This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hello, what's up, welcome back. You are listening to Side Hustle School. I'm Chris Guillebeau. Every day on the show, a different story of someone who starts an income generating project without quitting their day job. Fun one for you today. And you know, it's kind of a cliche to come
up with ideas at a bar after an evening of drinking. But it does sometimes happen. And sometimes the ideas you come up with are ridiculous or absurd. But once in a while, they turn out to be good ideas. Well, what if you could have a ridiculous, absurd idea that is also good?
That's what you'll hear about today in the story of how an alcohol-fueled idea sells more than 1500 t-shirts in less than a year. Like a lot of ideas, some of them actually good. The concept of a giant pocket shirt came up at a bar. Jake Kellenbeck works as a server and bartender in Tampa, Florida. Until now, he has never had a side hustle. But one night as the story goes,
Jake was with two of his buddies, John and Alex. At some point after a lot of beer was consumed, one of them said, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if there was a t-shirt with an enormous pocket on the front of it?" The guys kept talking. And one of them mentioned how fun it would be to put things like puppies in your pocket as you walked down the street, or perhaps a Slurpee. And then they were off to the races thinking of all kinds of crazy things you could put, you could carry around if only you had an enormous pocket on your t-shirt. Again, I probably don't need to remind you that they were drinking. But the next day they kept thinking about it. And looking online, they checked
to see if anybody was selling anything like this already. There was nowhere to buy that giant pocket shirt of their dreams. So first they asked if Jake's mom would help them out, and so a few of them to see what they looked like. Mrs. Kellenbeck humored them, the giant pocket shirts turned out great, the guys wore them out and showed their friends, and everybody loved them. Strangers would
come up to them on the street and ask them where they got it. So naturally, they made the only logical conclusion, let's start a business and share this experience with as many people as we can. The pocket pioneers, as they called themselves, started with asking a fashion teacher at a local college for leads to local manufacturers. They then either worked with those manufacturers themselves or got new referrals from them. Each person they talked to got them closer to the answer, even if they couldn't answer it themselves. They also bootstrapped. Their startup costs were low
because they did most things themselves. Most of the money that they spent was in testing the product and making sure they got the right materials. They made their own website, did their own photography, and it's not that they were experienced in this. In their own words, that first website looked awful when they started, but they were able to sell shirts and move forward with what they had. Since then, each of the three of them has specialized in the skill, and collectively they've gotten a lot better at graphic design, web design, and photography. They're clearly having a lot of fun. There are
stories on their site about things like smuggling beef jerky into a concert using the teas and other suggestions based on what seems like real world experience. But it's also been a legit learning experience for Jake, John, and Alex. Through this experience, they've learned about website development, marketing, supply chain management, finance, intellectual property, and pretty much anything you could imagine someone doing something like this would need to know. In fact, they say that the whole thing has been one big lesson on entrepreneurship. It's almost like going to business school, except it's better because what they're learning is directly applicable. And instead
of investing tens of thousands of dollars, this project is actually profitable. Since streaming up the idea on that drunken evening, Jake and the pocket pioneers have sold more than 1,500 shirts. Because they did so much of the work themselves, those startup costs were less than $3,000. They tested different styles, fabrics, cuts, pocket sizes, materials. The sales price for the shirt is between $20 and $30. They're still just getting going, but they've already made around $35,000.
Or at least that's the gross amount. It doesn't account for beer and other important deductions. So you can obviously tell that these guys are having fun. It almost sounds like a fake story. This guy's a bartender hanging out with a couple of his friends. They have this crazy idea. They
actually follow up on it, and it works. And it's not a fake story, of course. Every story you hear on Side Hustle School is legit. You can always go and look at the notes and read more about those people. And you can usually see their websites and see exactly what they're doing. And to me,
this kind of story just reinforces this idea that if you don't know how to do something, the solution is to go out and ask questions. And if you don't get the answers that you need, you keep asking questions. And you ask more people. Marie Forleo is a good friend of mine. Among other things, she founded a very popular online course called B School. And Marie has
this great phrase that I borrow or steal from time to time. And the phrase is, "Everything is figure-outable." And that's what you see in this story and lots of other stories that you hear on the show. So this idea of manufacturing t-shirts with a giant pocket on the front is now taken. But there is an idea out there waiting for you too. Maybe you'll find it at the bar. Maybe not.
But when you find it or when you think you find it, I hope you don't just daydream about it. I hope you actually take action to pursue that idea, to figure it out, and to see what might happen if you actually work toward making it reality. Speaking of show notes, if you want to see those notes, learn more about the Pocket Pioneers. Just go to sidehustleschool.com/68. I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School, and I'll see you tomorrow.
