This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Greetings, friends, listeners, Side Hustle School Community. Welcome, my name is Chris Guillebeau. Today I wanna encourage you to ask yourself if there was something you liked to do when you were younger that you let go of as you grew up and might want to rediscover. Now, not everything we did in our days of youth is worth rediscovering. I mentioned in a recent episode that I liked My Little Pony.
When I was a kid, I was a big fan of My Little Pony. And as much fun as it was to read about My Little Pony now, realize that it was still out there and all that, now that I'm almost 90 years old, I didn't actually have a burning desire to go out and collect them again. It was just a little blast in the past that I was like, okay, great. Also for a brief time, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. This was mostly when I was 10 years old and I did win the T-ball league MVP at age 10, but then I retired and took my talents to the world of video gaming.
So as I said, not everything is worth revisiting. I'm not gonna have a side hustle as a baseball player or a My Little Pony collector, but some things are. And perhaps there might be one for you. And when you rediscover it, you just might find it could work as an income generating project now. That's what we talk about here on the show.
And that's what today's featured case study uncovered. This heating and air company sales rep had all but given up on his childhood love of woodworking. But after a six year break and a random Instagram post, he found himself rekindling interest. He now earns an extra $18,000 a year on the side doing something he enjoys. I'll bring you that story right after this message for our sponsor.
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When James Barrett was still in high school, he took a woodworking class at the junior college next door and loved it. He enjoyed shaping and bending wood, learning how to create a beautiful finish and talking with the other members of the community who came by to use the facilities. But most importantly, he loved building things that would last. With this passion in mind, James finished school and went straight into the world of work. He took a job at a cabinet shop in the Bay Area so he could spend his time rubbing shoulders with professional craftsmen.
He started off as a lowly apprentice, cleaning glue off the machinery and sweeping the floors, but slowly began to work his way up the ladder. The more responsibility he gained, the more he learned about craftsmanship and the inner workings of a small business. At this point in his life, he went in a different direction for a while. He took a few years to travel the country and live in different places before settling in Boise, Idaho. There he began raising a family and took a job in sales for a heating and air company.
Once settled, James felt he had this woodworking itch he needed to chip away at. He offered to make pieces of furniture for his friends. He didn't have any desire to turn it into a business. He just wanted to make pieces that would delight those friends and family for years to come. It wasn't long until he found himself spending his evenings and weekends in his garage that was now a workshop.
He noticed something funny happened every time he made something for a friend. They would come by to collect their furniture and they would ask strange questions like, how much do I owe you for this? Or why are you making these for free? They're good enough to sell. After enough people had asked these questions, James seriously began thinking about turning this passion project into a business.
But the real catalyst came when he shared a few pieces on Instagram. A friend who worked for a Tri-State magazine was looking for local businesses to write about. She saw the furniture and got in touch to ask if they could write a four page spread about him. When the piece was complete, she asked James, what's your business name and website? He realized he needed to quickly set something up.
James and his wife decided on the name of Mahogany House Woodwork because well, it just seemed logical and simple. And also they had to decide right then since they didn't actually have a name or a website. To build the site, James enlisted the help of one of his web developer friends. Due to his small budget, they worked out a profit share system. His friend would build the site and do a monthly amount of digital marketing and then take a percentage of whatever sales came in online.
Although the magazine article didn't attract as much attention as he'd hoped, James felt like if the business was up and running, it would be worth pushing it further to see what he could earn. He focused his efforts on two product lines and he kept these distinct with a different microsite for each one. The first is the Wood Cutting Board Store where James creates custom cutting boards to order. Because these are smaller projects and less time intensive, he's able to make more of them per month. The second is Boise Custom Furniture where James creates unique larger pieces of furniture like tables and cabinets.
These jobs often earn more money but are also more time and labor intensive. And due to that time intensive nature of woodworking and the fact that he was still working a regular job, James made the decision early on that he wouldn't do all the work himself. He didn't want the business's growth to be limited by the amount he could create each month. So he hired a part-time woodworker from the community to work with him around 15 hours a week on projects. James also works around 15 hours a week on running and growing the business.
By dividing his products into those two categories and splitting the workload, he's able to generate about $1,500 a month in profit. So $18,000 a year on the side. He found pricing to be the most difficult but also the most interesting part of his business. His philosophy is that if you're converting most of the people who visit your website into customers and you aren't offering a total unique service, your prices are too low. So he would slowly increase his prices until he reached a conversion rate of around 60%, which by the way to me is still extremely high.
So maybe he still got some room to go higher. There's a question James uses to determine the quality of his work. He asked himself, will this delight the customer? And if he can't answer an honest yes, it goes back to the chopping block, literally. His advice for side hustlers is to not let your ego get caught up in your business.
Be willing to change, be willing to move with the market. Ultimately, it's your customer's demand that will determine whether your work is worth paying for. So find a way to give people what they want. James has put a lot of effort into mixing his side hustler with family life. He regularly has his kids help out in the workshop doing non-machinery-based jobs.
His eight-year-old daughter, who James says is already a hustler, loves doing odd jobs to earn more money for herself. At some point, he wants to work more on larger pieces and expand into a bigger workspace. But for now, he's happy creating pieces that last for his customers all over the country. [Music]
So there's a definite lesson about pricing there. I love what he said about how if you're converting a lot of people who come to your website, really high conversion rate, but you're not selling anything that's totally unique, maybe your prices are too low.
And like I said, if he has a conversion rate of 60%, that's still pretty high. I mean, granted, he may not have a ton of traffic, and the people that are coming are already, you know, clearly interested in buying the chopping block or whatever it is. But still, you know, that's a pretty amazing conversion rate. So perhaps he does still have an opportunity to do more there. And I also thought it was interesting that he actually has two different microsites for the two brands or the two product lines.
One is called the Wood Cutting Board Store. The other one is Boise Custom Furniture. And both of these product lines are organized together under the business name of Mahogany House Woodwork. And there's a couple of different reasons why you would do this or why you would not do it. Just like anything else in life, there are pros and cons.
But for him, he liked the idea of just kind of creating some separation. And if you come to the Wood Cutting Board Store, that's all it is. You know, it's Wood Cutting Boards all the time. Whereas obviously with Custom Furniture, it probably involves a lot more back and forth quotes, you know, conversation with customers. Whereas with the Wood Cutting Board, you just go and buy it.
There's not really a right way or a wrong way to do it. It's just a matter of preference and how this kind of fits in with the rest of his lifestyle and what his goals are and, you know, how much profit is he trying to make versus how much of it is a lifestyle business. So again, lots of pros and cons, but so much flexibility. That's what the World of Side Hustle is all about. There is no one size fits all.
You gotta find what works for you that doesn't add pressure to your life, but actually helps to alleviate some of the pressure, which is what sounds like has happened here in multiple ways from being able to revisit that love of woodworking and also get paid for it. You know, that's pretty good too. All right, I hope you enjoyed this story. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. The show notes for today are at sidehustleschool.com/787.
Come and check out his business, see some photos of the work and don't forget to come back tomorrow or if you're subscribed, you know, just keep listening 'cause the episode will come to you. Crazy how that works. Thank you so much. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
