In short
Podcast Summary: The Side Hustle Show - Episode 574
Overview In this episode of *The Side Hustle Show*, host Nick Loper interviews Monisha Misra, the founder of BoardsbyMo, a charcuterie board business that has achieved over $1 million in all-time revenue. The discussion focuses on Monisha's journey from a side hustle to a full-time business, her marketing strategies, and the importance of customer service and community engagement.
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Key Highlights
Transition from Side Hustle to Full-Time Business
- Monisha started BoardsbyMo while working full-time in software sales.
- She reached a significant revenue milestone ($100k) within the first year, which encouraged her to pursue the business full-time.
- Monisha set a revenue target to ensure stability before quitting her job, successfully meeting it by May 2022.
Marketing and Growth Strategies
- Social Media Utilization:
- Monisha grew her Instagram following from 20,000 to 120,000 by posting content that reflects her passion and personality rather than simply adhering to algorithmic strategies.
- She emphasizes the importance of authenticity in social media, sharing not only beautiful product images but also behind-the-scenes content.
- Diversified Marketing Channels:
- Beyond Instagram, Monisha found success on LinkedIn and through local press features and awards.
- Active participation in Facebook groups and experimenting with TikTok contributed to her outreach.
- Corporate Catering and Workshops:
- A shift from individual orders to corporate catering significantly increased revenue.
- Monisha offers workshops in collaboration with local businesses, serving dual purposes of marketing and community engagement.
Customer Engagement and Service
- Consultative Approach:
- Monisha's business model evolved from being transactional to providing consultative service, helping clients choose the best catering options.
- Feedback and Continuous Improvement:
- Collecting customer feedback is a staple in her business to ensure continuous improvement and customer satisfaction.
Revenue Streams
- The bulk of revenue now comes from corporate catering, private workshops, and business consulting courses.
- Monisha created educational resources for aspiring food entrepreneurs, addressing gaps in the market for creative business education.
Team Building and Delegation
- Monisha hired a team of seven, allowing her to delegate tasks and focus on business growth.
- She emphasizes the importance of hiring people who bring different strengths to the table and encourages a culture of collaboration and shared ideas.
Future Aspirations
- Monisha is exploring the potential for a physical storefront to enhance customer reach and provide grab-and-go options.
- She envisions expanding the business through franchising and further engaging with creative entrepreneurs.
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Key Takeaways
- Embrace Authenticity: Being true to oneself in marketing can resonate more with audiences than strictly following trends.
- Focus on B2B Opportunities: Transitioning to corporate catering can yield higher revenue than individual sales.
- Hire Smartly: Building a team that complements your skills can relieve pressure and facilitate growth.
- Stay Agile: Market demands shift rapidly; staying adaptable is essential for long-term success.
- Seek Continuous Feedback: Customer insights are invaluable for improving service and product offerings.
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Conclusion Monisha Misra’s journey illustrates the potential of turning a creative passion into a thriving business. By leveraging social media, diversifying revenue streams, and fostering community relations, she has significantly scaled BoardsbyMo. This episode serves as an inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to navigate the complexities of growing a side hustle into a successful venture.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Three years to a million dollars in all-time revenue starting as a side hustle. What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show. Now a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Because your nine to five may make you a living, but your five to nine makes you alive. When we first met today's guest, she'd gone from zero to a hundred grand in sales in nine months on the side and in the middle of a pandemic. But another two years have gone by today. We've got a Where Are They Now episode with Side Hustle Nation's favorite meat and she's entrepreneur, Monisha Mitzra. Welcome back to the Side Hustle Show.
0:39Hey, Nick. Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely. So if you're just tuning in, if you're new to the show, encourage you to go back and check out episode 434 if you missed it. That was our original interview with Monisha, but I can catch you up. So here's where we left off. At that point, you're selling charcuterie platters locally, delivering them through a third-party delivery service for logistics, they're doing virtual board building workshops, almost like team building workshops for corporate businesses who are stuck on zoom. And then based on the volume of inbound messages that you started getting, had started teaching other would be charcuterie entrepreneurs, how to get started in this business.
1:18And at that time, the boards by Mo Instagram account was the primary marketing channel, it had grown to around 20 ,000 followers in that first year. But catch us up. I now see that Instagram is six times larger, around 120 ,000 followers. But what else has been going on the last couple years? It has been a wild ride to start. So I definitely never thought that this would get any further than a side hustle. I was working my nine to five at the time when we first chatted and I was doing both. So I had my nine to five in software sales. And then I was doing boards by Mo basically at nights and weekends.
1:56And so much has happened. I ended up quitting my nine to five last May. So now I'm doing this full time. We still have a lot of different avenues and revenue streams, and we're continuing to grow. But this is now my full time business. So I have no other responsibilities. What was it like to make that leap? Was there a revenue or profit target that you were looking for where you felt comfortable giving notice at work? What was it? I feel like I was really lucky to work for a company that was so supportive. And they knew what I was doing from the very beginning. They were also one of my biggest corporate customers.
2:29And that was a huge component of me being able to make that jump. But it was so scary because I was losing stability. I was losing security. I was essentially saying, I hope I make enough money to take care of myself. And I basically set a revenue goal for myself. And I said, if I can hit this consistently for six months in a row, then I'll quit and I will do this full time. And I set that goal in November 2021. I hit it May of 2022. So I put in my notice and I was very transparent that this is what I was looking to do. So I didn't catch anyone off guard or by surprise. But yeah, it was definitely one of the scariest things I think I've ever done.
3:09Even when you have that track record of revenue, it's still like, does that continue? It's still like, you know, at least what it was for me. when I first quit my job or my one and only corporate job, it was still, am I allowed to do this? Can I really cut my own paycheck? Is this going to be a thing? But I like that trading, the security of the job for the roller coaster, but the potential higher upside of doing your own thing and all of the boxes that that checks in terms of personal creativity and flexibility and freedom and the financial rewards as well. So you quit your job a little over a year ago now and you're full-time into Boards by Mo.
