Keep It in the Family
Some side hustlers start young, and some parents involve the whole family in their entrepreneurial adventures. These stories feature kids, families, or partnerships.
Immigrant Couple Translates Heritage into Children’s Flash Cards
House Arrest Leads to $500,000 Food Truck Hustle
Fourteen-Year-Old Turns Class Project into Actual Business
Florist and Sculpture Professor Team Up to Make Presidential Lip Balm
Mom and Son Protect Family Jewels in Heartland Hustle
IMMIGRANT COUPLE TRANSLATES HERITAGE INTO CHILDREN’S FLASH CARDS
NAME
LOCATION
SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA
STARTUP COSTS
$1,500
INCOME
$50,000+/YEAR
WEBSITE
Two children of immigrants from Laos meet the needs of an underserved community in a $50,000 per year hustle.
When the Communist Party took over Laos in 1975, the small country in South Asia became hostile toward the Hmong ethnic group. As allies of the United States in the Vietnam War, the Hmong people (pronounced “Mong”) were considered risks to Communism, and a violent wave of persecution began.
Thousands fled the country and relocated in America, including the parents of young Mykou and Touger Thao. After settling in Minnesota and getting married, Mykou and Touger had their first child. They enjoyed reading to her, but were disappointed by the lack of language-learning tools for the Hmong language. There were no children’s books, no magazines or primers—almost no resources at all.
The couple wanted their daughter to be bilingual in English and their heritage language, so they began looking into creating their own Hmong flash cards. A month later, they hired a freelance designer to create twenty-six images for their animal flash cards, printing them out in their home office.
The cards looked great! But in terms of a side hustle, they didn’t do anything with them immediately. They questioned whether anyone else would want them and put the project on pause.
After more time went by, Mykou and Touger realized they were sitting on an idea that could help thousands of displaced families in the country. They agreed to set aside their hesitations and test it out. The couple made a short video of Mykou teaching their one-year-old daughter the names of the animals and uploaded it to YouTube. They then posted it on Facebook with a link to purchase, but the video only received one thousand views—a small number, at least in their minds.
Despite the relatively low number of views, the couple sold 125 flash-card sets at $20 each, bringing in more than $2,500 over a two-week period. Mykou and Touger fulfilled everything manually using PayPal invoices, self-printed shipping labels, and a spreadsheet. When it was all said and done, the couple had profited $1,000 from this initial set of cards.
That first launch wasn’t a particularly large success in terms of sales, but the extremely high conversion rate was encouraging. One in ten viewers had ordered the cards!
As the new year rolled around, Mykou and Touger began brainstorming ways to expand. They hired another freelance designer and created three new sets of flash cards. In addition to animals, they now had numbers, food, and objects. After setting up a website, the couple made another video. This time they thought that they might have better luck if they uploaded the video straight to Facebook, skipping YouTube.
Their hunch was right. In less than three days, the new video displaying four new sets of flash cards had been viewed 150,000 times. Over the next thirty days, Hmong Baby received $10,000 worth of orders. Shopify actually put a hold on the store’s revenue because the system tagged the dramatic spike in sales as a possible scam. After they made a couple of anxious phone calls, the site was able to function again.
Thankfully, fulfilling these orders was much more efficient than it was with the first flash-card set launch. Shopify handled the payments, shipping, and inventory with ease.
On fire with the thrill of sales, Mykou began working on a new project: a Hmong children’s book. Over the next few months, she wrote the story, rehired the designer for illustrations, and began exploring printing options.
Compared to the flash cards, the logistics of printing a book were far more complicated. The flash cards were printed locally, which made communicating with the printer fairly simple. The books, however, would be printed in China, which was stressful since they couldn’t communicate with the printer in person. They also had to do a lot of Googling to figure out how freight forwarding and customs worked.
Once they had their sample book and were satisfied with it, they began crafting a crowdfunding page on their website. Many of their customers had expressed interest in a children’s book, but Mykou and Touger wanted to validate that interest by asking those customers to support the production costs.
Once again, they made a video. This one was viewed over 125,000 times in under seven days, prompting more than enough preorders to fund the project. A couple of months later, hundreds of Mykou’s books were being read to kids across the country.
In their first year of business, Mykou and Touger generated just over $50,000 in sales through Hmong Baby. Not only have they created a way to teach their daughter the language of their heritage, but their business has enabled them both to become self-employed so that they can spend more time at home.
Next, they want to create more products and streamline their method to be more effective and efficient. They’ve also received inquiries from people in other immigrant communities who want to replicate their success.
