AI transcript
0:00:06 What’s up?
0:00:06 What’s up?
0:00:07 Nick Loper here.
0:00:11 Welcome to the Side Hustle Show, where we’ve been helping people make extra money since
0:00:12 2013.
0:00:17 Today’s guest took a creative approach to his side hustle, starting with a product that
0:00:21 was already selling and then applying his own branding, marketing, positioning to it
0:00:25 and driving around $300,000 a year in sales.
0:00:29 From baldbuck.com, Chris Gray, welcome to the Side Hustle Show.
0:00:31 Nick, I’m happy to be here.
0:00:34 Your voice is so soothing.
0:00:38 Like it could be like on a calm radio station or something.
0:00:40 You have a really nice voice, dude.
0:00:43 This is my podcast voice, honed over decades of doing this.
0:00:43 Okay.
0:00:45 Well, you as well.
0:00:46 Very deep.
0:00:47 Let’s stick around in this one.
0:00:51 We’re going to learn how Chris came up with the idea for Bald Buck Barbecue Seasoning.
0:00:52 It’s a barbecue rub brand.
0:00:57 The sales tactics you can borrow for your own business and how he’s grown and scaled all
0:00:59 as a part-time project.
0:01:01 And barbecue season is upon us.
0:01:02 So good timing on this one.
0:01:05 And my understanding is that’s where this story starts.
0:01:08 A few years ago, eating some delicious chicken.
0:01:09 Yeah, man.
0:01:14 I was hanging out with my brother-in-law and I’m, you know, I’m in Texas, Texas boy.
0:01:16 And I love smoking food.
0:01:21 One day I go over there and I eat this chicken and I’m like, man, this is delicious.
0:01:22 What did you put on it?
0:01:24 And he showed me the, uh, the seasoning.
0:01:26 I said, oh, okay.
0:01:30 So I went and found out how to get some, um, or actually he gave me some, like a big bag of
0:01:30 it.
0:01:35 I used it on chicken, Mick, and my friends loved it.
0:01:36 My family loved it.
0:01:40 I started getting requests to like cater within the family, right?
0:01:42 This is not like paid catering, but people were just loving it.
0:01:43 Okay.
0:01:48 And so I was like, I’m sitting on something here and I could either go open a restaurant
0:01:50 or I can just sell the rub.
0:01:53 So I decided to sell the rub.
0:01:53 Pause right there.
0:01:57 Cause those are two very different options that I think other people might’ve come up with.
0:01:59 Other people might’ve been like, well, here’s where you can go get it.
0:02:00 Or here’s where I got it, right?
0:02:01 Like there’s the easy solution.
0:02:06 And then there’s the one step, you know, inserting yourself into potential profit stream step.
0:02:07 Yeah.
0:02:07 I don’t know.
0:02:08 I think that’s the way I think.
0:02:10 I just saw an opportunity, right?
0:02:14 I, I, I like most entrepreneurs, I probably suffer from chasing too many things.
0:02:19 Um, but I saw here was an opportunity for something that I’m passionate about, which is
0:02:23 smoking food, barbecue, and then I’m also passionate about marketing.
0:02:30 And so I chose to go sell the seasoning itself as opposed to open a restaurant because the overhead
0:02:35 was going to be lower and I could work more digitally than having to commit a bunch of money
0:02:40 to buying a space and getting staff and having rent and all the overhead that would come.
0:02:41 Yeah.
0:02:42 With having a barbecue joint.
0:02:42 Okay.
0:02:44 So step one, delicious chicken, maybe step zero.
0:02:50 Step two is, I assume going to your brother and say, well, where did you get this stuff?
0:02:54 How can I, um, build a, build a distribution channel here?
0:02:55 Like what’s going on there?
0:02:56 So this is what I love.
0:03:00 I tell people, I sell this barbecue seasoning and they’re like, oh man, did you come up with
0:03:01 your own special blend?
0:03:03 And how long did it take?
0:03:04 And did you have a lab?
0:03:05 And none of that, man.
0:03:07 I just found out who made it.
0:03:10 And then I called them up and I’m like, Hey, I like your seasoning.
0:03:12 Do you white label it?
0:03:15 Meaning do they give you the rub and allow you to put your own brand on it?
0:03:16 Yeah.
0:03:17 And the white labeling happens all the time.
0:03:21 If you go to like Costco has Kirkland’s, which is a white label of something else.
0:03:24 Walmart has great value, a white label of something else.
0:03:25 And so Amazon does it.
0:03:26 Everybody does it.
0:03:27 Yeah.
0:03:29 And so I called them up and said, Hey, can I just white label your season?
0:03:31 They’re like, yeah, we have a program for that.
0:03:32 And I was like, great.
0:03:38 So then I had to go and create my own brand, my own coloring, my own, all that stuff, which
0:03:39 was easy to do.
0:03:43 I was lucky because my business partner, we have a business partner in several businesses.
0:03:45 He’s a graphic design guy.
0:03:50 And we were going over all these different names on, you know, what we wanted the seasoning
0:03:50 to be.
0:03:52 I had a list of 20 different names.
0:03:53 One was bald buck.
0:03:55 We chose bald buck because it was funny.
0:03:56 Plus I’m bald.
0:03:58 My nickname with my friends is buck.
0:03:59 They would call me bald buck.
0:04:03 So I found, I thought this would be a way of like getting back at them.
0:04:04 Like, Hey, you made fun of me.
0:04:05 Now I have a brand.
0:04:08 Um, and so we did that.
0:04:10 We came up, he drew the, he made the logo.
0:04:11 We came up with the name.
0:04:12 We gave it to the company.
0:04:15 They label it, they can it, and they just ship it to us.
0:04:19 So all I got to do now is push it, which is kind of scary, Nick, because when you get
0:04:24 sold or when you get shipped 5,000 units of seasoning, you better, you better figure out how
0:04:26 to move it or you better cook a lot of chicken.
0:04:27 Okay.
0:04:32 So the seasoning company had this system already in place and they say, Hey, you can totally
0:04:32 do that.
0:04:34 Just send us your graphics.
0:04:35 Send us your seasoning.
0:04:38 Send us your branding package and we’ll, we’ll put it on the bottles for you.
0:04:39 You don’t even have to do that yourself.
0:04:41 Yeah, they, they can it.
0:04:42 They put it on enough.
0:04:42 I want to save money.
0:04:45 I got to do that myself eventually, but they do it all.
0:04:47 And a lot of places do this, Nick.
0:04:48 And a lot of different things.
0:04:49 Um, it could be microphones.
0:04:50 It could be art.
0:04:51 It could be shirts.
0:04:54 Like a lot of people do most of the work for you.
0:04:56 All you have to do is go push it.
0:04:58 And that’s something I wish I would have understood a long time ago.
0:05:00 I don’t have to create everything.
0:05:02 A lot of the work can be done.
0:05:05 I just need to find something that works and then find a way to sell it.
0:05:08 So in this case, we had this seasoning worked.
0:05:09 My family loved it.
0:05:10 Friends loved it.
0:05:13 It was already popular in a different state.
0:05:16 I just had to take it, bring it and wrap a different story around it.
0:05:17 And that’s what I did.
0:05:17 Yeah.
0:05:24 And there’s some, uh, parallels or similarities to like the Amazon FBA private labeling world
0:05:26 that was big, you know, eight or 10 years ago.
0:05:29 Whereas, you know, look at the two, three, four-star reviews for a given product.
0:05:32 You know, what are people it’s, you know, you know, it’s already selling, you know,
0:05:35 there’s some proven demand, but how can you make some tweak
0:05:39 or improvement or iteration and go oftentimes find that same factory?
0:05:42 Like, I want you to make me this, but with these adjustments,
0:05:45 with these small changes, then I bring that to market.
0:05:49 And like, that was a very popular side hustle for, for a long time.
0:05:50 And I imagine people are still doing it.
0:05:53 And in this case, it sounds like, well, I didn’t tweak the recipe at all.
0:05:56 I just, I’m going to put my own marketing to it.
0:05:57 Once I, once I’ve got it landed.
0:06:00 Yeah, man, I think things get, uh, what’s the word?
0:06:05 Commoditized easily nowadays say there’s a widget out there and everybody’s selling it.
0:06:08 And I say, well, my widget just kind of has this little special thing to it.
0:06:09 The special feature.
0:06:11 Well, then nobody cares about a feature, right?
0:06:13 Like I have a Apple watch right here.
0:06:18 If you see any kind of Apple commercial, they don’t, they don’t sell you on the features of the phone
0:06:20 or the watch or whatever it is.
0:06:21 It’s always some kind of benefit.
0:06:25 And usually one key benefit they talk about with seasoning, right?
0:06:31 There’s no like, well, there is a benefit, but what I think sells this thing is the stories
0:06:32 that are behind it.
0:06:35 These are things that are happening in my life or things I’ve experienced or things I heard
0:06:36 from other people.
0:06:39 But I don’t know if you ever heard, Nick, somebody can look this up.
0:06:41 I forget the name of it, but it was a study done over 10 years ago.
0:06:47 And these guys bought several items from eBay, several like really, really cheap items.
0:06:51 They probably bought them for, I don’t know, sub two bucks, sub a dollar, whatever they buy
0:06:52 them.
0:06:59 And then what they did was they paid some copywriters to put a story behind each item
0:07:01 and then they relisted it, right?
0:07:07 So say they bought something for a buck on eBay, take that same item, relist it this time
0:07:08 with a story.
0:07:09 Okay.
0:07:09 Okay.
0:07:12 There was a story about a horse head and a story about this, that they did that.
