This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
When I was thinking, long, long ago, a galaxy far, far away, or actually it was just my living room, but when I was thinking long ago about what I wanted this show to be about, some decisions were simple. The name is Side Hustle School. I wanted to focus on regular people who didn't necessarily want to become entrepreneurs. I felt there was so much messaging out there about how everybody needs to go and quit their job and jump off a cliff and take a big risk and that's not really what most people want to do actually. A lot of our stories feature people who are totally happy in their regular career.
They just have a desire to make a couple thousand dollars a month extra on the side. Perfectly reasonable goal. In fact, it's pretty awesome. So in other words, I knew I didn't want to cover startups or even companies for the most part. Plenty of other people, other shows, other books, resources do that.
But I also realized that we'd probably have a number of people, a number of potential case studies who would be great for the show but had really grown their side hustle into a real business. And as I tried to figure out what to do about that, I realized the key point is that when we publish those features of somebody who's doing really well, the point is almost without exception, the person whose story I'm telling started their business on the side while they were working that regular job, whatever it was, and without a lot of money. So they weren't an investor-backed startup. They often didn't have a business plan. They were just doing something that they loved and they found a way to turn that into a product or service that other people were willing to pay for.
So as always, you don't have to grow your side hustle but some people can and do. Welcome to a brand new week of the show. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I have the privilege and honor of bringing you these stories and I love what I do, by the way. I feel so fortunate.
Today's story is especially inspiring. It's all about a chef who sets out to reinvent the humble apron, growing it into a multi-million dollar company while still working in restaurants at night. Pretty amazing story today for our amazing listeners. So let's say thank you to our sponsor. They allow the show to be completely free to you.
And then I'll tell you this inspiring story and see what we can learn from it. [Music]
People in the cooking industry work incredibly hard for their money. They put in backbreaking hours, miss out on holidays and time spent with family, all for the love of food. The last thing they want to worry about while slaving over a stove is replacing their clothing. They need gear that works as hard as they do.
That brings us to Ellen Bennett. Her story is one of passion, resilience and reimagined chef's aprons. Ellen is hustling personified. At just 18 years old, she moved from LA to Mexico City. What started out as a two month trip ended up being a four year adventure.
She attended culinary school there and turned aside hustling to make ends meet. That included renting out every spare foot or spare meter of her home to visiting tourists, working as an English teacher, translator and even a lottery number announcer. How's that for a dream job? It was a life education that taught her how to be resourceful. But her heart was in food.
So she eventually moved back to Los Angeles in 2012 and began a stint as a line chef at Baco Mercat, a much loved Spanish fusion restaurant in the middle of downtown LA. After two and a half years working there, a sizzling opportunity arose, one that Ellen was keen to take advantage of. Fed up with the subpar aprons available on the market, the owner, Joseph Centeno, was looking to commission a company to make a more functional and durable apron for his staff. This was a pain point for Ellen too, who was tired of constantly having to adjust her straps or find some way to keep her pockets from falling apart, all the while working a busy line. She knew she could use her experience to improve on your run of the mill apron.
So Ellen asked him, the chef, to give her a chance to create them herself. She could make some money. It was also the perfect test subject as she'd be using the apron on her own. He believed in her. So he gave her a shot with an order of 40 aprons.
Problem was at this point, Ellen had zero experience with sewing. You could say it was a half-baked idea. What she did have though was determination and a passion to succeed. Being the resourceful individual she is, Ellen traded what she could in exchange for help from those she knew. The first thing she needed was a sewing pattern.
So she offered to cook a friend dinner in exchange for making her one. She pulled $300 from her savings account and continued to negotiate her way to the finished product. Soon she had the first batch of aprons made by her new company, Headley and Bennett, and by company, it's really just her at this point, and it was ready to deliver them to her boss. He took them with minimal fanfare and said he would provide feedback after the first shift. His response was, well, not subtle.
"These aprons suck," he said. As Ellen says now, you learn the most from failure. Although the feedback left her ego feeling a little worse for wear, she was far from defeated and made a promise to remake 20 of the aprons with the assurance that they'd be perfect this time. His criticisms helped her refine the product. The second batch were better quality and featured a unique strap system that's still used today.
She burned through all her profit making those aprons for a second time, but was happier with the outcome. Once again, she delivered them to the boss and waited for his feedback. This time the feedback was different. "Thanks, these are great. Now get back to work." The response of a true chef.
His abruptness didn't matter because that first sale meant something special to Ellen. Someone had believed in her and she succeeded in creating a product that could help her coworkers and restore some dignity and pride to the kitchen. She describes her feeling in that moment as a calm knowingness. It all just felt right. And she knew Headley and Bennett was something she'd dedicate more time to.
