This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Oh, hey there, what's up? This is Chris Guillebeau with Side Hustle School bringing you today a new story, of course, and also today is a listener success story. I always love highlighting projects that our listeners are working on. People out there are doing all kinds of interesting things. And today's story specifically is about natural deodorant, which is, as you might imagine, kind of a personal product.
We're gonna call it natural deodorant that actually works. It brings in $5,500 a month. And the story features someone who ends up creating a sensational side hustle selling her own natural floral-based deodorant. This is a brand new product and project. She started it on the cheap, at least relatively.
It's not a hundred dollar startup, but the point is she did it without outside investment. And last month, it made more than $5,000 for this first time side hustler who listens to the show. So where did she get this idea and how did she make it happen? Well, all those details coming up right after this quick thank you to our sponsor. [Music]
You probably heard the saying, "If you want something done right, "you have to do it yourself." That saying can apply to so many things, perhaps even natural deodorant.
Sarah Moray is currently the head of business development for a biotechnology company, but she had previously worked in venture capital for five years. During those years, she saw lots of early stage companies trying to raise money, offering to give away 30% of their company's equity just for a chance at funding. She knew that a lot of businesses didn't need a million dollars in venture capital funding to get going. They just needed some cash and a day job for the founder to keep them going until their business began to earn money. Now during this time, Sarah was also on the hunt for a natural deodorant that didn't have harmful chemicals, parabens and aluminum or aluminum for some of our listeners, but nothing seemed to work for her.
She was frustrated by the lack of options, especially after she had tested just about all of them. So Sarah decided to do what any Pinterest craze millennial would do, she decided to try making her own and she called it Curie. She gathered recipes from the internet, stocked up on ingredients and turned her kitchen into ground zero. She spent 10 months working on her formula, asking everyone around to please smell her. At long last, she had cracked the code.
It's a little citrusy, it contains a hint of floral and it has a lot of freshness. In her former life in venture capital, Sarah would always encourage founders with low startup costs to do as much as they could on their own in order to keep every percentage of equity. So it was only natural for her to take the same path when she was building her side hustle. Thanks to her day job, she was able to take her sweet time with launching Curie and really hone in on creating the perfect product without the pressure of needing to make money right away. Still, once she finally launched, she did make money, but more on that in a moment.
Sarah officially launched Curie after testing her product for a few months and doing a limited production run of 50 units in December. She designed a label in Adobe Illustrator, printed out those labels at Kinko's and then posted a few images to social media to test drive the response. She sold that initial product run to friends, family, friends of friends and even a few Instagram followers. She then took their feedback and used it to finalize her formula. That first product run was a great opportunity to get feedback from those friends and friends of friends and perhaps more importantly from complete strangers who didn't feel bound by the rules of friendship to be non-critical.
As Sarah told us, this was a crucial step since up until that point, I was the only one using it. Deodorant is a product that works differently for everyone. So I needed to bring others into the process. Everything from the consistency and scent to the amount of baking soda it contained, a concern for those with sensitive skin, was carefully noted and used to create something that had real sweat equity. It turns out that Sarah had the right ingredients for side hustle success.
In her first week, she brought in $1,500 in sales. This immediate success meant that she could and had to upgrade her production process from her kitchen to having a manufacturer craft and package orders. Now you might wonder, how exactly does one go about finding a deodorant manufacturer? She says the answer is not nearly as complicated as you'd think. She didn't have a connection in the industry.
All it took was Google and a bit of resourcefulness. She found seven or eight promising health and beauty manufacturers who fit her guidelines. They sourced raw ingredients that were GMO free and did no animal testing at any stage of the process. From there, she started calling them up. Some of those manufacturers said no outright because apparently deodorant is more complicated to produce than other skincare products.
Fun fact for you there. And others, Sarah had to cross off her list because they required huge batch orders. Finally, one manufacturer took pity on Sarah and referred her to somebody else who might suit her needs. That connection was a match made in skincare heaven. Not only were they able to sell her smaller batches at an affordable price, they also had a chemist on the payroll who could help with her formula.
Sarah's experience in venture capital had taught her that product needs to be number one. It helped that she spent her first 10 months maniacally focused on that product. And she believed that if she didn't have an amazing product, then she didn't have a product-based business. At least not one that was gonna be profitable. It also helped that Sarah was an avid listener of the Side Hustle School podcast.
What, that's us, oh my God, thank you so much, Sarah. Two episodes in particular stood out. Episode number three, "The Candy Heart Hustle" becomes a six figure second income. And episode 205, "Mommy Coffee" goes on to earn $20,000 a month. Sarah would listen to previous episodes while working out at the gym and presumably testing different recipes.
After all was said and done, her startup costs for this project came to about $16,000. Now that's not a small amount of money, of course, but it was funded in large part by her savings account and credit card. This amount covered product ingredients, initial manufacturing, and everything for her website. Sarah worked at her day job through the whole process and continues to work there. Last month, her natural deodorant profits were $5,500.
That's right, $5,500 just from last month. For now, almost all the profits Sarah earns is reinvested back into the company for product development and social media strategy. But she's also been able to enjoy some things for herself. Among other places, she's planning trips to Australia and Mexico thanks to this new additional income. Sarah has come a long way since testing deodorant formulas in her kitchen and making her friends and family smell her after a workout.
And by the way, that was just last year, so she works fast. Speaking of working fast, she's now working on creating and launching more products for her side hustle. So hopefully at some point we can look back and see what she's come out with. But for now, let's say she's off to a sensational start. [Music]
Yay, congratulations to Sarah.
Like I said, I always love hearing from our listeners who are starting projects. Well done, this is fantastic. $5,500 in profits last month and she's just getting started. So can't wait to see what happens next. And also just a couple of comments on like the day job and the startup cost.
I mean, it costs $16,000 to start this project. So $16,000, not $100 startup, not the cheapest thing in the world. But still, if you think about manufacturing, about creating a wellness product, especially a product so personal and complicated to make, apparently, as deodorant. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody said that creating a new deodorant line costs $100,000. And maybe for some people it does, but you work with what you have.
And so $16,000 to start this project, which is now highly profitable in its early months. Seems like a really wise investment. And also this is why a day job is so great for this kind of project. Because if you want to invest an amount of money like that into your project, it really helps to be able to say, okay, if it doesn't work out, it's not the end of the world. I've got this day job that's keeping me going and I'm gonna be able to make this investment.
I'm not gonna go somewhere for outside funding. I'm gonna own 100% of the company. And again, I've got that job that is giving me security while I build out this business. And we also ask her, by the way, like where are the sales coming from? And so far it seems like the customers, the initial customers are posting about it a lot.
She said one of her customers posted unprompted in a beauty or wellness Facebook group yesterday and she got 20 orders from it. So again, it seems like a legit product. If you're out there and you're looking for an alternative natural women's deodorant, maybe you wanna check it out. But even if you're not in that market, hopefully there's something you can learn from her. I too enjoy learning throughout this process.
I'm so glad to be able to bring these episodes to you. Don't forget, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. If you'd like to check out Curie or just learn more about this process, maybe follow along with Sarah's journey, come on over to sidehustleschool.com/509. That's where we'll keep all the notes and links to everything I mentioned. Be sure you're subscribed to the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts.
I want it to be easy for you to get these episodes every single day as they come out. With that, I'm gonna sign off for today, but I will be back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
