How to Start a 6 Figure Side Hustle Exclusively on FB Marketplace. Ep #055

So that could be an incentive for someone to spend the 2, 3, 4, $5,000. Because you can send them jobs and you don't have to guarantee them jobs. You could say, listen, I might not get a lead in Schenectady for a year, but when I do, you're my guy. And then you can take a cut of the lead. You could process the payment, you could pass 90% of it on to them. So you can make money training them and then you can make money on installs happening all over the country that you don't have to manage. Welcome to the Kerner office. I am excited about today because a couple weeks ago I was on Instagram and I saw a video of a guy building shelves and it had millions of views and he calls himself the Shelf Dude. And I thought, this is interesting. This could be a cool side hustle for literally anyone that can spend $100 on a chop saw. So I posted about it on Twitter. It went viral, got 1.5 million views. I drove over 3,000 clicks to the Shelf Dude's website. This guy has no idea who I am. I'd never communicated with him before. And then so I reached out and I was like, dude, come on my podcast, I want to hear about your business. I think people have a lot to learn about starting a business through Facebook Marketplace just on the weekends that's approachable to anyone that they could scale into a six or seven figure business because that's what he did. He sells locally and he's selling six figures worth of shelving per year. And it's great business. And anyone can start any number of thousands of businesses on Facebook Marketplace. So we talk a lot of tactics about how to approach that, specifically how to start a shelf business because you can't really ship these things nationwide. So he doesn't really care about competitors all over the country. So anyway, enjoy. I hope you like and subscribe and share with your friends. We'll see you next time. So how did you get going in the shelf business?

How I got into this was well prior to all the little side projects and things my wife and I have done over the last few years. This one started about when I decided to go back to school to get the MBA from here. The local university, Utah Valley University. I've always been a woodworker. I have had my tools, I've done some projects, put some shelves up, that type of thing, house projects. But I was really struggling with keeping the garage organized. And so she came across a similar type post on Facebook. So I hate Make a shelf like this. Okay. Okay, let's do that. It saved a whole bunch of back problems having to get into the attic. It was really see a need, fill a need type thing. Kind of forgot about it. Decided to go back to school as I mentioned. But then, oh, how are we going to pay for that? Well, maybe a sale of those shelves. My wife said, okay, so I started posting those on Facebook, shared that around and that filled up my agenda rather quickly.

And so just on your personal Facebook account?

Just on the personal Facebook as a listing, nothing paid.

Facebook Marketplace.

Facebook Marketplace. And whether it was a really trending type shelf at that moment, it's, it's still kind of there. It's really popular. It just blew up. And so I had a full time job at the time, 9 to 5 and I would just do this on the weekends as installs, borrowing my buddy's truck just to be able to take the shelves to and from, pick up wood and such. But then after a little while, you know, probably May 10, I finally quit the day job and dedicated to the shelf dude.

Yeah, you got to buy a truck.

Then I had to buy a truck on the shelf dude. Was able to afford that monthly cost. And yeah, just going full steam ahead, trying to now dedicating those eight hours that I was at work not doing this, trying to dedicate those eight hours to growing it in every other. Which way.

Yeah, great.

10 or talking to more people, making more shelves.

So what happened or what was it, what metric or conversation or sales number that gave you the confidence to quit your job, that you would be okay doing this?

Great question. Yeah, it was many conversations with my wife here at 11:12am Writing on our little whiteboard here in our room of okay, what's our numbers? Okay, if I sell this many shelves, that's this much. Okay, now minus taxes, we're going to save this much from it. This cost, obviously, materials, what's left over now is that more or less than what we're making now? Then we played with that number. It's like, oh, I need to sell this many shelves to get this end number right. Just that little Excel problem playing with those numbers. It was a conversation just like that where we decided, okay, we can continue on like we are making a little bit extra money, but you're getting super tired, you're gonna get burnt out trying to. You're burning the candle at both ends, working and working till 12 and doing it. It's not sustainable. Health wise at least, or even just it was getting super hectic with Life and the kids. I'd come home and be in the garage and it just wasn't very conducive to good relationships and things. And so that was a huge factor. But then going from there to pull this trigger, it felt good. Let's the numbers were there, let's just risk it. And so we decided to pull the trigger.

Now was there a marketing channel that you weren't fully exhausting, that you knew all right, like I'm going to have to pull this lever once I quit or did you already have enough demand at that point?