It wasn't long before it started to feel like a real business. She got a bank account, a business license. Now she was legit. She still didn't know how to sew, but that wasn't necessary. She found an LA-based sewing company to sew all the aprons.
Sales began flowing in due to appearances at local farmers markets. And in fact, the volume was becoming so great that one of the sewers at the company offered to work for her exclusively. He left his job and began producing her aprons full-time out of his home. Each sale at the markets heightened Ellen's passion. Soon she had hundreds of customers as part of her self-described apron squad.
Everybody needs a squad. Soon she needed more space. So she leased a small office which she could barely afford. It was exciting because both Ellen and the sewer could work side by side. But when it was time to move in on the first day, her sewer didn't show up.
After tracking him down, he confessed that it was just too much and he couldn't cope. The news wasn't a total shock. At that stage, they were a two-person show cooking up 200 aprons a week. It wasn't enough to frazzle anyone's nerves. But Ellen kept stirring the pot.
She found new sewers and designed more aprons. By the time the company's first anniversary rolled around, Ellen had sold thousands of aprons. Besides the farmers markets and her online stores, she would attend industry events. She would approach famous chefs asking them what they looked for in an apron. It was a great strategy that enabled her to nab celebrity chefs like Martha Stewart and David Chang as customers.
Before long, she outgrew that office space and would move to progressively larger warehouses three times over the next three years. Now listen, all this time, Ellen was still working in the evening as a chef. She put in her apron hours during the day, then she would rush off to the restaurant at night to wear an apron, saying goodbye to her staff while running out the door to be staff for someone else. It wasn't until the end of 2015, three years in, that it got to be too much and she decided to dedicate 100% of her time to Headlee and Bennett. The company is now located in a 17,000 square foot warehouse in LA and sells millions of dollars in aprons every year.
The farmers markets are a distant memory. These days, most sales are made directly through their online Shopify store or via custom orders. They're also transitioning to wholesale customers like Williams Sonoma and Whole Foods. Ellen's brand continues to evolve. Although it started with aprons, she's now transitioning to more of a lifestyle brand, one that aims to bring simplicity and functionality to all areas of the kitchen.
She told us that an apron is to a chef what a cape is to a superhero. For both it seems, they're capable of great things as long as they're wearing the right equipment. So amazing story, congratulations Ellen. Fantastic, if I ever need an apron, which is probably not gonna happen, but if I ever need one, I know where to go. Perhaps the product itself will be more helpful to some of our listeners, but I love the story.
And in this story, Ellen followed this four part plan. I don't mean to overly simplify because there's obviously a lot of details, but basically there were four general strategies. And the first one was product first. Because she was a chef, because she had so much experience, she knew that the existing solutions were not satisfactory. She thought she could do better.
But even so, it took her some time to figure that out. The first batch didn't go so well. She got that negative feedback from her boss, but then she took that feedback, went away, made a second version. And it wasn't just the second version, by the way. I think she kept iterating all along.
Some of the other celebrity chefs that she met later would give input and she would take that into consideration when making the next iteration. So product always came first. Number two, understand the audience, which wasn't too hard for her to do because that was her background. She understood how important an apron could be to a chef, why it was not just a practical, but also a pretty personal need. Then number three, she built structure to her business.
So it wasn't just her doing everything. And that was also a process. She hired a company at first, and then she hired this guy. And it turned out she was too reliant on that one guy because it was too much work for him. So then she adjusted and ended up building a team and moving to a succession of larger and larger warehouses.
And as that was happening, she was growing the business all along the way, starting with the farmer's markets and then the online store and then going out to the industry events and so on. But without those other three strategies, I don't think she would have gotten very far in growing the business because you have to have a stellar product. You have to really understand your audience. And if you're gonna have growth, if that is your goal, you're gonna have to create structure to be able to sustain that growth. So well done, well executed.
If this was a restaurant, I'd give it a stronger view on Yelp. Five stars would recommend. And to our listeners, I hope you enjoyed this one as well. Like I said, I think you might find it inspirational, but I also hope it might inspire you to take action of your own. That is the whole point of the show.
We wanna support people out there who are trying to create something for themselves, whatever that thing may be, whether it grows into a multi-million dollar brand or it's just something that you're proud of. You can look at it and say, I made that thing. I created that. I had an idea and I made it happen. That is my wish for you.
If you'd like to check out the show notes for today, just come to sidehustleschool.com/583. I'll be back again with you tomorrow and I hope you'll join me. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
