This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hello, what's up? Welcome back. This is Side Hustle School. I'm Chris Guillebeau, and today's story is really fun. It's about how a single mom created an astrology calendar that made $15,000 in a short period of time. Before I tell you today's story, I just want to highlight
something. The best thing about a side hustle really is freedom and opportunity. When you have a job, even if it's a good job, you still have certain obligations. You have to work within a certain structure. There's usually a ceiling of some kind on your income. You might get promoted.
If you work on commission, you might sell more, but it's very rare for that income to be completely unlimited. You also don't have complete autonomy or flexibility. So in today's story, you'll hear about someone who was doing something that she loved and cared about, but it also came with great limits and restrictions and also a lot of stress. Now with her hustle, it's not that everything is absolutely perfect, but this project she's created has greatly eased her stress load while allowing her to be much more creative. So let's jump right in. Before pursuing a hustle that she'd had her
eye on for a while, Julie Wilder in central Florida had owned an organic restaurant for more than a decade. That business was rewarding, but as you can imagine, it was also a ton of work. Years before she ever created this profitable side hustle, Julie had a passion project where she designed an astrology calendar and updated it every year. She was totally focused on the restaurant, didn't have time or interest in selling that calendar. But then after updating the design, she decided to try selling it on Etsy, mostly out of curiosity. People seem to like it. There
wasn't anything quite like it on the market. So after she sold the restaurant, she decided to spend some time exploring this hustle before beginning an all new different career. Within a few months, she had made $5,000 with minimal effort, entirely bootstrapped. There was no outside funding, and she didn't even need to borrow from her savings since at that point, the hustle was supporting itself. During the last month we spoke, she had made another $2,000. This time
with almost no effort at all since the calendar is already designed. Julie is now projecting that she'll earn at least $15,000 from this highly profitable product. There's nothing wrong with running a restaurant, but these kind of profit margins are much, much different and the work is far less stressful. Let's think about this product a little bit. I don't know a lot about astrology, but I do know that a lot of people are interested in it. And that's always a good sign.
It's also a bit controversial, which is also a good sign. It shows that people are passionate about it. They have strong opinions. You never want to go into an industry or niche where no one cares. Polarizing industries make for great side hustles. And then the product. Since I don't
know a lot, I originally assumed that there are a ton of astrology calendars out there. And what I learned is that there's actually only three main ones and they all have very similar new agey art styles, which is fine for people who are into that aesthetic, but what about everybody else? So that's what Julie identified. Something was missing. In fact, she uses the word disruptive when she talks about it. She created a modern unisex design that is visually pleasing and makes
it a lot easier to understand the concepts of astrology. And now the marketing, how did she actually do that? Well, that's where Etsy came in. She went to Etsy.com, the site for handcrafted items, but she didn't just slap up the listings and walk away. She made video tutorials. She wrote
a few posts. Then in order to reach beyond her friend circle, she joined a bunch of Facebook groups, shared those posts in the forums and found some of her target market. Again, it's work, but once it's done, there are very few costs. It doesn't take much time. Once the investment has been made in all that early work. So now she has a product that costs a dollar to manufacture,
but sells every day for $15. Pretty smart idea. And again, much easier than running a restaurant. I asked Julie what's been the best thing about this project and she said, you know, it's just been easy. I put about a week into design every year and the rest is just simple marketing and fulfillment. I can't believe a piece of art I created can actually pay my mortgage.
This is simple, easy, and no stress. Also, I mentioned Julie's a single mom. She's able to work from home and her daughter works alongside her. Sometimes her daughter's learning a trade, learning product development, and her daughter even sold a few of her own kits that she assembled herself. This is a textbook case of what I hope you'll learn through this daily series of stories and lessons. Julie, the former restaurant owner took what was originally a passion project
and then found a way to monetize it. She understood it was a very big market, but her calendar was unique. She was doing something that no one had done before, at least not in that way. And she also divided the project into phases, which was really smart, putting in a bunch of work on the front end with design, but then switching entirely to marketing. Once she knew she had a successful product. That's why this little hustle is well on the way to $15,000
in profit, if not more, and probably a lot more in the future. Well, it may not happen exactly like that for you, but if you listen to these stories and you begin applying them and think about, okay, what am I going to make for myself this year? You will see results over time. I'll be with you every day. I have more and more stories coming up. Remember, inspiration is great,
but inspiration combined with action is so much better. If you want to say hi, just head over to sidehustleschool.com. Every day, there's an original post with show notes about the lesson. You can also get a free five step hustle course. Now thanks for sale. I just
want you to be well supported as we go through this year and work on your hustle. I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. I'll see you tomorrow for our first weekly recap.