0:07:17 They sold this thing for like, if they bought it for two bucks, they could sell it for like
0:07:18 32 bucks.
0:07:18 Okay.
0:07:18 Right.
0:07:19 Whatever that multiple is.
0:07:25 And that was item after item after item with the only difference being the story.
0:07:27 That’s an example of what happened with bald buck.
0:07:31 Cause you take this seasoning and I’m not just, we’re not just selling seasoning here.
0:07:32 There’s a story behind that.
0:07:33 This there’s love behind it.
0:07:34 There’s entertainment behind it.
0:07:35 There’s some drama behind it.
0:07:39 We wrap these stories around the recipes and that’s how we sell it.
0:07:39 Yeah.
0:07:40 I like that.
0:07:43 I tried to do something similar selling an old car of mine, a crappy car.
0:07:46 It was going to sell for like 2000 bucks, but I was like, here’s the journey that we’ve
0:07:47 been on together.
0:07:50 They’re like, it’s ready for its next adventure, you know?
0:07:51 Yes.
0:07:52 So this is, this is great.
0:07:58 I love that example of, you know, taking a commoditized thing and adding words to it, adding
0:08:00 a little more emotion and story to it.
0:08:00 Absolutely.
0:08:02 You get 5,000 units.
0:08:05 First of all, we got to pause and say, well, how much does that cost?
0:08:07 And it was at the minimum or could you have gone lower?
0:08:10 Or like how much does the minimum order, what’s the startup cost here?
0:08:16 Well, the MOQ was like 300 actually, but it was like the price is super high.
0:08:18 So I just like, let me, I just jumped in.
0:08:20 It’s kind of like to burn the ships, right?
0:08:23 Like if I buy 300, I’m kind of like, yeah, well, I got 300 here.
0:08:24 It might work.
0:08:28 I buy 5,000, which ended up being over $5,000 or something.
0:08:33 And it’s like, okay, you know, I’m, I better move this seasoning or my wife is going to
0:08:35 be upset.
0:08:39 So that gave me the added motivation to really move this seasoning.
0:08:43 And so one of the things that helped get it, get it off the wall, I’m talking a lot that
0:08:45 did I answer your question before I go?
0:08:45 No, no, no, that’s good.
0:08:45 Okay.
0:08:47 So just to get a ballpark, okay.
0:08:54 5,000 units, roughly 5,000, maybe a little more, but like a bucket to per jar per thing.
0:08:55 Is that accurate?
0:08:56 Yes, sir.
0:08:56 Okay.
0:08:57 All right, go ahead.
0:08:59 So these things get landed and now you’re like, well, now I got to figure out how to
0:08:59 move them.
0:09:02 Like, what are some of your, what are some of your first marketing moves here?
0:09:02 All right.
0:09:06 So the first one, I didn’t know I was sitting down, I was sitting down and I was like, man,
0:09:07 I gotta, I gotta move this.
0:09:09 And so I just started thinking, I’m like, well, you know what?
0:09:10 Let me just reach out.
0:09:16 I use something to tell me the most popular barbecue influencers on YouTube.
0:09:21 I Googled it, got the most popular ones, and I went to the list and then I found, I was
0:09:25 watching these different guys’ videos and there was some I resonated with, some I didn’t.
0:09:27 There was one in particular named T-Roy.
0:09:28 I just liked him.
0:09:29 I just liked his vibe.
0:09:30 I liked his shows, digging him.
0:09:33 So I started doing my research on him.
0:09:35 If you’re reaching out to somebody, and this is something that I’ve learned.
0:09:38 So this is like, if I’m, if I was watching this show, this is me talking to me.
0:09:44 If I’m looking to reach out to Nick or somebody on YouTube, learn a little bit about them and,
0:09:46 and be able to speak to them a little bit.
0:09:51 Because if you just kind of come out and you’re just like, hey, sell my seasoning and I don’t
0:09:51 know who you are.
0:09:53 Well, then they’re not going to, they’re not going to really care about you.
0:09:58 But if you can reach out and speak their language or resonate with them in some form or fashion
0:10:02 or show that you’ve been watching it or you’re, you’re familiar with them, then that helps.
0:10:09 So I do my research on T-Roy and come to find out, Nick, that T-Roy used to live in the
0:10:10 same city I lived in.
0:10:13 It’s a, it’s a, it’s a bigger city now in Texas, but it’s not huge.
0:10:14 It’s called Pflugerville.
0:10:15 It’s North of Austin.
0:10:16 It’s like not a big city.
0:10:17 He lived in Pflugerville.
0:10:19 I lived in Pflugerville.
0:10:21 Then I found out that he lived his own, and I forgot how I did this.
0:10:22 I was doing research.
0:10:25 He lived in an old neighborhood that my best friend lived in.
0:10:31 So when I reach out to T-Roy, I reach out to him with a, I don’t just say a simple email
0:10:33 like, Hey, check out my seasoning.
0:10:38 I get, I put, I gave him an email that he would, would break his pattern, his reading pattern.
0:10:42 The title of the email was like, ball, black, Jamaican from Pflugerville, Texas.
0:10:46 That’s going to be a lot different from everything else he sees in his email stuff.
0:10:46 Right?
0:10:48 So ball, black, Jamaican from Pflugerville, Texas.
0:10:49 He opens it.
0:10:50 Then he opens it.
0:10:52 And I first go into, I’m from Pflugerville.
0:10:55 I had a, my, one of my best friends grew up in Black Hawk, blah, blah, blah.
0:10:58 So I was, so I, he knows that I’ve done my research then.
0:11:02 Try to find like some common connection and may not, you know, luck may not strike that
0:11:06 you have, you know, a hometown in common with, with the big influencer in your niche, but like
0:11:10 use that as a framework to try and find some sort of common connection.
0:11:11 Yes.
0:11:12 And there’s, there’s all, there’s going to be something.
0:11:15 I got lucky with that, but there could have been a number of things.
0:11:18 I could have talked about seasoning or an episode, whatever it is.
0:11:20 There’s a number of ways I could have gone about it.
0:11:22 But to, to your point, Nick is yeah, find something in common.
0:11:23 I did that.
0:11:28 And then the next thing I did that was important was I didn’t say, Hey, will you just put my
0:11:29 seasoning on your show?
0:11:30 Who’s going to do that?
0:11:30 That’s all.
0:11:31 That’s like, what’s in it for me.
0:11:34 My thing was what’s in it for him through that.
0:11:35 It was like, you know what?
0:11:37 I’m going to, I love to give you this seasoning.
0:11:38 I like to mail it to you.
0:11:40 I want you to try it.
0:11:44 And if you, I said it, it works best on chicken, smoked chicken.
0:11:51 If you like it, I will then give it to the first 50 fans who request it for free.
0:11:53 So one, I’m saying, Hey, try it first.
0:11:55 Cause I’m not sure if he’s going to like it or not.
0:11:56 And I want him to like it.
0:12:01 Otherwise he’s not going to really be like as authentic when he talks about it on the show.
0:12:04 And then two, it was like, it was something that he could give to his fans.
0:12:06 It’s not me giving to him.
0:12:08 It’s him giving something to his fans.
0:12:14 I, I, I lose what a hundred something, 200 something bucks when it comes to the shipping
0:12:14 and all that other stuff.
0:12:15 Yeah.
0:12:21 But I just paid that money for massive advertisement and backing.
0:12:22 Yeah, no, this is really cool.
0:12:25 So it sounds like he does try it.
0:12:26 He, he, he responds.
0:12:28 First of all, you get a yes.
0:12:28 Yeah, sure.
0:12:28 Send me it.
0:12:29 I’ll give it a try.
0:12:32 He likes it, makes a video about it.
0:12:34 And there’s a cool angle of like, Hey, this stuff is super good.
0:12:39 Plus if you’re watching this and you’re the first to like comments,
0:12:42 subscribe, you know, whatever his call to action is, uh, you fear in the first 50,
0:12:45 I’ll send you, Chris, I’ll send you a jar of this.
0:12:46 Absolutely.
0:12:48 And that was done in like 2021, I think.
0:12:50 And I’m still getting emails today.
0:12:51 Hey, I saw your video.
0:12:54 Can I, that was done in like four years ago at this point.
0:12:54 Yeah.
0:12:59 The first 50 have long since been claimed, but well, that’s, and that’s kind of cool.
0:13:03 It’s like an evergreen type of, uh, type of medium where people could be discovering
0:13:06 the stuff years after it’s originally published.
0:13:07 Absolutely.
0:13:10 And then now what was beautiful about this is okay.
0:13:15 We, um, you know, I put it out there, the video, you get this massive spike in traffic
0:13:19 when, when the video drops, you know, first 50 people get it for free.
0:13:20 Other people who realize, Hey, I can’t get it for free.
0:13:21 I’ll buy it.
0:13:22 They, they go buy.
0:13:23 So a couple of things happen from there.
0:13:28 One, other YouTubers will reach out to me about, Hey, I saw it on T-Roy station.
0:13:30 Can we do it on ours?
0:13:33 I’m like, yeah, I’ll give it to your fans for, I’ll give it to 20 of your fans, depending
0:13:35 on the size of their, their channel.
0:13:38 So I just started giving it away to people who asked me to do reviews.
0:13:38 Okay.
0:13:44 And because T-Roy was a, a giant in the barbecue influencer space, other people were watching
0:13:48 is that, Hey, you know, could we do, could we do set up a similar arrangement, uh, for
0:13:50 my own channel for the other barbecue channels?
0:13:54 I’m looking, it looks like 350,000 subs for T-Roy.
