This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Fire in the hole. Handcrafted drumsticks ignite into profits. My friends, welcome to Side Hustle School. This podcast is on fire. I have learned so much through the years by working on these episodes, learning about all sorts of different topics, all kinds of things that people out there do to make money.
And today we're gonna talk about pyrography. I've had to practice saying that word. Pyrography, pyro means fire, and graphy is like writing, drawing, recording. Pyrography is the art of writing with fire, okay? So we're gonna hear about this more in the episode itself, where a pyrographer's handcrafted drumsticks ignite into profits.
I'm gonna try to find some other ways to say pyrography just 'cause it's a difficult word to pronounce, but basically it's a newspaper company employee who creates an Etsy store to market her wood-burned artistry wares. Just goes to show there's something out there you can do as well. It could be something in the arts. It could be something totally different. Basically there's a skill you have, some knowledge you have acquired, some experience that you have gained that can be turned into an income-generating side hustle.
That's what we're all about here on the podcast. Gonna bring you this detailed case study right after a quick shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
Ella Korgel-Brocklesby is a full-time graphic designer for a large company. And when she's not busy at her day job, she used to paint and hand letter windows for businesses. Then in what sounds like another project that we're gonna have to hear about sometime, she also used to paint race cars.
As I said, that'll have to be another episode. For this one, Ella spends her evenings and weekends as a pyrographer for her Etsy store, Korgel Greetings. What's pyrography? It is the art of producing drawings on wood or leather by using heated tools or flame. Ella stumbled into this line of work when her mother passed away and left her with a lot of art supplies and tools.
Digging through those tools awakened Ella's inner muse. And before long, that muse led to her burning elegant eye-catching designs into wooden objects. She made a wine box as a gift for a relative. Shortly thereafter, another relative requested the same thing. Now, it was also around this time that Ella's husband lost his job of 20 years.
So needing some more household income, she realized she might be able to monetize these new skills into a profitable project. She was mostly selling to family members, $5 here, $20 there. So it definitely wasn't a moneymaker at this point. And she started thinking outside the wine box. She knew Etsy was the place to sell handmade goods online.
So she figured, why not? She didn't know a lot of people in the area, didn't have a platform to draw from, but with that Etsy shop, she could reach all kinds of people, no matter where they lived. It took a month and a half to get her first sale, but the holiday season gave her a boost. People were taking notice and they weren't just noticing, they were ordering, they were buying, they were paying. Ella was wood burning everything from signs to plaques to wooden ores.
But what truly set her apart in the wood burning space was her custom drumsticks. In less than a year, she had a percussive bestseller on her hands. Those wooden drumsticks were ablaze. She could hand draw, hand wood burn, and hand paint a variety of designs. This set her apart in the industry because most customized drumsticks were made with machine laser burners.
And no machine can do what Ella does because of the way she wraps her designs around the sticks. While most laser engravers only burn text, Ella offers fancier designs and colors, even hand painting items upon request. The sticks were now in full swing, attracting the attention of celebrity drummers like Carrie Underwood's drummer Garrett Goodwin. And meanwhile, the Instagram posts from the account she made were drawing the attention of both musicians and non-musicians alike. Her best tip for this, using time-lapse videos of her work.
Ella said people love those videos, they often watch them over and over. As her body of work increased, she was able to display her business cards in local shops with a small inventory. This has helped to bring her more traffic, but she continues to focus most of her efforts on the online world. Prices range from $6 for small magnets to $125 for a rustic wooden ore. The coveted customized drumsticks sell upwards of $40.
In her first full year of doing this on the side, annual profits were $7,000. And that's a very seasonal business because in November alone, cordial greetings earned over $2,000 of that amount. And to achieve these profits, startup costs were less than 50 bucks. That's right, less than 50 bucks. Not counting what she received from her mom, the supplies were just a bundle of wood, $12, a bundle of unfinished drumsticks, $30, and some wood sealer for $8.
At some point, she upgraded to a $200 razor-tip wood burner, but basically that's it. It's a very, very low-cost hustle. And this hustle has helped keep Ella's family funded for some of life's extra amenities, including private music lessons for her two teenagers. She prefers the online space as opposed to craft shows in farmer's markets, online shoppers tend to know exactly what they want. Because her customers are looking for something unique, it just makes sense for them to come to the source.
Plus, finding customized items in retail stores is rare. Ella's excited, and she believes she's just getting started. She plans to continue marketing to bands and musicians of all genres, as well as offering to add logos and signatures on drumsticks. Her long-term goal is for cordial greetings to grow, perhaps even ignite into her full-time work. And that's why she wants to fan the flames and keep stoking the fire.
[Music]
My friends, check out the Cordial Greeting Shop on Etsy, Etsy.com/shop/cordialgreetings. Ella from Indiana is still out there selling drumsticks and other things. She's been going for eight years on Etsy, almost 2,000 sales at the time I'm recording here. And she has a remarkable 4.9 rating, 4.9 average rating. It's like my Uber rating.
I have a 4.9, and I'm always like, what happened? Why don't I have 5.0? Anyway, cordial greetings, as I said. Listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. To find the show notes for today's episode, sidehustleschool.com/3424, 3,424 episodes, all available for free download and streaming on that same site.
And of course, new episodes out every day, seven days a week. Thank you for being out there. Much more is coming up. My name's Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School.
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