Letters-from-Santa Hustles Down Chimney

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Hello, what's up, welcome. My name is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. Now, listen up, I'm gonna begin today's show with an important disclaimer. If you are listening to the show with any young children, especially ones with an affection for holiday traditions, you might wanna skip this one for now, throw on some frozen remixes, just let it go, and save this episode for later. 'Cause I'm gonna give some behind the scenes about a particular workshop at the North Pole, and I don't wanna mess with whatever you've got going on in your household.

Like, I don't wanna be responsible for any premature enlightenment, that's all on you. So there's my disclaimer, you better hit that pause button quickly if that applies to you. 'Cause for everybody else, really fun story today. Holiday cheer is good, but I'm gonna tell you about a special assistant of Santa Claus who made $6,000 last year with her highly creative project. It only took a few weeks to do it.

We are all about capitalism Christmas over here, and I will bring you that story in just a moment. [Music]

Santa Claus might sit around and get fat 11 months of the year, but come December, this jolly old man becomes overwhelmed with work. He's gotta think about all kinds of things, deliveries, logistics, and of course, communication. You see, even in our hyper-connected world where Santa gets inquiries from all sorts of different networks, social media's blowing up, he's got his own Snapchat filter, there are a lot of people who still communicate with Santa using an old school network called letter writing. Now for our millennials and Gen Z listeners, should probably explain a little bit, people used to actually hand write on pieces of paper and then put them in the mailbox.

I don't mean the outbox where you click send. I mean an actual piece of paper in an actual envelope. Then they use stamps.com to send that envelope off to other people who would receive it at the glacially slow pace of several days later. And in fact, when it comes to writing to Santa, despite this modern age we live in, some people still use this antiquated system. Now that's where our story comes in.

I was recently informed that one of his assistants is a fan of the show. Brie Larea works at a tech startup in downtown Washington DC. She says one of the best things about working at this startup is that their employees have flexibility to take on projects outside of their daily roles. They also have the example of many entrepreneurs nearby to help them learn and experiment. But let's go back a little.

Right out of college, Brie had spent all of her savings on a four month backpacking trip. Upon her return to Yakima, Washington, she got a job as a waitress while her boyfriend at the time worked on a campaign. She was only working at the restaurant part time, so she didn't have a lot of money, but more importantly, she was also bored. She knew she wanted to start a side gig, but what would it be? While Brie sat down and asked herself, what am I good at?

She knew she was a fairly strong writer, but what could she sell that included her writing? What would people actually pay money for? She didn't have time to write a book. She'd already tried her hand at writing resumes, which didn't go very well. So what would she do?

Well, to this day, she's not completely sure how the idea first showed up, but somehow she began advertising handwritten letters from Santa. She posted on Craigslist, Facebook, and Tumblr and got no traction at first, no response. She posted a few pictures of the ones she had drafted. They didn't look so great. She learned quickly that parents wouldn't pay for something they could easily do themselves.

So Brie sat down once again, discouraged but determined, and mapped out how she could differentiate the letters. She focused on a few key things. The first was personalization. She would learn key facts about a child from a list of questions and then personalize the letter, making sure they knew Santa was watching and that he was proud of them, at least most of them. The parents also got to approve the letters, which was a huge comfort for them 'cause they didn't want to be on the hook for something Santa promised.

But here's what made it a true side hustle success where people started paying. Brie began to advertise that these deluxe letters included reindeer food. What parent who loved Christmas didn't want to watch their child leave out magic reindeer food on Christmas Eve? Now, since you're learning her secrets here, the reindeer food was discount birdseed from her local pet store with a little glitter mixed in. All of a sudden, she had hit the Santa letter jackpot.

The first year, she sold around 300 letters at $9.95 each, or a deluxe package at $11.95. The letters cost her about $1.50 each to write in package, so she made around $4,000. The second year, 2015, she sold about 400 letters and raised the prices slightly to $11.95 and $13.95. However, this year, she outsourced the writing of the letters using upwork.com, so her profit margin was slightly less. This time, they cost her about $3 each to write in package.

Now, last year, 2016, something interesting happened. After first thinking that she wouldn't do it again, because even with the outsourcing, it was a lot of work, she finally decided to go for it. But she started late and did very little marketing. However, here's the surprise. She raised her prices to $19.95 and $26.95.

So in doing less work, she actually made a lot more money. By selling just 250 letters, instead of 400 the year before, this time she made just under $6,000. This is all less than a month's part-time work. She begins the process around November 15th, and the letters are sent by December 5th to 10th. I often ask people, what's the greatest thing about your hustle?

Bree had an interesting answer. She said, that's easy. A side hustle gives you extra purpose. I love focusing my extra energy and something I built from the ground up. I love when my work makes others happy.

I get hundreds of emails from parents each year with pictures of their children, beaming with letters from Santa and baggies of reindeer food. It's fulfilling to know that the work you have complete ownership of means something to other people. Well, I love that. I couldn't say it any better myself. Congratulations, Bree, on such an awesome capitalist Christmas project.

[Music]

Well, Santa Claus has pretty good name recognition. You know, like you say, Santa Claus, a lot of people kind of know what you're talking about. Maybe somebody else will come along at some point and disrupt that process, but it's gonna take a lot of startup capital and a lot of time to do that. He's pretty well entrenched in that market. He's kind of like the electric company, you know, basically like a one-man market.

And it's a well established tradition, at least in a lot of parts of the world, for parents who want to nurture and encourage this belief among their kids, at least for a few years until reality hits and they have to start paying the mortgage, you know, age seven. And in this story, I think her idea to outsource the writing was a key part of her being able to continue because it was very labor intensive, especially that first year, writing all those letters herself. I'm sure there's still some copy and paste action going on. It's not like everything is 100% personalized, but that's okay because the parents obviously still love it. So it's a fun story, of course, but because it's side hustle school, it's also a money-making project.

She talks about how this side hustle gives her extra purpose. She feels this ownership. She feels pride in what she hears back from the parents. And again, first year she did it, $4,000. This is part-time work on the side.

Second year, I think it was something similar to that. And then the third year she changed a few things up, raised her prices, didn't market very well by her own admission, but still made close to $6,000. So definitely a lot of interesting things to take away from that Santa Claus hustling down the chimney story. And my friends, you better watch out, you better not pout, and you better get to work on your hustle. The time is now.

Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes are online at sidehustleschool.com/338. If you enjoyed this episode, leave me some milk and cookies, or even better, a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. That would be awesome, and you're awesome too. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.

[Music]