There was enough demand just through Marketplace or prior to quitting the day job. We did start the Instagram. So if I was doing, if I started this or I did start this November ish of 23 work through getting 20 plus shelves a month. Okay then. And I think it was January or February 2nd is when I started the Instagram account that grew to what is it now, 56000 followers pretty quick. That that was a huge factor as well. Those are really the only two channels we had that time when, when we decided to pull the trigger. And then a lot. Yeah, yeah. So that to answer your question, it was just those two. But yeah, what was left over is really hadn't explored any of the ads, Facebook ads, the Instagram ads. I, I, we created a tick tock account but we just really haven't given it a our full attention, which I'm sure we could more even do. What you're doing of just talking about business and such via Twitter, YouTube, we haven't even touched. I've had a lot of people request that. Hey, do you have a video to show me how to do this? There's videos out there, but it's just a matter of time I guess.

Now are you only making that one model or different variations of the model with configurations or are you doing all kinds of shelves at this point?

No, it's really just that shelf just for the 27 gallon totes. Sorry, there is some 17 gallon, 12 gallon variations but it's just a smaller version or just a shrunk down version for those smaller totes. Same concept though.

So sometimes you do them wider, sometimes taller.

Correct? Yeah, as on my website and as my videos like four high by five across, 11 by whatever number six by 15 and and what's what size tote you want?

Yeah. Okay. So can you break down the unit economics of an average shelf? Are you buying it in bulk or just from Home Depot? What's your profit and all that?

Once again, for all Those listening and wanting to do something similar, obviously you have some tips and tricks that you learn along the way. Places that you can find different prices. Obviously if you buy in bulk, it's going to be cheaper for you, but it's just a matter of getting to that point. Right. If you're just doing one or two, it doesn't make sense to buy a whole bunch. That being said, I get all the wood from Home Depot. I, you know, buy a bundle of that. It's about 302 by fours at a time. We've made a contact over in China for the wheels. Amazon get a whole bunch of stuff just bulk for like screws and things like that. 4 high by 5 across on wheels cost about $200 in material and that's obviously with those bulk discounts. And then I charge 770 for the shelf. It's a good profit margin there. Yeah, obviously not including any time.

Sure.

Right.

How much time are we talking?

Time to make that shelf. Obviously for a new newcomer that's just buying a DY DIY plan. It's going to take you three to four hours. Right. If you have everything laid out, no distractions and just following the instructions, probably a little faster. But that's a conservative number right now because I'm doing multiples at a time. Probably takes me about two hours to a couple shelves making multiple.

And are you batching like your cuts? You have like an assembly line, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have my order of what I cut first. Cut the verticals, then cut the rungs, cut the bases. After that. I have a little in my garage. This is all out of my garage right now. We actually are getting a warehouse here at the end of the month, so.

Nice.

So we won't have to move around. Yeah, I try to have stations, just kind of move it down the line. Got an employee that helps me just go faster cut. And I tend to do more installs. He tends to be the shelf builder. I'll do the install with the clients.

Do you offer any customization for an upcharge or you try to keep it like the Model T. Any color. As long as it's black, we can.

Paint it any color. Most recently we've obviously done the black and white. White comes out super slick. Especially in a nice white storage room. Just go mixes right with the wall. Any. Yeah, any color. Whether you want plywood on top, plywood on the sides. I got a couple other little hooks and things on that are in the in creation. So you can put your chairs, like your folding chairs, lawn chairs on the side, just even doors on the front so it looks like more of a cabinet style just to hide the bins. I personally like the look of the bins visible.

Yeah.

You also can't deny the cleanliness of everything just covered up. You can't see it like in your kitchen. Right. So everything's tucked away.

What is your volume looking like nowadays and how has that grown over time?

It definitely felt busier when I had the day job. Right. It's like, oh man, we're super busy. But now that's spread out over just more time and I can deliver throughout the week. I'd say it's roughly the same volume, but I mean it's less stress. There's a couple things that we could be doing that whether do based on time we don't do or just other priorities. Hey, you got more time now let's spend a little more time together. Right. There's been that kind of trade off. It hasn't necessarily. Not equivalated, but that's not work. But it hasn't necessarily translated into. It was eight hours exactly shelf, dude. It's just. It's kind of transformed a little bit. But back to your question. It's volumes speed about the same. But that's also given us some time to work on some of the projects too that we've wanted to do.

