Artistic Cartographer Maps Out Successful Side Hustle

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

[Music]

What's up my friends, welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I'm excited about today's story. We're gonna do a little bit of an audit and make some suggestions, some suggestions to help an artist make more money. All right, I'll be curious about your suggestions as well.

So first of all, the story, here's what it's about. We've got an artistic cartographer with an enthusiasm for both maps and art who merges the two to create hand-printed mazes that zigzag through the hearts of iconic cities. She's making this beautiful art and we'll talk about that, the art. We'll also talk about the money, which is critical in this case because she lives in San Francisco and wants to be a full-time working artist. So it's all starting well, but she definitely needs to earn more.

So how could she do that? Let's brainstorm a bit. I'll offer a few of my suggestions at the end of the episode. And then perhaps some of our listeners might have suggestions as well. Maybe even you, let me know if you do.

Stay tuned, that story is coming right up. [Music]

Need to get from the Golden Gate Bridge to Soutro Tower in San Francisco? Well, you're in luck because today's featured side hustler, Michelle Chandra, can take you on the longest, windiest route imaginable. Michelle is a graphic designer with a love for the outdoors, adventures, learning and art. From her life as an undergraduate seeking to be a creative writer to her current life as an artist with a mapping style all her own, Michelle's journey has been full of twists and turns.

She began her adventure when she entered college discovering a whole new world of travel, poetry and art. She connected with a community of artists all over San Francisco, ultimately inspiring her into a labyrinth of projects. The X at the conclusion of her journey was artistic cartography and the intricate world of mapping was love at first sight. Michelle landed a full-time job at the Bay Area startup creating web map visualizations. And that's where she stayed putting together maps for three years.

While at a work conference, she attended a talk on maze generating algorithms that utilized grids. As a traveler who worked in mapping, Michelle immediately connected the dots because cities are planned on grids as well. Always keen on a puzzle, Michelle took on the challenge of designing her first map maze using actual street grids. Although the journey was at times difficult and took three months, over a hundred hours to solve, it was also a ton of fun. It occurred to her that perhaps others out there might enjoy the challenge as well.

With less than $2,000, she purchased and built everything she needed to create her own screen printing shop and an online store using Shopify. Much of that initial cost went to supplies, but $500 of it was used to create a vacuum printing press. More on that in a second. And after all the hard work that goes into creating her designs, she then planned to air dry her prints on a wood rack she created from an Ikea baby crib. So Michelle is pretty resourceful.

So what is this whole process about screen printing, at least in this way, for those not familiar with it, it's the process of pushing ink through a mesh-encased frame to print a design on paper, cloth, or whatever else your heart desires. Michelle cuts paper by hand, gathers all the ink she needs, and then clamps her screen print frame to her homemade vacuum press to hold the design in place while she prints. The vacuum suction also eliminates the need to use toxic spray adhesive. By the way, I got a lot more details on how that process actually works, but I don't know much about that stuff. So let's talk about the actual business model.

That's what this is about here. To kick things off, Michelle made maze maps for two of the country's most iconic cities, her hometown of San Francisco and Brooklyn. For the San Francisco maze, she decided to start at the Golden Gate Bridge. And for Brooklyn, nothing would suffice, but to have it start at the Brooklyn Bridge, winding its way down to Coney Island. She realized pretty early that people would want to solve these puzzles, like a maze map again, without damaging the original designs.

So she also sends along an extra print with every sale. Michelle sets her prices based on other map prints. We're gonna talk about this at the end. She started fairly low, worked her way up as she gained confidence and feedback from customers. Currently, you can pick up one of her handmade map mazes starting at just $24.

She also improved in quality. According to her, the beginnings of her side hustle were far from a work of art. Two of the colors she first offered were unpopular, but the other two sold well. So from there, she cut some of those unpopular colors developed new ones, and then figured out which other cities to feature. Marketing presented its own set of challenges for Michelle, a self-identified introvert with social anxiety.

Oh, that's me as well, by the way, self-identified introvert with social anxiety. Hey, what's up? Facing her fears, she got her maps featured on artsy blogs, placed in some local gift shops, and attended a bunch of events in order to do whatever she could to get that artwork into the world. Her first year, she brought in a small profit of around $3,500. The year after that, profits doubled to $7,000.