3:45What else has happened in terms of growing the, I mean, maybe we start with the Instagram following, if that was the primary driver at the time. What have you seen work to 6X the account the last couple of years? I think three years ago, when you asked me the question about Instagram, I probably said something along the lines of, post consistently, use hashtags, tag other companies and accounts and all of that. And while that did get me to a good place from a following perspective, an engagement perspective, I noticed around like year one or two, one or a half maybe, it just stopped being fun for me because I was just doing what I thought what I was supposed to do on the app.
4:25And I was just pumping out content and I was sending out so much information and I was trying to just do what the algorithm needed me to do. And it became became a chore. It actually became work that I didn't enjoy. So I just stopped and I started only posting things that made me happy and only started posting things that I enjoyed and videos I enjoyed creating. And I think that has been a huge game changer for me. I think people now see a more organic side of me. It's not very PC all the time. I'm not the most professional person on Instagram because I just started showing a little bit more of myself and what makes me happy and why I started this business.
5:07And I think that's been a huge part of the growth on Instagram specifically. But now there's also so many other avenues to market from a social perspective. There's Facebook groups, there's TikTok, which I tried. I really tried on TikTok, but just couldn't. My heart wasn't in that one. LinkedIn has been huge, huge, huge for me as well. So I think I'm just kind of learning that from a marketing perspective, there are a lot of things that you have to do. But if you're not organic and you're not transparent about what makes you happy, people can see right through it and they can start seeing it more as a marketing initiative rather than what you're actually enjoying.
5:43Right. That's the thing with all of these. I mean, that's one of the questions is, you know, of all of the cheese plate influencers that popped up in the last three or four years. What do you think made yours stand out? was it that transparency and like letting the personality come through versus just, this is a very highly curated feed of salami picture, you know, it's like, it's a weird, I don't know. Yeah. So, I mean, there is a very huge benefit to doing what I do in that the product itself is very aesthetically pleasing. If you see a charcuterie board anywhere you go, you're like, oh my gosh, that's so pretty.
6:19So there's a, you know, an automatic advantage there. Yeah, it lends itself to like a visual marketing medium for sure. Totally. But then when I started adding my own content, so some of my content now on Instagram, it's not just a picture of a cheese board. It's me doing a day in the life when I take you to the kitchen with me and I show these massive wheels of cheese that we're getting from our wholesaler and almost like the not sexy parts of the job where I'm just sitting there for eight hours and I'm just cutting these big wheels of cheese and there's salami in my hair. It's a more organic and realistic depiction of what it's like to be a small business owner.
6:56It's not always rainbows and butterflies. It's not just these pretty pictures. That's like the last part, the picture before the order's out the door. And then there was a hundred things before, and then there's a hundred things after. And when I started showing that aspect of it, I think is when, again, the Instagram account itself was growing, but then people started understanding that there is a little bit more value than someone who's just organizing meat and cheese on a plate. Yeah. Do those posts have the same kind of virality where other people are tagging their friends or sharing it around in order to grow the following?
7:29I don't know. Sometimes, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes people will tell you Instagram is only about videos and reels right now. That's all you should be posting. But then I'll post a picture because I still like pictures and that'll take off. I have likes hidden on all of my posts because I don't want to see it. I actually don't care how many people look at it because at this point it's become something that I'm just doing kind of for myself of this makes me happy. And I actually haven't looked at likes or anything like that in a very long time. And I will keep it that way. I like this aspect of showing kind of the behind the scenes because it is very, at least on the surface, the trends would be just showing the finished product and say, look, here's a beautiful visual.
8:13And that's what people want to see. That's what the algorithm them seems to be rewarding but there's a whole lot of other stuff that goes into it so we recently went through this kitchen remodel and the builders had a pretty prolific instagram account and it's a lot you know a lot here's you know the before and after is like again a very visual product visual medium like show this transformation but then when their stories and sometimes on their reels too they would show kind of like the demolition process where it's like that does not look good like oh you tore this house down to the studs and but it's like that probably you building trust.
8:44Like, oh, these guys, you know, through every step of the process, here's how it works. So I think there's a lot of businesses that may lend itself to that. And I could probably be better at posting at all. And I hardly ever post anything, but like how the sausage is made preferably. But let's go over to LinkedIn. You mentioned that as another marketing avenues. What's been going on over there? So a huge part of our business has now shifted to corporate catering. So when I first started, I was basically driving around town, just delivering cheese boards to individuals who wanted it for a date night or to gift it as a birthday present or something like that.
9:19That is such a small part of our business right now, but it was the backbone. It's what created the whole company, but it's not a big of a revenue stream as it used to be. Now we're almost completely corporate catering. So your big conferences, your company meetings, your presentations, your 200 person event that you're hosting, that is what we're getting booked for now more than anything else. And so LinkedIn is a great avenue to find those prospects. We've just become really active on posting just people really like to see the day in the life on LinkedIn too. As a small business owner, I always talk about things that are going well and challenges that I've had.
9:59I talk a lot about challenges on LinkedIn and that tends to go over really well. We're all facing the same challenges and a lot of people don't like talking about them. So that's a huge part of it. So I just, again, I try to keep it as organic as possible. Nothing's really curated. I don't have any type of schedule there. It's more about when something exciting happens or something challenging happens. I share that. Are you doing proactive outreach to these companies in the local area and saying, hey, we can cater your event or we think if you have an event coming up, like, or is it inbound? Okay, fun update since last time.
10:33I have seven employees now, which I did not have before. It was just me in the past. So I have a salesperson who focuses on cold outreach, retaining previous clients, all of that good stuff. So she does all of that. She reaches out to those people that are engaging with us on different platforms. She reaches out to other businesses that are next door to the businesses that we just worked with or catered for. So she is 100 % sales. I don't have to do that anymore for the first time in like a decade. And it feels really good. Yeah. Delegation. Okay. Yep. And then I have someone on marketing. So she does all the email newsletters, the automation, the campaigns, some of the social posting, and the other five help me in the actual kitchen with the styling.
