In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kyle and Lauren Alderman. The owners of www.stealthsteel.com. They consider themselves accidental entrepreneurs. They were able to take a simple idea and turn it into a 6 figure business overnight. Listen and be inspired!
In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kyle and Lauren Alderman. The owners of www.stealthsteel.com. They consider themselves accidental entrepreneurs. They were able to take a simple idea and turn it into a 6 figure business overnight. Listen and be inspired!
Welcome to the side hustle, pilot podcast, ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, Fasten your seatbelts and get ready to take off and create the type of side hustle and lifestyle you've always dreamed of. We hope you enjoy the ride.
Speaker 2:This podcast isn't for your typical coffee, drinking gear jerker it's for that hard charging button pushing. I've got the courage kind of pilot and remember fly airplanes because it's fun. Not because you have to now without any further delay, your host, Tito G
Speaker 3:hello, and welcome to the side hustle pilot podcast. In today's episode, we have cow and Lauren alderman, the owners of stealth steel.com. They consider themselves accidental entrepreneurs. Their story is inspiring in the fact that they took a simple product that they discovered would be desirable by their niche, and they turned it into an incredible business. So without any other delay, let's get started.
Speaker 4:Kyle, if you just want to start off by telling your story and Lauren, you can jump in as you see fit. I mean, you guys have an incredible, a side hustle or business that you've created. Give us a little backstory. How'd you get into this?
Speaker 5:Uh, well, I will say it was an accident for sure. We never set out or intended to create a business or be where we're at today. We're incredibly grateful and have worked really hard to get where we're at, but it was an accident. So, uh, I recently separated from the air force. I flew B twos on activity. And then before that I flew to[inaudible] and Lauren, um, her father had owned a metal fabricating company, and it was a large metal fabricating company. And the primary customer was Anheuser Busch. So he had some subcontractors that were into industrial, um, tool creation, had very large equipment, water jet specifically, uh, and they had this engineer that was kind of bored making pipe fittings and whatnot. So he decided to make an American flag. We saw it and were like, Hey, if you put an aircraft on that, pilots love some, I love me walls and swags. So they'll put that on the wall. And, uh, so we made it and someone asked to purchase it almost immediately, and we just acted as the middleman, not making any money off of it or anything. Just being the conduit between somebody who could make a product. Um, Lauren had the design background. So she, her background is in interior design and architecture. So she knew how to do AutoCAD and all that. So she sent the files to the, uh, water jet. He made the product and we just literally acted as a middleman. Um, and then one day we were at dinner, uh, and I have a metal or metal, a credit card. And I said, you know, we gotta, we had to make something that's credit card size, pop an airplane out of it, make it a bottle opener. And I bet it would sell. So Lauren drew it in CAD and sent it to the guy. He made it. And immediately someone was like, we'll take 30 of those. And we'll take 20 of those. And again, we're not making any money off this. We're just kind of being the middleman. And then somebody asked to pay with a credit card along the, along the line somewhere, we learned, looked into it and created an Etsy site. Um, that was so we could take that one single credit card payment. And then we posted the Etsy site and within like an hour, somebody completely third party unrelated purchase something. And we were like, wait a minute, hold on. And then like couple hours go by. And there's another purchase. We're like, Holy cow, is this something people are interested in? Um, and then it just snowballed from there. I mean, it, it went from, you know, a little Etsy site to a sole proprietorship, um, too, and you know, we've got a laser guy, we've got a powder coat, or we've got a water jet guy. We've got a plasma guy to slowly bringing all of that in house, creating a website, creating an LLC purchasing equipment to make stuff ourselves. And then the rest is history. Uh, so we, we, we specialize in aviation themed cups, bottle openers, um, flags, luggage, tags, that kind of stuff, um, with a big focus on commercial and military aviation. Uh, but we do everything and anything between the two of us, we've taught ourselves how to use, not only the equipment, but the design stuff. We do the designs in house, um, and then contract out what we can't do just due to lack of industrial machinery.
