SIDE HUSTLE SPOTLIGHT
Stephanie Tuba is an accountant and body care side hustler from Farmington, Michigan. During the day, Stephanie works in corporate accounting, specialising in managing large-volume inventory selections, analysing and keeping track of large company debts, equity, and credit lines, and dealing with multiple small businesses under one parent company.
Stephanie has been in accounting for the last six years and graduated from the University of Michigan in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting.
Q. What is your side hustle, and when did you start it?
A. I started my side hustle, Tarabusi Creek, in 2014 while moving out of my parent’s house to attend the University of Michigan. I was going through their garage looking for items to take with me and saw a box of old soap supplies in a box on one of my dad’s shelves. Curious about it, I pulled it down and was hit with a wave of nostalgia; me and my dad had tried making soap back when I was about ten years old as an in-home science and craft experiment.
So, upon finding this box of almost-10-year-old supplies, I started researching different soapmaking methods and roped my dad back in for one last summer craft experiment before I left for college. We looked like mad scientists out in his garage, with my mom giving us the curious (and maybe a little concerned) eye every time she walked past, and we made our first batch of cold processed soap. It was a refreshing crash course on soapmaking, and we were excited about the little cube of soap we had made. My dad and I sliced it up the next day, and from then on, I was hooked.
Q. What inspired you to start?
A. Although I started making soap at 19, I didn’t start treating this like a business until a couple of years in. Then, around 2016, one of my posts online went viral during a small (and very casual) Black Friday sale I was running, and I ended up with almost 200 orders in one night.
For someone who hadn’t had more than ten orders a month for the past two years, this was the pivot point where I decided to launch this into a full-blown side hustle. I mean, I had so many orders to fulfil, suddenly! I was a bit panicked, but I got them all out in about two weeks and had to shift my entire mindset into how to scale my hobbyist operation into something that could handle that many orders at once.
So, the decision to start soapmaking as a hobby and the decision to turn it into a business were two different decisions, about two years apart from one another. Since then, it has been one heck of a journey, and I have learned so much along the way.
Q. Where do you see your side hustle five years from now?
A. So, if you had asked me this even last year, I would’ve told you that I’d love to see myself quitting my full-time job and launching into this feet first, with a brick-and-mortar store, employees, and a global expanse of networks in which my products were travelling. However, after the last year of business, I’m perfectly okay keeping this as a side hustle.
And, I know, that’s probably not what most people with side hustles want to hear. I’ve come to find that everyone wants to bask in the glory of being self-employed when things are going well, but no one wants to talk about what happens when things don’t go well. Last year, right about this time, I was going through the unfortunate process of having to let go of my one employee and break a $50,000 lease.
It was a devastating setback for my business, and to keep myself sane and make sure the bills were paid, I leaned harder into my full-time job. Although I think we’d all love to be making enough money with our side hustle to live off, it comes with many risks; that risk can be advantageous but also terrifying, and being purely self-employed is not for everyone.
For a lot of people, working for “the man” is perfectly okay. For now, I’m looking forward to rebuilding my side hustle in a carefully crafted manner, one that doesn’t necessarily need to save me from my corporate life one day.
Q. Do you have any advice for someone considering starting a side hustle?
A. Don’t fall into the trap that the only way to find happiness is through making your side hustle your main hustle! If you genuinely think that’s what you want to do one day, though, it’s doable.
Some of the things to consider before dumping the 9-to-5 job include whether or not you’ll be able to afford to do everything the correct way; do you have enough income coming in to put yourself on payroll and pay the associated payroll taxes? Do you have enough to pay for your health insurance (if you’re in the US)? Do you have enough to put into a proper retirement account? All of these things, while I was working to expand, ended up being too much for me to take on at the time, especially while trying to juggle a corporate career.
It can also be a lot of work managing employees, running a store, office, or manufacturing space, and dealing with how to scale up if you’re in production. Business owners wear many hats, which can become exhausting if you aren’t organised – and even if you are.
Side hustles can be a great way to earn a little extra cash, but they can also become a ton of work. It’s easy to get burned out in making your passion into a business, so don’t forget to stop now and again to reflect on if this resonates within you for the long haul. And if not? It’s okay to put it down. Not every hobby needs to be profit-generating!
I love making bath and body products, and I can’t imagine my life without Tarabusi Creek. In the almost ten years since I made soap with my dad in the garage, this side hustle has looked different during various stages of its development; just like we go through personal growth as we get older, your side hustle will most likely take on other forms too, and it’s essential to pay attention to the growth patterns and growing pains you come across in your small business along the way, just like you would with yourself.
