This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, what's up? Welcome back to Side Hustle School. I'm Chris Guillebeau, and we are beginning a new week. I got a fun set of stories for you this week, all about people who successfully start a side hustle without quitting their job. And as always, you'll learn how they got their idea, how they did it, how much money they made, and what you can learn from their story.
Today's story is about an American living in Belgium for more than a decade, who returns home and starts a project making fine chocolate. Now, we'll also look at the concept of mentorship, which I get asked about a lot. Now, I'm gonna tell you something very different than what you almost always hear. And the headline is, "I don't think you actually need a mentor." Now, I know this is a contentious opinion, so I'll explain a bit more after the story, which will begin in just a moment. [Music]
Today's story comes from the state of Louisiana via the small country of Belgium.
Known for its delicacies, including french fries, beer, waffles, and chocolate. Jeff Slaughter lived in Belgium for 13 years before returning home to Louisiana. While he was living and working abroad, he became intrigued by the chocolate culture of the country. Now, not only is this chocolate delicious, it's also artfully made and well packaged. Jeff had the idea to bring some of this culture back to America where the art of fine chocolate is sadly still in its infancy stage.
As a resourceful side hustler, Jeff set out to learn how to make chocolate in a traditional European manner. But at first, his quest led only to dead ends. He found two options and neither were great. The first option was a two-year school, all in French, which would have been difficult or nearly impossible with his current job. The second was a short three-day workshop produced by one of the Belgian chocolate companies.
This sounded good at first, but as Jeff dug deeper, he gained the impression that it was mostly for tourists and wouldn't really show him everything he needed to know. Finally, he found an online program based in Vancouver, Canada, known as École Chocolat, or the Chocolate School. This was a three-month course with a lot of reading material, video training, and biweekly assignments that were graded. Although attending a course in person might have been more helpful, with the limitations of time, money, and language, this seemed like the best option. The course exceeded his expectations and gave him the working rules to learn much more on his own.
Back in Louisiana, he set up a small kitchen and began to make batches of artisanal chocolate, using the skills he'd learned through the course. Next, he had to decide how to sell the chocolate he made. Thinking like a hustler, he realized that opening a chocolate shop would be expensive and potentially risky. So he decided to keep the operation small and nimble. He also said, "I don't want this business to run my life.
I want it to fit into my life," which is a great philosophy for a lot of the things that we look at on the show. Now lastly, I mentioned that Jeff lives in Louisiana. He wanted to run the hustle seasonally from November to March so that he wouldn't compete with the heat and humidity. Louisiana and many other states and some countries have what's known as a cottage law, where you can sell certain foods that you make in your home until you reach a revenue level of about $20,000 a year. Once you reach that point, you have to have a dedicated kitchen, receive regular inspections, go through the whole process, but you can start without worrying about any of that.
Jeff had learned a lot about making chocolate, but when it came to marketing it, not everything worked as well as he'd first hoped. At first he thought going to farmer's markets and festivals would be a good idea, but that experience was actually disappointing. He discovered that unless it was a high-end market, the shoppers there didn't tend to appreciate the quality of his chocolate. And then even if it was a good market, it didn't always bring in enough traffic to make sufficient sales. Fortunately, other experiences were much more rewarding.
In addition to selling the chocolate directly, Jeff decided to try other ideas, including parties, workshops, and even something he called personal chocolatier services. As an added benefit, he notes that making chocolate can be a lonely venture, but these parties, workshops, and client interactions with special orders add a social touch to the mix, which allows him to get out of his kitchen and spend time with people who are interested in what he's doing. This sweet hustle brought in somewhere between $6,000 and $8,000 the first year, and then about the same the next. Remember, this is a seasonal project. He's only doing it a few months of the year, so it's well over $1,000 a month when he's actively working on it.
His biggest limitation is not having a consistent place to work. He's hoping to eliminate that limitation by putting in a second kitchen in a new home he and his wife are building so that he can produce chocolate whenever he wants and potentially ramp up the project. [Music]
All right, congratulations to Jeff. Really fun project. I would love to try some of this chocolate.
And I mentioned at the top of the show that we'll look at mentorship. And I'm gonna tell you something really different about this because you have probably heard more than once that you need some kind of mentor to guide you along your way, to be your sounding board, to give you advice of all kinds. Well, I don't actually think you need a mentor. You probably need to learn some things. We all need to learn.
We're all constantly learning, at least hopefully. But that doesn't necessarily mean you need a formalized relationship from one particular guide or guru to do so. And the question you need to ask is, okay, to start my project or to go to the next level with my project, or if something isn't working, what is it that I really need to learn? That is the key question. So Jeff's example is really great here because it illustrates this well.
He first looked at doing a two-year chocolate school. And that's probably what a lot of people would have advised him to do. That is the traditional path in the chocolate-making world. But that didn't really work for his needs. Then he looked at that three-day workshop, which sounded good, but he realized it was more promotional than anything else.
And then he found that three-month online course, which was self-directed, but also with a fair amount of accountability, graded assignments, et cetera. And it sounds like Jeff is pretty good at independent learning. If you're not as disciplined or you definitely need that in-person group experience, then maybe an in-person group is better for you. But the point is, you should decide for yourself what you need to know and then figure out how you can acquire that knowledge. Now, Jeff also noted that one of the assignments he received from École Chocolat was to find three chocolatiers that he admired and might want to model his business after.
And he found three of them in the U.S. since that's where he knew he'd be selling. Two out of those three people responded to his email and were happy to answer questions and be a resource. So it's not like he's not getting any advice at all. It's not like he's not receiving direction, but he just kind of found his own way to do it.
And those values of independence, self-determination, getting creative by learning about that cottage law that allows you to make food in your home and sell it for up to $20,000 a year, these are valuable skills that you only acquire as you go through a process of discovery, just like Jeff did. So if you're really into mentorship, if it's working great for you, that's totally fine. I just want to speak to everybody who's beginning their journey and say there is another way you might be able to figure it out yourself. Now, as always, remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. If you want to find the show notes for today's episode, go to sidehustleschool.com/5050.
And I also want to give a shout out to my friends at the Radical Candor podcast. Now, when Sidusville School launched on January 1, it did so on the new Onward imprint, which is founded and produced by my friend and hero, Gretchen Rubin, and this other great show, Radical Candor launched at the same time. Now, this show is all about helping people in their work, specifically in a category of giving and receiving feedback, which is something that a lot of us struggle in. So on this show, two hosts talk about different strategies and tactics for how you can improve in this area. And over the next couple of weeks, they have two related episodes.
One is about how to give feedback to your boss, and the other is how to get feedback from your boss, which are both really important, but can also be difficult to figure out. So do some self-directed learning and check out Radical Candor in iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Chris Guillebeau, this is Sidusville School, and I'll see you tomorrow.