Most of all, they’re glad they overcame their initial hesitation and took a chance on making that first video.
“It was an amazing feeling to create something that people actually wanted enough that they would pay us for it. We were blown away!” —Touger
FUN FACT Mykou and Touger increased their video’s views by 1,500 percent by uploading the file directly to Facebook, rather than publishing it on YouTube and then sharing it.
CRITICAL FACTOR
Thousands of immigrant families from Laos were living in the United States, yet there were almost no educational resources to help their American-born kids connect with their heritage. Mykou and Touger provided a practical solution for a deeply personal need.
HOUSE ARREST LEADS TO $500,000 FOOD TRUCK HUSTLE
NAME
ZACH ELLSWORTH AND TEDDY SMITH
LOCATION
FAIRCHANCE, PENNSYLVANIA
STARTUP COSTS
$10,000
INCOME
$50,000 IN YEAR THREE
WEBSITE
Unable to leave home after a run-in with the law, two cousins get creative in the kitchen. It grows into a food truck and catering business in rural Pennsylvania.
Zach Ellsworth had just heard some bad news. His cousin, Teddy Smith, was under house arrest for a DUI. Zach and Teddy had grown up playing together in southwest Pennsylvania. By that point, however, they were leading very different lives. Teddy, at age thirty-three, was having run-ins with the law, while Zach was married with four kids, and held down a steady sales job.
During the long idle months while under house arrest, Teddy grew restless, and Zach started keeping him company. Before his unfortunate encounters with law enforcement, Teddy was a talented chef who had worked in several French restaurants.
To pass the time, Teddy started hosting a Tuesday supper club for his girlfriend, Zach, and Zach’s wife. It was over these weekly, house-confined gourmet dinners that Zach and Teddy started to voice discontent with their careers—as well as talking of starting a business together.
The cousins live in an economically depressed region in rural Pennsylvania, where 20 percent of the people live below the poverty line. You have to drive over an hour to Pittsburgh to seek out good restaurants. With all these data points in mind, Zach and Teddy hit on a mission: to bring reasonably priced, “city-quality” cuisine to their county.
This idea remained all talk and no action, at least until an opportunity fell in their laps. One day, a friend approached Zach with a conundrum. Her sister was getting married in six weeks, and the Mediterranean restaurant that was supposed to provide the catering had canceled without warning. She wondered if he knew of any other options.
Right there and then, Zach decided to launch the side hustle. He told his friend that he would cater the wedding himself, and then called Teddy to say that they had a job.
What they didn’t have was a kitchen. But after pleading with local businesses, they ended up paying just $25 to use a church kitchen. Then they successfully catered an eighty-five-person Mediterranean wedding—right in the middle of a field.
With one event under their belts, the cousins went into high gear. They continued to do occasional gigs that first year, bringing in $20,000. The following year, they launched the first food truck in their area—a long-time dream for both of them. They served lunch specialties like peanut butter and pepper jelly burgers and crab cake sandwiches, totaling up $125,000 in sales between the truck and the catering.
In year three, the cousins expanded once again—opening a restaurant serving modern American food, and generating $235,000 in sales from all three arms of the company. But the food business isn’t easy, and this third expansion proved to be a challenge. At the outset, local restaurants tried to have the food truck shut down because of the threat it represented, and the cousins had to figure out how to weather the down months when few wedding gigs presented themselves.
There were also a lot of unexpected costs. The cousins had to invest about $120,000 up front to open the restaurant, which was only possible after asking their fathers for a loan. The truck itself cost $83,000, but then there was insurance, equipment, gas, electricity, water, registration, tax, and parking expenses to contend with—which totaled about $2,000 in one-off costs and $8,500 yearly. This excluded business registration, website, branding, and payment-processing expenses.
All along, the pair invested almost every dime they made into growing the company. Teddy focused on the kitchen, while Zach managed the marketing, systems, and sales. Zach put in about twenty to thirty hours per week in addition to his day job, and Teddy, who began to work on the business full time, invested forty to fifty hours.
Their best marketing came through the food truck, which provided built-in visibility for the company on a daily basis. Outreach on Facebook was also successful, but with a twist. Instead of buying ads, they offered a free meal to a random follower each time they post about something important, such as a new menu or service. They say those posts ended up with five times the visibility, and at far less cost.
In year four, Zach and Teddy exceeded $500,000 in sales and $50,000 in profit, and begin planning their way to $1 million. Unfortunately, at that point they realized they’d made a mistake. The catering side of their business produced the bulk of profits, while their restaurant dreams ended up being more of a drain. Customers liked the food truck, but didn’t flock to the restaurant the way they’d hoped.