Yeah. Are you doing much business through your website, selling the plans or delivering stuff or like on a percentage basis, how much of it is just you selling shelves there locally versus stuff that comes through the website?

Percentage wise, I'd say it's still Facebook. All plans go through the website, which are still. You get those dings every few minutes, which is cool. Those notifications, I'd say it's about 50, 50 maybe, you know, 60, 40 through Marketplace. It's more heavily and then the website's 40%. We're currently working on a new website. Make a little easier for you to make your shelf a little clunky right now. So that's one of those projects I mentioned. But yeah, Facebook Marketplace and just chatting with people, that's the bulk of the business there. It's just spending time once you get that contact, hey, I'm interested. Just spending the time with them to convince them on the shelf.

Yeah, I guess like as far as the percentage between selling physical versus digital products plans.

Gotcha. No, I'd say it's still physical. Physical products is still.

Just because they're the vast majority.

Yeah, yeah. It's the vast majority. The plans are just a minimal and they don't cost as much. Right. So sell a couple shelves and I'm beating what the plants are. So then. Yeah, back to your. Yeah, probably still that 60, 40 with just more physical products.

Okay. What do you say to people that are like why don't you just go buy these at Costco? That's what a lot of the comments said. Right. Like this is 150 bucks at Costco.

Oh yeah. And so my quite my answer to all of you if you choose to watch this is mine's going to hold a lot more weight than the Costco one. Now Costco recently came out with release displayed next to those 27 gallon totes. The metal one. I don't even know the brand. There's a little it's silver round tubes that you can adjust the height. Like shelves.

Yep.

I have one of those in my garage on wheels as well that I'm.

Those are terrible.

They're kind of flimsy. If you get a lot of weight on them they're going to tip over. So they came out with one for those bins. So one across by four high and yeah, that's not going to hold nearly as much weight. They're selling it for $70. But yeah, if you only put, you know, £10 in each bin you should be fine. But mine's gonna hold up a whole bunch more. Probably last forever. As in the comments. How much weight can this hold? I'd worry about the bin breaking before the shelf. £50 in a bin, well that's probably too heavy for you to lift.

Yeah.

Want to put that in there anyway because you can't lift it.

Yeah.

That's the biggest point aside from aesthetics, what people are looking for. You can paint mine any color. The metal you really can't. Even though even not that metal one. But the plastic shelves for the 27 gallon tote, sure they're cheaper but as most people where I'm installing shelves and the reason why they're switching over is because yeah I have this 5 inch gap above the tote that is wasted space and I can only fit three because the other like three and a half. But it just doesn't fit well because it's not made for a tote. Taking a step back and looking at this whole niche which is just specifically for this shelf. Right. It's very specific. Everyone has storage, everyone has stuff. Empty space gets filled. Another book idea I have, hopefully nobody takes that but yeah, it's just stronger. Right. And with the wheels, you can wheel it around. Costco doesn't have that. Or any other one. Doesn't really have that. It's wood. You can screw other stuff into it. Right.

Yeah. Fighting any which way are you doing Facebook Marketplace boosted posts at all or just like organic free ones?

Prior to getting in contact with this marketing agency that I mentioned, I did do a couple boosted Marketplace listings. Not the ads, but just the listing boosted. I saw some activity from that. Really not noticeable. And whether that was I didn't pay enough or I didn't really give it enough time to really measure the ROI on that.

Well, it seems like the boosted listings are specific to certain things, whereas what you're selling is so specific that they can't give it any more visibility than it already gets from an organic search.

Right, right. Currently not paying for any of those. But with this marketing agency kind of changing topics there with an actual ad, put them on Google and Facebook. It'll be more like what you see other places.

Yeah. What about competitors? Are you seeing guys start to creep in on Facebook Marketplace and undercut you? What are you doing about that?

Yeah, there has been some undercutting. That's been the challenge as of late. It's just more people due to my popularity and everyone's seeing this. Oh, I can do that, too.

When you're in Utah, where, like the land of copycats, I mean, it is.

Yeah. Yeah. And so we've had a couple of those instances where people are using my photos on their listings. Hey, that's my photo. Take it down or do your own, whatever. Even some that have bought my plans, I see them say, hey, what's going on? This is my photo. Oh, hey, the shelf. Dude, I bought your plans. I thought I'd give it a try, too. Right on, man.

Right on.

Use your own photo. Yeah.