0:13:58 So I’m not a, not a small influencer to say yes, right out of the gate.
0:13:59 Not a small one, dude.
0:14:02 He, it, he had, you’re right.
0:14:03 You hit the nail on the head.
0:14:06 He had a, he has a massive influence and other people who want to be like him are watching.
0:14:07 So then they want to be like him.
0:14:07 So what do they do?
0:14:10 They go copy him and they reached out to me.
0:14:12 So I got other videos done just through that.
0:14:14 And then number two, I have the video.
0:14:17 I have a video of T-Roy that to your points evergreen.
0:14:23 Now I can use that in several different ways as social proof.
0:14:31 So now if we do an ad or we do a story or something, it’s not us talking about how great
0:14:32 ball buck is.
0:14:34 We’ll do the story or whatever, and we’ll put ball buck in there.
0:14:39 We’re also going to drop that video there so that the person who’s reading this story, reading
0:14:44 this thing, this recipe can click the video, go to YouTube, or they can watch the video right
0:14:45 on the page.
0:14:49 Or if they YouTube ball buck, he’s probably going to come up with some other people.
0:14:51 So they watch a C ad or whatever.
0:14:53 And we talk about how good it is.
0:14:57 They leave the landing page and now they search us and we’re there.
0:15:03 We’re on YouTube and we have other people talking about how good the seasoning is, which gives
0:15:05 us some social proof and helps sell it.
0:15:05 Yeah.
0:15:05 Yeah.
0:15:07 It’s not just the brand talking about it.
0:15:08 Like, hey, trust us.
0:15:08 We’re great.
0:15:09 It’s like, I don’t know.
0:15:11 We have other people vouching for it too.
0:15:12 Yes, absolutely.
0:15:17 More with Chris in just a moment, including the marketing tactics that drive consistent
0:15:17 sales.
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0:17:42 Aside from the giveaway, I take it, you said that the people who don’t get the, they don’t make it in time for the giveaway.
0:17:44 Like, do they come by and buy the stuff?
0:17:47 Like, are you starting to see your first paid sales at this point, too?
0:17:48 Yeah.
0:17:51 The people who didn’t make the giveaway, they start, some of them start buying it.
0:17:53 Then eventually that slows down.
0:17:57 And so I hit this point where I was like, okay, I did the T-Roy video.
0:17:57 That was cool.
0:18:01 It’s cool to show my family and friends and stuff like that and make a few sales.
0:18:03 But then how do I keep selling?
0:18:03 Right.
0:18:05 I got 5,000 of these to move here.
0:18:05 Yeah.
0:18:08 So then that’s what I came up with.
0:18:09 I was like, well, that’s when it hit me.
0:18:10 And I was like, well, I have this video.
0:18:12 This video is excellent social proof.
0:18:14 So at that point, we’re like, you know what?
0:18:18 Let’s write some blogs, some stories about this.
0:18:21 And what we did, Nick, was we would, I was like, you know what?
0:18:25 Let me write an article about how to smoke chicken.
0:18:29 Or get with, we would get like, this is interesting.
0:18:31 My brother-in-law, right?
0:18:35 He has his dad, his dad’s a salty older guy or whatever.
0:18:36 So I would just talk to this guy.
0:18:38 This guy’s been in a lot of different barbecue competitions.
0:18:40 I would talk to him about stories.
0:18:43 And he would teach me a little bit about how to smoke chicken.
0:18:46 But I’d also ask him about stories, about competition stories.
0:18:47 I jotted down.
0:18:52 So now I take those same tips he gave me about how to smoke chicken because they’re really
0:18:53 good tips.
0:18:57 And I could write an article about how to smoke the best chicken and blah, blah, blah.
0:18:58 And you’re going to get some feedback.
0:19:00 I’m going to educate you on how to smoke the chicken.
0:19:02 But more important, there’s going to be a story in there.
0:19:07 And that story would probably resonate with the demographic that’s going to read that article.
0:19:09 And so that’s what we did.
0:19:09 All right.
0:19:14 And you’re relying on Google Organic at this point for people to find it?
0:19:15 We pushed a lot of that through Facebook.
0:19:17 Again, I’m a marketer.
0:19:24 So if we could rely on Organic and if I didn’t have 5,000 units of it, I probably would just
0:19:28 slow roll it, but didn’t have the time for that.
0:19:33 And so what I did was we just went to Facebook ads, put an ad out there, and then let it roll.
0:19:38 And the great thing for you guys who don’t know, Facebook ads or most platforms nowadays,
0:19:41 they do what I call the heavy lifting.
0:19:44 Like back in the day when me and Nick were doing a bunch of marketing, you’d have to be
0:19:48 real specific about your targeting and kind of get all technical with your targeting.
0:19:52 Nowadays, these platforms, these social media platforms are so good.
0:19:56 They kind of know who to put these things in front of without you saying it.
0:19:59 You just need to put the ad out there and it’ll figure it out for you.
0:20:01 And so was the ad like a direct call to action?
0:20:02 Hey, come by the seasoning.
0:20:05 Or was it more of like a content?
0:20:08 We’re going to show them the article on how to smoke.
0:20:10 Here’s a great smoked chicken recipe.
0:20:12 Try to get a sense of what you found effective there.
0:20:17 If I come out and say, ball buck season and buy it, watch this video, not going to sell.
0:20:21 But if I come out and say, hey, hey, here’s how to smoke chicken.
0:20:24 Or here’s some three smoked chicken tips that most people don’t know.
0:20:27 And I give them really good tips that they did not know.
0:20:28 That’s really helpful.
0:20:33 And then I subtly mention the rub and how it helps.
0:20:36 Now it has a better chance of selling.
0:20:38 It’s an indirect sell.
0:20:42 So the purpose here is to educate, then sell, not sell.
0:20:43 Got it.
0:20:43 Got it.
0:20:50 And I’m looking at pricing on the site and it seems to be kind of in the $30-ish, $35 maybe.
0:20:53 Oh no, it’s $18 for the single container.
0:20:58 So if the acquisition cost is a buck or two, there’s some margin to play with there.
0:21:01 Have you done any testing on pricing or how do you arrive at this?
0:21:03 No, I mean, I started at the top.
0:21:09 So I just went and looked at the best rubs in the market, found how much they could, what was the max they were selling for.
0:21:11 And then I matched that.
0:21:14 And I had to because, you know, this is not a high ticket product.
0:21:22 So you want, you know, if there was any, again, if I’m watching this and I’m giving myself advice, like charge more, right?
0:21:25 It’s easier to come down in a price than it is to go up.
0:21:34 So I figured I needed to charge more so I could have room for hiring people and shipping and buying products and the things that come with selling a seasoning.
0:21:36 So we charged, I charged as much as I possibly could.
0:21:41 And I’ve gone up since then because tariffs and things are more expensive to get shipped in and stuff like that.
0:21:44 And so, but yeah, I found the most expensive thing on the market and matched it.
0:21:45 Okay.
0:21:45 Got it.
0:21:45 Yeah.
0:21:48 You’re going to have to pay for shipping or pay for ads.
0:21:51 There’s acquisition costs involved.
0:21:53 Did you pay for these giveaways, all sorts of things?
0:21:54 Yeah, exactly.
0:21:55 We have to pay for these giveaways.
0:21:59 I mean, I had, I need as much room to work with as possible.
0:22:01 And so I need as much margin as possible.
0:22:01 Yeah.
0:22:08 I was going to say when it’s a direct to consumer play, it’s not like somebody is standing at the grocery store and they’re, you know, comparing one, two and three.
0:22:12 And well, this one is $5 and this one is 10 and this one is 15.
0:22:15 And they’re like really looking at the label and sniffing it and smell.
0:22:23 It’s like, it’s almost in this impulse buy category of like, well, this YouTuber recommended it or this recipe looks good.
0:22:24 Like it recommended it.
0:22:25 It’s like, I’ll give it a try.
0:22:25 Right.
0:22:29 And so it seems, even though it’s somewhat commoditized, right?
0:22:36 You can get this stuff at any grocery store, but it’s like, that’s that story and that branding and the positioning and like the interrupt factor.
0:22:37 Oh, I saw this on Facebook.
0:22:41 I saw this on YouTube where it’s maybe less price sensitive than you might think.
0:22:42 Yeah.
0:22:47 I mean, they’re at the grocery store and they’re comparing, okay, this one’s five, this one’s 10, this one’s 20.
0:22:49 Oh, I’m going to get the five one and try it.
0:22:50 And that’s just a commoditized type thing.
0:22:58 Whereas our seasoning, you know, not saying that there’s nothing special about the seasoning at the grocery store, but there is a lot of love behind what we do.
0:23:03 And the stories that, I mean, I’m, I’m talking to, by the way, my rub goes out to an older demographic.
0:23:06 And it’s funny because where I get my stories comes from an older demographic.
0:23:10 I got, I got, uh, you know, the, the pit match guy I was talking to.
0:23:12 He’s, he’s an older gentleman.
0:23:14 There’s a female I talked to and she’s older as well.
0:23:16 And I go and I grabbed their stories.
0:23:18 I grabbed that people who love to cook.
0:23:19 And then I use that.
0:23:22 If I was just trying to push seasoning, I wouldn’t do that.
0:23:28 Like I care about this and these people, and they talk to me and there’s a love there that I then transfer to the landing page.
0:23:32 That’s much different than me just putting an ad out about a seasoning.
0:23:34 I think there’s more behind what we do.
0:23:40 And when the reader feels, reads that, it’s like when you, when people go to the movies, they’re going to the movies to check out.
0:23:42 Like there, there’s nothing going on.