11:23What kind of stuff are you sending out on email newsletters? How are people getting on this list to begin with? So have to have that subscribe to our newsletter button on our website. And then everyone who's ordered from us, obviously, has opted into receiving information. So these newsletters basically have upcoming events. So those workshops that we talked about, we do workshops with other local businesses in the Boston area so we can use it as a co-marketing effort. So we talk about workshops coming up. We talk about any deals, any promotions, anything that we're kind of working on. We have some new products that we released a couple of weeks ago.
11:58So we've been doing a huge campaign and launch around those products. So we try to really stay on top of those marketing emails because I have this fear that's probably not that outlandish, but I have a fear that one day all these social media platforms are just going to go away. Like they're all going to get banned. Something's going to happen. And I still need a way to talk to my people. And the only way to do that is to have an email list so you can continue reaching out. So I think this fear started when all of that political debates were happening with TikTok. I was like, okay, what if this now moves over to Instagram?
12:30I have 120 ,000 people on Instagram. And if we just lose that one day, where are my customers going to come from? So the email marketing is the forefront of our marketing strategy now. We can lose everything else, fine. But the email marketing is probably the most important thing to us at the moment. Yeah, get people off of these rented land platforms onto something that you have a little more control over and influence over. You know, the algorithm may change, but at least I could still get you in your inbox. And I think the most important part about that is you have to actually be talking to people who want to hear from you.
13:02So there's no buying lists or purchasing lists. It's people who have a genuine interest in your business and want to know what's coming up or what's happening. And when you can tailor the language of the email to actually speak to them, they engage, they click, they buy, they do all these things. And that's not something that happens as often or as frequently from just posting a picture of a cheese board on Instagram. Yeah. From the picture of the cheese board on Instagram to an email subscriber, is there a consistent call to action to say like, hey, come on over here versus just, hey, subscribe to our newsletter?
13:36Like the last thing anybody wants is, well, yeah, just another newsletter or another email in my inbox. Totally. There has to be an actual want. So we'll post things like our cheese of the month. Like this is people who are actually interested in charcuterie boards and cheese boards and hosting and entertaining. We do tips and tricks for like hosting a dinner party. So it's a little bit more than just we're selling you, we're selling you, we're selling you. It's like, hey, we're like a thought leader in this space, self-proclaimed, but fine. But we're good at what we do. And we want to share some of those things with you.
14:10So if you subscribe, you'll get that content and you'll have access to it as well. Tell me about these co-marketing workshops, because that sounds like an interesting tactic that I think other people might be able to apply. Oh, it's so much fun. So we find other small businesses in the Boston area, and we essentially work together to host a public workshop that people can sign up for. So we've done this with a little candy company. We've done this with a brewery. We did it with a candle company. We have one coming up in two weeks with an ice cream company. And essentially, we bring people into their space.
14:45They learn how to make a charcuterie board. And then whatever the company is that's hosting can also provide their product as well. So the ice cream company that we're doing in two weeks, they all make a board. And then afterwards, they get a free ice cream cone. And it just shows people, here's another local business that you can support and that you can frequent and purchase from later on. And in this case, the ice cream company or the brewery is promoting the event to their list. Is it free? Are they charging for that? It's like, hey, buy your tickets in advance. So just it's an exposure to a new audience or a new customer database, essentially.
15:17Yeah, exposure to audiences on both ends. So we go through kind of a schedule of when our marketing emails are going to go out, what the language is going to be around it. But the whole idea behind it is to bring people into their small business and then have a fun activity around it. So we have a wine company that we're partnering with at the end of the month, and they basically were doing a 30-minute charcuterie board building class, and then their wine educator comes and does a 30-minute pairing. It's like a cohesive situation. So this has been so much fun. I think we were just in our little team meeting yesterday, and we were talking about how the partnership angle is something we really want to continue building on and maybe even create like a partnership program where there's different tiers of partners, depending on a variety of different things with different perks.
16:04And I think we're going to start building something like that out so we can keep building that Boston database. Yeah, I think this is really cool. And whether or not you charge for it or whether or not it's a moneymaker directly, we never know who's going to be in attendance, right? And now they're hopefully part of your email list and you can remarket to them and they may work at some company that has catering for an upcoming event. Like lots of good things can start to snowball from that. And we've seen examples of people doing this for service businesses as well, not just product businesses where you go and host the lunchtime workshop at the accounting office and talk about web design or talk about email marketing file you can do it virtually like hey come on join my educational webinar educational workshop on topic xyz and even if you have nothing directly to sell like okay now you are the perceived expert the perceived authority on this problem so the next time anybody has that problem in their business or like could you just do it for me like okay now You're the go-to person for that.
17:02I think that makes a lot of sense. I think one of my favorite experiences with these workshops is we did one with a food hall, I think two months ago, and it was a public workshop. And this woman showed up. Her name is Shelly. We love Shelly. But Shelly sat down and she goes, oh, my God, I would love to do this in my office with our marketing team. And she's like, we've been looking for a fun activity to do. And she goes, what's your availability? And she gave me the date. And I was like, I'm going to have Hannah email you right now and you guys can figure it out. while we're in this workshop, Hannah had already sent the invoice, already booked this private team workshop.
17:36We got done with the public workshop that Shelly was at. And she's like, oh, I'm booked. I'll see you in two weeks. You're coming to my office to do this with the team. And it was the coolest cross-sell opportunity that happened literally on the spot. So two weeks later, I go there and then she's like, hey, we have some investors coming in in a couple of weeks. Can you come set up a spread? Because we really need to impress them. So then we were there a couple of weeks later, and it's continuing to grow. And that happens so often because I used to work for an inbound sales company, right? I know the power of inbound.