They decided to regroup, going back to the drawing board to see what lessons they could learn and what they’d do next.
“It’s good to talk about your idea and get feedback, but also get real sales before investing too much time and energy.” —Zach
FUN FACT For a while, the sous chef for Teddy was someone who used to compete in eating competitions. He was featured on The Colbert Report for his unusual skills and appetite.
CRITICAL FACTOR
Use the skills you already have! After a run-in with the law, Chef Teddy teamed up with his cousin to pursue a long-held dream of cooking for their own customers. The business worked until they expanded too quickly.
FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD TURNS CLASS PROJECT INTO ACTUAL BUSINESS
NAME
LOCATION
DENVER, COLORADO
STARTUP COSTS
$1,500
INCOME
$250/MONTH
WEBSITE
When this eighth grader was given a school project, she didn’t just want a passing grade—she wanted to create a real business.
When most eighth graders are handed a school project, they hope to come out with a good grade and enough time left over to hang out with their friends. But Emily Rudnick in Denver, Colorado, wasn’t like most eighth graders. When she was handed her school project, she came out with a full-blown business—and an extra $250 a month in her pocket.
Despite being just fourteen years old, Emily had spent hundreds of hours locked away in her kitchen laboratory with her father, David, creating spice blends. They would play around with ingredients trying to come up with a hot new seasoning that could blow the competition out of the water (or at least off the table).
For her class project turned business, Emily wanted to officially make and bottle her own spice. This challenge required multiple attempts. Upon cooking one of her initial recipes, the entire family had to vacate the house for a day, leaving all the doors and windows opened.
After “spicegate,” Emily and David went to talk with experts at another local business, the Savory Spice Shop. This is where she gave her project a name: RudSpice.
After receiving the class assignment, she went back to the staff of the Savory Spice Shop once more to enlist their help in turning her hobby into something more. It was there she learned her first real lessons in business. The shop’s co-owner, Janet, offered a beneficial exchange. If Emily could make the product more accessible to people, and reduce the amount of money she spent on making each vial of the spice, the shop would put it on the shelves for sale.
Going back to the drawing board, Emily managed both to find a similar blend of spices that more people could eat without their eyes watering, and to bring the manufacturing cost of each mixture down to $2.74. That same recipe now stands on the shelves of the shop, retailing at $6 a bottle.
Safe in the knowledge that she’d passed her class assignment, it was now time to take RudSpice to a wider market. But to do that, she was going to need more money—and she didn’t want to take it from her current investor, her dad. So she decided to crowdfund her project through Kickstarter.
David and Emily wrote a campaign description, made a video, and set about raising $1,500 to cover expenses. After just a few weeks of word-of-mouth marketing and getting her story featured in a local newspaper, the project raised more than $2,760.
The school project is long since over, but Emily is still heating up. RudSpice now offers three products: the original five-spice product from her project, a slightly hotter ten-spice blend, and a cooking rub.
Of the $250 a month she made during the first year, Emily is yet to spend any of it personally. She’s investing it back into the business and into her college fund, resisting the urge to buy the hot tub she’s always wanted.
Spice-wise, she’s focusing on getting the product in local restaurants, reaching out to farmers’ markets, and creating more bottles to put on the retail shelves. It’s a business model with a real kick!
“I want to take RudSpice to a larger level and see it in restaurants and grocery stores. My ultimate goal is to have it replace salt and pepper at the dinner table.” —Emily
FUN FACT When Emily went to Spain, she visited Arzak, a wildly popular restaurant that holds three Michelin stars. The head chef tried RudSpice and encouraged her to continue.
CRITICAL FACTOR
Emily upgraded her school project to a fiery-hot side hustle. By telling her story in a crowdfunding campaign, she was able to cover 100 percent of the expenses.
FLORIST AND SCULPTURE PROFESSOR TEAM UP TO MAKE PRESIDENTIAL LIP BALM
NAME
LOCATION
SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS
STARTUP COSTS
$50
INCOME
$55,000/YEAR
WEBSITE
A gift idea for family and friends blossoms into a full-fledged lip balm biz.
Megan Luckey is a freelance sign-language interpreter and florist living in Springfield, Illinois. Her side hustle is making all-natural lip balm. She runs it with her business partner and former teacher, Khara Koffel, a sculpture professor at a nearby college.