Speaker 6:It's kind of cool because we actually have those first sketches from our very first bottle openers. And then, um, yeah, I remember it was an eight, 10 bottle opener that's sold in like Minnesota, I think with an Etsy, if you're not familiar with gives you the little churching sound when you make a sale. And we were like, Oh my gosh, it happened. So it was quite, it's been a fun ride, but yeah, that's, that's a good, a summary of how we got to where we are and it's, and it's totally been. The other thing with the bottle openers is immediately, I think like all pilots, they want, they wanted their call sign, right? Their name or their squad room. They want it personalized. So that's been just such a big, big driver for us is that customization, personalization side too. So that's where the laser engraving came in and we went from there, but it was, it really was. We totally taught ourselves just cold called anybody from woodworkers to, um, waterjet companies. And just tried to find people who could help us and get to where we are.
Speaker 4:That's incredible. So what I love about this story is the whole idea that it was accidental, right? It just happened to snowball and it went from one step to the next, I mean, let me ask you a question for your specific business. I mean, you've had an incredible career. You went from[inaudible] all right. To be twos, which isn't really easy for most people. I mean, you, you typically don't go from[inaudible], but having that background and being involved in that a type of network can imagine helped you out significantly. Would you say so?
Speaker 5:Oh, absolutely. As a matter of fact, a fellow B two pilot is the owner of squadron posters, uh, dot com and he's a graphic designer naturally, you know, it comes to him easily and I am not, um, Lauren has that artistic flair, but I, I can't tell you how many times I just, I called on him to be like, Hey man, how do you do this? How do you, what do you use for website? What do you, um, what's your tax structured? How do you use account? Like, and that's been the case with, with so many people along the way. And now, now from like a product perspective, it is a lot of our network that reaches out to us and asks, Hey, can you make something for my squadron it's people I flew with in the[inaudible] community or people I've met in the[inaudible] community, um, asking for us to make specific products for them. So it's been a, it's been definitely a critical that we had the, the aviation network that we do too,
Speaker 6:to keep this thing going and same with, you know, military spouses and military families. Like those, those networks, even when you move from living with them, you just, you know, you keep those tight connections and they, um, you know, have really word of mouth referral. And this pilot network has been the cause of our success, just spreading the word that way and through social media and then, uh, you know, through our websites and different programs like that,
Speaker 4:having that network definitely helped you out. Now, my question for you is, I mean, you guys have never ran an eCommerce business before, correct?
Speaker 5:No, no, this is, this is new to us for sure.
Speaker 4:You know, you kind of described the first initial orders and all of that stuff. It went from, you know, Etsy to a full fledged business. At what point did you guys think to yourself? You know what, we've got something big here we're still pretty
Speaker 5:kind of maybe in disbelief of how well it's gone and trying to keep the reins, like keep the Jack in the box type thing. Like Lauren kind of mentioned, we do, we do like Facebook and Instagram as far as advertising goes, but we don't throw ourselves out there too much because we're almost afraid to like unleash the floodgates cause it's been pretty successful. But for, in my opinion, there was a period where we were using, we were contracting out everything except for design. So we were doing the design and customer, uh, front facing activities. And we were having, we were paying someone to do the laser work. We were paying someone to cut the metal. We were paying someone to powder coat and Lauren and I kind of sat down and were like, you know, we're giving away a lot of the equity that we've kind of built and we're doing, we're doing a lot of the work for them. So why don't we kind of take the leap, you know, take the small risk and see if we can do some of this ourselves. Um, so when we did that, that's we made that decision that like we wanted to get serious about it. And then we made that decision and that's kind of like where the business turned, where we were. We were really able to like quickly turn around products, go from design the product in a customer's hand, really fast. And the strength of our business is networking and, um, like personal referrals for the most part, uh, and word of mouth. And that's kind of where things took off. Once we started, we got our own laser, got our own sublimation printer, got our own, um, accounts to like bring in stuff wholesale. That's when things really took off.