18:09I know all of that. Nothing beats word of mouth. And it is the easiest, most feel-good way to get a new customer. And this happens so frequently with what we do, especially in the corporate space. So the workshops are never going to go anywhere. Whatever the revenue streams are coming in from that angle. It's just such a good upsell and cross-sell opportunity for everything else. And it's a lot of fun for me. So that's there to stay. Yeah, right. It's that word of mouth snowball effect. I think that's really cool. And then to mix metaphors, that flywheel starts to spin. And the person at this event also knows somebody over here.
18:43The recommendation engine starts to flow. I think that's really powerful. And it doesn't take as many as you might think, right? You just maybe take a handful of getting the right people in the right room and they spider out to their own networks. And all of a sudden you're connected to half the city, you might feel like. Right. And then you start looking at things like your customer acquisition costs and you start looking at all the numbers behind it. And you're like, wow, if I could just keep doing the word of mouth, I could save a lot of money in the long term too. So we do a lot of just in terms of customer service, like that's a huge part of the business for us.
19:16So we always want to make sure no matter who is talking to our customers and our clients that we're providing the absolute best customer service because people talk about that too. And that's just been a huge piece of it for us. Anything specific that you're doing either beforehand, handholding customer-wise or after the catering delivery, after the event, post-game follow-up, collecting reviews or anything like that? I always ask for feedback and I always take whatever they have to say. And to this day, we still do that. That will never change. But one big thing that we had to make a change on about a year ago, this was a kind of a learning experience for us.
19:50Someone booked a smart event. We got there. Turns out what they booked didn't really match with what they were doing, like logistically, long story. But anyway, it kind of made us think like, is this a transactional sale? Or are we supposed to be acting a little bit more as like a vendor consultant? Like, should we be saying, hey, like, what's the setup of the room? I don't think that this product is going to work that well, just because it's not going to be easy to grab. It's not going to be successful. Maybe we should try this instead. We weren't doing that at the beginning because we were just kind of saying like, oh, we have a request.
20:21Let's just fulfill it. We have really changed the way we engage with our clients now. So if someone reaches out and they're like, hey, we have a wedding for 100 people. We would love for you to cater it. Instead of saying, cool, here's an invoice for 100, we'll say, all right, let's just talk about the event itself, the timing, the location. What time would you like us to be set up? Where is the table going to be placed? And we've started acting just more of a consultant instead of just a transactional sale. That has been so great for us because people will come back to us afterwards. They're like, thank you so much for recommending this.
20:52It worked out so much better than what we initially were planning to do. And I think that's something we're drilling into all seven of us now. We have it ingrained that we're always kind of going after this consultative approach, even though it's just food and it's just catering. We're not some software company, but it still goes a really long way when you can share your expertise and show what's worked for other clients and what hasn't and how they can have the best experience ever with our product. Right. And then on the review side, is there a presence on Yelp or Facebook or Google reviews or Google local business, whatever they keep changing the name of it, but anything like that where people can find you through just organic search results?
21:33You know, charcuterie catering Boston or something. Do you show up? Yep, absolutely. We've worked hard on our SEO for the website one. So hopefully that's showing up. Otherwise, need to revisit that. Google reviews every event that's booked with us. We send them a thank you note afterwards and we ask for that Google review and we just word it in a way of your review will help someone else make a decision on whether or not to move forward with us. We'd appreciate it. some people like to leave reviews, some don't, but we get them every once in a while. And it's nice to have, I like to say we have a lot of really, really great reviews on Google and I hope it stays that way.
22:07But I think it's just a matter of asking for it and sharing why it's important for us as a small business to have their review. Do you ever have a service provider who is like so good and so underpriced that you almost don't want to leave them a review? Because like, well, then they're going to get too popular and then I won't be able to afford them again. Let me tell you something. For the last year, I have not shared my general contractor's name with a single person because, one, he definitely needs to charge more. I'm not going to say anything to him, but he is definitely underpriced and he's so amazing at what he does.
22:39I'm waiting for our last home project to be done before I tell anybody about it. Then you can go out and recommend it to the world. Yeah, I totally feel that on more than one level with him because someone will be like, oh, I'm redoing my bathroom. Do you have anyone? I'm like, nope, not right now, but got to keep those under wraps for a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. Did you know there's a disease running rampant alongside hustlers and new entrepreneurs? It's called superhero syndrome. Symptoms include a feeling like you got to do everything yourself, thinking you're the only one who can do it right, and struggling to let go of certain tasks.
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25:01Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash side hustle. Go to shopify.com slash side hustle. Shopify.com slash side hustle. Anything else going on on the top of the funnel driving traffic size? We talked about Instagram. We talked about LinkedIn. We talked about Google. Anything else where people are discovering boards by Mo for the first time? Yeah, I think we have been very lucky. We've been featured quite a bit and just like the local Boston news outlets, whether they are like short news segments or local podcast hosts or articles that are written. I kind of make it a point to keep those relationships going.
25:46No matter what, we might have some really cool things happen in the future. And I'd love to continue working with them on press releases and stuff like that. So the news aspect of it has been pretty big. Last year or two years ago, actually, I won Boston Business Journal's 40 Under 40. And that's been a relationship that we've kept for the last couple of years. And now we're a caterer for them too with the Boston Business Journal, which is nice. Yeah. So it's cool to kind of get our name out that way as well from more of a business perspective. Is that something that you had to proactively apply for?
26:19They somehow discovered you? One of the girls who had taken my business course nominated me for the 40 Under 40 award. And I didn't know that was happening. I didn't even know what the process looked like for that. And I remember I was on a demo when I worked at HubSpot and I got a Slack. And it was a person I'd never talked to before. She's like, oh my God, congrats on 40 Under 40. I'm on this demo for like a huge deal that I'm trying to close. And I was like, oh my God. And the prospect was like, are you okay? And I was like, can we just pause for two seconds? I need to look something up. And it was really, really cool.
26:53That's probably the coolest thing that's happened. Well, there was one other really cool thing. But the Boston 40 Under 40 is definitely on my top two things that have come from this business. And that relationship has been really amazing. So that's been a huge part of it. And then the other really cool thing was we won the Boston Celtics Small Business of the Game Award. So I got to go out on the court during a Celtics game, all for boards by Moe, and that was amazing. I saw your picture on that. I was like, wow, that's... Probably the coolest thing that will ever happen to me. My husband was really jealous on that one.
