Car Enthusiast Sells DIY Tune-Up Kits

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

In the fall of 2017, I went on an extensive book tour to about 25 cities, all across North America, also London, and then later I went to some cities in Australia. I'm going to be doing another tour in June, so stay tuned, excited about that. But on that previous tour, I asked each audience every night who here has a side hustle, and we usually heard a few quick stories from people at each stop. Over and over, I noticed how people's faces would light up when they talked about getting orders, when they talked about getting a PayPal notification, when they talked about getting hired by a client, and then getting paid, especially for the first time, or the first few times, or especially with a new project for the first time. Well, in today's story, a longtime side hustler creates a series of products for fellow car enthusiasts, and he mentioned something to us that reminded me of that tour and the stories that I heard night after night.

He said, "I celebrate every time I drop off packages at the post office. My favorite part is packaging up orders and printing shipping labels." He also said, "I make a lot more money in my day job, but it's a thankless job. I don't get to use the stuff I create, and I don't care about it. With a side hustle, I get to enjoy what I do, because not only do I do it for myself, but I make other people happy, and they want to spend their money with me." Listen, my friends, this is powerful. There are a lot of reasons for starting a side hustle, and one of them is that when you do this, whether it's the first time or the tenth time, chances are you'll experience a lot of joy in the journey.

Thanks for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I'm going to have this story for you. Car enthusiast sells DIY tune-up kits right after this message. Software engineer Dustin Davis has had a lot of side projects.

He started at age 13 selling bootleg software on CD-ROMs before broadband internet was common. Then he had a 10-year hustle doing printer maintenance and repair. For the last five years of that one, he hired a guy to do the work for him. Dustin just invoiced customers and got paid. For his next project, the one we're featuring here, he looked in a different direction.

Specifically, he looked to the racetrack. As a lifelong car enthusiast, he had recently purchased a brand-new sports car and was out doing laps on the track. He had some trouble shifting gears at high speeds due to weak components used by the manufacturer. After parking the car in the garage, he spent the next week thinking about how to solve that problem cheaply and easily. There were some existing solutions, but they all came at great expense, great difficulty, or just resulted in a car that was unpleasant to drive.

Using materials he got from Home Depot, Dustin was able to build a prototype that would fix the problem. He called it an engine leash, since that's what it looks like, two brackets and a steel cable. One side attaches to the frame and the other to the engine. The engine leash solved the original problem with none of the drawbacks of the existing solutions. Best of all, he spent less than $100 on this endeavor and had materials left over to make more.

After testing it out, he posted about it in a car enthusiast forum, and to his surprise, he got a lot of positive feedback. He then offered the tool for sale and had a few takers right away. It helped that it was a fraction of the price of any other solution and only took 10 minutes to install. Once he had sold enough, he was able to get the brackets laser cut instead of doing it manually himself. This saved a lot of time, increased the quality, and allowed him to produce more units to keep up with demand.

Eventually, he didn't need to actively market them. They sold themselves by word of mouth from satisfied customers. And then he wondered, "Okay, what's next?" Fueled up with the success of the engine leash, Dustin began to look at creating additional products and services for his fellow car enthusiasts. Over the past year, he's added more parts, including some that he customizes himself and others that he orders in bulk from China and then resells. It can take up to 30 days to get those parts imported, so some people would rather buy it from him at a 25% markup and not wait.

Okay, so let's talk about the money. Startup costs, as mentioned, were less than $100 for the original product. That's right, it is a true $100 startup. That's all it took to start generating profits. Then, once the business became more established, he chose to invest in it more.

Research and development for recent products has cost up to $15,000. However, he notes that at this point, everything pays for itself, so none of those expenses have come out of pocket. And as for those profits, he's now averaging $4,000 to $6,000 a month, according to a new ordering system that he just set up in June. Before that, he was using Microsoft Excel to manage everything, and it was less precise. They also had an $11,000 month in September and a $13,000 month in October.

But, of course, there have been challenges. It's not always easy, and in almost every episode, I try to highlight any challenges, obstacles, or difficulties that the featured side hustler has encountered. So, in Dustin's case, he mentioned two things in particular. Number one, criticism from trolls. His original product competed with a few other products that came out around the same time.

And these competing products came from people who were better known and had more credibility, at least at first. He overcame that challenge by proving himself and his products, and he says that the results now speak for themselves. The second challenge has been unreliable vendors. Now, this is a challenge that continues. He's had many machine shops stop taking his orders without any word as to why.

He says when you spend less than $10,000 with someone, they don't make you a priority when other customers are placing $100,000 orders. So that is just something he has to deal with as he goes along. But it seems like it's working. Dustin's goal is to end his 20-plus year career in technology and move full-time into the automotive industry. He has several new product ideas ready to launch, and right now, he's just trying to find time to work on them.

All right, congratulations to Dustin. It's exciting to see how he took one initial success and has continued to grow it and develop new products. Now, as I mentioned, there is joy in the journey. The side hustle journey often produces disproportionate satisfaction. And I think that comes from building something of your own.

It comes from having ownership over something, a sense of independence and empowerment that only comes from making something happen. And then seeing the effect it has on other people, seeing the value that it provides to other people, so much so that they're willing to say like, "Hey, here's my credit card," or whatever the method of payment is. Now, Dustin also mentioned that the automotive aftermarket is incredibly saturated, so it can be hard to get a foot in the door. But he said if you know your customers well enough and actually care about them, it's not hard to get traction in the long term. It might be hard to be a quick overnight success, but in the long term, it's not that hard.

You start by solving your own problems because if you don't believe in your own product, no one else will. Then he said you treat customers with respect, you don't lie to them, and you always offer tangible proof of any claims you make. That's some parting advice from Dustin. Be sure to come and check out his website, see what he's up to. You can find that linked on the show notes page, along with anything else I mentioned in the episode.

Today's page is at sidehustleschool.com/739. That's for episode 739. I'm so glad you chose to spend some time listening to this story today. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope it got you thinking about something. If it didn't, well, there's another story coming tomorrow.

That's how it works, a whole barrage of stories, all designed to help you see just what's possible. So many opportunities, so many possibilities, and I can't wait to hear what you're working on. All right, that's it for today. Once again, I'm Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.