This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello friends and listeners. Welcome to Side Hustle School. I am your host, Chris Guillebeau. Got a pretty cool story for you today. As you know, there's all kinds of ways to make money and this one is definitely unusual.
By way of introduction, I'll mention some family lore. This is something that my mom has said many times over the years. One of her beliefs is never argue with an idiot because when you argue with an idiot, they'll bring you down to their level and then they'll beat you with experience. And what she means of course is even if you're right, even if you're on the moral high ground, with some people, you're just not gonna be able to win. So don't fight that battle.
And also to bring that adage up to modern day, I would say never argue in the comment section online 'cause nothing good can come from that either. In fact, for best results, if you're reading a news site, don't even read the comments. Just don't go there, it's gonna make you depressed. So what does this have to do with today's feature? Well, today's feature is about how a woman reads a mean comment on Dolly Parton's Facebook page.
That's right, Dolly Parton. She then realizes the absurdity of internet trolling and bakes up a hilarious and ironic side hustle. If someone on the internet has ever said anything mean to you, you'll like this story. I'll pull it out of the oven for you right after thanking our sponsor. [Music]
One day in early 2017, Kat Thek was taking a mental break from her full-time copywriting work when she noticed something on Facebook that struck her as completely absurd.
Someone had left a negative comment on Dolly Parton's page. That comment said, "Your mama be so disappointed in you." Kat looked at it for a good, long moment. Why would anyone waste their time to insult a complete stranger like that? It wasn't even a good insult. It was just absurd in every way and also grammatically incorrect.
It's a strange impulse to want to attack someone with random, senseless Facebook trolling, especially if it's toward Dolly Parton. A couple of days went by, but Kat couldn't stop thinking about it. At some point, the idea of a cake with the troll comment written on it popped into her head. Something a bit different than the usual happy birthday or get well soon messages. So she baked the cake and wrote that comment on it with plenty of icing.
"Your mama be so disappointed in you." She and her friends got a kick out of it, and then the idea went to the next level. She could send it to the person who made the original comment. After some investigative work to find the troll's address, she sent him the cake and a printout of his original comment on Dolly Parton's page. The whole idea was fun, sarcastic, and gave everyone that Kat told about it a good laugh. She realized there might be other people out there who want to call out their internet trolls with cakes.
So she bought a domain, built a basic website, and launched her side hustle, Troll Cakes Bakery and Detective Agency. She priced her wares at $35 for a troll cake and $60 for a troll cake plus detective work to find the troll's address. If she couldn't find the address of the troll, she figured she would just refund the order and apologize. After buying some additional cake supplies and setting up the site, Kat's total startup costs for Troll Cakes were just above $200. Initially, she imagined she'd have to buy special shipping boxes to fit her cakes, but that ended up being a nightmare.
Not only was it difficult to find the right box or the right price, but the shipping costs would be different for each cake. Then she realized it would be easier to make her cakes fit the US Postal Service flat rate boxes, with protective padding, of course, rather than trying to work with third-party boxes. That ended up being a huge relief. The costs were consistent, shipping was always under three days, and tracking was included. Kat used an old-school marketing tactic to market her new hustle.
She printed off a couple dozen paper tear-off sheets with her ad and website address, then hung them up on light posts along her daily commute. About a week later, Troll Cakes received its very first order. Kat was ecstatic and a little terrified. She baked a cake, topped it with the troll comment, found the troll's address with some clever online sleuthing, and then shipped it off. A few more weeks passed by with only an occasional order, but April 2017 was a turning point.
After her new hustle's Instagram page started taking off, Troll Cakes began getting featured on more and more websites. Even NPR came along and told the story of her home-baked cakes. By now, she was receiving several orders a week consistently. She was baking these cakes in her small Brooklyn kitchen, and in less than two months, she was reaching her maximum baking capacity. Nearly every day, her table was covered with hilarious Troll Cakes, saying things like, "Oh no, baby, what is you doing?
Short hair really doesn't suit you. I don't like your dog. I'm horrified by your disturbing post." And of course, Britney Spears, "You need Jesus." And then, in August, the motherload of internet press laid its eyes upon Troll Cakes, BuzzFeed came calling and did a feature. The response was, "Well, bittersweet." Kat was flooded with literally hundreds of orders. She went to every baking store she could find in all five New York City boroughs to buy out their candy letters, and she still didn't have enough.
She thought about ordering more online, but she didn't really even have the baking capacity to make every order anyway. She had to begin emailing customers and explaining that there was a waiting period of at least two months. Gotta wait 60 days to get your Troll Cake. About half of those orders ended up being refunded, but a surprising number of customers were more than happy to wait. As the saying goes, revenge is a dish best served cold, and also with icing.
Sales slowed down in the months after the big rush, but they didn't stop. Some months, she was baking several cakes a day. Other months, she had more free time. Kat's favorite cakes are part of her new $30 "Tiny Hands" special, where she sends cakes featuring tweets from the current occupant of the White House directly to that house on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. She's not trying to make a living with this, but she's having fun, and she is making money.
She considers it as parking money or the weekend trip fund, not something she counts on in her budget for regular living expenses. Because she's not sure how sustainable the flow of orders will be months or years from now, Kat doesn't have any plans to scale Troll Cakes. For now, she's just enjoying the absurdity of it all as a fun side hustle while she continues her regular full-time work as a freelance copywriter. Awesome, I hope you enjoyed that story. We have actually been trying to feature Kat for something like three months now, but she's been really busy baking cakes.
So I was happy when our writer was finally able to get in touch with her, do the interview, ask her for some of her favorite cakes of all time. And I also wondered when I first read the notes, like, why isn't she growing this? Like, I feel like it could be so much more. $30 a cake isn't a bad price, but shipping is included. So why not charge $10 for that?
I feel like just about anybody would pay $10 shipping for a cake. But as to why she doesn't grow it, well, I think the answer is because it's a side hustle and she's not trying to scale it. She doesn't want to become a full-time baker, and that's okay. The other thing is if it really worked and it was sustainable, pretty soon there'd probably be a lot of other people doing the same thing, or at least trying to. So in other words, she knows what she's doing.
She's got a great plan. She also has a great story for the rest of her life. She can always talk about that time she made Troll Cakes and sent them to people on the internet. And of course, there's also a feel-good component to it. Because if somebody ever has criticized you or said something mean to you on the internet, you know that it sucks.
It's not nice. That person is a bully and you go away feeling bad. So with this project, she's essentially calling people out and just showing the absurdity, showing the stupidity of some of these kinds of comments, which is hilarious and ironic, but it also inspires this sense of belonging, I think. Because again, you just realize how stupid these kinds of comments are. Anyway, Troll Cakes, you heard it here first.
The next time somebody says something mean to you online, maybe you'll want to send them a cake. Inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. To find the show notes for today's episode, maybe see some photos of cakes. I don't like your dog. Your mama be so disappointed in you.
Britney Spears, you need Jesus. We'll link all those up. Come check out sidehustleschool.com/401. Be nice out there, everybody. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Sidusleschool.