27:25That one was awesome. So I think like public exposure like that, Boston is such a supportive city when it comes to small businesses. I think, I mean, every city always wants to support local, but Boston does a really great job of showcasing those small businesses and those local businesses. So we've had a lot of opportunity from that aspect, which has been really nice. And I think that's something that just about anybody can do is find those local award lists, find those local best of lists, and either try and build a relationship with the curator or the journalist or the organizer, like some semi self promotional way without being overly spammy.
28:00But sometimes it's as simple as throwing in an application, like if they don't know you exist, they're not going to be able to include you. So I think that's something that just about everybody can do. And it adds credibility to it, like even if you're just nominated, and even if you had a friend nominate you, right? Hey, we were nominated for the best of the East side. I think that could definitely be a thing. There have been more things that we have not won, obviously, in the last three years than we have. And I don't take those things as like, oh, we didn't win this or we lost this. The fact that I'm even able to be a part of that group that's being looked at for an award or for some type of recognition is huge.
28:36And I think all of those things, whether you get them or you don't, they're just such a huge part of this journey. As an entrepreneur, you feel something so amazing when you're even included in these lists. So I take it all as great experiences. Yeah, it was early on in the Side Hustle show was nominated for the best business podcast at the podcast conference. And it added a little bit of credibility to the show never ended up winning, but it was like pretty cool to be included alongside some of my favorite shows. And it was like, Oh, okay, you know, I probably don't have a fraction of the audience that these shows do.
29:10But But now I feel like at least we're in the same ballpark. At least they may be the home run hitter and I may be riding the bench, but at least we're in the same ballpark. So I think that's really cool. And I know that press doesn't always happen by accident. It happens through these relationships, happens by being proactive and prolific and having this, a lot of times, a social media presence and having the positive feedback from customers and a lot of foundation that goes into it. But you can also grease those wheels a little bit by being proactive and being responsive when journalists do reach out.
29:41Let's talk about the revenue side of the equation. We've touched on a few of these different ones where starting out onesie twosies, you know, board delivery for date night, relatively low volume, low margin. And I remember you telling me like definitely lost money on my first few orders because like, hey, 40 bucks and we'll deliver like, oh gosh, going backwards on this stuff. Don't give me PTSD right now. I can't think about that. That's still a part of the business, but not huge. It takes a lot of volume to make up a significant profit percentage on that. So focusing on catering, larger events, corporate events, weddings, stuff like that.
30:15And then these workshops, what else is going on on the revenue side? The catering is number one. Also, when you're doing corporate catering, it's a lot easier to book events when people are not spending their own money. So when they're expensing something, or it's on the company's dime, it's just a little bit easier to get that buy in, right? It's a little bit easier to justify and they say, Hey, I have this budget, and this is what I need. And you can go from there. So that's been really great. The workshops, again, are huge because not only are we doing the public workshops with the partners, we're also doing private workshops for teams and for companies and for bridal showers and things like that.
30:52So that's a huge part of it. The business consulting is still going strong. So three years ago, I started like a business course on how to start a charcuterie board business because everyone was doing it at the time and everyone had the same questions. Then when we all switched to catering, I created a course on catering. And then I saw this really big gap in creative small businesses. If you go look online and you start doing some Google searches on sales and marketing for a small business, a lot of the content is tailored towards technical companies or software companies or apps and how to market that, how to get that out there.
31:29There weren't a ton of resources for creative based companies and how to sell your products. If you're a baker or a charcuterie board company or an artist, creating your product is probably where your passion is, but you may not always know how to sell it. So I had the benefit of being in sales for a decade prior to this and I worked at HubSpot right before. So I created like a small business sales and marketing workshop. And that one was probably the biggest one that took off kind of the quickest because it was such a big gap for creative businesses of how to market, how to send those marketing emails, how to create a sales strategy.
32:03What is a buyer persona? What are you supposed to do to get a new customer? And that one has been a huge part of it. And so once I released that, it somehow got in front of Harvard Business School and I became a managed mentor for HBS. And I was able to talk to young entrepreneurs that were maybe a little bit more creative on how to launch and how to build something that way. And I just think there's a gap in that. There are resources, but I think there needed to be kind of an all-encompassing curriculum almost of how to do this when you're just starting out. Are you teaching those as kind of cohort-based?
32:42For the next 12 weeks, we'll go through this material together. Is this pre-recorded? How do you have that structured? It's on Teachable, so it's pre-recorded, but there is a workbook that is part of it. so you can take the course at your own pace and you fill out the workbook as you go. So it'll ask you things that you, that's when you kind of get really stressed out in the workbook as you realize like, oh no, I don't have my different pipelines broken out. I don't know what my profit is on this specific product. I don't know what my bestseller was last year. It really gets you to do a deep dive and then create processes from there.
33:15So you don't have to keep doing this, like digging through the mud, trying to figure out your analytics and you're reporting, you kind of have a system set up moving forward. What's the price point on that? It's on part of a bundle. I think it's like 400 bucks. And then you can do all three courses, I think for 900. And it ends up being something that you can continue looking back on as long as you need to. So I have taken that sales and marketing workshop myself every year for the last three years. I've gone back and I've done my pricing calculations all over again. I've revamped my sales and marketing strategy based on what's happening in the economy.
33:48It always changes. It's never the same. So you're going to have to go back and kind of keep utilizing it. Okay. And what's a typical customer journey or customer funnel for signing up for either one of those classes or the bundle of classes? That is mainly all coming from Instagram. So that is, and maybe a little bit of LinkedIn, but probably not as much. I share a lot of business tips and tricks on Instagram, like little things like, for example, if I cater a wedding tomorrow, then I set a task for myself in HubSpot to send a happy one-year anniversary handwritten thank you note next year. And that opens up the door to potentially cater a housewarming or a birthday party or a baby shower or whatever their next life event is.