0:23:45 That’s a lot of people’s way of being present and checking out.
0:23:45 Right.
0:23:53 So now if I give you a story and it happens to be by seasoning, but I’ve allowed you to check out and get immersed into something.
0:23:58 And then you see this thing, you’re much more receptive to paying whatever the price is.
0:24:00 Cause now it’s not a five, 10 or $20 thing.
0:24:04 It’s a, this really cool story about this really cool product changes the game.
0:24:06 Here’s one thing that kind of surprised me.
0:24:09 Cause I’ve seen so many direct to consumer brands go this way.
0:24:12 The default is the subscription.
0:24:14 I’ll send you another thing every month, click here to sign up.
0:24:16 And it’s like, timeout.
0:24:17 I don’t know if I want it.
0:24:21 Like I haven’t even tried it yet, but it’s like, everybody seems to go be going that way.
0:24:26 And it’s kind of surprised, especially since it’s like a replenishable type of thing.
0:24:28 You’re going to, if you use it, if you like it, you’re going to run out.
0:24:29 You’re going to need to order more.
0:24:36 I was a little bit surprised not to see that like checkbox for the recurring, you know, subscribe and save type of thing here.
0:24:37 I thought about that, Nick.
0:24:39 And I was like, man, really, this is, it’s a lot of seasoning.
0:24:42 I mean, if you’re a heavy user, you’re probably using two cans.
0:24:46 I mean, if you’re a, if you’re a barbecue pit master guy, whatever.
0:24:46 Okay.
0:24:47 Different.
0:24:51 But your everyday person who’s buying this, maybe one a year.
0:24:52 I’m lucky if they get two.
0:24:56 It’s just, so what I’m going to send you seasoning every, every three months.
0:24:57 You’re just going to stack up.
0:24:59 No, I’m going to sell it to you.
0:25:02 And I’m also going to send you weekly emails to let you know that I’m still here.
0:25:05 So when you decide to buy, you can do it.
0:25:10 But again, this thing is, there is a very human component behind what we do.
0:25:11 I, at least I believe.
0:25:16 And I think that the way we approach it, avoiding the subscription thing is just more of a, is an example of that human approach.
0:25:16 Right.
0:25:17 That’s fair.
0:25:23 We’re going to do the follow-up, but we’re not going to, we’re not going to force you to commit to doing this subscription thing.
0:25:24 I wouldn’t want to buy all that.
0:25:25 See, like, what am I going to do with all that seasoning?
0:25:26 It doesn’t make any sense.
0:25:27 And so, yeah.
0:25:28 Okay.
0:25:33 Going back to the Facebook ads, was there a target cost of acquisition that, that you like to be in?
0:25:35 And like, how often do you have to rotate the copy?
0:25:38 Or is it just like, we’re running this on Evergreen?
0:25:41 Some of the campaigns run three, four, five months at a time, depending.
0:25:44 It is hard to get a target CPA.
0:25:46 A target CPA, for those who don’t know, is target cost per acquisition.
0:25:49 So you want to say, hey, I want to sell this thing.
0:25:54 I want this to cost me no more than $5 in advertisement for everything I sell.
0:25:56 That’s harder to do nowadays.
0:26:05 Back in the day, before cookies and this, and when consumer behavior was a little more simple, you could get a pretty decent target CPA.
0:26:08 You could be like, yeah, it’s costing me about five bucks to sell this thing.
0:26:11 Nowadays, the consumer is smart.
0:26:13 We’re all smart.
0:26:14 Like, I’ll give you a quick story.
0:26:21 We have, we had Windows installed in my house a year or two ago, which are way more expensive than I thought Windows should be.
0:26:22 We got them installed in our house.
0:26:23 But this is the thing.
0:26:26 I saw a ad on Facebook.
0:26:29 I then forwarded to my wife.
0:26:33 My wife goes to their website, comes back and talks to me.
0:26:37 And then she calls them again, I think, through their PPC, their pay-per-click, their Google Ads.
0:26:42 So, what happens is their Google Ads gets credit for that sell.
0:26:43 But where did it start?
0:26:45 It started back with me, with Facebook.
0:26:54 So, what I mean by that is, like, I can’t trust the CPA, and Facebook might be super high.
0:26:59 But if I’m selling a lot of products on the back end, well, they might have saw the ad on Facebook, but they watched YouTube.
0:27:01 Yeah, they had to come from somewhere.
0:27:06 Yeah, they saw it on Facebook, then it went to my site, or they went to Amazon, or something like that.
0:27:11 And so, I have to kind of get a feel for it as much as – it’s not as much as the science, like it used to be.
0:27:12 Okay.
0:27:22 Yeah, there is – as much as we’d like to be able to track down to the dollar with all these attribution models, it sounds like there may be a little bit of a gray area.
0:27:27 And you have to kind of trust the bottom line of, well, what sold?
0:27:28 What was their ad spend?
0:27:29 They had to come from somewhere.
0:27:34 They had to find that initial awareness somewhere, and it must be working, even if it’s not –
0:27:38 they didn’t follow the funnel in the same session.
0:27:38 Yeah.
0:27:43 I mean, and they’re so – they do have these other attribution tools, like I think Hyros and Triple Well.
0:27:46 They’re supposed to – to me, they’re not that great.
0:27:48 To me, at the end of the day, this is just for me.
0:27:53 I’m not saying that for everybody, but just for me, it’s what Nick just said, where I’m just – it has to come from somewhere.
0:27:54 Let me see what’s happening at the bottom line.
0:27:55 What am I spending on marketing?
0:27:55 Total.
0:27:57 What are my top line sales?
0:27:57 Total.
0:28:06 Let me do my best to try to figure out what’s really working as best as I can, but it comes down to having a feel, which you get by doing this over time.
0:28:06 Okay.
0:28:12 Now, are you shipping these initial orders out of your spare bedroom, out of the garage?
0:28:15 Like, is there a logistics partner?
0:28:24 Like, all of a sudden, if we’re talking about 5,000 units, licking and sticking and going to the post office, and it’s like, this is starting to get to be another – a whole other job.
0:28:29 Yeah, my living room was real fragrant there for a while, really fragrant.
0:28:40 And when I first started doing this, it was just me and my office, and I would have two days a week, which I didn’t have those two days to be doing this, but it was two days – I started off really heavy.
0:28:43 So, it’d be like two full days of me just doing it all.
0:28:44 Like, I was like – because I got hit.
0:28:48 It kind of – it was like an oh-my-gosh moment where it just – a lot came at once.
0:28:53 My very first article worked way better than I thought it would, and then all of a sudden, I have all these orders.
0:28:58 And so, now, I’m like, oh, crap, I have to do all these orders, and two days a week of just doing orders.
0:29:02 And as time went on, I ended up – my grandma lives down the road.
0:29:04 Thank goodness she has a big shed.
0:29:08 I could put an AC unit in, so now I put all the product and everything and all my materials in that shed.
0:29:11 The AC and all that’s good to go.
0:29:18 And then I have a pool house slash workout room in my backyard, and I have – there’s two employees, actually three employees.
0:29:22 But one of the employees comes once to twice a week, depending on the workload.
0:29:29 And she’ll go in the pool house, and she has everything she needs out there, and she’s just – we do all that in the pool house.
0:29:32 USPS comes and picks it up, and I’m done.
0:29:33 All right.
0:29:34 We’re not promising overnight shipping.
0:29:36 We’re going to process these a couple days a week.
0:29:38 You get it when you get it.
0:29:51 You mentioned Amazon, so I do want to talk about that as a distribution channel, as a place to potentially find people who – yeah, they discovered you through YouTube, and they’re – well, they’re used to shopping on Amazon, so they may find you over there.
0:29:52 Yeah.
0:30:00 Or through potentially Amazon directly if they’re looking for unique gifts or barbecue seasoning or something directly on Amazon.
0:30:03 Can you talk to me about that as a sales channel?
0:30:04 Yeah, absolutely.
0:30:05 I was against it at first.
0:30:08 For those who don’t know, when you ship on Amazon, you don’t keep your data.
0:30:09 What do I mean by that?
0:30:11 That means that you don’t know the person’s email.
0:30:13 You don’t know their phone number.
0:30:15 I don’t know if you even get their address.
0:30:16 I don’t remember.
0:30:31 But my point being is if you buy from my store, if Nick comes to my store and he buys, I get all Nick’s information, not just like random information, good information, like his real name, real phone number, a real email because he just bought something, so he wants to track it.
0:30:34 So I get a real email address, and I get his physical address.
0:30:38 This is quality data, which is a whole other game, whole other conversation.
0:30:39 So I get that.
0:30:41 When you go to Amazon, you get none of that.
0:30:42 Amazon keeps that.
0:30:44 Yeah, it’s Amazon’s customer, not your customer.
0:30:45 Exactly.
0:30:49 I’m helping Amazon get data, and nowadays data’s gold.
0:30:52 So I’m helping Amazon get all the data, keep all of it, and I just sell.
0:30:56 So I was against it, but I had to, I was like, you know what?
0:30:57 People trust Amazon.
0:30:59 They may not trust me, even though I have all the social proof.
0:31:00 Let me put this on Amazon.
0:31:04 So I put it on Amazon, and man, it’s sold.
0:31:05 Like, people just trust Amazon.
0:31:07 So I was like, oh gosh, the people are really buying it.
0:31:08 Yeah, yeah.
0:31:10 Like, I see, like, hundreds of reviews on the listing.
0:31:10 Yeah.
0:31:12 People, it’s Amazon.
0:31:13 They trust it.
