Before the Side Hustle: What Grandpa Wayne’s Western Auto Taught Me About Making a Living

Long before Etsy shops, print-on-demand and selling something from a laptop were considered normal, my grandfather ran a Western Auto store in small-town Iowa. I didn’t realize it then, but I was watching my first entrepreneur.

By Curtiss Wayne Andrews

Before there was Amazon, there was the hardware store.

Before there was DoorDash, there was a kid on a bicycle.

Before there were Etsy shops, Shopify stores, print-on-demand companies and people filming themselves explaining how they made $742 last Tuesday while you somehow accomplished nothing…

…there was Grandpa Wayne.

And Western Auto.

Growing up, I didn’t think of my grandfather as an entrepreneur.

He was just Grandpa.

His store was just the store.

But looking back now—after spending much of my adult life experimenting with businesses, publishing books, selling products online and trying more side hustles than any reasonable person probably should—I realize something.

Grandpa Wayne was my first business education.

I just didn’t know I was enrolled.

When the Hardware Store Was Part of the Town

Grandpa Wayne operated a Western Auto store in Nevada, Iowa, back when businesses like his were woven into the fabric of small-town America.

For anyone too young to remember Western Auto, imagine a place where hardware store, auto-parts shop, sporting-goods department and general store all got shoved under one roof.

You needed a spark plug?

They had it.

A wrench?

Probably.

Fishing gear?

Sure.

Something for the lawn?

Go see Wayne.

And unlike today’s shopping experience, there wasn’t an algorithm quietly following you around the store suggesting:

CUSTOMERS WHO PURCHASED THIS SOCKET WRENCH ALSO BOUGHT THESE SIX COMPLETELY UNRELATED THINGS.

There was a person behind the counter.

He knew what he sold.

More importantly, he knew the people buying it.

That’s the part I’ve come to appreciate more as I’ve gotten older.

The store wasn’t simply a place where merchandise changed hands.

It was a relationship business.

Customers came in because they needed something, but they also came in because they knew who was standing behind the counter.

Reputation mattered.

Your word mattered.

If you sold somebody something lousy, there wasn’t an endless supply of anonymous customers arriving tomorrow from a Facebook ad.

You might see the unhappy customer at church.

Or the grocery store.

Or the gas station.

Or probably all three.

Customer retention was considerably more awkward in a small town.

I Thought I Was Hanging Out With Grandpa

I spent time around that store as a kid.

At the time, I certainly wasn’t standing there thinking:

I should carefully observe these interactions because they will inform my entrepreneurial philosophy several decades from now.

I was a kid.

There were things to touch.

Displays to investigate. Gumball machines to shake down.

Probably something I wasn’t supposed to be messing with.

But those memories stayed with me.

I remember the feeling of a business filled with actual stuff.

Shelves.

Boxes.

Tools.

Parts.

Merchandise that had to be ordered, unpacked, stocked and eventually sold.

That’s an important distinction when I compare Grandpa’s business with the strange little enterprises I’ve built in the internet age.

Because Grandpa couldn’t upload a JPEG and call it inventory.

His inventory weighed something.

Grandpa Had to Buy the Stuff Before He Could Sell the Stuff

This may be one of the greatest differences between his entrepreneurial world and mine.

Running a retail store required capital.

Real capital.

You needed a physical location.

Fixtures.

Signs.

Utilities.

Inventory.

And if you guessed wrong about what people wanted?

Congratulations.

You now owned a lot of stuff nobody wanted.

Compare that with something like print-on-demand.

I’ve been involved in POD since 2020. The basic proposition still amazes me when I compare it to Grandpa’s generation.

I can create a design. Actually, thousands of them.

Upload it.

Make it available for sale.

And in many cases I don’t manufacture the physical product until somebody actually buys it.

Grandpa would probably have stared at me for several seconds.

“You sell it before you have it?”

Yep.

“And somebody else makes it?”

Yep.

“And somebody else ships it?”

Correct.

At that point, I’m fairly certain Grandpa would have begun questioning exactly what part of this business I was actually doing.

Fair question.

But that’s the extraordinary opportunity the internet created.

It separated entrepreneurship from owning a storefront.

The Store Couldn’t Stay Open While Grandpa Slept

Here’s another thing we’ve forgotten.

Grandpa’s Western Auto couldn’t sell a wrench at 2:14 in the morning.

Somebody had to unlock the door.

Turn on the lights.

Stand behind the counter.

Help customers.

Ring up purchases.

Restock shelves.

Close the store.

And come back tomorrow.

Weather didn’t particularly care.

Neither did customers.

The physical business required a physical human being.

Today, I’ve had books sell while I was asleep.