34:32So little things like that that I personally do as a business owner, I share a lot of those tips on Instagram. And of course, that's like the little carrot to, hey, if you want the all encompassing marketing strategy and sales strategy, there's a course for that. In the meantime, there's little things here and there to kind of show what I do on my end. Gotcha. I think that's very, an underrated strategy is this automated follow-ups or even just follow-up reminders. And it's something that my wife and her partner do in their photography business. Cause it's, yeah, you never know that person down the road after the wedding.
35:05Yeah. they might have a kid that they want baby pictures of, you know, they just keep in touch. And some of these couples that have become families, they've been customers now for five, six years. So instead of looking at as a one-time service, one-time acquisition, it's like, okay, what's my lifetime customer value? Or, you know, you don't even have to think about it in those terms, but like, okay, I hope to be their go-to resource for photography, for catering, for power washing, for, you know, whatever it is that you provide, like, okay, I want to be front and or top of mind for that thing.
35:34Absolutely. I have some clients that I have gone through every phase of their life with them in the last couple of years. I was there for their bachelorette, for their bridal shower, for their wedding, and then for their housewarming, just did a baby shower for one of them. And it's so cool because they know what they're getting from me because our quality has stayed consistent and our product has stayed really consistent. And then they know that will show up and will deliver what they're looking for. And it's really nice for us because we build these relationships with them and they couldn't be any better as a form of word of mouth than just reoccurring customer.
36:08The post would be, hey, I've got an event tomorrow. Here's what I'm doing in my HubSpot dashboard to remind me to follow up a year from now. And then the call to action is, if you want to learn more about my sales and marketing systems, go join the course. Or is it like join my email drip sequence for this freebie that leads into it? talking about that part. A little bit of all of it. So obviously you have to give a little to show that you know what you're talking about before you want people to go pay for a course. I still want to keep this as a very organic sell. I'm not trying to get every single person to buy my course.
36:46You really need to be able to sit down and say, hey, I need to create a marketing strategy. I'm not sure where to start. Like, okay, Boards by Mo always post tips and tricks. Like, let me go there. I want to create a very organic reach onto my page. So the funnel is basically me sharing that information for free on my Instagram on a very regular basis. And then to be honest, it's just kind of a hope that you think of me when you realize that you need to create something and you need a little bit of extra help. We don't do any ad spend. We don't promote it in any way. I don't post about it just to post about it.
37:18It's usually always as a follow-up to if you want more of where this came from. Okay, I gotcha. So this transition from individual things to higher ticket, larger platters, larger events, the business workshops and classes. And the other thing I see on the website is corporate gifting. And I have a vision in my head, but I'll let you explain what might fall under that umbrella. Yeah, there's a lot. So people like to get real creative during the holidays. I think companies know that people just want to feel special right now, especially in the state of the economy, there's a lot of layoffs. There's a lot of things going on.
37:55And so we try to do like custom curated corporate gifting. We just partnered with a wine company. We don't have a liquor license, but we partnered with a wine company to where now we can do this wine and cheese, like pairing. It really is whatever our clients want it to be. We've gotten really creative with gifting options and we kind of work together to figure out a solution, but we have a lot of like handheld serve grab and go type gifts that we can do for conferences as people are leaving or Christmas gifts where we drop off at everyone's house with like a custom engraved board with the company name, things like that.
38:28So I think it's all across the board. Yeah, get creative and kind of lead the dance in a way. Well, if you have this in mind, we can figure something out there. As a business owner, you worked hard to make that phone ring, but missing a business call, it's like watching money fly right out the window. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O. It's the smarter way to run your business communications. Quo is the number one business phone system built for 2025, not 1995. In fact, it's rated the top choice for customer satisfaction with over 3 ,000 reviews on G2. Quo works right from an app on your phone or computer, and it means your team can share one number and collaborate on calls and texts, just like a shared inbox.
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39:55And I mentioned, I think you had one, maybe one employee. Yeah, I had Hannah. She's still here. She's my sales girl. But that's who I had when I talked to you three years ago. Okay, what was the next role that you hired for? The next role was probably October of that year. And it was to help in the kitchen during the holidays. I could start seeing that we were getting a lot of orders for the holidays. And it was just me and Hannah. And I was like, oh, I don't know if we can handle this capacity. Like there's too much happening. I was like, this is way too much. I don't want to be in the kitchen for 15 hours and then go to my sales job afterwards.
40:30And so I think my next hire was for kitchen prep. I think the next three were kitchen prep. And then Bridget was hired to help with marketing. And then I think the next two after that were also kitchen prep. So they've all been with me for as long as as soon as they've started. And so it's been really nice, Hannah, being with me the longest. We're starting to hire more for this year's holidays as well. This is the thing, like a perishable product, commercial kitchen licenses, a lot of delivery and logistics. Like there's a lot that goes into that and then trying to find help to do it. Well, but probably Monday through Thursday, probably pretty slow, but I need your help on the weekend for this wedding.
41:12It's like, ah, you know, try to structure that. So that's what I thought it was going to be. I'm going to skip forward. I know you're going to ask me what my biggest piece of advice is for, you know, people doing this. I'm going to skip forward just a little bit. I was holding myself back by not hiring. I was holding myself back by thinking that hiring someone for that type of role was going to be too hard. And I kept saying, like, no one's going to want to work just like a few hours on Friday or a few hours on Saturday. I'm never going to be able to find this. And then I just didn't do it for a while.
41:44As soon as I became so brutally honest about what I needed, I've hired every single person that I have from Instagram. And I have just been so transparent of, hey, this is not rainbows and butterflies. the picture that you see, the picture that you see on my page is the final product. To get there is not that fun and it's not that exciting. But I am looking for people to help me in the commercial kitchen. And some weeks you're going to get like 10 hours and some weeks you're going to get 40. I don't know. I don't have those answers. But if food styling and creativity is something that you are missing and something that you want to do a little bit of, I have a position for you.