0:31:17 So I had to go there at the expense of data.
0:31:20 It helps with the top line, so I just had to go there.
0:31:21 And here’s the thing.
0:31:25 With Amazon, I don’t play the whole, let me compete with other barbecue seasonings and
0:31:27 barbecue brands and play the organic and the SEO.
0:31:29 I had my site optimized on Amazon.
0:31:34 Like, I, you know, the first time I threw it up there, it was a really weak looking, like,
0:31:34 listing.
0:31:37 And then eventually, I was like, oh, let me look like a professional.
0:31:41 And so we did it, and it looks like a professional listing now, at least as professionals I can
0:31:42 pay for.
0:31:45 But we did that.
0:31:48 And like I said, man, it did really, really well.
0:31:49 What’s your take on this?
0:31:53 Because we’ve seen more people go your direction versus starting on Amazon.
0:31:57 We’ve seen more and more people try and build up their own traffic sources through their own
0:31:58 Shopify-powered store.
0:32:02 And then you know that a certain percentage of people are going to be looking for it on
0:32:02 it.
0:32:03 Can I just get it on Amazon?
0:32:05 Like, they already have my checkout information.
0:32:07 Can I just click the one-click thing?
0:32:12 Do you find there’s some value in the algorithm when you’re, like, driving your own traffic to
0:32:13 a certain extent?
0:32:13 Absolutely.
0:32:17 I think that I’m playing the whole, like, Amazon SEO.
0:32:19 When I say SEO, guys, it’s search engine optimization.
0:32:23 So I’m trying to rank organically on, like, if somebody typed in Barbecue Rub, there’s a
0:32:24 game you play to get you at the very top.
0:32:27 I don’t want, I don’t feel like playing all that, playing the game.
0:32:28 I don’t feel like advertising on Amazon.
0:32:31 I don’t even do the whole fulfillment by Amazon because they take a lot of your money.
0:32:35 If I do the advertising and fulfillment by Amazon, my margins shrink.
0:32:36 So I was like, forget it.
0:32:40 What I’ll do is do all my advertising off that platform.
0:32:44 And I only use Amazon when somebody wants to buy.
0:32:46 If somebody finds me on Amazon, they’ve probably made their decision already.
0:32:47 Okay.
0:32:48 And that’s what I wanted.
0:32:52 So the conversion rate on those, you know, listing clicks are super high because they
0:32:54 already know what they are looking for.
0:32:56 And so you’re doing fulfillment by merchant.
0:32:58 Like somebody will collect the order and then you’ll ship it out.
0:32:58 Absolutely.
0:32:59 Yeah.
0:33:00 Otherwise, yeah.
0:33:03 If they’re warehousing it, if they’re, if you’re doing their ad platform, like all this
0:33:03 stuff.
0:33:06 And all of a sudden those margins get real, real narrow.
0:33:08 Amazon’s making money no matter what your margins are.
0:33:10 Amazon’s so dirty, Nick.
0:33:14 And what they’ll do too is like, if you have a commodity or something, like say I had this
0:33:14 comb.
0:33:17 If you’re wondering why I have a comb, it’s for my beard, not for my head, obviously.
0:33:21 But if you have a comb there and Amazon sees that you’re selling a ton of this comb, what
0:33:22 does Amazon do?
0:33:22 Yeah.
0:33:23 The Amazon basics version.
0:33:24 Yeah.
0:33:25 They have all your data.
0:33:28 They know exactly what you’re doing and they have more money than you.
0:33:31 So they’ll go and just take your product and undercut you.
0:33:32 The beautiful thing about this.
0:33:34 And so you have to be cognizant, man.
0:33:39 Amazon can play that game where you can have your Amazon barbecue rub, but it’s not going
0:33:43 to sell unless you, because you’re not doing what I’m doing, which is putting something else
0:33:43 behind it.
0:33:48 More with Chris in just a moment, including the creative way he increases his average order
0:33:54 size and the side side hustle he expects to eventually overtake the barbecue rub e-commerce
0:33:55 part of the business.
0:33:56 Coming up right after this.
0:34:02 One strategy I didn’t fully embrace or maybe wasn’t fully aware of when I was starting out
0:34:06 was this idea of the piggyback principle in the startup phase.
0:34:09 That means you don’t have to start completely from scratch, but instead you can take advantage
0:34:15 of existing tools, templates, playbooks, best practices from the people who’ve gone before
0:34:15 you.
0:34:18 A perfect example of this is our partner Shopify.
0:34:24 Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses from household names to side hustlers
0:34:28 on their way to becoming household names with hundreds of ready to use templates.
0:34:31 Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store and start selling.
0:34:35 Plus, Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools to accelerate your workflow.
0:34:40 We’re talking product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhancing your product photography.
0:34:44 You can even easily create email and social media campaigns to reach your target customers
0:34:46 wherever they’re scrolling or strolling.
0:34:49 If you’re ready to sell, you’re ready for Shopify.
0:34:53 Turn your big business idea into with Shopify on your side.
0:34:59 Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash side hustle.
0:35:02 Go to shopify.com slash side hustle.
0:35:05 Shopify.com slash side hustle.
0:35:13 For such an important channel like phone, the software powering this important channel was super outdated and clunky.
0:35:20 We wanted to make it delightful and make it very easy for businesses to connect with their customers through voice and text.
0:35:24 That’s Darina Kulia, co-founder of our sponsor, OpenPhone.
0:35:31 Trusted by more than 60,000 customers, this is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communications.
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0:35:53 I think that makes a lot of sense.
0:36:00 Something that all of our customers love is ability to have a shared phone number, which really is great for calling and texting.
0:36:08 So when someone calls you or texts you, there’s multiple people that can team up on responding, and everyone is in the loop about that conversation.
0:36:12 This visibility is so critical, especially as you scale.
0:36:18 And the ability to text a business is like a new and novel thing that, as a customer, I really appreciate.
0:36:25 One thing that we’ve launched at OpenPhone, which is, I think, a game changer, is Sona, which is our voice AI agent.
0:36:29 It basically helps you never have a single missed call.
0:36:39 It can handle responses to any common questions, basically any questions that you train it on, and then it can capture that information so you can quickly follow up.
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0:36:49 Now, OpenPhone has automatic AI call summaries, so you don’t have to worry about taking notes while you’re on the call.
0:37:01 But another cool feature is what Darina called AI call tagging, basically allowing you to quickly filter for the calls that were sales objections or customer complaints or requests for a discount.
0:37:09 So you can review those and see what worked, what didn’t, and train team members on the most effective tactics and language in those cases.
0:37:13 And it’s all in the name of building a better, faster, and friendlier customer experience.
0:37:24 Right now, OpenPhone is offering SideHustle show listeners 20% off your first six months at OpenPhone.com slash SideHustle.
0:37:29 That’s O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E dot com slash SideHustle.
0:37:35 And if you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge.
0:37:38 OpenPhone, no missed calls, no missed customers.
0:37:40 Yeah.
0:37:45 You have control over the pricing, too, so you can kind of match, make sure it’s the same pricing.
0:37:46 Absolutely.
0:37:48 Can I hit on one thing about pricing, if you don’t mind?
0:37:49 Yeah, go ahead.
0:37:53 If you go on my site, you’ll see that there’s, I’m not just giving people seasoning.
0:37:55 Seasoning is expensive.
0:37:57 There are some items where it’s, what is it, a premium.
0:38:03 So the premium being, like, you buy this seasoning, you get this thing for free.
0:38:05 My seasoning is expensive.
0:38:05 I get it.
0:38:13 And so what I did was I would work with, talking about MOQs, I would work with, like, an Alibaba or somebody like that who sells wholesale.
0:38:17 This is prior to all the tariff stuff, by the way, so I’m not sure what the prices are now.
0:38:28 But back in the day, I could, like, get a bunch of barbecue slicers or, yeah, I can get a bunch of slicers or barbecue meat, like, thawing trays or 50-cal bottle openers.
0:38:38 It’s just cool things, depending on if it’s a female or male who’s buying my stuff, that if they went and bought that item alone, it would cost them north of 20 bucks, sometimes over 50, depending on the item.
0:38:50 So I go and I buy those and I say, hey, if you buy five things of seasoning, which lasts you two, three years, if you buy five things of seasoning, you’ll get this thing for free, this meat thawing tray.
0:38:53 Or you buy two things of seasoning, you get this slicer for free.
0:38:59 And then you see that, and you’re like, oh, the price of this is 30 bucks, but if I just bought the slicer alone, it’s 20 bucks.
0:39:00 So really, this is, it makes sense.
0:39:05 I did the premium thing, and you can help me kind of, like, make this point a little better here, Nick.
0:39:11 But adding a gift to it, like a free gift, a premium or something, helps justify the purchase.
0:39:16 If Nick buys something today and it was super expensive, and he goes to his wife and is like, babe, I bought this and it was really expensive.
0:39:17 She’s like, what the heck?
0:39:22 But if Nick’s like, hey, babe, I bought this, it was expensive, but we got a free car, she’s gonna be like, oh, that was great.
0:39:28 So you want to give people an excuse, a reason to not look stupid when they’re making a purchase.
0:39:40 I think that’s a really creative way to increase the average order size where you’re like, I could just get the, you know, the one pack, but for a little bit more, I could get two plus this free gift, or I could get five.
0:39:43 Yeah, I think this is a really interesting way to do it.
0:39:48 I don’t know if I’ve seen anybody doing exactly that on other e-commerce sites like this before.
0:39:49 Yeah, thanks, man.
0:39:51 That was exactly what it was.
0:39:53 It was like, I need to increase this average order value for this thing to make sense.
