This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Today's story begins with a shoe box of flower stained index cards. Our storyteller, our featured side hustler, grew up seeing these cards. Her grandmother's peach cobbler, her grandfather's chili, taped to the refrigerator at every holiday. While cleaning out a closet, she notices these cards are deteriorating. She decides to scan them, clean them up in Photoshop, and make a gallery quality poster for her own kitchen, which is kind of fun.
My grandma also used to make peach cobbler. Fun little throwback there. Neighbor sees the print, wants one of her mother's recipes, offers to pay. And so before long, we've got a little business here. Let's talk about how it came to be, as well as what's happened since we first heard about it.
This is part of our Throwback Thursday series. She's charging, well, let's see. Well, she'll tell us more about it. She'll tell us about how much she's charging, how many she's sold. It's a good number.
Definitely a well-run and meaningful side hustle. So yeah, Throwback Thursday segment. Last week in this segment, we heard how a campaign tool turned into a software product now licensed by multiple counties for political campaigns. Today, handwritten recipes become kitchen wall art. Let's hear the story.
I'll come back at the end with a few words of wrap up. [Music]
I never planned to monetize my grandmother's handwriting. The first print I made was just a housewarming gift to myself, a five by seven of her lemon pound cake recipe, stains and all. I printed it at the local copy shop, slipped it into a simple white frame and propped it against the backsplash. Every guest who visited mentioned it.
One Saturday, my neighbor Carol Ann said, "If I give you my mother's biscuit recipe, "can you make it look like that?" I told her the materials were $10 and my time was free. She insisted on paying 50. And I learned sentimental value has its own price scale. After that, I listed a handful of ready-made prints on Etsy, apple pie, deviled eggs, sugar cookies, using public domain script fonts to mimic faded ink where my originals have blank lines. I priced them at $19 for an instant download.
The first sale came from someone in Michigan who wrote, "Your grandmother's handwriting looks just like mine." That sentence convinced me the product wasn't recipes, it was nostalgia. Within a month, I added the custom option. Customers snapped a phone photo of any recipe card, emailed it and chose between digital or printed. I tidied it up, bumped the contrast and left small imperfections because the smudges were half the charm. At $59 for digital and $129 for print and ship.
The margins were great, paper, ink and a sturdy mailer cost under $8. Emotional support became an unexpected part of the service. One woman apologized that her card was ugly because her dad wrote it while in hospice. I told her the shaky script was exactly what would make the print priceless. She left a five paragraph review and posted a photo of the framed recipe hanging over the stove.
That single review drove more than 15 additional sales in two weeks. I hit my first thousand dollars in profit after 18 orders. I celebrated by buying a better scanner so I could capture every pencil mark at 600 DPI without the shadows my phone created. I also recorded a two minute video. How to photograph a recipe card in natural light using nothing but a piece of white poster board.
That cut back and forth emails in half. The biggest challenge was shipping prints flat. I learned to sandwich each one between two recycled cardboard sheets then slide everything into a rigid mailer stamped, do not bend. My damage rate fell to zero. Today I average six custom jobs a month.
Steady, unrushed work that fits around my day job and home life. It's peaceful and unstressful and fun. Whenever a new order pings my phone, I picture another kitchen gaining a quiet family heirloom. And I'm grateful a simple frame keeps someone's history in sight. [Music]
Hey Lillian, thank you so much for sharing the story.
Thanks as well for just pursuing this idea. Well, maybe not thanks, but congrats. I just think it's cool. A fun little project that obviously plays on nostalgia and keeping memories alive, honoring your family and just being happy when you see those recipes or whatever they might be. I guess it could be more than just recipes, but I love how you've nailed the whole project.
So well done listeners. Remember, I'm always cheering you on as well. I want to hear your stories. I want to know what you're working on, what's going well, what's not. Any way that we can be of service here, of course.
And you can access the complete catalog of 3,200 plus episodes all for free at sidehustleschool.com and download or stream as you wish. New episodes out every day, wherever you like to listen. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
