This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, hello, welcome back. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School, the only daily podcast all about creating personal freedom through a side hustle. A side hustle is not a part-time job. It's not just driving for Uber or something like that.
It's about creating an asset for yourself. Today, I'm gonna tell you about a woman who creates such an asset. It actually goes on to earn more than $100,000 over the past year. And she creates this asset by focusing on a major problem she had that she realized lots of other people had too. Specifically, this woman had had a bariatric weight loss surgery and she was looking for a delivery service to help her effectively manage her weight post-surgery.
When she didn't find what she was looking for, she saw an opportunity to not only fix her own problem and to improve her health, but also to help other women in her position and last but not least improve her finances at the same time. It did in fact turn into a major success. I'll tell you the whole story in just a moment. [Music]
In May 2016, Nikki Wilmore's life started taking a series of unfortunate turns. 13 years after her first bariatric weight loss surgery, she found herself putting on weight again and preparing to undergo a second surgery.
All the while, she was also facing an impending layoff from work and her job as a business analyst, the second layoff she'd had in the past few years. Putting her health first, Nikki used one evening to search for a subscription for supplements that were compatible with the surgery she was about to have. But much to her surprise, she couldn't find any such thing. Turning to a bariatric weight loss Facebook group for health, she saw other people had shared the same problem. They wanted a simple delivery service to help them manage their weight and reduce their stress, but they couldn't find one.
Nikki then had the idea for a product that could solve both her physical and financial problems. Sitting in the stands of her daughter's softball game the next day, Nikki posted about her idea in that Facebook group and also created a Facebook page called My Bariatric Box. Before she'd even done any research into her product, she'd gathered a hundred likes and knew she had a good idea on her hands. Or at least she thought she might. With the impending layoff hanging over her head and the responsibilities of motherhood, Nikki took a risk-adverse stance to starting her business.
She wanted to make sure people were willing to buy the product, not just say they would. So she wisely decided to ask people to pre-order the product before she invested too much of her own cash. Using an online platform called Celery, she created a simple webpage for My Bariatric Box and offered a 15% lifetime discount to anyone who signed up in the first month. Sensing that it would all be a failure, Nikki was overwhelmed to see her first customer, Ruth Goddard, signed up for a lifetime subscription just a few hours after the offer went live. Nikki's confidence improved.
When she decided to proceed, her startup costs came in at around $500. This was money to help create a more detailed website that she hosts through a service called Crate Joy, as well as buying the initial products and materials for her first boxes. To fill those boxes, she went looking for bariatric diet-compliant foods, snacks, supplements, fitness gear, healthy eating tools, and non-edible indulgences. Because of this unique niche, or niche if you prefer, she doesn't have much trouble finding and sourcing her products to include in the box at a heavily discounted rate. As the project grew, she went out of her way to meet suppliers at events, and she also contacted them directly through the forum on their website.
By buying orders in bulk and positioning her box as a marketing platform for the creators of the products she includes, she can also help to drive prices down further. This allows her to make sure she sells products that meet or exceed the value of the box, and her goal is to ensure a three-to-one cost-value ratio on each box. So what this means is people pay $35 for the subscription box, and Nikki wants them to get more than $100 of retail value in each box. That way, when they see that charge on their credit card, they're gonna think about the box they just got and realize, oh, I got so much more value than that, so I'm gonna keep subscribing. If you head over to the My Baryotic Box website, you'll see that Nikki currently offers a package that's delivered on a monthly basis, and customers can sign up for one, three, six, or 12-month contracts with the box.
The exact details of what's included in each box aren't known until that month arrives, but that's part of the fun. That's part of what people are paying for, the surprise, the discoverability of finding new products that they might otherwise not see. And because there's so much value, the idea is that if you don't like every product, well, that's fine. Hopefully, you're gonna find something that you like in each box. To help market the subscription, Nikki focuses on products that will get people talking in the hundreds of Facebook groups for bariatric surgery patients.
These additions allow her service to reach the right people in a short amount of time, and it helps to build word-of-mouth referrals. All right, so let's talk about the numbers. Since starting the side hustle in May 2016, Nikki has gone on to make over $130,000. That is correct, $130,000, and she's currently averaging $20,000 a month in sales. She says she's been able to achieve these figures because she found something in the weight loss industry that nobody was truly catering to, and therefore she didn't come up against any real competition.
Plus, having been through the surgery herself, having struggled a couple of times and overcame, it really allowed her to get into her customer's minds. She understood their needs, their obstacles, their struggles, their fears, and also their aspirations, their desire to get well. A lot of this income has been invested back in the business, and she's now purchased a small warehouse space to help her deal with the amount of order she's got. She also trademarked her product for a small fee of just $300. She says that process was pretty simple because her concept was accepted without any contest, and it was just a matter of waiting the seven months for the final approval.
To manage all of her orders and shipments, Nikki is reliant on a lot of apps and services. I'll mention a couple of them here, and as always, if you're curious, you can learn more about them and see the links on the show notes page for each episode. So she used Canva to help her create designs and pamphlets for her boxes. She used Trello to manage her workflows, and Zendesk to put all of her customer service under one roof. But the app she says she can't live without is Pirate Ship, which allows her to ship all of her products at US postal rates without incurring any extra fees.
Looking to the future, Nikki hopes to be able to help more people lose weight and keep it off while growing her business. She's already thinking about increasing that amount of warehouse space she just purchased, and she's planning to create new variations on the boxes that her customers love so much. [Music]
Well, this service, this collection of items that are delivered each month in the subscription box clearly caters to an identifiable need. And it's not just a need, it's an identifiable group of people with a common problem. A lot of people struggle with obesity.
Some of those people, after consultation with their doctor, choose this bariatric surgery option. I did some quick research, and the number I found was that in 2015, approximately 195,000 Americans underwent this surgery, and most of them are women, something like 80%. So Nikki, in her personal story, related to each one of those factors, this was a solution that she chose for herself. So as I said, she very much understood the common obstacles and fear and insecurity that comes along with somebody that's facing this situation, as well as their aspiration, their desire to get better, to not just have the surgery, but then keep the weight off. And presumably, if you go through this process and actually have the surgery, you are invested in your health, and spending $35 a month for a subscription box, it's gonna bring all these different products, and I imagine not just products, but also this kind of sense of motivation, this sense of like, hey, you made this commitment, hopefully these resources are gonna help you along the way, but it's also a little reminder of your new lifestyle.
So in other words, not a big investment for people to make. Also, fun fact, since starting this business, Nikki has managed to lose an additional 60 pounds herself, and get her health back on track. So she is essentially her own success story for overcoming this challenge, and then becoming a role model of sorts in creating this product for people. So congratulations to Nikki on both your personal success and on this great side hustle success, more than $100,000 in just over a year. Fantastic, and I hope it keeps growing.
For our listeners, as always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes include links to every tool and resource I mentioned that help Nikki grow her side hustle, and those show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/333. That's for episode 333. Remember, if you have a question or comment for the show, give me a call on the Hustle hotline, 844-9HUSTLE, or 844-948-7853. Thank you for listening today.
I'll be back tomorrow. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
