This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Welcome to Episode 474 of Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. So glad you're joining me. I've got a new story for you today, just like I do every day and I really like today's. I know I've been saying that a lot recently, but I think we've just been having a string of really great stories. Now listen, this story today, we're actually going to go back in time to a side hustle
that started 15 years ago, was immediately profitable, has grown considerably ever since, is now a seven figure project. That's right, seven figures and is still operated as a side hustle by a regular guy with a regular full-time job. Okay, I want to make sure you got all that, right? Seven figure project, been going for 15 years, still operated as a side hustle by a regular guy. And specifically, it's about a construction engineer that is our regular guy. And this construction
engineer discovers how much energy is wasted by addicts and creates a simple product that saves homeowners money. All right, so stay tuned. Let's say thank you to today's sponsor and I'll tell you all about this idea, how he made it happen, and what happened along the way. It is a good one. Side hustle school friends, let's take a trip back in time. The year is 2002. The internet is
nothing like it is today. Ecommerce is just starting to get off the ground. And Mark Tyrol is a construction engineer. He tests and certifies building materials and he loves his job. But there's something he doesn't love, a problem he sees all the time. That problem, addicts. Addicts
are never sealed properly. They always let in air from the outside. And they tend to cost homeowners hundreds of dollars per year and lost energy from heat or air conditioning, even if they don't realize it. Mark's own addict wasn't any different. And it bothered him. So one weekend,
he created a foam cover for his addict stairs that would provide at least some level of insulation. It wasn't fancy, but almost overnight his electricity bill went down. It was so simple, yet so effective, and he knew he had landed on something that others would want. So Mark started working on a side hustle during nights and weekends. He wasn't sure it would work. He was far more of a technical guy
than a marketing one, but he figured it was worth a shot. Being a construction engineer who dealt with materials on a daily basis, Mark had a pretty good idea of where to look to find a manufacturer. He talked to a few in his area and signed an agreement with one. That agreement cost him $5,000 for the first batch of product. He put it all on his credit card, which, by the way, is something that we don't usually suggest. But in late 2002, Mark launched his website and a new side
hustle called Batic Door. The only product was his attic stair cover priced at just over $100. Mark called his friends, emailed the link to his coworkers, but otherwise didn't really do much to market, mostly because he didn't know how. And yet somehow, Batic Door received its first sale that same day. For the next several weeks, he had a slow but steady stream of roughly three to four sales per week. Struck with the entrepreneurial spirit, Mark and his wife decided to try selling at trade
shows. It turned out that some of them were profitable while others were not, but they were all expensive and all exhausting. In the second year of business, he tried to do 10 shows, but it was just too much. Both Mark and his wife had full time jobs, and this side hustle was becoming a stress hustle. Sales were still coming, but he realized he needed to explore other ways of selling that could work more on autopilot. So Mark started uploading his products to different
channels. First, he listed on eBay, then on Amazon. Sure enough, his products were exposed to more people and sales grew. By the end of his second year, Mark was generating roughly $50,000 in sales annually. And using feedback he'd received from customers, he'd started to create a handful of other energy saving products. These products included a draft stopper for your chimney,
shutter seals and covers, and even an energy efficient pet door. As his product line got more complicated, so did manufacturing. It turned out that some manufacturers were awesome, others weren't so great with deadlines or didn't deliver consistently high quality products. Mark learned to be very particular about the samples he gets from a potential manufacturer. If the samples aren't top-notch, he politely moves on. Another sales channel that Mark wanted to take a whack at
was the Home Depot website. He applied online and was invited to pitch a product at their Atlanta headquarters. He selected his newer fireplace plug, a device that keeps drafts from entering through the chimney, and he wowed the product team. They accepted the fireplace plug and even trained him how to be an effective seller on their site. Mark kept going, all while working his day job. And by the end of year four, Battic Door was generating over $200,000 a year. He no longer
