Store Manager Makes Micro Gainz For Macro Profits

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

[Music]

Opportunities are everywhere. It's my hope that every person who listens to this podcast, at least over time, after listening for a few weeks, a few months, perhaps, you're gonna go away with an idea of something you can do to create more personal freedom for yourself. You can do that without quitting your job. You can do that with the skills you already have and without spending a lot of money. Every single story I tell you every single day seeks to illustrate those principles.

Now let's get specific and talk today about the world of fitness and wellness. I often mention that as one of the industries that is ripe with potential for income generating projects. That's because anybody who's into fitness or wellness tends to invest money in those areas. Now, of course, those broad areas could mean a lot of different things, which is why specialization is important. You could do something with software.

We had a guy who made an app to help with mobility, another person who made an app that finds users when they don't work out. I'm not sure what happened with that one, but I think it was a profitable project. Training or coaching of some kind. We had a story a long time ago about a mobile yoga studio, online courses, eBooks, guides, et cetera, and of course, physical products. Now it's the last one of those that we'll look at today.

When a grocery store manager hits a weightlifting plateau, he creates micro weight plates through hard work and heavy lifting. In less than three years, it's now a six-figure business. That's correct, a six-figure business built entirely on the side. We've got a lot of stories like that. If you're new to the program, go back and listen to the archives.

There's a lot of people doing this, again, using a skill they already have, and they just kind of figure it out. Now you can do that too in your own way. So today's episode is called Store Manager Makes Micro Gains for Macro Profits. Thanks for being around. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

That story is coming up right after this shout out to our sponsor. [Music]

Michael Reed works as an assistant manager for Weiss Markets, a popular grocery store chain in New England. At any given shift, he might be motivating staff, helping customers, for lifting heavy boxes while packing shelves. For the most part, Michael enjoys his job, especially at the last of those tasks. Because you see, in Michael's spare time, he's an avid gym junkie.

In the words of Ronald Schwarzenegger, he likes to pump iron. Weight training in particular is one of his favorite ways to exercise. In particular, he enjoys barbell and dumbbell training. It provides a measurable way to make progress by keeping track of how much weight you're able to lift. If you put in the work this week, next week you'll be slightly stronger, then slightly stronger again the week after that.

Eventually though, lifters reach what's known as a plateau. That's the point at which they stop making rapid improvements and the work just doesn't produce the results it used to. This is because most weights come in five pound increments. When you first start lifting, you might have 10 pounds total. Then you add two five pounders and have 20, then 30 and so on.

But the problem is this type of improvement doesn't continue forever. If it did, every weight lifter out there would be lifting cars over their heads. And of course I can do that, but you know, most people can't. As the overall weight gets higher, improvements, which are known as gains, get harder to come by. Lifting an additional five pounds on a heavy barbell is much harder than on a light one.

So when Michael hit his plateau, he looked for ways to remedy the situation. Before long, he came across weight plates. Weight plates are small sets of weights that lifters add to their dumbbells to increase the overall weight in smaller increments. So instead of adding five pounds, they can add a quarter, a half, three quarters, or a full pound. It enables them to make the incremental increases in weight that help bash through weightlifting plateaus.

Michael knew this was exactly the product he needed. So he hopped on over to Amazon to see what was on offer. The options there were limited, expensive, and almost all were made in China. Being a handy kind of guy, Michael figured he could make something cheaper himself right at home. He also thought he might be able to sell a few on the side.

He called his project MicroGains with a Z. So that's like gains, micro for the small plates and gains for the inevitable gains weight lifters would have using them. To start, he went to a local steel laser cutter and had 25 of each size cut, from a quarter pound to one pound. That was enough for him to make eight sets. He then hung the plates up in his shed and used a spray gun to paint them black.

Once the paint dried, he put a sticker of his logo in the corresponding weight on each plate. It was a slow process, but within a couple of days, he had his first batch of MicroGains plates ready to sell. Just two days after listing them on eBay, his first customer loaded up, purchasing two sets. Michael was overjoyed. That sale was validation.

Maybe it was even a weight off his shoulders, proof that this idea could actually work. The first batch of sets sold relatively quickly. Michael was left with a small profit when all was said and done. He chose to invest the proceeds into buying more steel plates. But after a few reps of this, he realized his process of making the plates was far too time consuming.

In weightlifting, the real gains happened during your recovery after a workout. Starting a business can be similar. You work hard, sometimes frantically, then you process and make improvements in the downtime. For this side hustle though, Michael had hardly any downtime between sessions to make those improvements. On the advice of his steel cutter, he decided to powder coat the plates.

This was a little more expensive, but it cut his production time considerably. Now, all he had to do was put the stickers on each plate and he was done. With that first version, he sold $30,000 worth of plates in the first year. But Michael was about to bust through his business plateau because over the next year, he refined his plates and process even further. Consequently, he sold more than four times what he did in that first year, $130,000 worth.

Then in October, 2018, he listed micro gains on Amazon and sales exploded again. The huge uptick revenue in 2019 is already at $160,000. With that sort of money on the weightlifting bench, you might think that Michael has quit his full-time job by now, but that's not the case because he's been pouring much of the profit generated back into micro gains with maximum intensity. To do that, he's now working on the next line of plates, which will be color coded. He also has ideas for another couple of product lines he can create in the same space.

So with enough sets and reps, he'll go from micro gains to macro profits. [Music]

Opportunities are everywhere. Where will you find yours? And once you find it, what will you do about it? What will be your first step?

In fact, what's your first step right now? What's your next step? If you have an idea, if you have a project already, what are you gonna do next? If you're still looking for ideas, go and make a list. Make a list of all your skills, make a list of all your interests.

Go and pay attention to the things that you pay for, the things you spend money on. Now here's some specific words of wisdom from Michael about micro gains, which is such an awesome project. I mean, six figures selling these micro gain weights. He says, "You wanna research potential competitors in the market to see how much they are selling in order to see if their product is worth producing." So he did this with micro gains by looking up the different micro plate sets offered on Amazon. Even though he wasn't impressed with the product, he wanted to pay attention to the sales.

So he went and looked at their seller rank. And from there, he could tell, are people actually buying this or not? Then he could see that the idea at least had potential. It doesn't prove everything, but it does give you a small little piece of information to move forward with. Heart listeners, I hope you move forward.

Inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/997. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back again tomorrow. Much more is coming up and I can't wait to share it with you.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

- From the Onward Project.