0:39:55 And it’s a good deal.
0:39:58 These slicers and these other things that we give away, those things are expensive, man.
0:40:03 Like, so we just give it to you for free with the seasoning, and now it makes more sense to buy the seasoning.
0:40:04 Okay.
0:40:07 Now, is there all these sitting in the pool house slash warehouse now too?
0:40:10 Yeah, yeah, they’re in the warehouse slash pool house.
0:40:16 So you have most of it in the warehouse, and then we just went, as we move things or things are selling, we just put what we need to in the pool house.
0:40:20 And again, the pool house is my workout room, and it is quite fragrant.
0:40:23 Come out of there, smell it like barbecue.
0:40:25 Yeah, exactly.
0:40:33 The other thing that you touched on was email marketing and sending out kind of a weekly, sometimes story-based, you know, newsletter, so to speak.
0:40:36 Is this content on how to smoke better chicken?
0:40:43 Like, give me an idea of what kind of stuff that you’re sending out that can’t always be, hey, did you run out yet?
0:40:44 Buy more.
0:40:50 Yeah, and that’s exactly what I was avoiding was, you know, you don’t want to send out something like, hey, buy more, buy more, because nobody cares about it.
0:40:54 Again, I’m thinking about the consumer more than I’m thinking about me when it comes to this.
0:41:01 And with the newsletter, this is a way of building a community around a seasoning, which sounds odd, right?
0:41:02 How do you build a community around a seasoning?
0:41:04 Well, we do it through our newsletter.
0:41:08 And for those who don’t know, if you’re looking at a side hustle, you know, don’t sleep on newsletters.
0:41:11 There’s platforms out there like Beehive, and newsletters are big business.
0:41:13 There was one, The Morning Brew.
0:41:15 They sold for like $75 million.
0:41:19 And then there’s smaller ones that sell for a million, and smaller ones that sell for $500,000, $600,000.
0:41:23 So newsletters are a side hustle if you could build it.
0:41:25 And so what I decided was, hey, you know what?
0:41:26 We’re going to do a newsletter out of this.
0:41:31 It’s going to have a weekly recipe, but it’s not just going to be, hey, here’s a cheesecake recipe.
0:41:34 It has nothing to do with the seasoning, but I give them recipes.
0:41:39 But if I just sent out recipes about chicken alfredo or something like that and pointed back to my site, nobody cares.
0:41:43 But it’s more of the same where it’s like, okay, who are these people?
0:41:46 These people I know that I can get stories from or whatever.
0:41:49 And then I go and I take those stories.
0:41:51 I give those to the people.
0:41:55 Like, here’s a story about something that happened last week or whatever it is.
0:42:01 And then I give them the actual recipe of what I’m saying or what I’m talking about that week.
0:42:03 And then let them go to the site if they want to or not.
0:42:10 It’s a cooking newsletter, but really it’s an entertainment newsletter where it’s a story about something that happened with our guy Buck that week.
0:42:12 And then there’s three interesting articles.
0:42:17 It’s typically articles that we find interesting, something that will entertain people.
0:42:18 And then there’s a recipe.
0:42:21 And it’s that format week after week.
0:42:23 And what we found, Nick, is that the audience loves it.
0:42:27 They email us back saying, hey, this is something that they look forward to weekly.
0:42:30 They really look forward to it, something that entertains them.
0:42:33 So now, again, it is not just a seasoning.
0:42:34 It’s a community.
0:42:35 It’s a thing of entertainment.
0:42:36 It changes.
0:42:39 I’m out of that whole commoditized, is it 5, 10, or 20?
0:42:41 I’m in a whole new ballgame.
0:42:42 Mm-hmm.
0:42:42 Yeah.
0:42:47 I mean, is the newsletter, do you see that becoming a side hustle on a side hustle?
0:42:53 Like, is it become its own like barbecue influencer thing that people follow along with, whether or not they ever buy the stuff?
0:42:54 That’s exactly what it’s going to be.
0:42:55 It’s a side hustle on a side hustle.
0:42:59 At this point, I did my first advertising two weeks ago.
0:43:01 My very first one, $7.20, right?
0:43:04 We got to start somewhere, though, right?
0:43:07 But I’m consistently like Beehive.
0:43:13 I like Beehive, the platform, because Beehive will make it easy for your newsletter to get sponsored.
0:43:16 All you have to do is make sure people want to actually read your newsletter.
0:43:18 And so we get high engagement.
0:43:22 And so now we’re getting flooded with sponsorships.
0:43:23 My first one was $7.20.
0:43:30 And then now I’m starting to figure out, OK, I can start testing how to put sponsorships in here.
0:43:32 And there’s other ways to monetize the newsletter.
0:43:36 So to your point, Nick, it’s a side hustle on a side hustle.
0:43:44 And to me, I think that I will eventually be more profitable in the newsletter business than I am with the seasoning business.
0:43:45 Interesting.
0:43:46 Yeah, you can see where it’s going.
0:43:48 How many subscribers do you have to at this point?
0:43:50 Right now we’re at 7,000.
0:43:51 We were as high as 9,000.
0:43:55 I had 42,000 emails at one point.
0:44:00 And then I went down to like 15,000 that were like somewhat active.
0:44:07 And then now on Beehive, since it’s so they really care about people engaging, I keep the list real tight.
0:44:10 Like if you don’t open my email within 30 days, I’m kicking you off and I’ll tell you.
0:44:10 Yeah, yeah.
0:44:18 And so I keep it real tight because I’d rather have a tighter list with higher engagement than a big list with low engagement.
0:44:18 Okay.
0:44:22 So Beehive, I assume Shopify is what’s running the site.
0:44:22 Absolutely.
0:44:25 Any other tools or tech that you swear by here?
0:44:28 We run the site on Shopify, use Beehive as a newsletter.
0:44:34 I use a lot of, I do a lot of talking with ChatGPT and Claude.
0:44:35 These are AI platforms.
0:44:38 A lot of idea stuff happening with that.
0:44:41 For those who I’m sure at this point, everybody knows about ChatGPT.
0:44:49 Some of y’all might know about Claude, but I don’t just go in there and like just come out to ChatGPT and ask it, hey, solve this problem.
0:44:55 I really take time to make sure ChatGPT knows exactly how I wanted to act.
0:45:02 And not just that, if you’re in ChatGPT, you go to the top of it, there’s certain models that ChatGPT has.
0:45:05 And each model does something different.
0:45:06 You’ll have a basic model.
0:45:09 You’ll have a model that’s good for ideas and research and writing.
0:45:11 You’ll have a model that’s good for coding.
0:45:17 I am very, very intentional about the way I’m training it to act.
0:45:19 Think about like training a person.
0:45:23 I tell it exactly how to act and I give it examples of what I’m looking for.
0:45:23 Okay.
0:45:24 Right.
0:45:26 And then I pick the correct model.
0:45:29 I’m looking, so if I’m doing research, ideal stuff, I’ll pick the research one.
0:45:30 At this point, it’s 4.5.
0:45:32 So I know how I want it to act.
0:45:34 I have it in the correct model.
0:45:37 And now I start working with it and coming up with ideas.
0:45:39 And here’s the thing I’ve learned about AI.
0:45:45 If you are terrible at, let’s say, writing copy, which is mean writing words to sell yourself,
0:45:51 if you’re terrible at that and you use AI, it’s just going to multiply how terrible you are.
0:45:52 Right.
0:45:52 That’s all it does.
0:45:58 But if you have a skill, like something you’re good at and you use AI correctly, it’ll multiply
0:46:00 your efficacy by 100 times.
0:46:06 And so I use it to magnify my strengths and in some cases compensate for my weaknesses.
0:46:11 But I find much more help when I use it to magnify my strengths.
0:46:12 Yeah, but you’re right.
0:46:14 It’s kind of garbage in, garbage out.
0:46:19 But if you can kind of prompt and prime it to act a certain way, it does a really good
0:46:20 job of doing that.
0:46:24 And again, between, and I’ll use, I’ll go, I’ll have chat GBT open and I’ll have Claude
0:46:24 open.
0:46:25 Claude’s another one.
0:46:32 And I’ll do the, I’ll like do the exact same thing to both and get different ideas and different
0:46:32 feedback.
0:46:35 And I’ll kind of compare and contrast that feedback.
0:46:40 It’s just like helping me expanding the mind, man.
0:46:40 It’s really, it’s really good.
0:46:45 Any other tools or resources that you like?
0:46:49 If you are trying to sell something, like you don’t have stories, you don’t know what’s going
0:46:57 on or whatever, Reddit is a goldmine, just a goldmine, depending on what you’re trying to
0:46:57 do.
0:47:02 If you’re trying to like crowdsource things or figure out what people think, if you’re trying
0:47:05 to find the story or something for something, I like to go to Reddit.
0:47:09 I’ll find the subreddit that makes the most sense for what I’m trying to figure out.
0:47:12 Then I’ll sort it by top comments.
0:47:16 Then once you do that, or top posts, you can sort it by top posts.
0:47:20 And then after you sort it by top posts, you can say for the year, for all time, for the
0:47:20 last week.
0:47:24 So I usually go top posts all time or top posts for the year.
0:47:27 And I start at the top and I look at the posts.
0:47:30 And not only do I look at the posts, I’ll open the post up and I’ll look at the comments.
0:47:31 These are real people.
0:47:36 So depending on your niche, let’s say you’re in the weight loss niche and you sell to females
0:47:40 and you find a subreddit that has a bunch of females who are looking to lose weight and
0:47:42 you sort it the way I’m looking at, I’m telling you to sort it.
