Business Analyst Creates Budding Side Hustle

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

[Music]

Hey, hey, what's up? Side Hustle School friends, listeners, community. This is Chris Guillebeau. Let's fire up the grill. In today's episode, a business analyst creates a budding side hustle.

He puts the can in cannabis products, finding a pot of gold in the form of affiliate commissions at the end of a hazy rainbow. Now, for those who are interested, a quick recap of previous episodes that have featured cannabis products, beginning with episode number 82, bartender writes state wood marijuana guide. Skipping ahead to 336, cannabis cookies make a sweet, soothing side hustle. 354, high times cartoonist, creates creative cannabis accessories. 434, California moms get high and get well.

And 510, bring your own cannabis to this 420 friendly painting class. This continues to be a rapidly expanding marketplace across the U.S. in lots of different states, although it is quasi-legal in lots of different places because it's still not legal in the federal system, but many states have made it legal. So lots of complications there. I'll look at it a bit in the end.

Also recently made legal in Canada. And this guy that I'm gonna tell you about today has found a way to make money on the periphery of the industry, which is actually what several of those other episodes are about as well. It's not people actually selling marijuana, but rather people who are getting creative with events or education, or something else in the many ancillary markets that have fired up with the advancement of this industry. So I'm gonna say a quick thank you to our sponsor. I appreciate them allowing the show to be free.

And then let's toke up. [Music]

Stone Everett, a business performance analyst from Orlando, Florida, has always had a side project up his sleeve. For as long as he can remember, he's been coming up with different ideas to make pocket money. He taught himself how to build websites from watching YouTube and tried a few different projects to test out ideas. They were slow burners at first, but eventually they began to bring in additional income for him before he lost interest or the ideas became dated with time.

He knew that cannabis was a trend that was on the up and up, especially as more states legalized and the stigma around usage lessened. However, he didn't have any interest in becoming a seller of cannabis itself. It was when he noticed a burning hole in the online cannabis accessories market that he realized it could become his next project. And he would call this project relief treats. His goal was to create an online directory of cannabis related accessories that he would either resell himself or just earn commissions from customers he referred to other merchants.

That way he wouldn't have to stock a full inventory of products, nor would he need to be responsible for sending anything out to customers. Simple enough, right? Well, it actually is pretty simple, but that doesn't mean there aren't any potholes. Stone says it can be a challenge to choose which products to sell, especially in a diverse and discerning market. So he tries to choose something for everybody, the luxury boutique item customer, the fiscally aware customer, the uninformed customer, and the practical everyday customer.

In his online shop, he features weed grinders, butter making machines, CBD oil, handheld microscopes, humidity controlled storage boxes, and grow lights. Among other things, it's pretty comprehensive. As he says, my inventory possibilities are practically limitless. There's almost no additional cost to appeal to as many demographics as possible. Still, while his stock possibilities might be limitless, Stone is pretty blunt about his challenges, like advertising, for example.

The main social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, as well as networks like Google AdWords, don't allow for any cannabis related promotion. This is because, as mentioned, cannabis remains federally illegal in the United States, even though it's legal in many jurisdictions. This means that Stone has to rely on search engine optimization and putting out content through his own social media channels. He says that although there's a lot of competition, he stands out because his content is always fresh, valuable, and engaging, and his products are attractive. Growing his side hustle is pretty dope, but he admits it can be tough to balance his personal life, his full-time job, and relief treats.

Nevertheless, at the end of the day, it's worth it since it's already bringing in an additional $1,200 a month in profits, approximately a quarter of the income from his full-time job. His next big move is to grow his side hustle into a flowering business. He wants to expand his product selection even more, especially as states continue to legalize. Relief treats might be a budding enterprise now, but he has high expectations. All right, so a quasi-legal market, I used that phrase earlier, is one in which there is a, let's say, a haze over the marketplace.

No pun intended, at least in that case. Particularly when it comes to cannabis, it's still illegal under the federal system, even as it is increasingly legalized by states and cities, different jurisdictions, and so on. The laws tend to vary from place to place, which is why it's confusing. And whenever there is demand combined with confusion, which is exactly what you're seeing in this market, there are a ton of opportunities for people to kind of carve out a space for themselves. Again, he's not selling the marijuana to cannabis.

Everything that he's selling is legal, actually legal pretty much everywhere, and he's able to do this through careful product selection. And this is also why the reselling or the affiliate model works well, because even when it comes to various drug accessories, some of those things can be illegal in different places, which is why it's better to let the bigger companies kind of figure that stuff out. A lot of what he's doing on the reselling site is linking out to Amazon. Now, Amazon.com is not gonna sell anything that's illegal. So he's essentially letting them and some specialized companies handle all that kind of stuff, including, of course, the shipping, the distribution, and he's focusing on building traffic to his site, adding new products, writing copy and reviews, all that kind of stuff.

So that's the good news. What's the downside for something like this? Well, there's not a ton of downside because it doesn't cost a lot to build something like this, but I would say one downside is customer retention, because most of the time you're just referring someone once. And sure, they may come back to your website to buy something else, but chances are, if you have referred them to another company to buy their CBD oil or whatever it is, they're gonna just go back to that company. They're not gonna keep coming back to you.

So the lifetime customer value can be pretty low unless you have something to offset that, some kind of loyalty program or some other reason why people should go back to your reselling your affiliate site instead of just going directly to that bigger company. But anyway, so far so good. It sounds like it's working out for him. As I said, if you're interested in that market, there's several other episodes that we have featured in the two years of Satasool School so far. You can always find any episode that I mentioned by number by just going to satasoolschool.com/ and then followed by that number.

So for example, this is episode 686. If you'd like to see our show notes for today, just go to satasoolschool.com/686. That's it for me. Be sure you do one thing today to get closer to a goal that you believe in. I'll be back again tomorrow with a weekly recap and a whole new set of stories all next week.

My name is Chris Guillebeau and this is Satasool School.