In fact, her goal is to keep doubling every year. Not only that, but Michelle also realized that she was learning way more running a business than she was at her main job. With that in mind, she opted to set off on her own path, leaving her day job to focus entirely on this growing side hustle. Luckily, she was able to make the leap thanks to savings and living a minimalist lifestyle. She's next hoping to convert more maze enthusiasts by getting her art featured in different places and boosting online marketing so she can spend more time creating and less time at festivals and fairs.

She's also excited to start exploring different art forms. And most of all, Michelle feels fortunate to have this opportunity. She looks forward to the twists and turns ahead. Okay, so the project is really fun. And just in case you heard that whole description and you were like, "I still don't quite know what it is," it's a very visual project, all right?

So just imagine like a visual city maze map, essentially. And of course, you can go and check it out on the show notes page. Maybe you wanna go and check it out and see if you have any other ideas as well, because overall, what we need to do is help Michelle make more money. So it looks really pretty, but if she's gonna be a full-time working artist in San Francisco, even having some savings and being minimalist, she's gonna need to have more sales. So here are a couple of suggestions I wrote down as I worked on the story and spent some time on her website.

Number one suggestion is to raise the price because $24 a map, and for this beautiful thing, like I know it's a print, but there are other prints out there selling for twice as much easily. There's some that sell for more than that, but even if you go from 24 to 30 or 36 or somewhere in that range, even if it's not 48, I feel like you're not really gonna get priced out by doing that. Or if that makes you uncomfortable, maybe some different sizes or something, but something to raise the price overall, at least have a different option, I think. I also think she needs to level up her Instagram game because this project is so visual. It does look really good, but she doesn't have that many followers.

So I think it's probably worth devoting some time to learning more about hashtags and learning to follow lots of different accounts who are art influencers, which I'll come to more again in a second, maybe soft pitching some of those curatorial, influential profiles in order to help build her own profile. And I know she said she was on some art blogs, but I feel like there's a lot more to be done there, design blogs and features, even things like The Jealous Curator. We just talked about, I don't know, a couple weeks back, Jason Kotky, Kotky.org. By the way, I'm going to link all this up in the show notes. I'm just going to go really quickly here, but all of it's going to be linked in the show notes.

I think she should look at art promotional bundles, which from time to time are a thing. I think she can look at flash sale sites like Oat Look and Similar, flash sale sites that are like, oh, we got this sale for 24 hours or 36 hours or whatever. A lot of those sites are for clothing items or jewelry. Then they also usually have like a small home decor section. So there could be something there.

I think she should talk to my friend, Alison Stanfield at artbizsuccess.com. So if you're out there and you're also trying to make a living as an artist, you need to know Alison, artbizsuccess.com. We will link it up. I wondered as well, I think this is my last suggestion, I wondered about gift guides. So on her site in the press section, it looks like she was actually in a holiday gift guide for 2018, which is great.

And that was with Forbes. So I almost think this is a strategy, like planning ahead into the fall, pitching all those different gift guides. If you get in the right thing, then you can easily be there again the next year. And then maybe one thing kind of tends to lead to another. So like Oprah has got a gift guide, like all kinds of people have gift guides.

So I just think, these ideas, these suggestions, look at all of them, consider them. And if the shoe fits, try it out. If it doesn't, then obviously discard it and keep doing your own thing. So those are just a few suggestions. I'm not saying she has to do all of that.

I'm not saying she has to do any of it because it's her business and her life. But those are some observations I had as I kind of worked on this. And I hope it's helpful to her in some way. I hope it's helpful to somebody out there as well, who's trying to do something similar, or maybe just try to figure out, okay, what's next for me? How can I follow my passion?

Not just any old passion, but some passion that actually connects to what other people value, something where I can actually create a little business around something I enjoy doing. That's what we talk about here on the show in one way or another every day. Today's show notes, including links to all this crazy stuff, are at sidehustleschool.com/861. Come and check it out, episode 861. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

Thanks so much, my friends. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.