0:47:46 And you go there and you read the posts and more important, read the comments and the comments
0:47:48 that really got a bunch of likes and stuff.
0:47:49 You learn a lot.
0:47:51 It’s crowdsourcing for free.
0:47:55 I would pay money for Reddit with the type of stuff that I learned from it.
0:47:56 It is amazing.
0:47:58 Do you have an example in the barbecue space?
0:48:01 Like I’m trying to think of what that might look like.
0:48:04 And now that I think about it, at the very beginning, when I was telling you, I was trying
0:48:06 to find an influencer, I use Google and I’m going to Reddit.
0:48:08 And that’s how I found T-Roy.
0:48:13 Now that I remember it, but in the specifically selling the product, there was a, it was tips
0:48:16 on how to smoke something called tri-tip, I believe.
0:48:20 And I went to, went to Reddit, went to the barbecue thing.
0:48:23 I looked up tri-tip, went in there, started looking through what people were saying.
0:48:25 Amazing tips, amazing tips.
0:48:26 I take it.
0:48:27 I go test it.
0:48:28 It worked great.
0:48:29 Boom.
0:48:30 Good to go.
0:48:34 And then putting that into an email or putting that into an article, which then drives a
0:48:35 Facebook ad, which then drives sales.
0:48:37 Absolutely.
0:48:39 That’s just one small example.
0:48:41 I’ve got different businesses done different things.
0:48:43 I’ve used Reddit heavy.
0:48:44 Got it.
0:48:44 Yeah.
0:48:49 This is almost a page out of the Buzzfeed playbook where, you know, there’s curating different
0:48:50 tweets or different faces.
0:48:52 And it’s just, you know, now that’s a piece of content for them.
0:48:53 Exactly.
0:48:57 And then for me, I’ll go to like, cause I’m not just doing, I don’t just sell barbecue
0:48:58 recipes.
0:49:01 I might, I had like, let’s say a creamy lemon chicken or something like that.
0:49:06 I’ll go to things like all recipes or just any like popular food thing.
0:49:08 And I do the same thing.
0:49:10 You go and you just look at the recipe.
0:49:10 Okay.
0:49:11 Is that good or whatever?
0:49:13 But then I start reading the comments.
0:49:16 There’s so much free crowdsourcing information out there.
0:49:23 If you get creative, if you want to pay for stuff, there’s another tool I use called SEM
0:49:23 Rush.
0:49:27 And this talks about traffic that’s at different websites.
0:49:30 And it’ll show you, Hey, this website’s getting so much X traffic or whatever.
0:49:36 But if you pay a little bit more, you figure out what the top pages are in that website.
0:49:38 So now let’s take a cooking website, like all recipes.
0:49:40 I go there, put it in SEM Rush.
0:49:41 It will show me all the traffic.
0:49:46 Then I’ll select something called top pages and I’ll sort it for top pages by the last two
0:49:46 years.
0:49:51 And then you’ll start to see which one of their recipes got the most traffic.
0:49:55 If that recipe got the most traffic, well, that tells you that people are interested
0:49:56 in it.
0:50:00 Maybe I should write an article about that recipe because people are already interested
0:50:00 in it.
0:50:01 Oh, okay.
0:50:01 Okay.
0:50:07 And even if it’s not going to rank organically, it may resonate with people on social because
0:50:09 you’ve got some data to back it up.
0:50:11 People are already finding it through all recipes.
0:50:12 Absolutely.
0:50:16 And so now instead of somebody having to search for it, like anything else, I’m bringing it
0:50:16 to them.
0:50:21 And they’re like, Oh yeah, I want to know how to make, you know, great homemade brownies
0:50:22 or something or whatever.
0:50:23 I keep using desserts.
0:50:25 I don’t really sell the product with desserts.
0:50:30 It’s like, well, it’s gotta be a Thai cheesecake and then chicken on the side.
0:50:33 But yeah, it’s usually a more savory recipe than I’m advertising.
0:50:37 But when I’m trying to put on my rest on my website and my newsletters, I’ll just, again,
0:50:38 I’m just giving out good information.
0:50:42 So I’ll give them a solid brownie recipe that I got from some website.
0:50:45 Plus use AI to like polish it up and give me tips.
0:50:47 I’ll give them some like really good information on how to cook stuff.
0:50:51 I mean, it’s such an interesting angle because I imagine the cost per clicks or cost, you
0:50:56 know, that you’re paying to Facebook are so much lower sending people to a piece of content
0:51:01 on a, you know, a recipe type of page than it would be to a product sales page.
0:51:04 And if I’m at the conversion rate, it’s obviously going to be a lot lower too.
0:51:07 It’s like, there’s a balance there and then, but there’s, you know, retargeting.
0:51:10 There’s all sorts of fun stuff you can do after that.
0:51:11 You got those people to initially click.
0:51:11 Yeah.
0:51:12 Yeah.
0:51:17 I’m not pushing finance or weight loss stuff or these things that have high CPCs cost per
0:51:18 clicks or high CPM.
0:51:20 CPM is basically how much it costs for people to see your stuff.
0:51:22 This is just food stuff.
0:51:26 And I want to find a recipe that’s engaging because here’s one more quick tip.
0:51:29 If you’re advertising on social media, you’re working with social media.
0:51:34 You have two different people who are your, your readers or your clients on there.
0:51:36 You have the people that you’re trying to sell to whoever that is.
0:51:39 And then you have the actual platform itself.
0:51:39 So let’s take Facebook.
0:51:44 You’re trying to reach the user, but also you need to be like taking care of Facebook.
0:51:45 Well, how do you take care of Facebook?
0:51:49 What’s Facebook in here for Facebook want Facebook or Tik TOK or whatever it is, pick your social
0:51:50 media platform.
0:51:50 What do they want?
0:51:54 They want people on their platform for as long as possible.
0:51:59 So if you’re putting something out there that has people on the platform, whether it’s like
0:52:05 watching a video for a while or engaging with the video or writing or sharing it or reading
0:52:10 something, if you play Facebook’s game or any social media platforms game, which is keep them
0:52:15 on that platform for as long as you can, then that social media platform will reward you
0:52:18 by putting your stuff out there for even cheaper.
0:52:20 So that’s the game.
0:52:20 Okay.
0:52:24 So it’s not even driving, it’s not even driving traffic back to baldbuck.com.
0:52:28 It’s like, I’m going to, I’m going to copy paste the whole recipe into the body of this Facebook
0:52:28 post.
0:52:41 And then also what Facebook likes is you get the biggest, I guess, bump, if you want
0:52:43 to call it for sharing and comments.
0:52:47 So if you’re getting people to share your stuff or comment on your stuff, if Facebook sees it,
0:52:50 man, this post, everybody’s talking about it, they’re sharing it.
0:52:51 What’s Facebook going to do?
0:52:52 Boom, boom, boom, boom.
0:52:55 They want to keep people happy, keep people engaged, keep them on the platform.
0:52:58 If you could do that, then you could do well.
0:52:58 Yeah.
0:53:02 And then all of a sudden, yeah, your cost per engagement or cost per reach goes, goes way
0:53:03 down because they’re pushing it out.
0:53:04 Way down.
0:53:05 Absolutely.
0:53:05 All right.
0:53:06 What would you do differently?
0:53:09 I mean, it sounds like we were three, four years into this business.
0:53:12 If you had to start over, anything you’d do to accelerate the journey?
0:53:19 I would have gotten more aggressive with reaching out to YouTubers or user-generated content influencer,
0:53:19 whoever it was.
0:53:22 I still could do that to this day, but this is a side hustle.
0:53:27 I got other stuff going on, but it’s not what you have to say.
0:53:29 It’s what other people have to say about the product.
0:53:32 And there’s a few ways of doing that.
0:53:33 You can’t just copy and paste a review.
0:53:40 If you could really get other people to speak about the product for you, that gives leverage,
0:53:40 man.
0:53:42 Would you approach it similarly today?
0:53:44 It was like, hey, we could do a giveaway for your audience.
0:53:49 Would you say, hey, I’d love for you to be an affiliate partner for this thing.
0:53:51 You know, here’s a unique referral code.
0:53:52 Like, how would you, how would you pitch it?
0:53:56 Everything you just said, the essence of what you just said is what’s, what’s in it for that
0:53:56 person.
0:54:02 Um, not caring about like, you know, obviously I have goals here, but for me to get those
0:54:04 goals, it’s the whole Zig Zig Ziglar thing, right?
0:54:05 You can get everything you want.
0:54:06 If you help enough people get what they want.
0:54:09 So it’s what’s in it for this other person.
0:54:13 How can I make them look good or help them make money or whatever it is?
0:54:15 Let me key in on that.
0:54:17 And then I’ll get what I need from, from this.
0:54:18 Fair enough.
0:54:20 Any, uh, any big surprises?
0:54:23 The surprise was, oh no, all of a sudden it’s an actual business.
0:54:27 Oh no, I have to actually like work with people and now I have to manage people.
0:54:28 And that was a surprise.
0:54:31 And so I didn’t think about that prior to getting into this.
0:54:32 I didn’t see that coming.
0:54:32 Yeah.
0:54:33 That’s interesting.
0:54:36 Is that the, the question most people ask is what if this fails?
0:54:37 What if it doesn’t work?
0:54:40 What if I just have to liquidate these 5,000 units of seasoning?
0:54:44 The other side of it is, well, what if it does work?
0:54:48 You know, what’s that, what’s that going to look like two, three, four years down the road?
0:54:53 And if it actually is selling, is that going to be, is that, it could be a win for me?
