This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey there side hustle school listeners and friends. Welcome back. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Every day on the show, I'm bringing you a different true story of an employee who creates a new source of income for themselves, usually without going into debt and often doing it pretty quickly. Now on that last point, today's story is a bit different. I'm going to have some commentary
about it at the end. This is a story of an Atlanta couple who sells affordable, high quality accessories. And they built this into a pretty successful business. I think it's doing something like $70,000 in net income this year. Obviously that's fantastic. We'll look at their process,
how they got their idea and so on. But in this story, they did spend about a year getting their project together before they put it out to the world. And while I have absolutely no criticism of them, obviously what they're doing is wonderful. And it's been fantastic for them. On side hustle school, I usually tend to encourage people to get started a bit quicker. So how can you balance this
idea of wanting to put together something that's high quality, something you really believe in and has the best chance of success with not spending a huge amount of time on something that's unproven that you don't know is going to work. But I'll talk about that in the end. I'll talk about the differences in these approaches and how maybe you can find what's best for you. But first, of course, I'll tell you their story. One of them is a criminal defense attorney. Together,
they get this vision and go around shopping, researching and eventually kind of making their own product as well. So I think you'll find it interesting. And I'll bring you the whole story right after this quick thank you to our sponsor. Today's story comes from Cherie Davis Foster and Greg Foster in Atlanta, Georgia. By day Cherie works as a criminal defense attorney and Greg is a digital operations manager. Their side hustle is
Admiral Rowe, a men's and women's accessories company offering high quality vintage handmade and modern pieces at affordable prices. Business began when Cherie moved to Atlanta right after law school. He was studying for the bar and looking for work. One day while Cherie and Greg were shopping at a local outdoor mall, they noticed that a lot of the accessories they liked were outside of their price range, even though they all looked alike and weren't necessarily high quality. After wondering why no companies in the market seemed to have higher quality materials and more affordable accessories, they decided to try it themselves. The idea was to make a site
offering the best modern handmade and vintage pieces. They would search locally for high quality vintage work, find great local artists for the handmade pieces and get the best in modern accessories from wholesale suppliers. Cherie and Greg, meanwhile, would be the resellers. They budgeted $5,000 in startup costs, which they used to buy wholesale and vintage pieces, and a $500 DSLR camera to take product photos. Between putting the website together, locking down social media accounts, and building up their inventory, it took about a year for Cherie and Greg to get going. They'd spend their weekends driving around Atlanta and nearby
suburbs to shop at antique malls, estate sales, and thrift stores. One day a week they'd look for online sales. Greg was previously a manager of photography for an apparel company, so he had some photo skills already. They bought some foam whiteboard, white tape, and a basic used tripod to make a photography light box at home with instructions they found online. Then they looked at similar accessory sites for style inspiration and took the photographs themselves. After all the
preparation and that year's worth of work, it was time to launch. At first, they didn't make many sales at all, even after putting pictures on social media. They then decided to sell at local markets to develop relationships with other small business owners and perhaps find stores that focused on selling items made by local brands. They applied to one store during the holidays and ramped it up from there. After a few local markets, they decided to try making their own jewelry.
