This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, what's up? Chris Guillebeau here. You're listening to Side Hustle School and we are beginning a new week. I hope it's starting well for you wherever you are. I am off to San Francisco and Austin, Texas in a couple days for the next round of Side Hustle School workshops.
I've got a bunch of great stories for you and I might actually catch up on my email. Well, we'll see about that. But enough about me. On the show, we often look at the idea of using the skills you already have. Taking those skills and applying them in a different way for your side hustle, that income generating project.
What's not just about the skills you already have, what about the network of people you already know? Often someone in that network can be key to your success. Now, some people think they don't know anyone. I've literally had people use that phrase. I don't know anyone at all.
But this is almost always false. Do you use Facebook? Who are your Facebook friends? Did you go to school, to college, to university? Where are those people now?
What about your colleagues, the people you work with? What about your former colleagues from your former job? And it's not just about who you know directly, who do your friends know? So think about that as you hear today's story. It's about a clothing salesman who has an idea and this idea requires manufacturing.
He doesn't know a lot about that. He doesn't want to spend a ton of money figuring it out. So he starts with the people he knows. Along the way, he ends up with a patent on his idea and a six-figure side income. I think you might find this very helpful.
[Music]
Jeffrey Nash's side hustle began when he used his powers of observation. After a lifetime of watching parents, especially mothers, bending over to help their children learn to walk, one day he looked at the scene differently. And in that moment, he realized the need for a very simple product that would allow a mom to stay upright and keep the baby safe. He envisioned a sturdy harness with long straps that the mom would hold to guide her baby as he or she was stumbling through their first few steps. He would later come to name this project The Juppy after his own child's nickname.
But before he could name it, he had to make it. At this point in our story, Jeffrey was 56 years old and wasn't an inventor by vocation, far from it in fact. For the past 40 years, he had worked in a men's clothing store, selling millions of dollars worth of clothing, but all for his employers. He felt confident that if he had this product, he could figure out how to sell it, but he wasn't sure how to go through the design, prototype and creation stages. The first part of his discovery process came through internet research.
He looked at other tools like baby walkers. It turned out some of those products had been banned in Canada and the European Union for being unsafe. So he researched alternatives and learned more about product safety. And he also did a lot of research to make sure his specific product, that one he had envisioned, didn't already exist. Once he was convinced that the product was both a good idea and a new one, he got started on making it.
He spent almost nothing making his early prototype because he began by drawing designs by hand. And since he's been in the clothing industry for decades, he had friends that were tailors and designers that he called on to review his sketches and confirmed that the designs could actually be manufactured. He settled on an initial design and another friend made a prototype that he could actually experiment with. At this point, his costs were just his time and materials. Once he tweaked that first handmade prototype to the point he was satisfied, the next hurdle was finding a trustworthy manufacturer who could produce the product at a low enough price point.
To do this, Jeffrey started by asking everyone he knew if they had any manufacturer recommendations. Between those conversations and some additional internet research, he soon had a few options and began reaching out to companies in the US, Mexico, and China. He eventually went with a company in China and placed his first order of 1,000 juppies. While he was finding a manufacturer, he was simultaneously starting the process of patenting the product. Now for this, he hired a patent lawyer, so it did actually cost money.
This part took about four years and $12,000, but eventually he was the proud owner of a patent for his juppie, but he didn't wait four years to start marketing the product. Even before he had his first order in hand, he started a website and began a grassroots marketing campaign. Since he was trying to keep costs low, he relied on mom bloggers to get the word out. He started by reaching out to those mom bloggers individually, offering them a free juppie to give away to their readers if they reviewed it. Now this worked remarkably well.
Pretty soon other mom bloggers were coming to him, asking for a review juppie, and in the first two years, his product was featured on over 400 blogs. That gave a huge kickstart to sales, and it was so popular that he started working with an agency to manage relations with the bloggers. Within the first two years of his first side hustle, after working as a clothing salesman for 40 plus years, Jeffrey was making $150,000 a year from selling his juppie. That number has declined a bit recently, but he's still averaging well over $100,000 a year. Now this isn't to say he hasn't made any missteps along the way.
The relationship with the agency that worked with bloggers went well, so he tried to hire a marketing company to expand his reach further, and he felt like they overpromised and underdelivered. After that experience, he started spending more time himself learning about Google AdWords, YouTube reviews, Facebook ads, and anything else he can do to get the word out. He says that the most surprising thing about creating the juppie are all the emails he gets from happy parents, telling him stories about how his product helped their child learn to walk. Naturally, he's also grateful for the financial freedom that has come from this side hustle. He's thrilled that he was able to take something he envisioned, turn it into reality, and bring him that financial freedom, as well as the pride he feels in seeing his idea through.
[Music]
So how about you? Who do you know who could help with your idea? Jeffrey had been in the clothing industry for decades, so it wasn't unnatural or awkward for him to go to some of his friends, who were tailors and designers, and ask them to review his sketches and provide any advice or input. He has this belief, a closed mouth never gets fed, and he said he wasn't afraid to ask for help. Well, that's good for him, but it is hard for a lot of us to ask for help.
And even though it's hard, it's often key to getting closer to the success that you envision. So I would encourage you to think about, who do you know who might be able to help with your idea? Where can you get advice, or recommendations, or a connection to someone else? And remember, don't just think about the people you know directly, think about who they know as well. Your circle is probably much wider than you think.
As always, I hope this story inspires you, but I also hope you take action on it and apply it in some way. If you wanna see the show notes for today's episode, learn more about the Juppy, just come over to sidehustleschool.com/93. I'm Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." I'll see you tomorrow. [Music]
