It’s All Smiles For Two Friends Brushing Away Bacteria

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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When you are reselling a product, you usually wanna find something that costs a good amount of money. This is because it's much easier to make higher profits on items that are higher priced. Imagine a scenario when you're acquiring an item for one price, then you're doubling the price before reselling it, which is not unusual. 100% margin is pretty typical for a lot of reselling industries. Okay, so let's say you're acquiring some kind of computer equipment that costs you $100.

You're then gonna resell it for $200. So for every 10 units you sell, you make $1,000. Makes sense? Now let's say that instead of computer equipment, it's something else that costs you $50. You then double the price, sell it for $100, and you need to sell twice as many to make $1,000.

So instead of selling 10 units, you have to sell 20. Going from $50 to $100 is still a good amount of profit, but what if you're looking at something with an even lower price point? In this scenario, you need to sell a lot more items. It's not impossible, but of course it is a challenge. Welcome to Side Hustle School.

My name is Chris Guillebeau, and in today's featured story, 'cause every day there is a story, a new story, a true story every day, today's story features two Australian friends who learned to import toothbrushes from the US, earning $30,000 in profit. Now as you might guess, toothbrushes are not expensive items. These retail for just $10 each, but they've clearly found a winner because they're selling them all across Australia. It's all smiles for these two friends who are brushing away bacteria. Stay tuned for more.

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Dean Roller and Andrew Adams are two best mates from Australia. They met through Dean's now ex-girlfriend over 10 years ago and bonded over a shared interest in self-improvement. When they met, Dean worked as an AdWords campaign manager and Andrew in real estate. They both described themselves as being terrible employees. They'd spend half their working hours daydreaming about business ideas they could start on the side.

As the years went by, they dabbled in a few ventures, including affiliate marketing and foreign currency trading. While they generated a bit of side income, neither of them made enough money to put a dent in their bills, let alone think of quitting full-time work. Now this brings us to 2013, when both guys felt it was time for a change of careers. Dean had began managing an online beanbag store, as one does, and Andrew, seeking more fulfillment, started work in the disability support field. Luckily, they both landed in jobs they enjoyed.

With the baggage of a daily grind off their shoulders, their minds became more creative. They would regularly meet up in brainstorm side hustle ideas. But it wasn't until one day in late 2015 that the right one came along. You see, Dean's mom is a dentist, and they stopped by to say hello one afternoon at her clinic. While there, they struck up a conversation with a patient in the waiting room.

She told them about an amazing toothbrush she'd found on a recent trip to the US. It was called Mouth Watchers. This toothbrush had thousands of bristles, was soft on the gums, and had a unique selling point. Those bristles had antibacterial silver embedded that killed 99% of germs on the brush. The patient's enthusiasm for the product piqued their interest.

So Dean and Andrew decided to each order one and try it for themselves. After using it, they were all smiles. They loved the brushes and thought they'd try selling them locally. After all, Dean's own mom was a dentist. She knew the drill.

If they needed information, they knew where to get it. They got in touch with the American manufacturer to express their interest. The company was busy with its US-based operations and had no intention of selling in Australia themselves. So they were happy to let Dean and Andrew try their hands at local distribution. They placed an order of 1,000 toothbrushes to start at a cost of just over $4,000.

They were now officially in the toothbrush business. With inventory in hand, they hit the pavement and spoke to local drugstores, offering them to stock toothbrushes on consignment. A consignment deal meant that the stores would only pay if the brushes sold. In other words, the stores had no risk. And because of that, many of them took them up on the offer.

Over the next few weeks, the brushes sold well and they made their first income. However, they were both still working their full-time jobs and selling to stores with time-consuming. They decided to look for a distribution rep who'd be responsible for selling the brushes on their behalf in exchange for a percentage of sales. After asking around, they connected with a company that facilitates this kind of distribution. They were now on the path to ramp up.

They selected this distribution model over direct sales for a few reasons. They knew they'd be able to build a website to showcase the toothbrushes, but they weren't convinced they could generate traffic at a low enough cost to make the margins work. These toothbrushes cost only $9.95 each, just under $10, which didn't leave much wiggle room. The idea was that by cutting the reps in on a deal to sell the brushes, there would be no additional cost other than to the rep who was essentially on commission. So far, this strategy has worked well, although it hasn't been without its challenges.

A few reps have disappeared along the way. One of them even went broke. Apparently, getting the last payment from that guy was like pulling teeth. It's so frustrating. You know, side hustlers have fillings too.

However, these ups and downs have been nothing more than small cavities and an otherwise perfect smile. The project continues to do well. So well, in fact, that over the past 12 months, they have generated $30,000 in profit, selling those mouth watchers toothbrushes to the local market. Some of that money has been spent on creating a locally targeted site with a subscription toothbrush model. That's something they're working on for the near future, and they also plan on spending the profit on generating content for a new website called Dental Aware.

Their goal is to leverage the traffic they build from the blog to sell more toothbrushes direct to consumers, as well as promote other products, such as teeth whitening kits and insurance. They both still enjoy their current jobs. They're not trying to rush out the door. So for now, they're not concerned with paying themselves more of the profit. In fact, you could say they're putting their money where their mouth is.

So as I said, it can be challenging to resell a low price product or just sell it in the first place. Like even if you're not buying it and reselling it, if it's your product and you're selling it for the first time, it can be challenging to make a lot of money doing that because the prices sell low. If you're gonna do it successfully, you need to sell a lot of it. Well, in this case, this is what these guys have done. They have sold a lot of toothbrushes.

A toothbrush is usually a commodity, but they've been able to help this US brand position itself as a significant improvement, at least compared to whatever toothbrushes are more commonly purchased there in Australia. And the other key to their success, which is what I wanted to highlight in this episode, was connecting with those distributors who would do their business to business selling for them. So those distributors, those reps, those are the people who are selling to the stores now. And just to be clear, this is harder than it sounds. It's not like you can just magically go out and connect with a distributor who's gonna go and sell for you.

You have to have the right product first, or else no one will wanna sell it. So the key is proving a demand, and then you have options. All things considered, if you can find a higher-priced product to sell, it might be easier for you, but once in a while, somebody comes along and finds a way to make $30,000 selling toothbrushes. So good for them, congrats. Thank you so much, Dean and Andrew, for allowing us to share this story with our community.

And listeners, thank you for listening. Don't forget to brush your teeth. And don't forget as well, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. If you wanna see the show notes for today's episode, just come to sidehustleschool.com/612. We're gonna link up that fancy toothbrush.

We're gonna link up Dean and Andrew's site, anything else that we can find that is relevant. You can also get a free "Five Steps to Hustle" course, which is in the midst of being updated as I speak. Well, not as I speak, but this week in general. And I hope you'll join me again tomorrow. Be sure you subscribe, tell your friends.

It's completely free, and a new episode comes out every day at 6.01 a.m. Eastern time. Once again, my name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is "Side Hustle School."