Speaker 6:And I think when you get those first group orders, like a, like a big quad order or something like that, it really, um, you're like, Oh, wow, okay. This is, this is a big deal. And you start, right. Yeah. And it took us a while to believe. And we kind of talked about that when we were talking about this interview of things we wanted to make sure we got out there is like that ability to believe in your product because we, it took us a bit to be like, are people really gonna pay for this? And then when we saw they would, and they, you know, they wanted more and more customization and you know, all of that stuff, it really, we we've gotten to that point where we know people want this and we can, um, be proud to put it out there. And I think that's something so like, for those of you that are starting out your ideas, definitely just believe in yourself and take the rest to get it out there. I had done social media, marketing and sales in it and my job before. And so I did have a little bit of experience with that, but nowhere near, you know, the level of options that are out there now for social media ads, marketing, stuff like that. So
Speaker 4:you didn't do any advertising and all of a sudden you're hearing those chimes come in through Etsy, right. And not knowing where those orders came from. That's pretty amazing. Right. I tell people all the time, if you can make a dollar online, you can make some serious money. I'm the type of person that I think if you can make a dollar, you can make a million as long as you know, how to scale that process. Right. So you've already discovered, Hey, I can make a dollar online or I can make$15 now, it's you, that's the hardest part is being able to create the process in which people are willing to pay you.
Speaker 6:Yeah. Right. And it's, it's amazing with this network, how far reaching it is like the B two specifically at first we were coming out with mainly B two products. We have like a, B two shaped bottle opener and then the flags and the credit card. And we were like, you know, that's such a small area, but we were getting, you know, whoever had the, be to account for Dell in Austin was ordering a couple hundred openers. And then the B two has programming at tinker. And then obviously at Northrop and all these other, it was, you just saw how things, people, the word spread just for one aircraft. So then to spread that, you know, through all these other aircraft's, um, internet, you know, international, we've done, um, stuffed in Singapore, England. I mean, so many other international air forces too, which is kind of interesting. And then it was, I think the other thing that's been interesting is as we got into commercial airline stuff, it's no coincidence that Kyle was trying to decide as we were deciding as a family, what we were going to do career wise and all of that stuff. So, you know, it just kind of progressed with us along too. I mean, we've moved this business and our company to three times before really cause just flexible to go right along with wherever our family's at.
Speaker 4:And so you're a first officer with ups flying the seven five, seven, six, uh, domestically based, correct?
Speaker 5:Correct. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And so in your opinion, I know Lauren helps a lot with this business, but as far as having this type of side hustle, how does that kind of play into your daily life as a pilot? How does that work for you?
Speaker 5:You know, I was really apprehensive at first, not knowing what to expect. Um, but it's been bottom line. It has been phenomenal. Uh, I love the, the great thing. The position that I'm in is I love my job at ups and I love what we're doing with stealth steel and ups affords me a ton of time off, um, Lauren and I, when we, we decided to get out of the military and commit to the, to the airlines, we said, Hey, we were look very narrow in our search. Um, and we said, we want to live at our, at our domicile. And, um, not to say that not living a domicile or, or commuting is a bad career. They're two different careers, commuting and living in Dhamma, but we made the decision to live in domicile. And in hindsight, it has given us a lot more flexibility to work with stealth steel and to foster that business because I have so much time off and I'm home so much. And when I am traveling, all I need is my laptop. And I'll do a lot of the design work on the laptop while Lauren's doing customer, um, customer feedback or running the laser. And then when I get home, we kind of switch and I'll run the laser. And, you know, so we, we have made it a definitely a flexible portion of our lifestyle that, um, I don't think we could do with another type of main career, like, uh, like we have at ups,
Speaker 6:even if he would've stayed active duty air force, there's no way. I mean, he's, he's able to commit much more time to this side hustle with the airlines. And he ever would have been able to stay in active duty. So it's, it's definitely a partnership. We have our niches of what we kind of ended up doing, but he's able to really help out. And I wouldn't, you know, we've got three kids and, um, I would have never been able to do it solo, but if he wasn't contributing the way he's able to,
Speaker 4:as far as for the person out there that really doesn't understand your business model, e-commerce how that operates. How would you describe that to somebody that really doesn't know how money is made your type of business?
