When one marketer couldn’t find what she needed for Valentine’s Day, she turned her frustration into a thriving seasonal business.
Challenge
Sarah was searching for a fun way to surprise her clients one Valentine’s Day — customized candy hearts printed with personal messages. What sounded like a simple idea quickly became a problem. After endless searches, she discovered that no reliable company offered personalized candy hearts the way she envisioned.
Action
Instead of giving up, Sarah decided to create the solution herself. With Valentine’s Day approaching fast, she built a simple three-page website promoting custom candy hearts. She marked up the price slightly above what a small manufacturer charged and began taking orders.
Within days, her site topped Google’s search results for custom candy hearts — and the orders poured in. She was thrilled, until the supplier fell behind and couldn’t fulfill everything on time. It was a painful lesson in depending too heavily on one unreliable partner.
Determined to gain control before the next season, Sarah began researching how to produce the candies herself. She explored options overseas, ordered machinery, and experimented nonstop. Her first machine didn’t even work. But persistence paid off — she eventually found a manufacturer who built a custom solution just weeks before Valentine’s Day.
When the next rush arrived, Sarah worked around the clock, sometimes twelve hours a day, to fulfill orders. It was exhausting — but everything shipped on time.
Result
Her tiny side project blossomed into a six-figure seasonal business. With production handled and her site consistently ranking first on Google, she streamlined operations and shifted her focus back to what she loved — marketing.
Lesson
Sarah never set out to quit her day job. What she wanted was freedom — the kind that comes from knowing you have options. Her side hustle didn’t just earn her extra income; it boosted her confidence and bargaining power at work.
When she couldn’t find what she needed, she built it — and when things broke, she learned how to fix them. Her journey is a reminder that resourcefulness beats perfection. Sometimes, the sweetest success begins with simply deciding to make things happen.
Inspired by a true story originally featured on Side Hustle School by Chris Guillebeau. This rewritten version is independently produced and fully original.