I’ve sold print-on-demand products while watching television.

Someone I’ve never met can find something I’ve created while sitting hundreds or thousands of miles away from me.

That would have sounded like science fiction when Grandpa was standing behind the counter.

And yet there’s a danger in thinking technology somehow eliminated the work.

It didn’t.

It moved the work.

Grandpa stocked shelves.

We optimize listings.

Grandpa arranged displays.

We make thumbnails.

Grandpa bought newspaper advertising.

We worry about keywords.

Grandpa wondered whether enough people in Nevada, Iowa, wanted what he had stocked.

We stare at analytics wondering why 11,000 people apparently looked at something and none of them bought the damn thing.

Different tools.

Same anxiety.

Grandpa Had Word of Mouth. We Have Algorithms.

Marketing may be where the contrast becomes funniest.

A local retailer like Grandpa relied heavily on the community.

People knew the store.

People told other people.

Maybe you advertised locally.

Maybe you ran a promotion.

Maybe somebody mentioned the business at church or work.

The potential audience had a geographic boundary.

Today I can publish something from my house and potentially put it in front of people around the world before lunch.

That’s incredible.

It’s also completely overwhelming.

Because Grandpa wasn’t competing with every hardware store on Earth.

We are.

Put a T-shirt online today and you’re competing with millions of other designs.

Publish a book and it joins an ocean of books.

Open an Etsy shop and discover 4,700 people apparently had your brilliant idea three years ago.

The barrier to entry became dramatically lower.

So did the barrier for everybody else.

That’s the trade.

Modern entrepreneurs need less money to enter the game.

But we’re entering a much bigger game.

The Old Store and My Obsession With Old Stuff

There’s another connection I didn’t recognize until recently.

I keep finding myself drawn to things from Grandpa’s world.

Old retail.

Old advertising.

Forgotten brands.

Roadside Americana.

Vintage Christmas.

Blow molds.

The physical objects that used to populate ordinary American life before everything became an app, a subscription or a brown cardboard box sitting outside your front door.

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time lately researching vintage holiday blow molds for The Glow That Won’t Go Out.

And there’s something familiar about that world.

Collectors talk about finding decorations at Sears.

K-Mart.

Hardware stores.

Local retailers.

They remember going shopping with their parents and seeing rows of glowing Santas and snowmen waiting to be taken home.

Those weren’t merely stores.

They became memory factories.

Nobody bought a plastic Santa thinking:

My child will become weirdly emotional about this object forty years from now.

They just bought a Christmas decoration.

But the kid remembered it.

That’s what fascinates me.

A Western Auto sign.

An old department-store catalog.

A blow mold Santa.

A roadside attraction.

An old diner.

These objects become little anchors connecting us to people and places that aren’t there anymore.

Maybe that’s part of why Grandpa’s store still occupies space in my head.

What Grandpa Understood That the Internet Can’t Automate

Technology changed almost everything about starting a small business.

But it didn’t change the most important part.

You still have to give somebody a reason to buy from you.

That’s it.

You can dress it up with modern terminology.

Conversion rates.

Funnels.

Customer acquisition.

SEO.

Engagement.

Optimization.

But Grandpa understood the fundamental equation without any of it.

Somebody walks into the store with a problem.

You help solve it.

They leave satisfied.

They come back.

They tell somebody else.

That’s business.

And increasingly, I think the people who succeed online are the ones who rediscover some version of that old Western Auto relationship.

Answer the email.

Stand behind what you sell.

Don’t pretend garbage is great because you need a sale.

Listen to what people actually want.

Be useful.

Earn trust.

Act like there’s a reasonable possibility you’re going to run into your customer at the grocery store tomorrow.

The internet could probably use more of that.

Grandpa Wayne Never Had a “Side Hustle”

This is where Side Hustle Revolution enters the story.

I dedicated the book to Grandpa Wayne.

Not because Grandpa spent his evenings watching videos titled 7 PASSIVE INCOME STREAMS YOU CAN START TODAY.

Thank God.

He belonged to a generation that didn’t need a trendy name for figuring out how to make a living.

You worked.

You sold something useful.

You solved problems.

You built relationships.

You took risks.

You watched expenses.

You kept going.

What we now call a side hustle is really an old instinct wrapped in new technology.

The revolutionary part isn’t that people suddenly discovered they could make money outside a traditional paycheck.

People have been doing that forever.

What’s revolutionary is access.

Grandpa needed a store.

I need a laptop.

Grandpa needed shelves.

I can need server space.

Grandpa needed inventory.

Sometimes I need a file.

Grandpa’s potential customer might have lived five miles away.

Mine might live five thousand miles away.

That’s an astonishing change.

But the principles underneath it would have been completely recognizable to him.