42:23It brought me the coolest people. It brought me people who already had their nine to fives, but we're looking for a little bit of a creative outlet for a few hours a week. Hannah ended up quitting her full-time job to join me full-time because she enjoyed it so much. So it is so scary to hire people because you're always worried that they're not going to fulfill the task the way you would, or they don't care as much as you do, or they're not going to be as committed as you do. If you find the right people, if you interview well, if you ask the right questions, it is a complete game changer for your business.
42:54I would never, ever, ever have thought I'd be as busy as we are as a company today, but it's all because I was able to hire those people and actually delegate tasks out to them. It's something that I have struggled with and continue to struggle with is this idea of really taking control by letting go. Like, if I want this thing to go beyond me, I'm going to have to have some help to have it get there. And it's for all those reasons you mentioned, oh, they're not going to do it as good as me. They're going to steal my ideas. They're just not going to care as much. They're going to hurt my brand.
43:26But at a certain point. I know. And I hear from a lot of people who are in the same position as a small business owner. They're like, I just don't think they're going to care as much as I do. And I'm like, yeah, they're not. They are not the ones who created the company. That's unrealistic for you to expect them to care about your company as much as you do. You don't need that. What you need is somebody who believes in what you're selling and believes in you and they want to do a good job for you and for themselves. But you don't need you point to like unless you're looking for a co-founder, but otherwise you just need a good person who believes in your brand and who believes in your product and is going to give you all of that.
44:05But I think when I changed my mindset into that, like I'm not looking for someone who cares about the bottom line and the revenue, all that stuff, right? I need someone who's going to do a great job in the kitchen or in marketing or in sales or whatever it is. Yeah. And to your point, you may not need that person to be full time. Some people are looking for extra hours, flexible work. And so I'll put that down as number one tip. Yeah. 2023 edition, not hiring is probably holding you back. Yes. And I think that's true in a lot of cases. It's like if you have built yourself a job and that was the goal, great.
44:36But to build yourself a business is, you know, how do you practice working on it? And how do you practice being the business owner and not the business doer? I think that's a great way to elevate that. So you got the team in place. Where's your time going these days? What's a day in the life? Day in the life. So we're working on some fun things coming up for the business. Like, hypothetically, wouldn't it be cool if there was a storefront that had boards by Mo on the, I don't know, maybe it would be cool. So we're working on some things there that might potentially come to fruition here pretty soon.
45:07I think for me right now, I'm trying to figure out what's next. What would be driving that? Just to have a dedicated kitchen space, to have foot traffic walking by? Because I'd say, oh, now I've got to sign a long-term corporate lease. That seems like, oh, the liability side of it, that seems risky. I've watched this company get from losing money on a$40 board that was just making it to a random doorstep to really having a name in Boston, which is amazing. And one of the things that we're really missing right now is the ability for people to pick up or order same day or come in and stop in for a grab and go.
45:50Gotcha. So on a pretty regular basis, we get an email sent to our info at address saying like, hey, can I order something for this afternoon? Or hey, one of our team members has a birthday. Can we come pick something up? Well, we work in a shared commercial kitchen and we only go in for certain hours every day. And that's not a possibility right now. So the more and more and more and more we started seeing these requests come in, I was like, okay, what if we did have a physical location where you can grab and go? You can place your pre-orders and come to pick up instead of waiting on us to deliver.
46:22Also, let's take the logistics off of my plate a little bit and let's give them the option. We can still have delivery because there are people who want that convenience. But what if people could just walk in? Boston's such a walkable city. What if people can just walk in and grab a small board for date night that night or something like that? Mind you, I've been thinking about this for a year and a half, and I've talked myself out of it every single time because I think I'm just scared to take the next step, just like I was scared to quit my job, just like I was scared to start this to begin with.
46:51But I think the one thing I've kind of realized is even if it doesn't work, even if it fails so badly, whatever, I've learned like 9 million things just having the conversations for the last few months. And I think that's worth it in itself. And I know myself, I'm not going to let it fail. But I think it would be a really cool challenge. I think it would be really fun to see what it can turn into. And I think it's the next organic step for the business. And then because there have been over 1 ,000 people who have taken the business courses and have started their own companies, I think it would be cool to show proof of concept with the first store and then franchise it out eventually if it works and things are going well.
47:27Yeah, that was the next question is like, does this become a transition from a local business to something that has a more national footprint through franchising or through some other licensing, something like that. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, I hope so. And there's definitely people that I have talked to in the last three years that would love to join and do something like that in a different city. So we'll see what happens. But I think it would be a fun challenge. Yes. Well, we are excited to catch up in another two or three years and see everything you've got year a go-getter and we'll see how this rocket ship continues to launch and continues to fly.
48:05So I'm really excited. Thank you for joining me again. We're going to chalk up that not hiring is holding you back as number one tip for 2023. The 2021 edition, I won't ask you to dig this up out of your memory banks. It was surround yourself with like-minded people, super valuable and definitely underrated. Probably the most overused quote is you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. But there's some truth to that where you got to be with people who lift you up, who have similar goals, and you can all move forward and make progress together. So I like that one as well.
48:37Just my quick notes, takeaways from this conversation, the things that I want to highlight a little bit was building your team. Like, yeah, it's going to be a challenge. Yeah, but you get to choose that challenge thinking of who, not how. And I remember, I don't remember where that, you know, little soundbite comes from, but like, instead of how am I going to get this done? Who can I find to help me get this done? Who has this expertise already? Or how can I get this off my plate? That's something that I need to hear every now and again as well. So appreciate you saying that. Well, I'll add one tiny, tiny thing to that if that's okay.
49:09The other thing that I always try to focus on when I hire somebody is I try to find people who are smarter than me in some capacity. So I know what my weaknesses are. I'm very self aware of what I'm good at and what I'm very bad at. And I think it's really important to me when I hire that I look for people who are generally just smarter than me. I don't want to be the smartest person in the room ever. My team is like a wealth of knowledge and so many random things. And it is so fun to sit down and have a team meeting with them because we all bring out the strengths in each other, but then we also can compensate for maybe something that I'm not the strongest at.
