Shopify Employee Sells Enough Apparel to Buy a French Bulldog

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Hey, what's up? It's Chris Guillebeau here with you for Side Hustle School. What do these things have in common? French Bulldogs, the LGBTQ community, print on demand, and drinking an entire box of red wine. Well, it's like this.

Sometimes you might be motivated to start a side hustle because of a particular purchase you want to make. There's something out there that you've got your eye on and it costs more money than you have, for more money than you're comfortable spending. And so you start a side hustle to pay for it. Well, today's story comes from a woman who wants to buy a bulldog, specifically a French bulldog. And apparently those are expensive.

Like $3,000 expensive, who knew? Libby Guillebeau, the show cat of Side Hustle School, came from the shelter. She costs less than a hundred bucks. Although we probably spent more than $3,000 on her over the years. Anyway, today's featured story needs $3,000.

So what does she do? Well, she gets resourceful and ends up making a lot more than that $3,000. In fact, she goes on to make more than $100,000, which is something like 33.3 French bulldogs. I think she only buys one in the end, but we'll find out. That story is coming right up after a quick thank you to our sponsor.

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In 2014, Liz Bertorelli of Toronto, Canada had pretty much everything she could possibly want in life. A good job with a stable income, a roof over her head, and a loving and supporting group of friends and family. But still, something was missing. You could say that there was a French bulldog shaped hole in her life. Now this was nothing new for Liz, who had been wanting a French bulldog since the dawn of time.

And anyone who knew her was well aware of her obsession with those little pups. The only problem with this long rooted obsession was that this precious little pup of Liz's dreams cost more than almost all of her Apple products combined. Since she had already started adulting by this point, selling lemonade at a stand on the street corner for extra cash was no longer a viable option. Determined to find a way to make her French bulldog dreams come true, she did what she'd do when faced with many of life's tough questions. She turned to the internet.

But despite finding an abundance of information about get rich opportunities or multi-level marketing, her options seem to come down to making pennies answering surveys or possibly selling a kidney. Neither of those options were attractive. Then one day, something magical happened. She began a new job working for Shopify as a social media content producer. This opened her mind to a whole new world of money-making ideas.

Plus it didn't hurt that starting an e-commerce shop could actually help her be better at her job since it would effectively put her in the shoes of a merchant and therefore help her see things from a customer's perspective. Somewhere along the way, she also learned about dropshipping and Printful, which is a free app in Shopify's app store. And she said it was love at first click. She loved the idea of creating a Shopify storefront and using Printful because they handle pretty much everything from printing to shipping apparel. That way, shop owners can focus on what they're selling and to whom they're selling it.

With her business model in place, next she needed a good idea of what to sell. She wanted her product to be something that she was passionate about, so she took a closer look at the things that mattered to her. As a member of the LGBTQ community, it seemed only natural that she would create apparel that would be right at home in a pride parade. The only problem was that Liz knew nothing about design, except for the fact that she might've had a copy of Adobe Illustrator from 2010 installed on an old PC somewhere. What she did have was a box of wine, some informative Printful tutorials, and a working knowledge of the Shopify platform.

So on the morning of May 1st, 2014, her LGBTQ apparel shop called Bobo Academy came to life despite having a serious morning after headache. And she says that was from the wine, not the process. She focused on creating simple designs for shirts, sweaters, hats, and totes with confident sassy phrases, like death to gender roles, and even some holiday-themed merchandise like ho ho homo for those who wanted to fly their flag at the ugly sweater Christmas party. Because Liz figured out the designs herself, and she gets a free Shopify store as a perk for working for them, her startup costs were virtually zero. And since she uses Printful for printing and shipping her apparel, they take a cut of profits, but that's okay because it allows her to focus on marketing and design.

And she does all of her own marketing too, which is mostly organic through Instagram and Tumblr. At first, Liz thought she'd just be selling to friends and family, but then orders from across the country and from as far away as Europe started rolling in. "I don't think I've ever drank so much champagne in my life," she said. Three years on, Bobo Academy has now shipped to over 141 countries, and it was even the official Pride merchandiser for the Toronto Pride Parade in 2016. Here's the thing, Liz's initial goal was short and to the point, to make $3,000 and get a French bulldog.

But the irony was that she ended up getting so caught up with the excitement of creating new designs, figuring out how taxes worked, and then deciding on the best marketing strategy that she completely forgot about her goal, at least for a while. After the first three months, she could have purchased that bulldog and called it quits, but instead she kept making bigger goals. Bobo Academy is still going strong and will be four years old in May, 2018. According to her estimates of her net income, she could be sharing her household with more than 50 French bulldogs by the end of her first three years. And yes, she now only does math by referring to bulldogs.

But in the end, she settled for one and her name is Olive. We asked Liz for some best practices when running an e-commerce store, and she said when communicating with customers, respond in a timely manner and be human because no one likes speaking with a copy and paste robot. She also said, make any contact information easy to find. Nothing drives her crazier than not being able to reach a shop owner. It's a big red flag.

More than anything else though, she recommends that you find something that motivates you and encourages you to set and reach your goals 'cause that's what worked for her. Liz thinks that the rest of the income earned from Bobo Academy will go towards building a better life for her and for Olive, of course. Maybe she'll also start saving up for her pup education because one day that dog is gonna go off to Bulldog College and we all know that's not cheap these days. Okay, why is this print on demand story successful when others fail? We talked about another one recently, episode 389, where an architect moonlights by selling designer onesies.

And in that episode, I talked about how being specific in this field is so important. You gotta stand out somehow. You can't be a generic print on demand supplier 'cause there's so many people trying to do this. And in this case, Liz chose this specific target group, a group that she identified with and she understood. And she says she knows nothing about design, but I went and looked at the designs.

They look pretty good to me. Maybe she's gotten better over the past three years, but some of the messages are funny and it's also positive. She has these encouraging messages about anti-bullying, about protecting trans kids, and just about celebrating different forms of identity. So I think that has a lot to do with it. And also she didn't just put it up and walk away.

She's done a really good job with Instagram in particular. I went to take a look and she's got very consistent posts. She has more than 13,000 followers at the time I'm recording this. So even though it kind of began serendipitously or out of this desire to make just a few thousand dollars, it does seem like she's built a real brand. And something that provides her security as she continues in her job.

So all of that is wonderful. And I hope that we can get something like that for you. I hope that by listening to the show, by taking action, not just listening, but doing something about it, you too can have a success story like the ones I tell you every day. Because inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. You're gonna check out Liz's shop and see some other resources about Shopify, about Printful, print on demand in general.

Those show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/417. That's 417. I am your host, Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School, and I hope you'll join me tomorrow.