When the Rubber Hits the Road, This Mom of Three Earns $5,000/Month

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

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As I was working on today's story, I was reminded of a previous one, episode 282, about a corporate employee who makes $350,000 selling anti-mosquito wristbands. That was a pretty crazy story. Not everybody's gonna go out and make $350,000, of course, but he did. And in that story, one of the things he did, one of the very simple things he did was he branded his anti-mosquito wristbands with the name of his business called EnvisaBand. And even though there were other generic anti-mosquito wristbands out there, just by creating some very simple branding is a big part of what enabled him to succeed, which is wild in a lot of ways.

And this represents the power of tweaks or differentiation. So tweaks are small changes, differentiation, something you do to stand out from other products. Now that was a bit extreme, again, $350,000, but the point is that tweaks can be pretty minor and you don't always need a ton of differentiation. So with that in mind, greetings, hello, welcome. This is Side Hustle School, my name is Chris Guillebeau.

And today's story looks at this effect, the effect of tweaks and differentiation through the lens of someone making a craft product that is not terribly uncommon. That product is a rubber stamp. Okay, a lot of people out there making rubber stamps. But after making a simple change to the color of her custom image rubber ink stamps, this interior designer and mother of three from Texas begins earning $5,000 a month. As a bonus, she also takes inspiration from a previous story we featured, a different one, to create $20,000 in new business.

So I always love these full circle moments where an episode might lead to somebody else's success in a different way, while they're also making plenty of their own success. So lots to talk about here. When the rubber hits the road, this mom of three earns $5,000 a month. That story is coming right up. [Music]

Austin-based Nicole Smith is a stay-at-home mom of three kids, ages six, four, and one.

Although she has a Bachelor of Science in Interior Design, she confesses that some days she feels more like a professional peanut butter and jelly chef, which as a side note would be an awesome job. Somebody should start that side hustle. Following the birth of her first child, Nicole took a bit of a detour, leaving her job at a high-end residential interior design firm. At the time, it was a dream come true to be there for the most transformative period of her daughter's life. But as many other stay-at-home moms and dads before her have discovered, the novelty of it all just didn't have the same kind of staying power as the crayon art on the walls.

At a certain point, she realized she was bored. Since it was baby central 24/7 in her home, it made sense for her to launch a side hustle drawing on her day-to-day as inspiration. Her online shop, Yellow Bess, began as a creative outlet making baby clothing before transitioning to making custom rubber stamps. It was different from the kind of work she'd been doing, but Nicole soon discovered that she really enjoyed it. Her rubber stamps were practical, elegant, and designed with a custom image that was laser engraved.

The only trouble was that there were already a lot of people out there making customizable rubber stamps. She was selling some, but to sell more, she needed something that would help her stand out. That feature ended up being surprisingly simple. Although Yellow was in her name, she had always loved Robin's egg blue, so she decided to hand paint all of her wooden stamp handles that color. Prior to this change, Nicole had tried a multitude of things to help her get the edge and figure out what tactics and products would work best, but nothing worked quite so well as this seemingly small change.

She was shocked by how successful her side hustle was becoming almost overnight, selling thousands of dollars a month in rubber stamps, and Robin's egg blue has now become her signature. Nicole stressed the importance of considering all your products as works in progress. She thinks that it really does pay to keep an eye out on trends, because it could completely reinvent not only your product, but your brand as well, leading to a massive increase in sales. She also kept an ear out for ways she could make improvements, and a change to her stamp production actually came to her thanks to a previous episode of Side Hustle School, episode 91, to be exact. In that episode, Brian Thompson purchased a laser engraver and started putting tweets, posts from Twitter, on wooden planks as part of an April Fool's joke.

This April Fool's joke actually went on to make him $50,000 a year for several years. Quite a joke. You could say he was laughing all the way to the bank, and that episode, that idea of the laser engraver, got her thinking. You see, up until that point, Nicole was doing the woodworking and painting parts of the process herself, but then contracting with a local stamp shop to do the engraving. That was working okay in the beginning, but now that she was bringing in this substantial number of sales, it didn't seem cost effective.

After doing the math, Nicole decided to buy her own laser engraving machine, and the move increased her profit margins from 50% to nearly 90%. This wasn't a small investment, it cost $18,000, but Nicole said that the nature of her side hustle allowed her to approach it as exactly that, an investment. She was getting lots of orders, and believed it was only a matter of time until she could cover that $18,000 cost in full. And she did. In fact, because of the laser engraver, so far in 2018, she's generated around $20,000 of new business, completely unrelated to rubber stamps, and she's bringing in roughly $5,000 a month from the stamps and related products.

A pretty amazing and creative success. The money is great, but Nicole is also quick to point out how her side hustle impacts her kids. She loves the fact that they'll be growing up in an environment where they see her being creative, working hard, and making things along the way. So what's next? Well, she's gonna keep making.

She's excited about the release of new product lines to her core of rubber stamps. She's planning on introducing a subscription box this fall, and all these things are bets intended to grow the value of her existing customers. She'd also like to introduce her expanding product line to people who may not have a need for rubber stamps. There's a lot of stuff in the mix there, and this side hustle gets our stamp of approval. [Music]

So fantastic story.

I definitely and completely believe in the power of tweaks and differentiation, just as you can see here and in many other stories as well. It's one of the biggest and most impactful things you can do, or at least you can look into when you're trying to grow an existing business. But just to be clear for everybody who's just starting out, let's not exaggerate the effect of a simple change without first mentioning the fact that she's building a real brand with quality products and strong customer service. So this isn't just happening randomly. The point is that when you have those things, that strong foundation, quality products, customer service, then a tweak or a change or a modest improvement can have major results.

But first you need that foundation. Like that's the most important thing. Rather have the foundation without the tweak than the tweak without the foundation, because a lot of times people will copy somebody else's tactics without understanding how critical that foundation is. And that's why the foundation is all the value. They're out there and they think, oh, if I just make colored handles on whatever I'm selling, then I'll also make $5,000 a month or whatever it is.

But that's not how it works. Even though there are a lot of people out there listening to this episode now, probably some other people who sell an Etsy, perhaps some other people who sell rubber stamps, I don't think that they're gonna go and see the same success if they just make that same change, right? Because Nicole has been building this business, you know, with that foundation. So the best tweaks happen when something is already working and you just wanna make it work more, or you wanna make it work differently. And that's what she was able to see through this process.

So good work, congratulations, Nicole. I will look forward to checking out Yellow Best. And I also like Robin's Egg Blue. It's one of my favorite colors as well. So we're gonna link up her site and online shop in the show notes for everybody to take a look at.

As always, listeners, don't forget inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Those notes are at sidehustleschool.com/622. That is for episode 622. I feel like we just got started yesterday, but here we are actually, it's 621 days later. So crazy how that works.

Much more is coming up, another story tomorrow, weekly recap the day after that, and then a whole new set of stories next week, all designed to get you thinking and get you taking action. That is the goal. Thank you for joining me. I hope you'll stick around. My name is Priscilla LaValle, and this is Side Hustle School.

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