Page 185 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

database, set up an app, and built her own website. The first incarnation was
Raw Food Switch, which correctly represented the concept but seemed a bit
boring. One day Nathalie noticed that the same letters—and therefore the same
website—could be rendered as Raw Foods Witch, leading to a new theme.
Dressing in character with a pointed black hat for photo shoots, she rebranded
the whole business around herself. Nathalie created programs, one-time
products, and individual consultation sessions in the same way we’ve seen others
do throughout the book. Raw Foods Witch grew into a $60,000 business after the
first year.

What’s not to love? Just one thing: “From the outside,” she told me at a
vegetarian restaurant in Toronto, “it looked like all I talked about was raw foods.
No one realized I had done all the programming and really enjoyed the
intersection of business and technology.”

The second business came about unexpectedly after Nathalie began getting
tech inquiries from her raw foods clients who were also creating businesses. She
decided to create a separate brand for tech consulting, operating under her own
name instead of the moniker she used in the other business. Raw Foods Witch is
still a powerful brand—friends and clients report that other shoppers have
mentioned her in the grocery store when they see a cart full of avocados—but
she restructured the business to run on 80 percent autopilot. It still brings in a
good income, but now Nathalie spends her time building the second business.
Instead of doing one or the other, Nathalie effectively franchised herself.

After Nathalie set up the tech consultancy, she had to go back to the raw foods
business and make some changes. The business had always been dependent on
new products and launches, and since her focus was now elsewhere, she had to
reduce that dependency while ensuring that it would produce income on a more
regular basis.

Across the border and a few states away, Brooke Thomas founded New Haven
Rolfing, a holistic health practice. The clinic attracts a clearly defined group of
clients: people who want to address chronic pain and mobility problems. (No
one comes to see Brooke when they’re feeling great.) By the time they arrive at
New Haven Rolfing, many have gone through a long list of other treatments that
haven’t helped. Brooke is a testimony to the treatment she provides—she
became pain-free through Rolfing after twenty-three years, having lived her
whole life to that point with problems related to a birth injury.

Before she moved to Connecticut, Brooke operated similar businesses in
California and New York. With each move she learned a little more about what
to do and what to avoid. Opening the same kind of business in different cities
was insightful. After moving to New Haven, she had filled her client list within