Do you worry about that just inviting more competitors or is it such a global business?

I don't know if that was on our minds at the very beginning of this, that people are going to copy us. Not to say that we necessarily copied anyone at the beginning because you had plans out there. You have DIY plans out there for everything.

Might as well. Might as well sell some. Yeah.

There really wasn't anyone turning around and providing the service. I'll make it for you. Right. And so that's where I feel we jumped in and grew because there was no competition.

Yeah.

Now, yeah, people have caught on. I want to do the same thing, make a little extra money. Good for them. You know, there's a million fish in the sea.

Right.

There's plenty to go around. I'm not by you doing the same thing. It's not to say I can't find something of my own.

Yeah. Have you thought about like in an effort to scale this having because of the fact that you have a pretty good Instagram following doing like a paid community of people doing the same thing around the world. Maybe 50 bucks a month, put them all in the same Facebook group or something where you can trade secrets or here's a good lumber supplier. Or even being like a like arranging a bunch of bulk lumber orders and then marking it up a little bit and you being like the funnel to that and then having other shelf dudes out there buying it.

I haven't come at it from that angle. We have on the plans and what's happened. We're just flushing out some wrinkles. Is not necessarily to do a franchise model because that's legally expensive to for that whole deal to go down, but more so an installer kind of model where like I went out to Florida and trained a guy to make shelves out there. Currently with this marketing agency, we're putting ads out there to create business. They're talking to me, hey, I'm in Miami. I want a shelf. Great. This is how much it is. Do the purchase through me and then I just send the shelf order to him. He'll make it, install it. We got a split going now that times 50 states and break out of the states in different areas. That's the model we're shooting for to be able to grow and expand this totally aside from. Or we'll get that first and then we'll work with Home Depot saying hey, we're going to give you so much service. Give me an extra discount. Right. For all those materials things that they'll be buying. So still in its infancy. I'd say.

Here's what I would do if I were you. Unsolicited, you might think it's a bad idea, but since you have the Instagram following I would make like a course or something. Even if it's just a PDF. Doesn't have to be fancy. Just like your whole business plan. Basically it includes the plans, it includes everything. And that's just like a lower tier offer. And then I would also offer an in person training course. So I know a guy that's. That sells in person epoxy flooring training in Pennsylvania and he ends up. He ended up making a ton more on the training business than he does on the epoxy flooring business. So he literally has a retail store for epoxy flooring. He installs it himself. And then he has a training business, or at least he did originally. But at this point he only does the training business. And so basically the second Tuesday of every month, his he'll have a couple dozen people fly in from all over the world. They'll spend two or three days there and he'll charge them like five grand to show them how to install it. All the ticks, the tips and tricks, all the things to avoid. And then they'll go back home and then they'll start their business. And it's not a franchise, it's not even a licensing agreement. So he doesn't have to worry about those expenses or legalities. They'll start their business. Half of them don't even start a business because human nature. But he still collects his five grand. And then when they buy their epoxy, they buy it from him. They don't have to, but most of them do because it's a good price and they know and trust the guy and they shook his hand and they met him. Right. And so I'm thinking of a situation where you could have a quarterly in person training there in Utah. People could fly in, you could post about it. And for all the people that, yeah, it's a lot of friction. It's a lot of money. It's, you know, travel cost. For all the people that don't want to do that, you could sell them the $100 course or $500 course. But you could say, listen, for the people that fly out here in person, they're going to be like authorized installers. For me, because of the leverage that you have with your Instagram account, you will be getting leads in Schenectady and Seattle and Tacoma, all over people that want shelves. And if you had a guy come to your training and gave you $5,000 by default, he can be like an authorized installer. And if you have another guy in Seattle that just gave you $200 for the course, he's on his own, right? Cause he, he didn't pay you as much. And you, frankly, you don't know how good of an installer he is. Cause he didn't go to your training. So that could be an incentive for someone to spend the 2, 3, 4, $5,000. Because you can send them jobs and you don't have to guarantee them jobs. You could say, listen, I might not get a lead in Schenectady for a year, but when I do, you're My guy. And then you can take a cut of the lead. You could process the payment. You could pass 90% of it onto them. So you can make money training them, and then you can make money on installs happening all over the country that you don't have to manage. And then if you could even work into your contract where if they screw something up, a complaint comes back to you, you could cut them out of the network if they're not doing a good job.

Right. I love it. Thank you.