The Best Business Lesson Grandpa Never Actually Gave Me

I wish I could tell you Grandpa sat me down one afternoon in Western Auto and delivered a perfect speech about entrepreneurship.

He didn’t.

Most important lessons don’t happen that way.

You understand them later.

Sometimes much later.

What Grandpa taught me came from watching him.

Showing up.

Knowing your business.

Knowing your customer.

Selling something people actually need.

Taking care of your reputation.

And understanding that there is no magical substitute for doing the work.

Technology makes starting easier.

It does not make succeeding automatic.

That’s an important distinction in a world filled with people promising that AI, dropshipping, publishing, content creation, affiliate marketing or whatever arrives next Tuesday will generate effortless money.

There is no effortless Western Auto.

And there’s no effortless internet business either.

Somewhere Between Western Auto and Amazon

Sometimes I wonder what Grandpa Wayne would make of all this.

I think the technology would amaze him.

The idea that I could create a book and make it available around the world without personally storing boxes of copies?

Incredible.

Selling designs without owning a screen-printing operation?

Ridiculous.

Running a business from a couch?

Suspicious.

But I think he’d understand the motivation immediately.

Because underneath the software, algorithms and terminology, we’re still doing what people like Grandpa have always done.

We’re trying to make something useful and convince somebody it’s worth paying for.

The tools changed.

The storefront changed.

The reach changed.

The opportunity changed.

The hustle didn’t.

And maybe that’s why, all these years later, when I think about entrepreneurship, I don’t picture Silicon Valley.

I picture a Western Auto store in Nevada, Iowa.

Shelves filled with nuts and bolts.

Customers walking through the door.

And Grandpa Wayne standing behind the counter.

I didn’t know it then.

But class was in session.

For Grandpa Wayne

I dedicated Side Hustle Revolution to my grandfather because the lessons behind the book started long before I ever heard the term “side hustle.”

The book is about finding opportunities in the modern economy, experimenting with ideas and building additional income without pretending there’s a magic button that does the work for you.

Grandpa wouldn’t recognize most of the tools.

I think he’d recognize the idea.

And that’s enough for me.

The Skill Every Side Hustler Needs — Even If You Hate Selling

My dad sold million-dollar systems out of a suitcase. I sell books and ideas from a laptop. The technology changed. The part that actually matters didn’t.

By Curtiss Wayne Andrews

There is a word that makes a surprising number of creative people uncomfortable.

Sales.

Tell someone you’re starting a side hustle and they’re excited.

Tell them you’re creating a book, designing T-shirts, opening an Etsy shop, freelancing, consulting or launching an online business and they’ll cheer you on.

Tell them they need to learn how to sell?

Suddenly everybody looks like you just invited them to spend Saturday afternoon at a timeshare presentation.

I understand it.

For years, I thought selling meant convincing somebody to buy something they didn’t particularly want.

I’ve come to believe almost the opposite.

Good selling is helping the right person understand why something you created might solve a problem they already have.

And I learned that lesson from someone who was selling long before Instagram, Etsy, Amazon KDP, TikTok or the phrase “side hustle” entered our vocabulary.

My dad.

When Selling Required a Suitcase

Back in the 1980s, my father worked as a national sales representative for Syva, a company known for diagnostic testing technology.

His version of working remotely didn’t involve Zoom.

It involved airports.

Lots of them.

He traveled around the country selling sophisticated drug-testing systems to organizations that needed reliable testing capabilities.

That meant courts.

Correctional facilities.

Major corporations.

And other customers where getting the answer right actually mattered.

There were no email funnels quietly working while he slept.

No Facebook retargeting ads.

No Shopify dashboard telling him somebody in Des Moines had abandoned a shopping cart.

If he wanted to make a sale in Texas, there was a decent chance he had to go to Texas.

Suitcase.

Rental car.

Hotel.

Presentation.

Meeting.

Dinner.

Another meeting.

Airport.

Repeat.

My brother and I became quite familiar with takeout and TV dinners.

But here’s the thing I didn’t appreciate when I was younger:

My father wasn’t really selling equipment.

He was selling confidence.

The customer had a problem. His job was to understand that problem well enough to explain why his company’s solution made sense.

That’s sales.

And nearly 40 years later, that’s still sales.

Your Side Hustle Has a Sales Department

Here’s the bad news for anyone hoping to start a side hustle without learning to sell:

You already have a sales department.

It’s you.

If you publish books, your Amazon description is a salesperson.

Your cover is a salesperson.

Your title is a salesperson.

If you sell print-on-demand products, your thumbnail is a salesperson.

If you’re a freelancer, your portfolio is selling.

