This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey there, what's up? Welcome back. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to Sidus Will School. And as we begin today, a quick refresher for you about hustle categories.
So sometimes I talk about services and sometimes I talk about products. And there are a couple other categories as well. But for now, remember that a service is something you do and a product is something you make. So we think about the stories that you've heard this week. Sarah, the fitness pole dancing instructor, she's providing a service. Jeff, who's coaching
families and their desire to live abroad, also providing a service. Now today's story is going to break that service streak. It's all about how a postal carrier creates a specialized gift product for new parents. But first, a lot of people have asked me, which is better, a product or a service? Now I would love to be able to just give you a one or the other answer. I don't have any shortage of opinions. I'm happy to tell you what I think. And I've
been doing this for a long time. But if anyone ever told you, Oh, it's better to make a product or it's better to have a service without much context, I think you should be skeptical because the best answer for this question really depends on the blend of your personality and your skills together with whatever the hustle is. As you learn an experiment, you'll know more about yourself as well as have more experience in starting projects. So this is the kind of information that guides your decisions about what kind of hustle category is best for you at any given time. And in any case, today's story led to the creation of a product that allows a mail carrier and mom to have a solid side income. I'll tell you that story
in just a moment. Alexanderina Varini is a Supreme Court certified interpreter from Romania into English, who also works as a mail carrier for the US Postal Service. More than 15 years ago, she had her first child Melissa and received a clay imprint of newborn Melissa's hands and feet as a gift. It was a fun memento. She could hang on her wall to remember those first few days of life.
Their family lived in Seattle at the time. And later they moved to Chicago and had a second child. And naturally she wanted to preserve his hands and feet too, but she couldn't find anyone who did something like that there. This discovery led Alexanderina who goes by Alex to give it a try herself. And once she learned how to make these clay imprints, she thought you know if she loved it, maybe other moms would too. It wasn't hard to learn how
to make the physical imprints and the costs are low. I don't mean to suggest that there's no skilled artistic process at all. But an imprint by nature is pretty basic and replicable. What makes an imprint unique is the child's hand or foot. The installation that's then created around it is really just kind of a formula. So to me, the smart thing about it
is the idea itself. Alex started off with the tried and true process. She did a few imprints for friends for free. And then as they told their friends, she decided to start charging. Now just to be clear, she didn't just let this happen passively. Alex worked
hard. In addition to those referrals, she started walking into businesses that cater to moms like playgrounds, shops, daycares. She would show them her products and see if they'd like to have her over and offer her services to their customers. She also went to OBGYN offices and asked to set up a small display with an imprint and her new business cards that she had just had printed. Now that was especially smart because pretty soon after starting her project, Alex realized that pregnant women are her ideal customers. Because in
her words, they want everything for their kids, especially their first child. And if they get it done for their first child, almost 100% of the time, they'll get it done for the next one. She also developed gift certificates, which became popular with previous customers because they were happy with her services. And when those customers friends had children, it was an obvious gift. Alex originally hoped to be able to make and sell imprints full time. Unfortunately, that proved to be a hard challenge to overcome, at least so far, and
she was initially disappointed. But when she shifted her thinking to make the project more of a side hustle, she began to see it in a more positive light. And that's because when you depend on something for your income, you're not making enough money, you very naturally get stressed, you can begin to panic. But when that thing is something extra or additional, then you think of the same amount of money as a bonus, and it feels a lot better. Business-wise, Alex is doing between 10 and 20 imprints a month. The cost is $50 to $70 each, so she's
bringing in an average of $800 each month. In addition to the money, she takes an enormous amount of pride in the work that she does. It truly gives her happiness, creating these keepsakes for parents everywhere. The response that she gets is humbling, and she loves knowing that what she creates will be kept by parents and grandparents for a lifetime. So what can we learn from Alex's story? Well, first, I really liked how she figured out
that pregnant women were her ideal customers, much more than new mothers or new fathers are. Because new parents are sleep deprived, they're fully occupied with parenting. But as she noted, when you're going to have a child, and especially when you don't have any other children, then your whole world is focused on that advanced planning and looking forward to things and doing everything you can to preserve memories. And Alex is also willing to market and pitch her service, which I love. It doesn't just come to you naturally.
She totally adopted that mindset of making things happen. Sometimes even on her mail route that she works for the postal service, she'll stop into a business or an office and see if they'll let her leave business cards. $800 a month is not a full time income for most of us. But again, $800 a month that you didn't have before. Well, that's pretty great.
If you have student loan debt of $20,000 with $800 a month in just over two years, you could completely pay that off. Long ago on my blog, I wrote a post showing how you can go anywhere in the world within a year by saving just $2 a day. Well, $800 a month can do that for you in just two months. Or of course, there's all kinds of other things you could do. The point is when your hustle money is your bonus money, it feels a lot different than your paycheck. So why does this hustle work? I think it works because it caters to the pride
that parents feel. And maybe even to get more psychological, when you have a newborn, you realize that child is going to grow up. And in some ways, that's exciting. Maybe at some points, you can't wait for that to happen. But at other points, you actually worry about it. You experience a sense of loss as your child becomes independent. And so here at
this stage, this very, very early stage of life, when they are completely dependent, a clay imprint is a permanent textural reminder of how small they were. So maybe it's kind of a way to anticipate the loss of dependence and to do whatever you can to hold on to that. And then as Alex learned, getting parents hooked with the first one is critical because how are you going to have a second or third child and watch them grow up without the same memento that the first one had? It's also not that expensive. So it becomes an automatic purchase. And then it becomes a lead generation tool as well, because new parents will tell
expectant parents about it. And the hustle will continue to earn referrals, maybe in the long term, even without Alex going into clinics and businesses all the time. So if you're creating a product, if you're building a service like several of the stories that we've heard on other days this week, it may not happen exactly like that for you. But if you listen to these stories, and you apply the lessons to your own hustle, you will see results over time. Remember, Sadosville School listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. If you go to sidehustleschool.com/4141, you'll
see the show notes for this episode, a link to Alex's website. And I'll also link up that blog post I mentioned about how if you can save $2 a day for a year, you can go anywhere. So I hope to see you somewhere in the world with that. But if nothing else, I hope to see you tomorrow right here. I'm Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Sadosville School.
