Expectant Mom Gives Birth To Organic Products Business

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

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Hello and welcome. Inside us all school, your host, Chris Guillebeau here. Very excited to bring you another story as I've been doing for 1061 days and counting another story of a real person out there, ordinary person, someone who didn't necessarily want to always be an entrepreneur, et cetera, who nevertheless finds a way to create freedom for themselves in the form of an income generating project, a money-making project also known as a side hustle. This one goes far beyond side hustle as well, as many of them do. This story features a soon to be mom who takes control of the ingredients that go into her body, giving birth to a new business in the process.

With $300 in startup costs, this organic business is now organically doing more than $30,000 a month in sales with a very healthy profit margin as well. This story is coming right up in just 30 seconds. [Music]

When Emily Silverstein was pregnant with her first child, she was just like any other expectant mom. She scoured the internet for nursery rhymes, baby names and tips about how to stay healthy during pregnancy. What she wasn't expecting to find was a magic number, 26.

This, she learned, was the number of seconds that it took for ingredients in personal care products to get into the bloodstream. With a baby sharing her body, Emily immediately realized she had to be more careful with what she was putting on her skin. That provided the spark for her to learn more about the different types of ingredients used in personal care. Hopping onto Pinterest, Emily began to learn how to make her own vegan skincare products. Through trial and error, and over the next couple of months, she became well versed in the process.

This went on even after she gave birth to her child. Then as her maternity leave came to an end, she had to return to work, Emily thought she could try selling the products she made. After all, she wasn't the only concerned mom out there. Her hunch was proven right very quickly. On December 24th, 2013, she listed five products on Etsy, and then posted on Facebook that she had launched Urban Oregonics.

The name comes from a blend of Oregon, the state and organics. That same day, she received an order from a total stranger. It was a pleasant surprise, and with the product already prepared, all she had to do was ship it out. Startup costs were just $300. Emily purchased ingredients and used baby food jars from friends and family to package those products.

As she went along and sales grew, she'd invest much of the profits back into the project. Working on her hustle part time, Emily gradually built up an email list and developed a presence on Pinterest and Instagram. A year and a half later, she hit a new milestone. Still working her own full-time job, she started to hire part-time help for the business. That's when she realized it no longer made sense for her to work this way.

She was in a position to double down on Urban Oregonics if only she had more time. She called it her other baby, and Emily knew it was high time she gave it the attention it deserved. As this organic business grew organically, retailers also began to approach her to stock her products. This seemed overwhelming at first, but Emily relied on a simple formula to set prices and keep her focus on growing the business. She would charge wholesalers twice her costs and her products within retail at twice the wholesale price.

The simplicity with which she operated at allowed her to avoid getting bogged down by any single part of the business, especially when time was limited. The growth of Urban Oregonics eventually provided another unexpected opportunity. Her husband, Corey, had made casual remarks that he would quit his job if she hit a certain monthly sales target. Every time she hit that target, however, he would raise the number. And in a way it made sense because she was more impulsive and he was more cautious.

This went on for two full years until Corey came home one day and announced that he was finally ready. The couple now runs all parts of the business themselves, and as Emily says, they're a perfect combination. Today, Urban Oregonics brings in anywhere from 30 to $40,000 in sales a month, with more than $20,000 a month in profit. With over 20 products on offer, including some seasonal ones, Emily has seen this business grow slowly but surely. [Music]

All right, so tremendous success, of course.

Slow success but sure success, as you heard with those numbers, fantastic results. And I took a peek at their website, of course, because I was like, well, how are they doing this? And I just love everything about it, short version. It's so sleek and well-designed. It reminds me of Pinterest, in a way.

It's like Pinterest, but well-organized. Like there's not a whole bunch of random stuff there. It's like everything is there for a reason. Lots of focus on the products, as there should be. Products are front and center with good photography.

There's reviews, just makes it really easy to purchase, which is exactly what you want in this kind of e-commerce situation. So if you're selling something similar or you have the idea of doing some kind of project like this, even remotely like it, you might want to take a look at the site, which of course I will link up in the show notes. Oh, also, I love the fact that they have a rewards program. So cool, loyalty program. It's been proven over and over through lots of research that these kinds of programs can almost illogically increase sales and repeat business.

And I'm kind of an example of that myself. Like I have these rewards cards and I go back to this coffee shop I don't even like because I got to get another stamp or whatever. So she's got this rewards program, if you create an account on the site, you get 200 points. You follow them on Instagram, you get 100 points. You refer a friend and you get 500 points and so on.

So of course you can redeem those points for products. Now, last but not least, speaking of Pinterest, we haven't talked about that platform in a while, but I've actually been hearing some interesting things from people about advertising there. Specifically, what I've heard is if you're paying too much for Facebook ads or if you're having a hard time kind of breaking through with Facebook ads, and this assumes of course that you have a product for sale, but you've been trying to do it through Facebook ads and running into difficulty whether through the cost or whether through Facebook limiting your ads for whatever reason, Pinterest might be a low cost option to be able to also reach some pretty dedicated people. So I've heard that from a couple sources. So I thought I would pass it on in case someone is interested.

All right, thank you so much listeners. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes, including links to Urban Organics and anything else I mentioned will be at sidehustleschool.com/1061. More is coming up, so be sure you're subscribed. My name is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.

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From the Onward Project.