The business started by accident, when Khara wanted to make lip balm as Christmas gifts. On the way back from visiting her parents, she looked on Pinterest for recipes. Then she ordered small amounts of each ingredient.
Khara convinced Megan to help her, and they began playing around with the ingredients. They found that it wasn’t that hard to make a decent balm. Before long, they were making batches in Khara’s kitchen, giving them away to people they knew. Their friends and family asked for more, so they ordered additional tubes and ingredients, and decided to charge to cover their costs.
Next, Khara heard about a coffee shop in town that was changing locations and looking for items to sell. They sent a message to the owner, who agreed to let them give it a try. After creating labels for what they called Serious Lip Balms, they started selling wholesale and at vendor fairs.
At one of those fairs, they met the woman who manages the gift shop for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, located right there in Springfield. She liked the balms and wanted to sell them in the shop, but there needed to be some connection to the president.
Abe Lincoln wrote down a lot of notes, but unfortunately he’d never said much about his favorite lip balm. So instead, Megan and Khara took home some recipes of his favorite desserts, and they matched their scents to those. The next time you’re at the presidential museum, you can pick up one of their balms in your choice of Mr. Lincoln’s Lemon Pie, Mrs. Lincoln’s White Cake, and Honest Abe’s gingerbread.
The first order was 150 balms, which they delivered on a Thursday. By Monday, the museum was reordering and placing orders for Gettysburg and Ford’s Theatre, two other Lincoln-themed shops.
As they’ve been making balms for Honest Abe and other customers, they continued to work their day jobs. In year two, they made 3,789 balms. In year three, they made 42,496. When they first bought lip balm tubes, they bought 25. They now buy them 10,000 at a time.
Megan has a fourteen-year-old son, and Khara’s son is three. Recently, a bunch of custom orders needed to be made on the weekend, and the kids jumped in to help out. “It absolutely must be leaving some sort of impression on these boys to see their mothers making a business out of nothing, and hustling their hearts out to make it happen,” Megan said.
Surely America’s first president would approve…at least as long as they saved him some lemon pie.
“Everything that we did in the beginning, and even now, we did ourselves. It’s never really been about spending money, it’s been about investing our time.” —Megan
FUN FACT Early on in the business, Megan and Khara were going to order cheap shirts online, but decided at the last minute to order from a local shop. That small T-shirt order turned into a strong friendship. Now, whenever they need a service or product, they try to look locally first in order to support their community.
CRITICAL FACTOR
A product like lip balm is widely available, and therefore needs good branding to stand out. As they grew, Megan and Khara improved their labeling and began making custom blends, including the ones commissioned by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
MOM AND SON PROTECT FAMILY JEWELS IN HEARTLAND HUSTLE
NAME
LOCATION
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
STARTUP COSTS
$20,000
INCOME
$10,000/MONTH
WEBSITE
A Kansas City–area mom and her young son invent an essential product for young male athletes.
Brandi Russell knows a lot about kids, both professionally and personally. By day, she’s a pediatric occupational therapist. By day and night, she’s a mother of two. Three summers ago, Brandi teamed up with her eleven-year-old son Kyler, becoming his business partner for a concept he had first imagined while playing Little League in a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri.
The idea? A protective, yet comfortable, athletic cup for young male athletes, aptly named the Comfy Cup.
Kyler loved baseball, but didn’t love the bulky equipment that boys are required to wear when playing sports. From the shelves of their local sporting goods stores to the depths of online retailers, Brandi bought him every different athletic cup available on the market…but they were all a pain in the crotch.
After weeks of protest, Brandi finally told Kyler, “If you don’t like something, quit complaining about it and come up with a solution!” Cue the Comfy Cup.
Kyler came to his mom the very next day with the idea to invent an athletic cup that’s soft, lightweight, and moves with your body. The mother-and-son team then crafted a one-of-a-kind, hand-sewn cup right in their living room, using foam, fabric, and Brandi’s trusty sewing machine. Product testing was held right there in that same room, with both Kyler and his dad serving as models. (Brandi assures us that no family members were harmed in the making of this product.)
This self-described “battle-tested, kid-approved” arts-and-crafts project has come a long way since then. The Comfy Cup is now available from various online retailers as well as their own e-commerce website.
The entire Russell family now has a part-time job in the business of protecting the family jewels. Kyler and his ten-year-old sister, Ellison, work to fill orders before and after school. Throughout the day, Brandi weaves in conference calls and meetings between her scheduled therapy sessions with her clients. She also runs the brand’s social media campaigns. This work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit seems to come naturally to her—she’s also written two children’s books as what she calls her “side side hustle.”