Speaker 5:So the kind of the life cycle of the transaction for us is let's just say someone approaches us, they come to our website, or e-commerce specifically, you got to open yourself up to communication channels so people can email us. They can come through our website, they can come through Etsy, they can come through Facebook messenger. Uh, they can call Instagram, like we have as many, as many social media, web, web outward facing ways to contact us as, um, as possible. So people contact us and then they put in the order for, let's say a, a, a cup. Um, at this point we inventory cups. So we invent, we have an inventory of products when someone orders something, we just pull it off the shelf and, uh, we customize it for whatever they want. Let's say they're a, uh, an F 16 pilot at, um, you know, whatever base at Luke or something. We put an F 16 on it with their call sign. We use, we particularly use Shopify for our website. Um, and Shopify is the best thing for someone, both a novice and an advanced business, in my opinion, because it is so simple to use. They do so much of the difficult stuff like calculating shipping and doing all that and setting up transactions and managing your fees and your credit card fees and all that stuff. They take care of everything. The customer pays the bill, we get the order. We fulfill the order. We have a shipping account with ups and USBs through Shopify, stick it in the mail. Uh, and then we get, um, a payout it's it's that some for us
Speaker 6:Shopify charges, a monthly fee, and then a percent of a transaction fee, um, at C charges a little bit higher transaction fee, but also both Etsy and Shopify are extremely intuitive. They are so easy to set up and modify as your business changes. And that, I mean, we were so intimidated by that. And I would say we've had great experiences with both of them and we keep both of them open. Cause they just each have their own little niche. Um, the help, the customer service, all of that with Shopify is just, we have my cousin owned, owns a business, that's an eCommerce business and she used Shopify and she's been a good mentor for us to talk through too. So definitely look for people who you can kind of bounce these ideas off of because it's been so helpful to us. And, um, we've really been able to kind of figure it out and had great experiences.
Speaker 4:You mentioned the credit card, a bottle opener. Is that something that you guys are the first ones to kind of come out with it? Was that a, an idea that you had, or
Speaker 6:what would it actually came from was we had the platinum Amex, which is actually stainless steel. And so, um, and Kyle was just like, if he knew that the water jet machine could get really detailed cuts. And so he's like, it'd be really cool. We should try cutting a, B two out of it. And we did, we did a few different things. And, um, so they do make like, you'll, you'll see other credit card shaped bottle openers, but as far as cutting out an aircraft, um, I mean, cause we've got now, you know, like the Apache, for example, there's some, there's some like super detail, the pillars and different engine details that we're able to cut into a stainless steel bottle opener that I feel like I haven't seen anywhere else.
Speaker 5:Yeah. It's definitely like the concept of a bottle opener. You can stick in your wallet. I don't know that is new or anything like that. But like Lauren said, our laser focus initially on the military aspect of things and customizing, and I think that's what we bring to the table for our customer base is like, if you email us and say, Hey, I find the seven 67, 300, we know what that is versus, you know, a 400 or a, um, you know, a seven 57 or like in the military, a 15 C versus an E. You know, we bring the aviation, understanding the things and are able to like people all the time will order something for their guard unit in like, let's say Connecticut. And we know that the Connecticut guard unit is C one 30 H's. So we'll email him back and be like, Hey, I just want to make sure you want to see one 38 with the, you know, the flying Yankees patch on the back. And like, they're enthralled. They're like, Oh my gosh, how do you know that? I didn't know the variance that's that's our niche is knowing the aviation side of things. Like Lauren said, we don't, we don't exclusively do aviation. Um, like right now we're actually doing some stuff for a marketing firm. Um, in Chicago, like a big industry, a big nationwide marketing firm contacted us for some graphic design work. And then that led the products and tee shirts and stuff. So like, we'll take whatever comes our way. But, um, we stumbled into this through the aviation side of things and it has been really good to us and that's what we enjoy. We both enjoy it, Lauren and I both kind of revel in the different options that we can provide to the aviation industry.
Speaker 4:You've got people that are thinking through this process of, Hey, I want to launch a business, whether it's t-shirts or this or that. And a lot of times they could be paralyzed just with the details. My question for you is when it comes to your experience, when you first started, how many products did you have, and have you noticed that you've got a couple of key products that really kind of bring a lot of customers and revenue to your business versus having a lot of products initially? What are your thoughts on that? Uh, we, we started off,
Speaker 5:I mean, the first thing we sold was a single American flag with a, B two on it, and then it was an a 10 and that was like all we had,
Speaker 6:we were just trying to pick aircraft that were at the base we were at.
