How We Turned an Opportunistic Side Hustle Into an 8-Figure Business

Jake and Jess Munday didn’t plan on building a neon sign empire, but some smart decisions along the way helped them turn an exploratory side hustle into a massively successful business.

My wife Jess and I were not planning on starting a company when the idea for Custom Neon came into our lives. Jess was on maternity leave with our first baby from a role that she loved and fully intended to return to. I was already running a very successful teeth-whitening e-commerce business. 

But then, we tried to purchase a custom neon sign for my son’s room and found it more difficult than we anticipated. With my years of experience in e-commerce and social media marketing, I immediately felt like there was a gap in the market and that we had the potential to fill it. It felt like an idea we couldn’t not explore. 

I’m so glad we did. Within three months of deciding to test the idea as a side hustle, we were selling $10,000 worth of signage per week. By the end of our first year, we had brought in several hundred thousand dollars in revenue, and we decided to both focus on this full-time. Now, five years later, we’re averaging over $1 million in sales each month.

Looking back, here are five of the things that helped us grow to where we are today. 

1. We found a way to test the market before we dove in

Before we purchased a single neon sign, I placed ads on Gumtree and Marketplace to see if there was interest from potential customers, using generic neon sign imagery I found online. When people reached out that they were interested, I told them that the product was unfortunately no longer available, but I would be in touch if I got more in stock. We were getting a handful of inquiries each day, which may seem small, but this was just a local ad. It was a really promising sign for us to move forward. 

Still, we didn’t want to invest too much upfront. We decided to use our own wedding as an excuse to buy a few neon signs that we would begin to rent out as a way to gain capital for the business, which cost us about $250. The aim was for the pictures from our wedding to demonstrate the ambiance and aesthetic that you can create with strategically placed LED neon signs, driving demand for similar signs from other engaged couples. 

It worked: Before we knew it, the rental calendar for our initial signs was full, and we had begun getting inquiries about custom signs. It soon became clear this business could be so much bigger than the side hustle gig we anticipated.

2. We let UGC and word of mouth drive sales

During the first 12 months, we didn’t need to spend a dime on advertising, instead relying on