attended many trade shows, but he did go to some big ones. And one year while he was at the International Builders' Show, an excited group approached his booth. They were interested in his product and asked for demonstrations. It turned out they were the advanced team for upcoming HGTV segments. Impressed by his products, they invited him to film more demonstrations in Los Angeles for an inter-show sequence of informational videos. Mark was thrilled. He
immediately called up a friend who lived in LA, and a few months later, he flew down and used that friend's house to demonstrate his products. In 2012, after 10 years in business, Battic Door had its first $1 million a year. In 2016, the business had its first $2 million a year, and sales have hovered around there ever since. Still, despite the growth, Mark never left his engineer's day job. As we step out of our time machine, the year is now 2018. The internet
is used around the world. Ecommerce has spread far beyond what most people would have imagined 15 years ago. And Mark Tyrell is still an engineer, but probably not for much longer. He's beginning to crave more time with his wife and kids and thanks to Battic Door, early retirement from his day job is now on the horizon. All right, the 15 year a million dollar side hustle. Love
that story. Congrats to Mark. First thought, first comment, you know, this world, this world of side hustling, it's clearly not a new phenomenon. Right? A lot of our listeners have been doing this for a long time. A lot of people know others who've been doing it for a long time. Mark's had
this 15 year project, you know, I've been doing this in various ways for 20 years. And part of what I hope to do here with the show is to shine a spotlight on as many variations and iterations of the side hustle world as possible, so that you can understand the desire you have is not uncommon, like you're not alone, like you want to have some kind of freedom, you want some independence, some autonomy, maybe you just want more money, that's okay. But often the desire for more money is rooted in something deeper. It's not just that you want more money, you want to be able to make choices that are important to you. You want to be able to have the freedom to work a day job that you love, or leave that job if you don't love it. Or maybe stay in that career for a while while
building this project on the side, just like Mark has done, so that eventually you are able to have the choice to go back and forth or do what is best for you at the time. Or maybe some other motivation, you know, my point is not to tell you what your motivation is, it's to help you achieve that goal, helping to accomplish a task that connects directly to your motivation to your mission. And also, you know, Mark is a pioneer in some ways. But aside from that one big decision he made early on to put $5,000 on his credit card, everything else he's done since then, at least what we heard about in the story, has been fairly conservative and consistent. And so the situation he's in now, where it seems that at some point soon he's going to make that decision to go into this full time, that's a result of that consistent effort. That's the result of building this business over time,
pursuing those additional sales channels like eBay and Amazon, Home Depot, developing more products in response to customer feedback and requests. So it sounds like aside from that one decision in the beginning, there's been very little risk associated with it, which is great. That's wonderful. That's the point. You say, you know, I don't know if this is going to work, so I'm just going to do what I can. Even for something that scales to a million dollar business,
you don't have to risk it all. All right, so I do have one suggestion for Mark. And of course, he can take it or leave it, you know, he's doing well enough on his own. But speaking of 2002, I went to look at his website, got to say, no disrespect, the website kind of looks like it's still living in 2002. All right, you'll see what I mean if you go and visit it on the show notes page, not a knock on his products at all. Nobody buys his products because of how
the website looks. So on the one hand, it's cool that you can have, you know, this level of success with a website that probably hasn't been updated in a decade or so. Again, no disrespect. But on the other hand, I think, okay, you know, why not invest a little bit here in somewhat of a refresh? Okay, even if it's not a complete redesign, even if you don't want a fancy website, just a little bit of an uplift, you know, because this is a pretty successful business. And if
there's a way that you can connect that redesign or that uplift, whatever it is, you know, to the greater mission, like what he's actually trying to accomplish, then I think it would probably be a good thing. I think it'd probably be worthwhile at this point to invest something into that. So that's just my two cents. As I said, wonderful project, very inspiring. I hope that you out there are inspired by it too. And I'll remind you that inspiration is good. But you know, what's
the next step? Inspiration with action, that's the better way to go. Also my two cents. Those show notes for today's episode are online at sidehustleschool.com/474. Much more is on the way as we continue throughout 2018. You are a rock star. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle
School.
