the next few years, he continued to gain experience, take more exams, and increase his earning potential further. Then came the next step and the side hustle we're focusing on today.
Every industry, every field has abbreviations in shorthand. Here are a couple of things that are important for this story. SI stands for special inspector, a certain kind of construction inspector, and CERTs is short for certifications. So Gabe's hustle would be called, appropriately, S-I-CERTs, and he got the website, S-I-CERTs.com. To get it up and running, he offered equity to two friends, Dee and Chris.
Dee worked as an internet marketer while Chris was an experienced Photoshop hobbyist. So Dee handled the marketing and Chris designed the site. Finally, he got Dee's brother, Alan, to build the site. Alan was a hobbyist web developer, and Gabe paid him on an hourly basis. He says that having these four people on board from the start was a huge help 'cause it meant that he could focus on course creation, his core skill.
Speaking of skills, one of the main skills of inspectors is reading building plans. To help his students learn, Gabe shipped physical plans to them that complimented the online teaching. He even added his best teaching notes right on the plans. This visual aid was unique to the industry. There were some other people teaching certification study courses, but no one was doing that.
Video marketing was another strategy that was rarely used by anyone else. Therefore, after he created the first course, Gabe shot videos that covered material from the first exam entry-level employees are required to take. He uploaded the videos to a new SISerts YouTube channel, and that channel has brought them a steady stream of traffic over the years. In fact, they've recently reached 300,000 total views. In terms of monetization, SISerts was a success from the start.
Doesn't always work that way, but this time it did. Every year since beginning, Gabe and the partners have been fortunate enough to average 60% revenue growth. Last year, they passed six figures. A big part of this is that Gabe has continued to create more courses around one each year. Many of his students have become repeat customers, and the site continues to benefit from organic search results, as well as all those people who come over from YouTube.
Gabe still works nine to five in the construction industry today. In the title for this episode, we're gonna call him a former construction inspector because he changed roles and moved into business development and then into a marketing director position. He's still employed, he enjoys his job, and he also enjoys spending some time each week growing SISerts. At the time I'm recording, we're almost at the end of 2017, and SISerts is on track to pass $200,000 in revenue by the end of the year. The growth doesn't seem to be slowing.
Like I said, every year it's been increasing, and this construction industry side hustle seems like a good project to keep building on. [Music]
Awesome, I thought this was a really great example. Really good story that we can draw several observations from. Actually had some questions for Gabe after recording that, so I went back and asked him some follow-ups. But first, just by way of contrast, I mentioned Teresa Greenway's story in the beginning.
Her sourdough bread baking courses were on the platform Udemy. Udemy is a marketplace of course content where lots of people are going to learn lots of different things. They have a huge audience, and one of the benefits of doing your course with them or a similar platform is that you're gonna be able to reach a bunch of people you wouldn't otherwise have access to. However, when it comes to something like construction inspection, that is a bit more specialized than something like bread baking. I realize we also talked last week about Jessica Brody in episode 303, she also does Udemy courses.
Now her courses are for writers. They're more specific than that. She does like productivity for writers and I think it's something about developing a script or plotting, but still, there's probably a lot more people that want to write a novel and are on that path than there are people who want to become a construction inspector. So in this case, it made a lot more sense for Gabe to just develop his own platform, essentially, his own website, S-I-CERTs, and then reach customers through search results, through that YouTube series he did, and then over time, building that repeat business. And doing it that way and charging a higher price for your course, Gabe's courses cost about $450, means you're gonna keep a lot more of the money than you would if you were doing a course and uploading it to something like Udemy.
Obviously pros and cons to everything, so you want to think about your situation, what you're developing, and where the best place for it to live is. Now I mentioned in the episode that Gabe assigned equity to a couple of friends who ended up helping with the project. So I wrote to him to ask like, how much equity is each person getting, and how'd you make that decision? He said, well, we used a simple principle when we started. We estimated how much time each of us would need to spend to make the business a success, and those who need to spend more time get more equity.
So when they started, Chris, the web designer, got 10% equity, while Dee, the marketer, was at 20%. He also mentioned his sister, Carmen, who did some custom illustrations for the first course, so she got 10%. And that left him with 60% of the equity. But then they changed it up a year later. Dee got an offer for a new job that was going to be very time consuming, and he basically wouldn't have time to work on SI certs.
So he left the company and relinquished his equity. And at the same time, Chris had actually been kicking ass with design, in Gabe's words, but he had also taken on a valuable role as a business advisor. So to mix things up, Chris's equity increased to 25%. They'd also stopped using the custom illustrations that Carmen had made. She got to keep 2%, but Gabe's equity went to 73%.
Now, if that sounds confusing, you don't have to keep track of it all. Here's how it ended up. Right now, the equity in this business is 73% for Gabe, 25% for Chris, and 2% for Carmen. And I tell you all these details just to illustrate that principle I mentioned. When Gabe started this business, he needed some help.
And so he gave away a portion of the business to a couple of people who had skills that he didn't have. It essentially is a partnership, but it's a bit different than some of the stories you hear, where it's just two people who are kind of in it together, 50/50 split. And I think what Gabe did in working with his friends and his sister was pretty smart, especially in setting it up so that there was flexibility as they went along. If somebody wasn't working on it or was working on it less, they got paid less. Meanwhile, Chris, the web designer, who had really committed, saw his equity increase.
There's some complexity to doing it this way. And of course, you also have to have a good relationship with the people you're doing this with to make sure that everyone is happy and feels like the split is fair. But it's also a lot more intelligent than just dividing it three ways when one person is gonna be doing the majority of the work. And last but not least, remember Gabe is still working his nine to five job. The job has changed a couple of times over the years, but he still has that work he goes to, even though at this point he can probably live off what is a full-time income coming in from these courses.
Just a reminder to always do what's best for you. You may very well not wanna quit your job just because you're making money somewhere else. Or maybe you can't quit your job soon enough. Do what's best for you, determine your own priorities, and set your side hustle goals accordingly. I hope you enjoyed this one.
As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action so much better. Today's show notes are online at sidehustleschool.com/311. That's three one one. Thanks for listening. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
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