The Russells work out of their home office and use their basement as a warehouse. The Comfy Cup retails for $12.99. They pay $2.79 per product, which is now manufactured in Hong Kong, plus $0.60 per product for shipping. After miscellaneous seller and shipping fees, it comes out to a profit of $6.92 per product.*
They reached a big milestone one year after starting, when the business broke even. Sales are now consistently over $10,000 per month!
Brandi says that the best part of the whole project is seeing her son’s idea become a reality. She remembers when they produced their first one thousand cups and she thought, How in the world are we going to sell all these? But then they were gone in just a few months.
The Comfy Cup brand is now growing as a retailer and wholesaler. They’ve applied to Shark Tank, and they have a proposal in with Walmart. The Russells also want to expand the product line to include sizing for tweens, teens, and even grown-ups.
They’re also thinking about venturing into other athletic equipment like shin guards—because while you’re protecting one part of the body, you might as well protect them all.
“The mountain of things you have to do to start a business may seem ominous at first, but if you’re able to take small and consistent steps toward your goal, eventually that mountain doesn’t seem so big.” —Brandi
FUN FACT The Comfy Cup was featured in the Grommet, an online website with 2.5 million subscribers. Only 3 percent of products submitted to the popular retailer are approved, and fewer are featured.
CRITICAL FACTOR
Lots of boys and young men play sports that require protection. Since so many of them were uncomfortable with the existing options, there had to be a better way—and it seems like Brandi and Kyler have found it.
WOOLLY MAMMOTH INSPIRES ORGANIC PALEO BARS
NAME
MICHAEL WINCHELL AND ANTHONY OSTLAND
LOCATION
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
STARTUP COSTS
$30,000
INCOME
$25,000/MONTH
WEBSITE
Frustrated by the lack of snack bars devoid of added sugar and weird ingredients they couldn’t pronounce, two hungry fitness enthusiasts create their own tasty paleo bar—and hustle their way to multiple six figures.
Michael Winchell and Anthony Ostland weren’t trying to start a food business. They were just hungry.
Michael, a financial analyst, and Anthony, a CrossFit instructor, both follow a paleo diet. Eager to eat well on the go, they were looking for a nutrition bar that was made out of real food. Their ideal bar wouldn’t have any added sugar or “weird stuff,” and would still taste good. But despite the plethora of snack bars and supplements on the market, they couldn’t find one that met their requirements.
They began prototyping bars in their kitchen at home, using organic ingredients like sprouted nuts, coconut, dates, and egg-white protein. Their friends and family loved what they were making, and they had to borrow more and more Cuisinart mixers as they continued to experiment. By the time they got to five Cuisinarts in their home kitchen, they realized that maybe they should consider renting space in a commercial kitchen. Their hobby was becoming an obsession.
Renting space allowed them to produce the bars more easily and keep up with the demand from friends and family. But before they started selling the bars to strangers, they set up a blind taste test with the kind of people they hoped to sell to. They compared their recipe to ten other bars that were similar, using a simple rating system that took several factors into consideration: taste, texture, and the all-important question, “Would you pay money for what’s in your mouth?”
Based on feedback from their blind taste testers, they went through close to one hundred iterations across four different flavors, until they got their recipes dialed in. As Michael explains, “This is a process that I think very few food startups actually go through, because they just assume that people will like what they make. We didn’t assume anything; we tested it until we knew we had a winning hand.”
As it turned out, their target market preferred bars with less sugar and more real food. With their recipes set, Michael and Anthony were ready to scale up and introduce their paleo Mammoth Bars to the masses.
The name refers to the legendary woolly mammoth. “We doubt that he did much surrendering back in the day,” Michael said, “and we like that attitude when it comes to health and nutrition.”
So with that liberation in mind, they introduced the Mammoth Bars in a clear wrapper with a simple white label. They kept this packaging for over two years as they continued to grow their supply to meet increasing demand.
During those years, they had to grapple with a lot of decisions—some of which they had anticipated and some they hadn’t. They knew they were going to write their own content, design their website using Shopify, and do their own accounting. Those parts were straightforward enough.
But as a food business, there were some additional puzzle pieces that had to be configured. They had to find organic suppliers, figure out what licenses they needed, and make sure they got all the proper inspections. And because they were set on being certified organic, they had to jump through even more hoops.
As Michael and Anthony scaled up, they encountered a temptation to add preservatives or tweak their recipe to make it easier to create in a larger kitchen and extend the shelf life of the product. This is what many nutrition bar producers do, so it wouldn’t be terribly unusual.