Speaker 5:I would say you stay focused initially, but find something that you enjoy, you know, the, the standard cliched word, do something you love so that you enjoy doing it. Like if you're into, um, Christmas trees, I don't know, pick something that you find interesting and kind of laser focus on something small and narrow there. One of the things that, you know, when you, when we were thinking about doing this podcast was like, what advice would I give someone? And like, there's a ton of, there's a ton of mistakes that we've made along the way. Or like sometimes we got lucky. And one of them that I would say is like, manage your risks. So initially starting out, you don't want to take these huge chunks. Like we're a debt free business. We have never taken a loan. We have never taken any money at any way, shape or form. We did everything from the customer paid for something. And there were some time periods there where we were either almost losing money or making like a dollar or$2 and we would just bring something in and then, you know, buy the next product and so on and so forth. So we were very managed in our risks and that comes with your product offerings too. At first we didn't offer much of anything and it was, we waited until customers showed an interest or we would put out a design that was free to us to create digitally and see if it hit. And if it hit, then we would try and seek out a customer. And if that customer purchased it, that would kind of fund the next expansion. So we were like very cognizant in our expansion to be managed and mitigated so that we weren't biting off more than we could chew. We didn't, we didn't take out a hundred thousand dollar loan to go buy equipment. I bought my equipment through a government auction site and that's one of our like gold mines that I think our business would have gone a different direction. Had we not purchased our laser, which is a pretty expensive piece of equipment. Like our setup is anywhere from probably like 40 to$50,000. Now, maybe, maybe even upwards of that. And we paid like four grand for it, you know, and we got it brand new. Um, and that was just through being patient and waiting for something through a government auction to come up. We purchased it from NASA. So just being, being focused on something you enjoy and then being mitigated in your risk so that you don't try and go too wide too soon, you know, stay, stay narrow, go deep, figure out what your niche is, and don't be afraid to fail. I mean, you're going to screw some stuff up. We've, we've spent some money on some products that we've sold, very little of what we've learned along the way, like how to go about that differently so that we don't repeat that failure again.
Speaker 4:What is something the average Joe would never know about the type of business that you guys run, that you were surprised to learn yourself or that you learned after getting into it?
Speaker 5:Holy smokes so much. I mean, they're like pick your, pick your topic like financially, um, the structure of businesses, like I'm a business. I have a, uh, master's and I have an MBA. So I mean, like I knew enough about business to be dangerous, but like, you know, LLCs and liability and accounting and tax structure and, you know, collecting sales tax, like there's a whole, that whole side of things. Um, the, the actual, the actual, like, um, marketing side of things, like thank God for Lauren being savvy on Instagram and how to like reach out to influencers. And like that has been huge. And a single one of, one single connection we made on Instagram led to over 600 cups sold in one, one outreach.
Speaker 6:Even that's a Testament to this pilot network, you know, like they there's other, um, accounts, Facebook groups. I mean, if we get someone, our biggest win is if someone posts one of our products in a, a squadron Facebook group or a WhatsApp, or like this RST, I mean, this is, this is huge for us to be able to get that kind of exposure and to hear from someone else in their network, like, Hey, I can vouch for these guys. They do good work. That has been 100% our success. And we've had customers who we, you know, 100%, they are not accurate in what they're requesting. And we have to just it's the whole, the customer's always right, because we don't want to burn a single bridge because this word of mouth and this network is totally our bread and butter and has been the secret to our success from, um, from the beginning. It's, it's so important to us. And it shows, you know, even throughout Kyle's career, like you said, from people with people have come out of the woodwork from pilot training all the way through, um, you know, just captains, these swollen with and ups or across the gamut, that word of mouth referral. And this network is just so huge.
Speaker 5:Yeah. That's the two things that I would advice I would give people who are looking to start out is to reiterate that don't never burn a bridge. You might want to cross one day, you know, you might not need it today. You might not need it tomorrow, but I can't tell you how many times somebody has just completely helped us out along the way. Uh, and had our relationship gone differently that would not have been the case. Um, and then don't like sell yourself short. Don't like, for me, I was real self conscious about like my artistic ability. Like I hooked in pilot training. I hooked the bold face because my instructor said it looked like I wrote it left-handed with a Korean. Like, I, I mean, like from an artistic perspective, I was like, I got nothing to offer. I'm not going to learn how to use the software. We use Adobe illustrator. Like I'm not going to be able to learn this software. I don't understand what was vector drawings are, but have I have been able to teach myself how to do all of that through, you know, talking with Wolf squadron posters to like Googling on the internet. So like give, be confident that you can do something that you might not know you're able to do.
