This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, welcome back. You are listening to Side Hustle School. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. Hope you enjoyed yesterday's story about the small email list that grows to almost 300,000 people, makes more than a million dollars. I had a feeling that one would be a crowd favorite and so far it seems a lot of people like it.
Today's story is also great, but it's quite different. It's about an elementary school teacher who starts a side hustle that makes it on the Today Show. And it all began with a Facebook photo. I often talk about how paying attention to frustrations is a good way to get hustle ideas. Well, this story relates directly to a frustration of the school teacher.
And I'll tell you about it right after this. [Music]
Adrienne Osterman started her hustle because she was annoyed. She didn't have an abundance of free time. In fact, she was greatly overworked. She had a full-time job as an elementary school teacher.
She was also a single mom, had a whole host of other personal demands. So it's not like she was sitting around and said, "Hey, what should I do with this extra 15 hours a week?" No, as I said, she was annoyed. And it all started with a Facebook photo. A friend posted her two children in their team shirts, ready to cheer on the New York Giants at a game one afternoon. The middle school aged daughter had a mud mask on her face and the caption read, "My kids have their game face on." Adrienne thought, wouldn't it be great if she could treat her skin in the Giants colors?
Now her own daughter happened to be visiting this weekend, who's a University of Connecticut graduate and devoted fan. Adrienne asked if she or any of her friends ever painted their faces at the UConn football games they often attended while tailgating with their friends. Her response was quick and to the point, "No, Mom, it would make our face break out." Adrienne started asking her friends directly about their experiences with the face paints available on the market. One told her she once bought eye black from a party store and it left little pimples along the sides of her face. Another said she'd tried it and it would run in the rain and smear easily.
One girl had a green arm three days after her event because the paint she used stained her skin so badly. Ultimately, it was not lack of interest or enthusiasm that kept these fans from fully engaging in the sporting experience. They simply didn't have good history with the products that were available to them. So Adrienne started searching the market for a product that would solve this problem and she couldn't find one. What she did find, however, was article after article about how toxic traditional face paints are.
And over the next couple of months, she made it her mission to develop a product that went beyond not just being bad for you, but to one that could actually benefit you. As part of this mission, she wrote up a list of requirements. First, every ingredient had to have a benefit to the skin. It had to function in the elements, needed to stay on and stay where you put it, had to be water resistant and contain a sunscreen, had to be natural and organic, come in team inspired colors, had to wash off easily and not stain clothes. She couldn't believe there wasn't something like this out there.
She felt that consumers should have a healthier option. Over the next several months, she worked hard keeping her startup costs low. She used the free law clinic at her state university to help with trademark and patent searches. She used her American Express rewards points to buy raw materials for experimenting and so on. She did all this research on her own time.
She used her nights and weekends for the physical experiment with making the actual formula. It wasn't easy and it wasn't always fun, but she was determined. Adrienne has always been creative. After much trial and error, lots of mixing up ingredients in her kitchen and bathroom with unwavering determination, she was happy with the recipe. All of those must haves from her list were met.
She now had a product and she decided to call it Fan Mask. To sell it online, she used Shopify to create a simple yet attractive website. Not being tech savvy was a big stressor for her, but again, she figured it out and orders slowly began coming in. She priced Fan Mask at $19.99 with several different color options and she also joined a service called Haro, which stands for Help a Reporter Out. I'll link it up in the show notes and this resource connects journalists with sources.
It's a free resource. I've used it before myself. It can definitely be helpful and for Adrienne, it was extremely helpful because through the service, she heard about a query from a Today Show producer looking for summertime sports products and the show ended up featuring Fan Mask in a very short segment. Now, when I say very short, her product was actually featured on the show for just two seconds. However, there are a lot of people watching the Today Show.
So that brief exposure in that short segment was enough to immediately bring new customers and inquiries to her site less than 10 minutes later. And this continued throughout the day, the next day on into the following week. It gave her the motivation to keep working on her project, to continue investing in it and to see where she could take it next. And speaking of next, her future goal is to produce a Kickstarter campaign, to raise money for greater exposure and she would also love to find a strategic partner who has the resources to get Fan Mask out to the world a bit faster. [Music]
So what can we learn from Adrienne's story?
Now, first of all, I think this product presents a bit of a marketing challenge and the challenge is most people in the market for buying face paint, they don't realize that it's toxic. It's not like it says, hey, this is bad for you on the bottle. So you first have to educate your market, which is kind of a high level task. But first glance, it definitely doesn't sound like the easiest kind of project to start or the most potentially profitable project. But nevertheless, I love the missional element to Fan Mask and Adrienne has a great origin story.
Being able to say she's both a teacher and a mom gives her instant credibility. And so I'm not surprised that outlets like The Today Show find it a natural fit to feature. In fact, it's almost easier to get a project like this featured in that kind of major mainstream media than it is to get something like Scott's email newsletter that we heard about yesterday. Now, obviously, if you compare the two, that email newsletter is reaching a lot more people, much more profitable. So it's better in that way.
But manufacturing this kind of alternative face paint can be a more interesting and attractive story for producers at places like The Today Show who are looking to feature new products for their audience. So pros and cons to everything, of course. Now, Adrienne also mentioned that she used Shopify. They are a partner of the show. If you go to Shopify.com/sidehustle, you can get a 21-day trial and check it out for yourself.
Adrienne's experience with Shopify was that even though she felt overwhelmed with tech stuff, it was very easy to get started. And she had much more of a challenge figuring out how to actually make the product than she did getting it online, getting her payment system set up. All the stuff that she was intimidated by in the first place ended up being a lot simpler than she expected. Adrienne found initial success and created her own product while responding to a frustration. If you listen to these stories, begin applying them to your own hustle, pay attention to frustrations and annoyances that you see in your daily life, you will see results too.
Remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. Show notes for today's episode are online, sidehustleschool.com/52. I'll also link up Haro and Shopify and anything else that we talked about. From that site, you can say hi to me or ask a question for the show. I'm Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School, and I'll see you tomorrow.