But they made a decision early on that they would figure out a way to scale up without sacrificing quality, and to continue handling production themselves instead of outsourcing it. This meant that they were in the kitchen every weekend and many weeknights grinding out the bars.
While they did almost everything themselves, their startup costs still added up. All told, they invested about $30,000 of their own money the first two years. Most of this investment, $20,000, went to ingredients and packaging materials. The remaining $10,000 was spent on leasing the kitchen space, website hosting, consultants for specialized topics like food science and manufacturing, and paying to rent space at events.
As their audience continued to grow, they knew they needed a brand overhaul—something more than their initial clear packaging with a white label. For phase two, they launched their product to a larger audience via Kickstarter.
They set their goal at $10,000 and offered pledge levels from $5 to $1,000. In the very first day, they surpassed their goal and went on to raise over $50,000. This strong endorsement meant they could fully move forward with their rebranding.
But at the same time, they now had to make a lot more bars than they’d ever made in such a short period of time. Prior to the Kickstarter campaign, their average monthly revenue was $6,000. To fulfill $50,000 worth of bars, they put in even more long weekends and all-nighters.
Beyond just running a successful Kickstarter campaign, it also boosted their monthly revenue up to an average of $10,000. Even more significantly, they were approached by Peet’s Coffee about carrying their bars in stores. Peet’s tested their bars in twelve Sacramento area stores, to great response at the end of the year. Early the next quarter, they began to roll out the bars to their stores nationwide.
More recently, their monthly revenue has been hovering around $25,000, split evenly among Peet’s Coffee sales, direct online sales, and sales at all other independent retailers.
As big as those numbers sound, Michael and Anthony still both have their day jobs. They finally hired a couple of people to make the bars for them in their shared kitchen, but they say there’s always something that needs to be tweaked.
From improving a production process, finding backup suppliers, getting into a new retailer, or thinking about launching new flavors, they have their work cut out for them.
And they wouldn’t have it any other way. As Michael said, “Once things stop being a challenge, I think I’d probably hang it up and move on to the next project. But I’m guessing we’ll never get to that point.”
“When you start a side hustle, there are going to be times when nothing goes right and it would just be easier to give up and say ‘Fine, you win…I’m done.’ And I don’t think there’s anything unique about our story other than the fact that we never did that.” —Michael
FUN FACT One particularly late-night session, Michael and Anthony had just finished making five hundred bars. As they headed to the car with boxes of neatly packaged bars and one last tray of unwrapped bars, Anthony tripped on the curb—and every single unwrapped bar went flying into the street. After a second of shock, they both burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the moment.
ACTION PLAN
1. Everything begins with the right recipe. Get in the kitchen and start experimenting!
2. Find your target audience wherever they are: yoga studios, offices, gyms, or wherever is best suited to your product.
3. Resist the temptation to assume that you know what your target audience prefers. Instead, follow Michael and Anthony’s lead by conducting blind taste tests, comparing your product to those of competitors, and making adjustments after each round. This is a lot of work, but worth it in the end.
4. Consider a crowdfunding campaign as a means of fund-raising and getting more people involved.
5. Improve the packaging as you go. Product comes first, but good branding will help you stand out.
CRITICAL FACTOR
The relentless testing that Michael and Anthony did (more than one hundred iterations!) gave them an edge over the many other nutrition bars on the market. They’ve also cultivated a loyal following through their extreme dedication to quality.
Thinking of partnering up? Think again…or at least, think carefully.
For every partner story we feature on Side Hustle School, we have at least one that starts as a partnership before dissolving into a one-man or one-woman show. Why? Simply because when it comes to side hustles, almost inevitably one partner will be more committed to it than the other. And if this isn’t the case at the outset, it often changes as time goes by.
All things being equal, if you have the choice between “owning” your idea completely or sharing it with a friend, it’s better to own it yourself. This doesn’t mean that you don’t get help from others—everyone needs help! It just means that going into partnership can add complexity to a process that should be simple.
Clearly, there are occasions where partnering up makes good sense. Just keep these principles in mind:
• It’s usually best to partner with someone who has different skills and strengths than you do.
• Have a clear, written agreement for what happens if one partner needs to move on.
Following these principles will help you focus on the things that matter—and perhaps avoid unnecessary conflict down the road.
For more, visit SideHustleSchool.com/partnership.
* Another expense is an annual charge of $1,200 for liability insurance. Given what the cup is protecting, it seemed like a good idea to get insured.