49:43And it is amazing. It is like the best dynamic to be able to look for that. And I think that really takes like setting your ego aside for a second and being like, okay, they're probably going to excel in this and I'm really not great at it, but this could be a huge advantage for the business as a whole. Yeah, it's kind of funny when and very rewarding when a team member comes up. And it's like, well, I know your process says to do it this way. But have you ever heard of this tool? Or have you ever heard of this thing? I love when they do that. It's yours. You own it now. I know you found a better way.
50:12That's fantastic. I never know. I didn't know about that. Oh, my, that's my favorite thing ever is when they come to me with something is one, it just shows me that they care enough to even think about it that way. And they care enough to bring up a new idea or that they've thought about it enough. Like, I wish I could send you the text thread that I walked out to this morning when I first opened it up. And we have a cheese team group chat. And it says, I think Mo's LLC should also have boards by Mo, bundles by Mo, game night by Mo, fresh cards by Mo, jewelry by Mo, podcast by Mo, business by Mo.
50:41I'm like, what is happening over here? What are y 'all talking about? But I think it's like they have so many amazing ideas and they care enough to talk about it and make it fun. And it's just, It's so much, I don't know, I love it. Yeah, and it's impressive you've been able, since it is Boards by Mo, it's still like, it's been able to grow beyond just you. And I think that's something that a lot of businesses maybe get stuck in is like, well, it's in Side Hustle Nation to a certain extent. It's like, well, it's got my mug on the cover. It's got my mug on the homepage. Like, how do you graduate beyond personal brand to be something that has a little bit bigger potential to have this multi-city presence in your case?
51:17But that was one of my takeaways related to the team. also related on the traffic driving side was this idea of simplicity first, diversification second, and it goes for investing as well. But look, we're going to nail Instagram, that's going to be our primary thing. And then we're going to do LinkedIn, and then we're going to do Google, and then we're going to do these partner workshops, like, okay, I'm going to layer on complexity as the business grows, but I don't need to start there. And it can be intimidating starting out like I got to, I got to come up with all these different marketing channels.
51:45And then the last note that I had, and this applies to almost every business out there. It's like finding a way to go B2B. As you mentioned, oh, it's a lot easier to sell when it's on an expense account or when it's not the customer's money. And it's like, yeah, we can do these individual one-off boards and that's fine, but the real money is in catering these big events. It's like, hey, it was one order, but the margin was X or the sales was 10 times higher. And so I think there's a lot of sense to that. We talked with him a long time ago, this guy, Travis Marziani was selling like dance clothing, like for dance kid, I don't know, kid dance programs or something.
52:23But it was like, you know, the big pivot in the business wasn't selling like one-off outfits. It was like, Oh, we could sell to this dance company for their upcoming recital. And it's like, instead of these one-off orders, now we could sell 20 or 30. It's like the shipping is only incrementally more and, you know, such a bigger ticket. So I'm finding that way to go B2B. Even we had a guy, Josh Belk was doing like mobile car detailing. Yes, I remember. I could do, hey, one-off orders. Hey, that's fantastic. But like, oh, he's used car a lot or the car dealership down the road. Like, oh, all of a sudden now we got 10 orders in a week and it was just maybe slightly lower margin, but higher volume.
52:57And like, it just made a lot of sense to find those bigger ticket sales. I listen to all your podcasts, like every single one. And I think that was one thing that kept reoccurring in a lot of the earlier ones I was listening to before we went B2B is I was listening to a lot of these people with their side hustles say like, oh, yeah. And then I started talking to a company and then that was a bigger order. And I think that's almost what spurred in my mind. I'm like, well, maybe I can work a little less in terms of volume and still see the same revenue, if not more. If I started going after the property managers or the company event coordinator, whatever it was, it's been huge.
53:37I think if you have a product that is B2B and B2C, finding a cross-sell or upsell in between to kind of get to both. Because I don't think we'll ever get rid of the B2C. I think it's going to be the back, especially if we open up a store, right? It's going to continue to be there. But if you can create a path for it to turn into B2B in some capacity, I think that's always great. Yeah, I so appreciate that note. And of course, thank you for tuning in. That's awesome. So this episode is kind of like the phase one to 10 of your story. And if people listening, if you want the zero to one, that launch phase, that lift off phase, definitely go back, check out episode 434.
54:14That's our original interview. If you're new to the show, if you're wondering what other episodes might be relevant to you, I want to invite you to test out our new playlist generator. All you got to do is go to hustle.show, answer a few short multiple choice questions, and it'll build you a custom curated playlist based on your answers. Then you can add that to your device or you can pick and choose your favorites there. You can learn what works and you can go forth, go out to the world and go make some more money. Again, that's at hustle.show. It's mobile friendly if you want to do it from your phone as well.
54:43Big thanks to Manisha for sharing her insight. Once again, thanks to Notion for sponsoring this week. You can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. And big thanks for you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, make sure to text it to a friend. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.
From the publisher
Who would have ever thought that cheese boards could earn you $1M?
When we first met Monisha Misra, she had grown her charcuterie board side hustle, BoardsbyMo, to over $100k in revenue in less than a year.
Fast forward to today, BoardsbyMo generates over $1 million in lifetime revenue, and Monisha now runs the business full-time with a team of 7 employees.
In this "Where are they now?" episode, Monisha catches us up on the rapid growth and evolution of charcuterie board company BoardsbyMo over the past few years.
Tune into this episode 574 of The Side Hustle Show to learn:
How Monisha leveraged Instagram and social media to build an audience for her charcuterie board business
Strategies she used to land press features and local awards
Ways she diversified her offerings into workshops, classes, and corporate gifting
Why excellent customer service was key to her success
How you can turn your own creative passion into a lucrative business
Full Show Notes: How I Grew to $1M in All-Time Revenue, Starting as a Side Hustle
Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
