This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, Side Hustle School listeners, friends, and community, welcome back. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Do you ever have trouble sleeping? If so, you're not the only one. Approximately 100 million Americans struggle from sleeplessness, including 60 million with chronic insomnia.
And of course, those figures are just for the U.S. People struggle with insomnia all over the world. Well, our featured story today, our case study, was one of those people until she studied the world of herbal remedies. She then transformed this knowledge into a mission that helps other insomniacs. This mission pays her up to $3,000 a month, which is currently helping her as she transitions between jobs.
If you have a problem, if you have a struggle, you're probably not the only one. And as you'll see throughout the year, there might be a way to not only find a solution for yourself, but also find a solution for your side hustle. Today's story is coming right up after a quick shout-out to our sponsor. [Music]
A.C. Brown has been suffering from insomnia since the age of 15.
Afflicted by vivid nightmares that would leave her terrified to fall asleep, she found herself addicted to over-the-counter sleep remedies, just trying to get a few hours shut eye. The older she got, the more she found this system of sleepless nights and synthetic solutions to be an unhealthy way to live. She wanted a reliable way of falling asleep that didn't involve popping pills. In order to wean herself off medication and improve her sleep naturally, she began to learn about herbal remedies and how fragrances can affect your sleep. A.C. bought all the books she could find on the topic
and began taking local classes on how to mix your own fragrances. She learned about the herbs, flavors, and smells that promote good sleep and began to try the different concoctions on herself. After a few months of research and experimentation, she found a handful of mixtures that helped her soothe her insomnia and drift off to sleep. Having discovered that medication-free solution for herself, A.C. turned her attention to a larger community.
For years, she'd been a part of Facebook groups and message boards for other insomniacs. She became driven by the mission to help these people escape their meds and sleepless nights too. That's where she saw the opportunity to create a side hustle about a topic she was passionate about and now knowledgeable in as well. She decided to package and sell the remedies she'd created under the name Goodnight Darling. When she started, A.C. didn't have any savings,
so she used extra money from her paychecks to fund this new venture. She'd free up between $300 and $500 a month by giving up Starbucks coffee, packing her lunch instead of eating out, and letting go of some costly monthly subscriptions. She'd then used this extra free capital to build her website and buy the stock she needed to create her products. Goodnight Darling's website was created on Shopify. She chose this service over others because it was easy and it came with a lot of apps that made running a business more manageable in your free time.
She also used a ship station to deal with the shipping and handling of her products and says that it saved her a lot of time. A.C. began to grow her business around three core types of sleep products that she creates herself by hand, herbal teas, room sprays, and bath soaks. They come in different flavors and scents and are all made from cruelty-free and vegan ingredients. In order to create these products, she has to source a lot of different materials, including herbs, packaging, and glass bottles.
She does all this through manufacturers that she's found through friends and her own research. She says that building a personal relationship with the manufacturers and suppliers is key to becoming one of their VIP customers, especially when placing smaller orders at first. She says when they see you're as invested in their business as you are your own, they'll often go the extra mile for you. We just talked about marketing on Instagram in yesterday's episode, and for A.C. that's also where she began to see real success in selling her remedies.
She had started out by just selling to friends and then moved to posting in those Facebook groups she was part of. But once she created an Instagram feed with lots of dreamy images about sleep and also a good amount of intriguing product images, that's when the sales really started. In fact, the majority of her sales now come through Instagram. She's begun to explore advertising there to build a larger following. She says if you want to try using Instagram ads, be sure to be as specific as possible with your keywords.
Get into your customer's heads and try to find the exact words or hashtags they'll be using. Then test your ideas with a small budget, get feedback and repeat. A combination of her great products, knowledge of audience, and being able to connect with people from firsthand experience has helped A.C. go on to earn between $2,000 and $3,000 in profits each month. She was recently laid off from her full-time job as a corporate account executive, so this money has helped her make ends meet while she looks for another job.
In the long term, her mission for the future is to own the night. She's adding other sleep-related products from mugs to pajamas to pillowcases, all with the goal of creating a brand that people associate with every part of good sleep. Maybe her story is proof that even for insomniacs, side hustle dreams can come true. So if the problem you're experiencing is a common one, especially something that millions of other people struggle with, like we see in this example, your search for personal solutions may end up being a search for a side hustle. And you'll see this principle throughout a lot of different stories this year.
Starting a side hustle is not always based in what you're passionate about. It can often be based in solving a problem, fixing something, improving something, making a better way of life for someone, or just making someone's life a little bit better. And also, by the way, for problems that affect so many people, like this example, it's not like there's only one solution. There are all kinds of potential remedies, some of which will naturally work better for some people than others. So you're not looking for the single magic elixir, you're looking for something that will work for enough people.
Like if it works for you, it's probably gonna work for some other people too. So just keep that in mind if you get overwhelmed and think, well, there's already a lot of different solutions out there, different remedies. What do I have to offer? There probably is something that you have to offer too. Keep that in mind as we go along.
And remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. If you would like to see the show notes for today's episode, just come on over to sidehustleschool.com/382. If you have a comment or a question, give me a call on the Hustle hotline. It's 8449 Hustle or 8449487853. We're gonna be playing messages, hearing stories, and answering questions from a lot more listeners this year.
So if you have something to contribute or to ask about, I would love to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening. I hope your new year is starting off well. I'll be back again tomorrow with another episode. I hope you'll join me for it.
I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]