Speaker 7:Mmm.
Speaker 5:But it's gotta be something you enjoy doing. Like, I don't mind on my leg. I, I enjoy drawing the different aircraft that we use for our laser on my layovers. Like if I didn't enjoy that, it would be completely different. Um, you know, so keeping all of that in mind is important. You just don't know where things are going to take you. Like I said, at the very beginning, this was an accident for us. There were times we got a letter in the mail that said like, Hey, congratulations on your business. You owe us first quarter taxes. And we're like, no about, so that was two, three years ago. But now like, you know, now we have a process and, um, you stumbled along the way for sure. But we're, uh, we're definitely grateful for all the people that have helped us out.
Speaker 6:I was just going to say, you know, listening to your audience too, there's been so many ideas that we've had that we're like, Oh, this is going to be huge. We're going to love this. And it won't hit. And you're like, why is this item of all things so popular, but you just kind of, you go with thing you listened to, to what your customers say. And, um, you know, just, just keep an open mind.
Speaker 4:You know, I, I think, uh, what you just said is truly like the Holy grail of success, right? This whole idea of listening to your audience. I don't know about you guys, but in, in the businesses that I have, I've got RST and different online businesses as well. The best ideas that we have received have not come from us.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah. That's absolutely true.
Speaker 4:It's come from the very, uh, the same people that we want to serve and have a desire to serve, or the ones that end up bringing the best value and ideas to us. Uh, and the key is like you're saying is to listen and then find a way to implement it. What about misconceptions? What would you say is probably the biggest misconception in your type of business?
Speaker 6:I think for us, well, for one, I don't think people totally understand how we get from what they're ordering to the product. So it's a lot of design time that we do on the computer before we're actually running the product. So when you're looking at the cost of that, you know, time, our time is very valuable to us. And it took us a while to believe in that and know like, okay, it's worth charging for this. Um, so that's probably one. And then,
Speaker 5:and it kind of, you hit on this earlier. Like people get put off by the difficulty of starting a business.
Speaker 7:Mmm.
Speaker 5:And I'm not to, like, it's not easy at times. They're like, there is a lot of screw ups and like heading down the wrong path, but like all in all, if I were to, if I were to do it all over again, like absolutely, and I'd have done it faster, I'd done it faster rather than a bigger at had done it because it wasn't as hard as I always thought, you know, you take those entrepreneurial classes in, uh, in college and in your MBA. And you're like, man, these guys are crazy going through these long hours and working whatever. And it's not like those are some sensational stories at times. Like, like I said, it's hard, there are some things that you have to learn along the way, but for the most part, if there's something you're interested in and passionate about, and you're willing to be confident and fail a little bit, like there's, there is a niche and a place for everyone to make money for, for guys that are staring down a furlough, don't look at it as a, um, you know, I get it. Like, it's horrible, it's a financial stress, but take it as an, be an optimist, take it as an opportunity to try something new, do something different, do something you love, bring your family on board, um, and go for the ride and just see where it takes you.
Speaker 6:And honestly, with some of those risks, like we were told, you know, a lot of people talk about ups first year pay and making it through that. And we were very intimidated going into that year and had we not had this, um, you know, it was P it's all of the benefits of owning your own business from, um, you know, just paying off, paying for internet and phone and, you know, some of those, uh, business expenses that you can cover for having an in home business and honestly really helped us out during those hard financial times. So, um, while it's a risk, it's also, you see
Speaker 5:quickly that, um, how helpful it is as well.
Speaker 4:Alright. So if another crew member came up to you and said, Hey, man, I love the type of business that you're doing. And, uh, I'm about to lose my job. Uh, I've got a little bit of money to invest. Um, what would be one of the fastest way I could probably make a little bit of income, um, doing what you're doing? What would you say?
