Hustle on the Side

When Bette Nesmith Graham created Liquid Paper, she was at her wit’s end. A single mother working as a secretary and taking odd jobs on the side to make ends meet. The product that started in Graham’s kitchen blender ended up becoming one of the most beloved office supply products of all time. Inspiration struck when she was working as an executive secretary at Texas Bank and Trust, and was flummoxed by the smudges that her IBM electric typewriter’s carbon ribbon left when she made a mistake.

“Graham had to find a way to fix her numerous typos. Soon, an idea struck. She’d previously had a side hustle painting window displays at the bank.  ‘An artist never corrects by erasing but always paints over the error,’ she later recalled. ‘So I decided to use what artists use.’”

I loved hearing how her side hustle painting windows to make ends meet (she was only earning $300/mo as a secretary) equipped her with a unique perspective to solve not only her own problem, but many, many others’ as well (she eventually sold Liquid Paper to Gilette for $47.5 million, which would be just shy of $200 million today). As a scrappy side-hustler, she looked up recipes for tempera at the library, and collaborated with a paint shop employee and her son’s chemistry teacher to get the recipe right for her purposes.

It’s a great example of how experiences in one domain (no matter how desperate the circumstance may be) can transfer into a new context, to the prepared mind. As Henry David Thoreau said back in 1860, “A man receives only what he is ready to receive…” (thanks, Austin Kleon, for sharing that gem here).

Hat tip to The Hustle for posting this great story which brought that familiar pungent aroma from my high school days right back to my nostrils…

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