Canadian Mom Rolls Out Supportive Side Hustle

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

[Music]

If you have ever broken your leg or severely injured your ankle or harmed your foot or some other kind of injury like that, you may be aware that crutches are uncomfortable. They are just uncomfortable and cumbersome to use, but if you're in a situation where you can't put any weight on your foot, you have to do something. Well, there is a little known or at least a less known alternative called a knee walker or a knee scooter. And this little known alternative has led to a profitable side hustle for the caretaker Canadian that we're gonna talk about today. Last year she made $56,000 from this project.

This year she's doing even better and she's leveling up the idea by introducing a franchise model. I enjoyed working on this story because I'm familiar with knee walkers myself, not for my own use, but for my mom. Last Christmas she had an accident and hurt her ankle quite badly. Now, fortunately over time, she did make a full recovery. She's back to walking normally, everything is good.

But during her recovery period, she had one of these knee walkers. And when she came to visit, the whole family was surprised at just how much she was able to move, like how mobile she was with this knee walker. She was just cruising along down the sidewalk and we had to be like, hey, mom, slow down a little bit. So it's a wonderful, helpful invention. And it's also wonderful to see how somebody is helping themselves, making money in the form of a side hustle, by getting this invention out to other people who need it in her province in Canada.

So stay tuned. I'll tell you all about how she makes it happen. [Music]

Surgery can be a transformative experience. We come out differently on the other side, sometimes physically and emotionally. Once we've had a surgery or someone we love has, and Adriana Coleman, a full-time mom from Canada, found herself driving home with a life-changing side hustle in the trunk of her car.

After intensive surgery, Adriana's husband was unable to bear any weight on his foot for weeks. Even the slightest strain resulted in searing pain, which made crutches impractical and even a little dangerous. So he opted to try something new. He ordered what's known as a knee walker or a knee scooter. If you've never seen one, it's basically a scooter where you put your weight on the knee of the injured leg and push with the other.

It has handlebars, brakes, and padding to make it much more comfortable and practical than crutches. While attending lots of different follow-up appointments, physical therapy, and checkups, Adriana and her husband would find themselves talking about the knee walker to other patients. Entire waiting rooms of people would want to know where they'd found that thing and how much it cost and how they could get their knees on one too. This got them thinking about the potential for a business. There was a large market of people recovering from injuries who had no idea about these knee walkers or how to access them.

So why not create a service that rented them out? Adriana set herself a budget of around $3,000 and named her idea recovery rentals. She wanted to create a strong internet presence and look professional from the outset, but she also didn't want to lose a lot of money if it didn't work out. While she was getting a website design, she took to the showroom floors of local healthcare suppliers. She looked at the different models of knee walkers to find which brands showed up most often and seemed to be most reliable.

She came across one brand, Drive, which had lots of products across multiple price ranges. Adriana deemed them to be top quality and went home to contact their sales department. She says the process for that was as simple as calling up and being put through to a sales rep. When she explained her business idea, Drive was more than happy to work with her, and she invested a few hundred dollars into three brand new knee walkers. Once they arrived a few weeks later, recovery rentals was ready to be taken to the public.

The main marketing strategy was leaving business cards and promotional materials in podiatry waiting rooms and offices. Adriana plucked up the courage to go and talk to receptionists and share her story. She knew that they were the gatekeepers between her and the doctors, and it was important to have relationships with them. Adriana admits that going into doctor's offices was scary at first, but she overcame the fear of your belief in her product. She knew it would help patients.

After all, she'd seen it firsthand, and it would be worse for everyone if she didn't share her idea. Many of the receptionists were friendly and let her leave her materials. Two weeks after her knee walkers arrived, Adriana received her first order. Then two days later, the next two came in. Since she only had three knee walkers, she was now fully booked.

So using her side hustle savvy, she reinvested the money into more stock so she could take more orders. Due to the nature of the business, she's found her client base split between two groups of people. There are those who know they have an operation coming up and they book their knee walker well in advance. These customers allow Adriana to know her baseline income and what to plan for the coming months. She can allocate walkers and plan the drop-offs with maximum efficiency.

But of course, there are also customers, a lot of them who have accidents and need one right away. These people are just as important to her business, but they make it a bit more hectic and stressful to manage. So let's talk about some numbers and logistics. She currently invests about 10 hours a week into the business. She's got some systems in place to make sure her workload is lighter and she doesn't neglect time with her kids.

That automatic booking integration on the website helps. And the main business cost is putting gas in her car. Now that she's got the inventory, she's not doing any paid advertising. She performs many of the drop-offs and deliveries herself, as well as driving around to find new locations to market the service. She charges $110 for the initial four-week rental.

And then more after that, in addition to selling accessories, she made $24,000 that first year, which then grew to $56,000 the next. She also has a second side to the business, which is just as smart as her first idea. After chatting with some friends from Edmonton about her new venture, they expressed their interest in starting a similar business. So she coached them through it and made a franchise of recovery rentals. Then when her daughter went off to college, she helped her do the same thing to create a profitable side hustle around her studies.

Super smart. Looking to the future, Adriana wants to double down on the franchise side of the business and help take recovery rentals all over North America. She wants to help immobile patients cruise to recovery without using those complicated crutches. [Music]

What a great idea. I don't know why this kind of thing hasn't been around for a long time in a lot of markets.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. These knee walkers are for sale in different places, but you don't need to own one. At least the vast majority of people don't need to own one. If you have this injury, you need to have it for four weeks or six weeks or however long your recovery period is, however long you can't put any weight on your foot. I also wonder if insurance covers any of the costs for patients, which would make it a lot easier for the patients to make the decision to rent one of these recovery rollers.

Now, just a few days ago, in episode 632, with the guy who was making maps that he was providing to hotels, which gave them to guests, I mentioned that that was a good project if you have the personality of being a salesperson. Well, as you heard in this episode, there's also a sales process here and some of it's similar and some of it's different. So as Adriana realized, a big part of the sales process for her was selling the idea to gatekeepers in the form of receptionists at doctor's offices. She knew if she could get through to them, she'd be well positioned to get her service in front of the people who needed it the most. So it wasn't easy.

She still had to overcome that moment of fear and maybe intimidation of walking into the doctor's office and approaching the receptionist and essentially saying like, "I've got this product that I'm trying to sell." And it never is for any of us, or at least for most of us, let's say, but in overcoming the resistance, she was able to get her project up and running. And now it's doing really well. She made $56,000 on the side last year, working about 10 hours a week. And she's looking at the next phase of expansion in the form of franchising. So definitely a lot we can take from this, at least I think so.

And I hope you enjoyed this episode. Listeners, as always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes, including links to Adriana's project are at sidehustleschool.com/636. Also in the notes to the story, she mentioned that she spent a fair amount of money on that website that she made. At the time, she didn't know of a cheaper option to host her website.

She said if she could go back, she might try to spend a little bit less money making her original site. Well, if you would like to host a website for $4 a month, you should check out our partner offer. Just go to sidehustleschool.com/website. Again, that deal starts at $4 a month, depending on which options you need. And in most cases, you can choose the low-priced option and grow with it as your business grows.

So once again, that's sidehustleschool.com/website. Thank you for listening today. I'll be back again tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is "Sidasal School." [Music]