Speaker 5:Uh, I think I would return it with a question and I would say, well, what is it? What is it that you're the most interested in? And like, turn it into a conversation about trying to find out what it is that drives that individual, whether it's a skill set that they have, um, a or a hobby that they're interested in, you know, like a perfect example, I'll just throw it out there. Um, I know a couple of guys that are like huge into general aviation and, um, have a lot of, a lot of guys in our community, military and commercial pilots have built their own planes. And, uh, you know, this guy is building planes and I'm like, we're having this conversation. He's like, so eventually one day I just started consulting people on building their own planes, you know, making YouTube videos and, and whatnot on ways to build planes. And I was like that, you know, that's a perfect example of taking something you're passionate about. Maybe even have a professional skill, you know, he's a pilot, um, and turning it into a business opportunity. So, um, if it's specific to e-commerce, I would say, Hey, if you think you have a product or a skill that you want to market online, I would look into, uh, one of the web hostings like Shopify or Etsy. There's a couple of other ones, a couple of their really good options out there. And, uh, keep your costs low, you know, take, take that$1,500 to put, uh, put, um, you know, maybe a half of it up to the admin side of things, creating a business, getting your LLC done. Don't pay someone to do that stuff for you initially, like go online, do your research, spend a hundred bucks of your own money, create your own LLC. Um, and then get your website going. Don't pay someone, you know, a business advisor, a thousand dollars to create an LLC for you. And now you're only left with 500 bucks to do something, you know, take, take that little bit of money, create the admin side of the house and then take the rest of it and work on a product or a concept that you can then push out and utilize the stuff that's free. Utilize Facebook, utilize the groups that you're in your networks. Um, RST, you know, like this type of stuff is the lifeblood of our business. Um, we pay for nothing we pay for no advertising whatsoever. Um, so use, take that 1500 bucks and use it smartly and manage your risks. Uh, right off the bat, a lot of guys will like run to a franchise for me. Like I just can't handle, I can't handle that upfront risk of paying, you know, a hundred thousand or 200,000 or even 20,000 to get in on a business. Like that's not for me, but that is for a lot of people. So do what you're comfortable with, do what you're good at. Um, and just let it ride.
Speaker 4:What would be one of the worst, uh, pieces of advice that you've heard when it comes to your space?
Speaker 5:I would say like the kind of hinting towards that business advisor stuff, like we've been approached a few times, like we had an accountant and we were looking for an accountant and that accountant tried to like upsell us. This is in Missouri. He tried to upsell us on a lot of things that sounded like really shiny. Like, you know, Hey, we can help with your business plan. We can help, uh, register you as an S Corp or a C Corp. And, you know, we'll pay$1,500 here and 15 there. And next thing you know, you're looking at like a$10,000 bill and we were going to do it. We were absolutely going to go down this road. And then Lauren and I sat down and I did just, just like infantile small amount of research. It was like, you know what? I think I can make an LLC myself for like a hundred bucks look into the, if you're, if you're a veteran, Oh yes. Benefits of
Speaker 6:being a veteran owned business. Because for example, the state of Kentucky didn't charge us for an LLC fee because we were deciding, you know, there's also benefits to being a woman owned business. So as we were filing for an LLC, we were trying to decide, you know, how to file that. And it ended up that it made more sense for it to be a veteran owned business. So just really kind of digging in, and there's, there's so much, you can figure out on your own though, with all of the resources online. I mean, even the software we've learned, we did that through YouTube tutorials or, um, you know, we didn't hire a web designer because Shopify has such good programs already in there. And
Speaker 4:biggest mistake. How would you define that? I would say
Speaker 5:our biggest mistake is we, we burn through a lot of product. Like our business is, uh, is a production business. So we like, for instance, somebody will order a patch and, uh, we have to draw it, I'll draw the patch. Lauren will draw the patch and then we'll put it on the laser and it like, just doesn't look right. And we will go through that process over and over again. And if I took a picture of our office right now, you would see hundreds, thousands of dollars worth of, of mess ups, screw ups, financial losses to our business because we didn't get it right the first time. Um, and that happens every single day, every single order. So what did I learn from that? I learned that if I have to build in attrition into my prices, like, um, if somebody orders 20 cups, I have like a 10% attrition rate that I planned for now, because I know that screw ups are gonna happen along the way. Some of them will be operator error. Some of them will be equipment area, but, um, it's been costly. Like the amount of failures that we have is pretty significant. Um, over time they've gone down, but, uh, that's probably our biggest, probably not knowing that it was going to be like that going into it. And then, um, just the financial, like every time we burn a cup and it screws up, we kind of look at each other, like, man, it just watched the money go down the drain because we know how much that just cost us, but it happens all the time and you just have to get used to it. You have to get used to screwing up
Speaker 4:before we, uh, end this podcast. Is there one part in piece of advice that you'd like to give our community?