What would you say to other people that want to do, like, a similar business based on Facebook Marketplace? It might not be a shelf business, but I always tweet about the power of Facebook marketplace and how people sleep on it. They don't have any idea how much opportunity there is there. And you picked one of 10,000 different verticals. What about the other 9,999? What advice would you give to people that want to at least validate an idea or fully fledged launch a business on Facebook Marketplace?

Well, one step prior to Facebook, just any idea, Just for any of those that are looking to do anything, any business, I think the biggest hurdle that you can overcome is the fear of what's going to happen. You know, many people make excellent pastries or cookies or they have a little hobby that, oh, this is so cool. And it's just whether they. The fear of rejection, nobody's even wanted this could be hard. They don't want to take their risk. You know, fear that of the change or what could happen. I think that's the biggest hurdle. Not to say we necessarily had that. It was more of, let's just see what happens. We jumped. We. We'd already had that practice. Right? But for anyone just wanting to do something, I'd say that's the biggest thing now, a solution or a way around that fear, aside from just do it, see what happens, what's the worst that can happen? Think of it this way. When I made the first shelf, I got the money up front, right? I got deposit up front that paid for the materials, right? Then I just had to deliver, right? Whatever fear or nervousness of showing up and, hey, I'm the shelf dude. Let me make this shelf for you. Was over in an hour as I made it, and boom, I'm done. And then my confidence was boosted right after that first time. But the fear, I guess I don't know if this is a fear of fear of not having enough money. Well, you know, make a good one, sell it, get a couple orders, and that then pays for the way you can. It pays for itself. Right. You don't necessarily have to go out and take a. A ten thousand dollar loan to do a business. You can start with one and you grow it.

How many shelves are you installing per month?

Right now the average is about 20. Nice. Kind of all ranges but the most popular is at 4 by 5. Just because that's good. It tends to handle all the variation of bins that people have collected over there the many years. That's roughly what it fits into.

Okay. Have you thought of offering ancillary services like garage organization as an upsell?

I have thought about that and whether or not because I've tried to. Not tried, but I've contacted a couple garage cleaning organizing services to offer my shelves as part of their offering just so I can just provide more shelves. I do like the membership or just the service model of cleaning. It's just compared to what I'm doing, the shelf's gonna last forever unless you buy another house or want more storage or one and done. Right. And so it's not necessarily the best business model. It's just a different business model than the membership service type thing. Definitely have thought about it but just haven't really acted on it.

Yeah, you could outsource it to someone that's already doing it and just take a cut. I'm even thinking of the idea of like is there an industry that you could invent that's like quarterly garage cleaning? Right. Kind of like what you referenced. Where not house cleaning, not weekly, not monthly because it doesn't need it that much. But I'll clean my garage and six months later I have to do it again. I wonder if people would pay for that. And at least you have a database of customers that care about their garage. You can at least send an email and ask.

Sure, sure. No, Yeah, I. There's been a couple of companies that I've done that with that do that specific thing. So it's goes back to. You can sell anything. You can sell anything.

Yeah.

People are willing to pay for anything. If it's hard, if it's difficult, they don't want to do it. You know, I always think of that, that. What was it? A Pixar movie? Robots see a need, fill a need.

Well, any other thoughts or questions? I appreciate your time. I. Where can people find you if they want to like buy your plans or anything?

The shelfdude.com is the best place to find us. Or Instagram the shelf. Dude, it's kind of old logo here, but it's Now a circle with a shelf. Dude in it. You should recognize me, obviously. I'm the face of that as well as the website. My phone number's there, available as well. Give me a call. We can chat about any solution, find the plans. If you want to DIY it yourself, it's not that hard. But, you know, whether you don't have time, that or. Or the money or the tools, that's where you'd reach out to me. I can service you that way. But, yeah, that's. Those are the best places to find me. And I really enjoy making shelves for people. I love the creation part of it, the building part of it. And whether it's building a house or building something that just has some use, it's really satisfying.

Yeah. And it all happened. All this happened because you saw a video of someone making these shelves and you thought, I could do that. That's how it always starts, right? What if I did that? I gotta be a little curious and a little confident. So.

Yeah, a little willing to risk it and see what happens.

Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you, Alex. I appreciate your time.

I appreciate it, Chris. Thanks so much.

All right. What'd you think? That was Alex Hansen. You can find him@theshelfdude.com and we'll see you next time.