This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Rise and shine. Let's talk about the coffee grinder that made $300,000. $300,000. And in fact, it was $300,000 when we first ran a version of this episode years ago. So I'm pretty sure it's sold many more thousands of dollars, many more hundreds of thousands of dollars since. It is one
of our early years stories from 2018, I believe. If you happen to be listening back then, well, it's completely new now. We rerecord everything. And if you didn't hear this story, well, now it's entirely 100% new to you. We're going to talk about a petroleum engineer who finds the perfect item to resell on Amazon. You'll never guess what it is. Well, I already told you actually it is the
humble coffee grinder. I actually have one of these in my kitchen. I have been using it for, I think about, I don't know, five years or more. So I am a fan of this product. And if you also enjoy a good cup of coffee in the morning, then you might appreciate this episode because it's another coffee lover who combines his love of coffee with his love of creating projects. So
it goes on to sell, as I said, $300,000 plus with this product. And I'll also give you a couple of action steps if you'd like to try reselling something on Amazon yourself. Alright, detailed stories coming up. Going to tell you about this very profitable and also just useful and fun and cool coffee grinder. Raj Chahal was like a lot of us. He was knee deep in student debt. He owed
almost $50,000. He was trying to help out his parents. And he was also working hard to climb the corporate ladder as an engineer at Chevron. Trying to please the corporate overlords day after day was exhausting. And Raj dreamed of stepping out of the rat race. He wanted to work for himself,
move back to Houston to be with his long distance girlfriend and stop sacrificing his happiness for the sake of a multinational corporation. So Raj began reading books, listening to podcasts, going through courses on online business. He dabbled with a few ideas, but eventually labeled on private labeling products to sell on Amazon after meeting someone who'd had success. Making coffee by hand was one way Raj centered himself each morning. He was passionate about good coffee and he wondered if he could capitalize on the growing specialty coffee movement for his hustle. He researched possibilities on Kickstarter, Amazon and other
platforms to see what kinds of devices were selling really well. And the answer was clear, coffee grinders, not the big bulky automatic ones, but the small handheld manual ones. Raj's grinder would be small, lightweight, used frequently and it would sell in the 20 to $30 range. It could also act as a gateway product to selling something else in the future and it was perfect for selling on Amazon. Now at the time there was a generic coffee grinder making the rounds that was selling well, but it had zero branding on it. The company that sold it had no
website. When Raj saw the same design on Alibaba, the idea clicked. He would use that existing product to create his own grinder that he would promote with creative, passionate branding. And just to be clear, there's nothing copycat about that that's totally allowed in the world of Fulfilled by Amazon. After a couple of weeks of confusing emails and a few phone calls, Raj found a manufacturer that would make 200 units to start off. That was about a thousand dollar
investment on his end. And thus Java Press sprang to life with the turn of a sharp steel blade. With that order placed, Raj started getting all the logistics. He sent in his official business documents, signed up for an account on Amazon and got approved for order fulfillment from one of their warehouses. Continually waking up at 5 a.m. to work on his hustle was rough, but his morning
routine of making coffee, writing a gratitude list, and making a plan for the day helped him through. This routine set Raj up for success each day by keeping him focused. A few weeks after that order, his grinders arrived at Amazon's warehouse. It was go time. He set loose his self written ads and product description on Amazon, set up some post purchase emails to help customers maximize the grinders potential and went to sleep. Now a few days went by without any excitement, but
then about a week after launch, Raj woke up to his first sale. By the end of that second week, he'd had dozens more. He studied his ads obsessively, ranking them by views and conversions and refining them. And it was working. In only his third month in business, Java Press had over $30,000 in sales.
It looked like he was on the cusp of massive growth. But then, dun dun dun, disaster struck. One of Raj's grinders was returned as defective. No big deal, right? But then hundreds, yes, hundreds followed. Raj's return rate quickly jumped to 90% all from a faulty grinder design.
It was a huge problem, a disaster for sure. But Raj believed in the power of customer service. So he personally replied to every complaint to offer a full refund and apology and the promise of a brand new grinder for free once he solved the issue. So he went back to his manufacturer, probably had some not fun emails or phone calls with them. But once they identified the problem and altered the design, he placed another order. It was terrifying to invest a few thousand more
dollars at this point, but there was plenty of demand and his ads were working. So if this new grinder design didn't break, he knew he'd make the money back. Raj likes to say that those initial couple hundred customers are now part of his 1,000 true fans. His honesty throughout the entire mistake, as well as his willingness to give them a brand new grinder generated loyalty that remains strong to this day, not to mention hundreds of five star reviews. It was such a successful turnaround that Raj quit his job to work on JavaPress full time, just eight months into the hustle. And a lot happened after that. At the time of our original episode,
JavaPress had three additional coffee products and a monthly coffee subscription. It had fulfilled two wishes for the Make-A-Wish foundation and generated over $300,000 in profit. Raj says his success was largely due to his customer driven approach and deep messaging from those post purchase emails to the way his team responds to support requests, to the written content on the website, the social media giveaways, all the stuff he does. It builds an ecosystem of value, care and passion that encourages customers to use their coffee routine to appreciate the little things in life. He's brewed up a business, a lifestyle and a mission all in one. And it
hasn't felt like a grind. All right. Well, fun fact, as I mentioned, I own this coffee grinder, I use it myself. I did not get it free. I paid for it. And you can check out Raj's website at
JavaPress.com. That's press with an E so J A B A P R E S S E.com. He's still selling on Amazon as well. It looks like he's got some other products still doing that coffee subscription. And if you want to do something like this, your first step is to prepare a large cup of coffee. I mean,
and then after that, I guess there's some other steps you need to find the right product and the right way to sell it, which is a lot of what we talk about in different ways here on the podcast. What is the right product? Who does it serve? What need are you meeting? And then what is the right way to communicate or to message about it? How do you go from idea to offer, right? Because people
don't buy ideas, they buy products and services. So you need to communicate an offer and communicate it to those right people. And working on that back and forth through an iterative process is ultimately the side hustle way and doing that without spending a lot of money ideally. So congratulations to Raj. So glad to see Java press is still going strong listeners. Inspiration is
good, but inspiration with action is better. Thanks for tuning in today. I'm so excited to make the show for you. Much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is side hustle
school. From the Onward Project.