Speaker 6:I mean, I think we've, we've really tried to drive home how important the, you know, not burning bridges and reaching out to your, um, community is an, but I also think as far as I don't, I don't know if you want to call it a mistake going off of the last question, but especially coming from the air force where you're not, you know, nepotism and put, you know, all the, you doing favors and things like that is looked down upon. It was very, almost kind of awkward for Kyle to reach out to people. He knew to say like, Hey, we have this business. Whereas my background was more in sales. So I was a little bit more comfortable with that. But, um, people want to support each other, especially during, you know, hard times. So don't be afraid to really put yourself out there and let the people, you know, that care about you and have known you have this new idea. You have, I think you'll be surprised at how much people really do want to support each other through all of this.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I would, uh, I'll kind of parlay that and say like, use your networks, RST being a huge one right up front, use your networks. Um, do some, find something that you enjoy doing, and it doesn't have to be the thing that you're professionally trained in. You know, pilots oftentimes can look at themselves as like a, you know, a one trick pony. And all I do is take off and land and, and you know, some stuff in between, but you know, so many guys have these incredible hobbies that they could really monetize and turn into something powerful. Um, don't be afraid to fail, but also be confident, you know, like go through it, go through whatever it is you're trying to do as if you're going to succeed. But when you don't like, don't, don't turn that off as a, Oh my gosh, I can't do this. Um, turn, use it as a, wow. Okay. How can I go about this differently? What do I need to learn? Um, and I think you'll be wildly successful. I mean, like I said, for us specifically, I spent a day, I went an entire day and sat down with the guy that did our lasering before we had our own laser. And just like, listen, just listened for like 12 hours straight. Um, and utilize that network that we were in at the time, um, to create our business, which has been really successful and, um, something we truly enjoy doing. And I think anyone could do what if we can do it, anyone can do it. It's like when you're in the air force, uh, or you're in the military and you're in survival school and you're going through this like miserable experience. And you're like, man, if so-and-so who I know is a lot, you know, is a pushover can get through this. Then I can get through it. Like if, if we can run a business and be successful, anybody can run a business and be successful. Um,
Speaker 6:and be patient too, because like we started our Etsy shop. It was on our son's birthday, actually December 12th. And for us, our Christmas sales make up until, I mean, we had a couple, the past few months in 2020 have been crazy. But until that, until recently our Christmas business sales from holiday squadron parties to Christmas gifts make up a 80% of our sales. So by the time we let that ride through that first, we were blown away when that took off. So it was like if we wouldn't have had that whole year of just kind of putting things out there on social media and putting the bug out there about what we were offering, you know, that was slowly getting people's wheels, turning of ideas that they might want for gifts. And then sure enough, by the time they were ready, I mean, we, it just took off. So, um, you know, be patient with timing,
Speaker 4:Kyle and Lauren, we appreciate you guys taking your time to share your inspirational story with our community. And, um, we know your time is valuable for any entrepreneur it's valuable and for anybody for that matter, uh, we wish you the best of luck. And, uh, thank you once again for serving this community.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Well, Hey, thank you. Thanks for being the, uh, kind of the centerpiece for all of us to connect and learn about the, not only the aviation industry, but now, uh, see side businesses and let us all help each other out. So thanks for doing what you do
Speaker 6:and we're happy if anyone ever wants to reach out to us. And thank you all for listening. We did create a promo code for anyone that's listening. It's M R S T side hustle. I think we'll get that posted too, but, um, we really appreciate you all listening and thank you so much for inviting us on good luck to everybody.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to today's episode. We hope you've enjoyed the flight and remember fly airplanes because it's fun.
Speaker 4:Not because you have
Speaker 8:[inaudible].