Enjoy an Ice Cold Beverage in a Mug Made from Ice

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

What's up my friends? Welcome to the program. Got a great show for you today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. Now, you may be familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy

of Needs. It's basically a ranking of five levels of human needs that we all have, ranging from basic food and shelter, on up to love and self-actualization. So, breaking news. This taxonomy is no doubt being revised to account for the invention you'll hear about in today's story. The invention is a mug made from ice that can hold your beer or other favorite beverage. The "nice" mug, as it's called, was created in the frozen tundra of

a Minnesota winter. It goes on to sell 4,000 units, with its owner currently in negotiations, to bring it to National Hockey League fans. And it's all because one man wanted a cold beer and a sauna. This hearty Viking/territory manager for a food company brings his invention to life, funds it with a $25,000 crowdfunding campaign, and is now taking this life-changing beverage holder to the masses. Hold off on that self-actualization. First, you need your

nice mug. All the details are coming right up. Did you know that many of the most influential inventions came about by accident? This list includes the post-it note, superglue, and even the chocolate chip cookie. Now, you can add another one to that accidental invention hall of fame, the "nice" mug, with the emphasis on the ice. One especially chilly Minnesota winter night, Glenn Auerbach, was

trudging through the snow to his backyard sauna, when he realized that one of the water containers he used to dump cold water over his head had been left outside, full of water from a sauna a couple of days prior. For all intents and purposes, it looked frozen solid. Sitting on his sauna bench, Glenn dumped out that chunk of ice and noticed that the center was miraculously unfrozen. He poured out the liquid part, and what remained was a perfectly formed drinking vessel. Never one to miss an opportunity, he and a friend poured a frothy beer into the mug made out of ice and took turns sipping. After they finished that first

beer, they naturally started on another. A ways into that second beer, Glenn noticed that while the mug melted down a bit, it held its shape well and never leaked. Best of all, that beer tasted fantastic. After that night, Glenn started leaving more water containers outside to freeze, hoping to replicate that first mug experience, but he noticed he couldn't quite catch the perfect freezing point. Either the mug would be too thin, or it came out frozen solid, like a hockey puck. So he decided to ramp up his experiments.

Following a long period of trial and error, reusing potato salad containers (side note, his family started eating a lot of potato salad at this point in time) combined with hockey tape to create rudimentary molds, he finally found the perfect combination. It consisted of two deli containers, one inside the other that would create the vessel, and then a lid to keep everything in place. The result was what he called the "nice mug." That's with a lowercase n, capital I-C-E. Nice! Although he had a name for this new invention, he didn't have a plan for it. Glenn had a

job he enjoyed, working as a territory manager for one of the largest food companies in the world. For the past 20 years, they'd been good to him, putting food on the table and keeping him flush in deli containers. But now he was looking ahead, and he had a bunch of side hustle ideas. He figured that if he could scale "nice mug" and make it profitable, he could do that with any of his other brilliant ideas. It was the perfect practice run for everything he'd want to create when he was looking to retire.

He met up with a friend of a friend who was a plastic injection molding engineer. Although the materials needed to create the product were relatively inexpensive, the tooling needed to make "nice mugs en masse" would need to be sourced from China, and that would cost about $15,000. It was a lot of money, but winter was coming. It was the perfect time to get "nice mugs" into the hands of people in time for peak sauna season. The startup cost wasn't as insurmountable as the Wall in Game of Thrones, but Glenn certainly viewed it the same way the Wildings did. He needed to build strength

with numbers, so he turned to Kickstarter to fund his new project. Leading up to the launch, a friend created a logo. He built a new website using WordPress, adding it to the hosting plan he already had for his existing website, sauna times, and made a video highlighting his beloved creation. By the end of the campaign, he'd brought in over $25,000. Next, he put in the order for the tooling and formed a partnership with a local manufacturer who would use that tooling to produce his "nice mugs" for him. And,

of course, he celebrated with a beer-filled mug and a relaxing sauna in his backyard. When it came to pricing, Glenn opted to set his price using a 3-4x model. In other words, he's charging 3-4 times what it costs to make it. He took into account a fraction of what the tooling cost, the packaging required to ship the product, the shipping prices themselves, website maintenance, marketing, and so on. All those considerations went into the rate he chose, which was $20. He also considered

that it's not a one-and-done kind of product, it's reusable. This 3-4x model is interesting. Glenn says if a product costs $10 to produce, a lot of people will turn around and sell it for $20, and someone will try to convince themselves that that 50% is net, but they're not taking into account that part of the $10 of profit needs to be applied to a variety of line items that contribute to the brand. In other words, you have to consider the cost of the tooling when you first started. You have to consider website maintenance, marketing, and so on.

However, he also says it's about striking the right balance because if you're selling something for $40 that costs you $10 to create, for example, customers might not take you seriously. The value isn't there unless you've got something unique. The good news is Glenn does have something unique. Since starting up, he sold over 4,000 units and typically brings in anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 a month. He continues to store, pack, and ship everything right out of his house. Because he's chosen

to bootstrap everything, there's still a lot of hands-on work being done. At some point, he hopes to hand that off to a fulfillment center. He's also focused on finding a product champion who will take on the brand. He recently spent $100 on dry ice and insulated packaging to ship a batch of ready-made nice mugs to the National Hockey League. He can picture sports fans cheering on their favorite hockey team with a nice mug full of frothy beer.

Outside of a sauna, Glenn believes there could be no better application. And the NHL agrees, at least in principle. All parties are hopeful for a licensing agreement, but there's still a lot of work to be done. So for the time being, the idea is still on ice. Well, how about that? The nice mug. Very helpful every time you want to have a beer

in the sauna, or whatever your favorite beverage is, or perhaps when you're watching a hockey game. Now, here's a fun fact about Glenn. He has a lot of interesting ideas floating around. His next one, his next big invention that he's working on, actually comes out really soon. He's starting a new Kickstarter campaign in the next few weeks. So if you happen to

be listening to this later, it might already be out. But this idea is called "Troxers," and it is a swim trunk/boxer shorts combo that he has developed for the spontaneous swimmer in you. So if you happen to be out and about, and you just want to take a swim and you haven't planned on it, if you're wearing your "Troxers," you can jump right in. Who knows if there is a market for this, but if you had asked me if there is a market for, you know, a mug made out of ice, at least a reusable one, I'm not sure what I would have said. Sometimes you just don't know until you try. And I hope that you have an idea

out there that you're thinking of trying whatever it is. Maybe it's not an invention. Maybe it's something that's a little bit simpler, easier to get to market instead of spending $15,000. But hey, whatever it is, I hope that you're making progress on it. I hope that you'll do one small thing today to get closer to that goal.

Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. The show notes for today are at sidehustleschool.com/867. Come and check out the nice mug. Perhaps the "Troxer." Anything else I mentioned? Oh, Greg's website, which is called "Sauna Times." Great name.

And of course, be sure to come back tomorrow for another story. We are not running out of awesome stories. We've got so many more coming up, and I'm so grateful to be able to make this show for you every day. All right, thanks so much. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.