Featuring other local brands didn't make sense because they didn't have the capital to support it and there also wasn't much unique about it. Cherie wanted to make fun, classic jewelry that was in line with the original vision of the company, those high quality, affordable pieces. She began watching YouTube videos and testing jewelry. Most of them got sold at the first market, so she added a few more each time until they had a full line. Cherie and Greg still sourced vintage pieces from estate sales and antique malls, and now they have relationships with sellers who get larger stocks of vintage items. They'd even bought from customers who
tell them about their personal stock from their mothers or grandmothers. For the modern pieces, they first bought from wholesalers and then developed a long-term relationship with a couple of them that has turned into a working relationship where the wholesalers actually manufacture pieces Cherie and Greg have designed themselves. Most of Admiral Rowe's sales come from local stores, wholesale accounts, and consignment, markets, and pop-up shops. Since Greg had that experience at an apparel company, he also had a basic idea of how to calculate wholesale costs to make sure they were still making enough money for the business. Consignment is riskier, but also more flexible, and has actually done better for them than wholesale. They try to do pop-ups and markets
at least once a month, especially the major markets which have more foot traffic, meaning more sales and more opportunities to gain repeat customers. As for marketing, they've just done some social media and word of mouth. They did try working with a PR and social media company, but it wasn't a good fit. It just didn't work very well. That's when Greg decided he would learn about it himself. He also took a Udemy class to learn about SEO and was able to build displays
for local stores and markets with his woodworking skills. As you can tell, Greg had a lot of existing skills that he brought to this business, as well as a couple of things that he learned along the way. Admiral Rowe began by stocking a few products, selling them, and then using the money to either increase their stock or develop new products. The first year of profit was $2,500. Still significant, of course. But now in 2017, they're looking at making more than $70,000. Their long
term hope is to take the business full time. They plan to expand the wholesale part into additional states, improve their offerings, perhaps launching a wedding category and improving their online presence. By building this side hustle into a real business, Cherie and Greg believe they're building their future. Amazing. Congratulations to Cherie and Greg. I see from my notes that their
profit in 2017 is actually $72,000. Well, $72,000 is nothing to argue with, of course. I just want to present an alternative to somebody else who's going down this road. Because one of the things that people get discouraged by when they're starting a new side hustle or maybe even trying to make it a small business like what you're seeing here is they spend a long time preparing and then it doesn't work out. So then you feel really bad because you're like, I put all this time into something and it turns out it wasn't the right idea. Or maybe it wasn't that it was
the totally wrong idea. I just got something pretty major wrong about it. Now the thing is that's totally normal. Like lots of projects, you don't have it right in the first place. You have to go back and change something or maybe even look at the fundamentals. But generally speaking,
wouldn't it be better if you could fast track that process a little bit? That could lower your risk, not just in terms of finances, but in terms of the time you're putting into it, your emotional investment into something, which I think is important as well. So if you have a clear vision for something you know what you want to do, then by all means, don't let me dissuade you from that, even if it takes a lot of time to get going. But for new side hustlers who are trying this approach, I might recommend a couple of things like what if you just sold one thing? Instead of building a whole portfolio, in this example, you have jewelry that they made, you have pieces that they purchased from wholesalers, you have the local brands that they're trying to represent.
What if you just sold one thing? Essentially, I'm encouraging you to think smaller, which I know is counterintuitive. And people are always telling you think big and dream big and follow that dream. Well, absolutely, you should follow a dream. But I think it's actually great when your dream is achievable in a short period of time. And that gives you the focus and the belief in yourself
and the project to keep going, maybe even build it bigger after that. Another thing you could try doing is pre-selling through some kind of crowdfunding campaign or other efforts. We've had several crowdfunding stories recently. I've got another great one coming up next week. And I actually think one of the best things about crowdfunding is not just the money that it brings in. It's also the sign of confidence, the market validation. When there is a successful
crowdfunding campaign, you can say, "Well, at least some people want this." Some people have chosen to not only say it's a good idea, but they've actually invested in it. They've put down their credit card and committed to purchase this item before it's even made. So those are just my two cents on that. Not my $72,000, but hopefully something that's valuable to some people. Again, good work to Cherie and Greg. Looks like a wonderful site. I'll encourage you to check it
out on the show notes. You can come see those notes and all the links at sidehustleschool.com/340. That's 340. We are rolling along. Can you believe it? 340 episodes so far. Don't forget that
inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. I want you to build freedom for yourself just like the people you hear about on the show every day. I hope that something I do and something the show does is helpful to you in that regard. Thank you for listening. I'll be back tomorrow.
I'm Chris Guillebeau for Site Us In School.
