Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Baker Built a 7500 Monthly Side Hustle in Sourdough Starter Consulting
Transcript
- Lucas: So you know how everyone went through that sourdough phase during the pandemic? Well, one baker I spoke to turned that into a serious side hustle. Luna: I feel like half my friends still have jars of starter in their fridges that they're terrified to kill. There's definitely a market there. Lucas: Exactly. Her name is Megan—she's a professional baker at a small artisan bakery in Portland. She started doing sourdough starter consulting on the side about two years ago, and now she's pulling in around seventy-five hundred dollars a month. Luna: That's real money. How does consulting for something like a starter even work? Is it mostly troubleshooting? Lucas: A big chunk is troubleshooting, yeah. People's starters go dormant, they get mold, they lose their rise. Megan charges a hundred and fifty dollars for an initial one-hour video call where she diagnoses the problem and sets up a feeding schedule. Luna: That's pretty steep for a starter consult. But if you've killed a few already, I guess it's worth it. Lucas: Right. And she also offers a weekly check-in package—four weeks, four hundred bucks—where she follows up and adjusts hydration levels, flour ratios, that kind of thing. About a third of her clients sign up for that after the initial call. Luna: So she's essentially selling peace of mind around a jar of flour and water. Smart. Lucas: But the real money is in the corporate workshops. She does virtual team-building events where she sends everyone a freeze-dried starter packet in advance, then runs a two-hour session teaching the whole fermentation process. Luna: Oh, I've seen those. They're huge in tech companies right now. How much does she charge per session? Lucas: Twenty-five hundred for up to thirty participants. She does about two of those a month. That alone covers most of her goal. Luna: And she's doing this while working full-time at a bakery? I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Lucas: She works four ten-hour shifts at the bakery, then dedicates Saturday mornings to consultations and one evening a week for the corporate stuff. She told me she caps it at fifteen hours a week on the side. Luna: Fifteen hours for seventy-five hundred a month. That's a hundred and twenty-five dollars an hour, roughly. That's well above what most freelancers charge. Lucas: Yeah, and she says the key is niching down hard. She doesn't just offer 'baking consulting'—she literally only works with sourdough starter issues. No full recipes, no cake decorating, no bread shaping. Luna: That narrow focus probably makes her look like the expert. If I need starter help, she's the only person I'd think of. Lucas: Exactly. She built her entire online presence around that niche. Her Instagram is all time-lapse videos of starters doubling in size, troubleshooting tips, and client testimonials. Luna: Where did she find her first clients? Did she start with friends and family? Lucas: Mostly local at first. She put up flyers at the bakery where she works and at a few farmers' markets. The first few clients were people who recognized her from the bakery counter. Luna: So she leveraged her existing credibility. That's smart—you don't have to start from zero if you're already in the industry. Lucas: Right. And then she started offering a free five-day email course on sourdough basics. That grew her email list to about two thousand people within a year. Now she sends out a monthly newsletter with a paid workshop link. Luna: That's a classic content funnel. Free value upfront, then a paid offer. But for a baker who might not be super technical, how did she set up the email course? Lucas: She used a simple platform called ConvertKit. She wrote the emails herself over a few weekends. Nothing fancy—just clear instructions and photos of her starter at different stages. Luna: I love that. You don't need a fancy tech stack. Just good information that people actually want. Lucas: One thing she emphasized to me is that she never pretends to be a scientist. She's a baker. She explains things in terms of smell, texture, and timing, not pH levels and microbial strains. Luna: That probably makes her more relatable. If I'm a home baker, I don't want a lecture on lactobacillus. I just want to know why my starter smells like acetone. Lucas: Exactly. And she says the acetone question comes up in almost every consult. Apparently it means the starter is hungry—it's producing more acid because it's underfed. Luna: Now I'm wondering about my own starter. Anyway, let's talk about the downsides. What's the hardest part about this side hustle? Lucas: She said the hardest part is managing expectations around timing. People expect overnight results, but reviving a starter can take a week. She spends a lot of time upfront setting realistic timelines. Luna: So there's a coaching element to it. You're managing emotions as much as fermentation. Lucas: Big time. And she also deals with the occasional client who wants a refund because their starter didn't double in three days. She handles that by offering a satisfaction guarantee—if it doesn't work within two weeks, she'll do a free follow-up call. Luna: That's smart. It shows confidence without being pushy. Lucas: She also had to learn to say no. She used to take on clients who wanted custom bread recipes or full baking courses. That would drag her hours up and dilute her focus. Luna: Staying in your lane is underrated. If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone. Lucas: That's exactly her philosophy. Now, she's even started a small e-book called 'The No-Knead Sourdough Companion' that sells for twelve dollars on her website. It's passive income on top of everything. Luna: And she probably promotes it to her email list. That's a nice little bonus. Do you know how many copies she's sold? Lucas: She said about a hundred and fifty in the last six months. So that's another eighteen hundred bucks that required almost no ongoing effort. Luna: The whole model is really clean. Full-time job plus a niche consulting business that scales through workshops and digital products. Lucas: And the best part is, she's not burning out. She keeps the side hustle to fifteen hours a week, and she says it actually makes her better at her day job because she's more engaged with her craft. Luna: That's the dream scenario. Your side hustle feeds your main work and vice versa. Lucas: Before we wrap up, I want to say something about the show itself. A couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these episodes going—buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if any of these stories have helped you think about your own career differently. Luna: Yeah, it's a small thing that makes a real difference. We keep the show ad-free because of listeners like that. Lucas: Anyway, back to Megan. She's actually thinking about quitting her bakery job in six months and doing this full-time. She's aiming to replace her forty-five-thousand-dollar salary with consulting alone. Luna: She's already at ninety thousand from the side hustle. She can definitely do it. But will she miss the routine of the bakery? Lucas: She says she will, but she's planning to keep one shift a week at the bakery just for the community. That way she stays grounded and connected to the source of her expertise. Luna: That's a great balance. You don't have to burn all your bridges to build a new path. Lucas: Exactly. So if you've got a skill that people consistently ask you about—whether it's sourdough or something else—think about how you might package it. You might be sitting on a seventy-five-hundred-dollar-a-month side hustle. Luna: And you don't need to be a scientist. Just be the helpful expert who solves one specific problem well. Lucas: That's the takeaway. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.