0:54:57 And I mean, it sounds like, yes, but just like, you know, there’s, there’s other things that
0:55:00 happened along the way or that necessitated along the way.
0:55:03 It’s like, yo, if I don’t want to be doing all the work, yeah, I’m going to have to bring
0:55:03 on some help.
0:55:06 This is something that’s going to sound a little bit of woo woo, but I’m going to go there anyways.
0:55:10 Like I told you at the very beginning, I bought a bunch of units and it was, I might, I might
0:55:10 recommend it.
0:55:15 I’m not saying go spend a bunch of money and like put yourself into a corner.
0:55:16 I don’t, that wasn’t a wise move.
0:55:17 It was just something that I did.
0:55:25 But I will say that I feel like the mindset behind stuff is, is underestimated.
0:55:30 So if I bought these units feeling like, man, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know if I’m
0:55:33 going to be able to do this, then I probably want, if I buy these units and I’m like, I
0:55:37 have to do this, then it just puts me in a different mode.
0:55:39 You’re working from a totally different place.
0:55:40 That’s one.
0:55:44 And then the second thing, when I’ve noticed this with anything that I’ve started, any
0:55:48 business or whatever, I would get caught up in what’s the logo going to be?
0:55:50 What’s the product?
0:55:51 Let me optimize the product.
0:55:52 What’s my website going to look like?
0:55:52 What?
0:55:53 Oh, let me change this color.
0:55:58 And I would do all these things, do all these different things, everything, but the most important
0:56:00 thing, which is sell it.
0:56:01 It was a pattern of mine.
0:56:03 Well, it’s easy to procrastinate on.
0:56:03 Yeah, that’s the hard part.
0:56:05 But you feel like you’re doing something.
0:56:09 It’s like a, like a, like a running back going from sideline to sideline instead of up to
0:56:09 field.
0:56:12 Like you look busy, but you’re not doing anything.
0:56:12 Yeah.
0:56:15 And that’s how I was like all these little things that made me feel good.
0:56:16 Let me get it up.
0:56:18 Maybe I should go back to school.
0:56:21 Like all these things making me feel good about it.
0:56:24 But what I’m doing is really just procrastinating, doing the thing that’s most important, which is
0:56:25 selling the product.
0:56:29 And if I could go back and tell myself that with anything I’ve done is figure out how to
0:56:31 sell it, then figure everything else out.
0:56:32 Yeah.
0:56:33 We’ll figure out.
0:56:33 Yeah.
0:56:35 We’ll, we’ll figure out the logistics once we got some orders.
0:56:35 Yeah.
0:56:38 Well, we could always change the logo down the road if we don’t like it.
0:56:38 Yeah.
0:56:39 There’s all sorts of, yeah.
0:56:43 But no, it’s, it’s easy to get caught up on that, you know, because you want to, you
0:56:47 want to put your best foot forward, but at the same time, yeah, I’m, I’m with you
0:56:48 on, on all of that.
0:56:52 But baldbuck.com, that’s where you can find this order ups, the barbecue seasoning for
0:56:53 yourself.
0:56:55 Yo, Chris Gray is where you can find Chris on social.
0:56:57 What’s next for you?
0:56:58 What’s got you excited this year?
0:57:00 I love our newsletter and what we’re doing there.
0:57:02 That’s, that’s really fun.
0:57:05 And then I’m really excited about where AI is right now.
0:57:10 Kind of think that we are in the wild west of it where in my, in my little inner bubble
0:57:13 circle, whatever you want to call it, everybody’s talking about it, but the general population
0:57:15 isn’t really on it.
0:57:19 And I think that this is like, you know, back in the day, you know, I don’t know how old
0:57:21 you are, Nick, I’m, I’m 44, man.
0:57:25 And, and I was around when the internet started coming to, to be a thing.
0:57:26 I’m, I’m close to that.
0:57:27 I’m almost there.
0:57:27 Yeah, man.
0:57:32 Well, you remember people were like email or you could buy things online.
0:57:34 That’s how it was back then.
0:57:35 Now look at it today.
0:57:39 I believe we’re there with AI and we’re on the precipice of it.
0:57:40 And a lot of people don’t know about it.
0:57:43 And there’s a lot of different ways to make a lot of money.
0:57:48 Maybe using AI and using AI and robotics and automation and, or use you just using AI to
0:57:49 get ideas and help with stuff.
0:57:54 But I think we’re kind of, we’re here where there’s an opportunity to use it to make money
0:57:58 or use it to help you make money or directly use it to make money.
0:57:59 I’m excited about that.
0:57:59 Yeah.
0:58:01 It’s a, it’s a brave new world.
0:58:02 We’ll see where it goes.
0:58:06 I’m trying to get better about using it on a daily, weekly basis.
0:58:09 I know I’m just scratching the surface and try, try and crowdsource some, some wisdom
0:58:12 from guests and from side hustle show listeners as well.
0:58:14 And what, what’s your use case here?
0:58:15 What am I, what am I missing out on?
0:58:16 But, uh, very cool.
0:58:20 Uh, so we’ll link up all this stuff, baldbuck.com and Chris Gray’s socials.
0:58:24 Let’s wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side hustle nation.
0:58:29 My number one tip is if you are starting to sell something or you have an idea of a product
0:58:34 that you want to do or a service you want to do, and you’re just starting, find something
0:58:36 that already works.
0:58:41 Don’t get crafty and try to create something unique and have this, oh, this idea, my blah,
0:58:41 blah, blah.
0:58:48 Like to get the thing off the ground to, you really want to get a ball rolling, find something
0:58:49 that is already working.
0:58:50 Then put your spin on it.
0:58:53 In the case of baldbuck, the seasoning was already selling.
0:58:56 I just need to, it was already good.
0:58:57 It already tasted good.
0:58:58 I didn’t need to come up with my own blend or something.
0:58:59 It was already working.
0:59:00 Yeah.
0:59:00 Yeah.
0:59:02 I just put, I put my label on it and figured out how to sell it.
0:59:06 But I think that concept is something else that’s helped me tremendously as I leverage
0:59:07 what’s already working.
0:59:07 Yeah.
0:59:09 Remove part of the equation, right?
0:59:13 Like it’s a way to kind of leapfrog or piggyback what’s already been done.
0:59:15 You don’t have to start completely from scratch.
0:59:19 It’s, you know, just, there’s still a lot of moving parts that you got to figure out,
0:59:21 but it’s like, well, here’s one, one less thing to worry about.
0:59:22 One less thing.
0:59:22 Up to the move.
0:59:24 So appreciate you sharing that.
0:59:25 That was one of my takeaways here.
0:59:32 You may not have to be a creator, an inventor completely from scratch.
0:59:36 And maybe you iterate on something that’s already out there, but go where there’s some proven
0:59:38 demand versus trying to create demand from scratch.
0:59:44 I loved Chris to talk about the brand positioning and then going after the partnerships.
0:59:46 We’re like, well, how am I going to sell this stuff?
0:59:48 Who’s already got some traffic and eyeballs?
0:59:50 Well, all these barbecue influencers do.
0:59:55 How can I make it a win for them instead of, and trying to find some sort of common ground
0:59:57 and then initial outreach, lots of good tips there.
1:00:02 And then going back to the storytelling and the emotion and his eBay example of like, it’s
1:00:03 the same stuff.
1:00:07 It’s the same commodity that it was 10 minutes ago, but now it has this story attached to it.
1:00:09 People willing to pay a premium for that.
1:00:12 Plus some creative ways to increase the average order size.
1:00:15 You’re going to do the shipping and logistics side of it anyways.
1:00:19 You know, what’s another couple of jars of stuff to throw into the box?
1:00:22 How do you incentivize people to increase that average order value?
1:00:23 What do you think?
1:00:26 Is there an opportunity to white label a product that you already love?
1:00:32 Your free listener bonus for this episode is my list of 20 hobby-related niches to get
1:00:35 your creative juices flowing, like barbecue might be a hobby for you as well.
1:00:37 Other stuff you might be able to sell for a profit.
1:00:40 Just follow the show notes link in the episode description.
1:00:41 It’ll get you right over there.
1:00:43 You’ll be able to download that for free.
1:00:46 Again, my list of 20 other hobby-related niches.
1:00:49 Big thanks to Chris for sharing his insight.
1:00:52 Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone.
1:00:57 As always, you can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our
1:00:59 sponsors in one place.
1:01:00 That is it for me.
1:01:01 Thank you so much for tuning in.
1:01:05 If you’re finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.
1:01:07 So fire off that text message.
1:01:09 Maybe it’s to that barbecue lover in your life.
1:01:12 Maybe it’s to somebody who’s just on the cusp of that next side hustle idea.
1:01:14 Would love your help in spreading the word.
1:01:17 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen.
1:01:20 And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show.
1:01:21 Hustle on.
What if you could turn someone else’s proven product into a six-figure side hustle by simply adding your own story and marketing magic?
Chris Gray from BaldBuck.com is doing exactly that with his barbecue seasoning business, generating around $300,000 annually selling a product he didn’t create — he just white-labeled it with his own branding and marketing approach.
Chris didn’t spend months in a lab perfecting his own spice blend. Instead, he found a seasoning that was already working, slapped his own label on it, and built a compelling story around it. Now he has a thriving e-commerce business that proves you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to build something profitable.
Listen to Episode 678 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:
- How to find and white-label products that are already selling
- Creative influencer outreach strategies that actually work
- Ways to build a community around any product through storytelling
- Email marketing tactics that turn customers into fans
Full Show Notes: $300k Worth of BBQ Rub on the Side
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
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