This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey there, what's up, welcome back. This is Sadduceful School, I am Chris Guillebeau. Here we are with a new week of news stories and much excitement. I'll be in Los Angeles on Thursday night, but otherwise I am hustling from world domination headquarters in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. There's a lot more to come with the show, working on all kinds of fun stuff behind the scenes.
Can't wait to share it with you, but today let's dive right into a new story. And this story is all about a woman who earns $7,000 selling glass nail files, then goes on to turn it into a six-figure business. Pretty awesome success, tell you all about it right after this. Our story today comes from San Diego, California, where Colleen Lloyd Roberts stumbled upon her hustle in a local farmer's market. With a background in real estate development and marketing, Colleen is also a cereal side hustler.
Her past hustles have included a food delivery service and designing a line of merchandise for a NASCAR driver. But that day, when she was wandering through the farmer's market, she was in between hustles. Colleen found a vendor who was selling glass nail files, something she'd never seen before. And when she picked it up to check it out, she had the sense that this was a product that a lot of people might be interested in. Now a quick side note for anyone out there that might not be familiar with the details of nail files, most files are made out of metal or cardboard.
Cardboard files aren't particularly durable, nor are they hygienic. Metal files are durable, and they can be cleaned, but they're rough on nails. The glass file that Colleen discovered that day was the best of both worlds. It was hygienic, it would last forever, and it was easy on your fingernails. This was a product she could get behind.
Colleen wanted to experiment, and naturally, that vendor she met at the farmer's market didn't have a low enough price point for her to buy in bulk and then resell at a reasonable profit. So, she went home and started doing some research. During Google, she first found a glass manufacturer in Ireland, but they used leaded glass. Colleen felt that you shouldn't use lead as an ingredient for a product that goes on the body, so she kept looking. She finally found a manufacturer in the Czech Republic that would work with her, but she had to order a minimum of 50 of each color.
She decided to make a big investment to order five colors in three different sizes for an upcoming craft fair in Southern California. That investment was $1,800, and with her first order, top-notch nail files was born. To prepare for the craft fair, she was determined to keep her costs low, so she went to a home improvement store and bought a pop-up tent and some terracotta flower pots that she spray-painted gold. She arranged the nail files like they were growing out of the pots and then displayed a few more flat on the table. That first day, she had a bunch of sales, but because of how she did the pricing, she was having trouble keeping enough change on hand.
This was a craft fair, so apparently, a lot of people were just paying in cash. The next day, Colleen changed it up and decided to offer a bundle of three different files -- a small, medium, and large -- for $20. It made things easier for her, in terms of making change, and the customers felt like they were getting one free. At the end of her two-day craft show, she knew she needed to at least make her $1,800 back, but she was floored when she counted up her money and realized she'd actually made $7,000. So, this is definitely a hustle that's worth pursuing, and she wanted to continue but still keep her costs as low as possible.
She began doing more craft fairs and trade shows, and she learned a couple tricks along the way that helped defray her costs and manage her cash flow. For example, on that first craft fair, she had to pay for the booth rental completely up front, but then she realized that she could ask to pay a deposit and then pay the balance later. Most shows are on the weekend, so the second check she made wouldn't get cash until Monday at the earliest. By then, she would have deposited all the money she made that weekend, and her rental costs would be paid for it by her sales. Even better, as she built up a reliable reputation with trade show managers, they started letting her pay for the booth when she arrived, without having to pay any deposit ahead of time.
So now, her sales paid for the booth rental directly without any upfront costs at all. After that first $1,800 purchase, where she did take a bit of a risk, her sales have been paying for all the new stock, and since her product is so small, it all fits in her spare bedroom, so she doesn't have any storage costs. About six months into the hustle, Colleen met the man who would become her husband, and it just so happened that he knew how to make websites. He built a simple website for top-notch glass files, and then Colleen began selling online. A few months later, she hired a PR rep who sent sets of the nail files to TV shows and magazines.
Through these efforts, she got into Real Simple magazine as a featured beauty product. That was huge. The month the magazine came out, brought her her highest online sales to date. With that spike in website income, along with the fact that she was starting to get burnt out doing trade shows all the time, Colleen began to focus more on the website and internet sales. In the beginning, at those trade shows, she had been collecting people's email addresses when they purchased the files as a way for them to register for the lifetime warranty she offered.
Since like a lot of hustles, her customers are the biggest source of referrals, she began some email marketing campaigns to harness that potential. What does all of this add up to? Well, all of these efforts led to the project becoming a six-figure hustle in 2016. She's now actually phasing out entirely of doing the shows, focusing only on website sales, which has a lot of benefits. It turns out one of the benefits is more free time, and Colleen is using that free time to, well, you probably guessed it, start another side hustle.
Maybe we'll check back and I'll tell you about that one another time, but for now she's also enjoying the flexibility that a successful online business brings her. When she gets too busy with other stuff, she can let that nail file hustle coast and come back to it whenever she has more time. In the long term, she'd actually like to hire someone full-time who can turn top-notch nail files into a nationally recognized brand, but for now she says, "I'm happy letting this be my hobby." "While other people's hobbies cost them money, mine makes me money." What a great story. Let's just kind of start where we left off. "While other people's hobbies cost them money, mine makes me money." Love that quote.
And I think this is the beauty of a side hustle, because as I tell you often, a side hustle should be fun. It should be something that you enjoy, that you look forward to, it's not just something that you have to do. And not only is it fun, hopefully, as you can see in Colleen's story, it's cashflow positive. It's income generating. It's adding to your bank account instead of all those other hobbies that take money from your bank account.
And there's nothing wrong with those things too. It's great to enjoy life and do fun stuff, but the point is a good side hustle is in a category of its own because once it's up and running well, it has the potential to add to your financial well-being, not just in the short term, but hopefully for a long time to come. I hope that you are working on a hustle, I hope that you are building something, or if nothing else, I hope you're actively thinking about it, writing down your ideas, learning about different platforms, maybe connecting an experiment or two. As always, remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. If you want to see the show notes for today's episode, learn more about top-notch nail files, go to sidehustleschool.com/71.
I'm Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School, and I'll see you tomorrow.
