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Welcome to Throwback Thursday, where we take a look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them.
Today we hear from Julie Sanchez. We first featured her in Episode 1284: Office Manager Cleans Up With Etsy Soap Store. It was a sudsational story, if I do say so myself. What's happened since?
Julie lives in Denver and sells travel-inspired soaps, perfumes, and more through The Adventuress Soap Co. She learned to make soap while teaching English in China for a year, and she loves how fragrance can evoke memories, feelings, and places. Her Etsy shop grew slowly but steadily in 2018 and 2019, then took off during the pandemic. People who had to cancel trips bought her products for a sense of wanderlust, or as gifts to make up for the trip they missed. One buyer picked her Iceland soap instead of the Iceland trip.
Her side hustle has since become her main hustle. She left her nonprofit day job, registered the business as an LLC, built her own website, and started expanding into wholesale. Her biggest challenge now is marketing and scaling to a full-time income. She's working on being more consistent and finding new revenue streams.
Julie's advice:
- Treat your side hustle like a business from the beginning. Get your LLC, learn about taxes, and be good about finances.
- Keep things simple. Don't try to make a million different products. Focus. That's easier to scale.
- Learn about marketing. Create a marketing calendar and learn about email marketing.
- If you want to make it your main hustle, prepare for it. Save a cushion of money and be all in.
Next up, she wants to get her products into more stores and grow brand awareness. Ten years down the line, she'd love to start a nonprofit that teaches others how to grow and scale micro businesses.
Thanks to Julie for sharing her updates. Check out TheAdventuressSoapCo.com. Want to see someone from our archive featured on a Thursday? Let me know at SideHustleSchool.com/questions.