If you’re a consultant, your first conversation with a potential client is selling.

If you make sourdough journals, caregiver logs, coloring books, training planners or some wonderfully strange book about vintage Christmas decorations, you are selling every time you explain why someone should care that the thing exists.

I’ve learned this firsthand.

Paper Sack Publishing encompasses books in wildly different niches.

That means I can’t simply make something and announce:

“LOOK! I MADE A BOOK!”

Nobody cares.

Nor should they.

The customer cares about what the book does for them.

That’s a very different question.

Stop Selling the Thing

This may be the biggest lesson I’ve learned.

Don’t begin by selling the thing.

Sell the outcome.

Suppose you’ve created a sourdough baking journal.

You could say:

“This is a 120-page sourdough logbook with recipe pages and fermentation tracking.”

Perfectly accurate.

Also perfectly capable of putting someone to sleep.

Instead, understand the frustration.

A home baker finally creates an extraordinary loaf.

Perfect crust.

Great oven spring.

Beautiful crumb.

Then tries to recreate it three weeks later and realizes:

“I have absolutely no idea what I did.”

Now you have a problem worth solving.

The journal isn’t really selling blank pages.

It’s selling the ability to repeat your best results.

That’s sales.

The Same Lesson Applies to Almost Everything

A caregiver log isn’t paper.

It’s a way for an exhausted family to communicate important information between shifts.

A training journal isn’t a collection of grids.

It’s a way for an athlete to see progress that can otherwise disappear into hundreds of individual workouts.

A family recipe book isn’t blank recipe pages.

It’s insurance against Grandma’s stuffing disappearing when nobody remembers exactly how she made it.

A book about vintage collectibles isn’t merely information.

It’s helping someone recognize the object they just pulled out of an estate-sale garage.

Once you understand the problem, selling becomes considerably less uncomfortable.

You’re not trying to manipulate someone.

You’re explaining the connection between their need and your solution.

My Dad Had to Get on an Airplane. You Have It Much Easier.

This is where today’s side hustler has an almost ridiculous advantage.

My father’s potential customer might be 1,500 miles away.

Today, yours might be 1,500 miles away too.

The difference is that you can reach yours before breakfast.

You can publish something on Pinterest.

Post a short video.

Send an email.

Write a blog article.

Test a new Amazon cover.

Change a product description.

Run a small advertisement.

Rewrite a headline.

Publish another version.

The cost of testing an idea has collapsed.

That’s extraordinary.

But it creates a trap.

Because when technology makes distribution easy, people start believing distribution is selling.

It isn’t.

Getting 10,000 people to see something nobody wants isn’t a business strategy.

It’s just a larger audience ignoring you.

Listen Before You Pitch

My father spent his career sitting across tables from customers.

That forced him to listen.

Online entrepreneurs can easily avoid that step.

We can sit alone with our laptops and convince ourselves we’ve created exactly what customers want.

Then launch it.

Crickets.

Then blame the algorithm.

Sometimes the algorithm isn’t the problem.

Sometimes nobody wanted the thing.

This is why reviews, search terms, Reddit discussions, Facebook groups, customer questions and even negative comments can be extraordinarily useful.

People will tell you what bothers them.

They’ll tell you what existing products get wrong.

They’ll tell you what they wish existed.

Your job isn’t always to invent demand.

Often, it’s simply to notice it.

Learn to Describe What You Do in One Sentence

Here’s a useful exercise.

Explain your side hustle without using industry jargon.

If you can’t explain why someone should care in one or two sentences, your customer probably can’t either.

Not:

“I provide innovative lifestyle solutions designed to empower entrepreneurial creators.”

I don’t know what that means.

Try:

“I create practical journals that help people track complicated things they don’t want to forget.”

Now I understand.

Clarity sells.

Confusion doesn’t.

Rejection Isn’t Nearly as Expensive Anymore

This may be the biggest advantage today’s entrepreneur has over my father’s generation.

Imagine flying across the country for a presentation.

Hotel.

Rental car.

Meals.

Hours preparing.

You walk into the meeting.

They say no.

That’s an expensive no.

Today?

You can test a product listing and nobody clicks.

Change the headline.

Try again.

Run an ad and nobody buys.

Stop it.

Change the offer.

Try again.

Publish a book and the cover isn’t working.

Replace it.

Your failure can cost $20 instead of $2,000.

That’s an incredible gift.

Yet people still treat a failed experiment like a verdict on their ability.

It isn’t.

It’s information.

Don’t Confuse Persistence With Repeating the Same Mistake

This is another place where sales teaches an important lesson.

Persistence matters.

But if something repeatedly doesn’t work, doing exactly the same thing harder isn’t necessarily perseverance.

Sometimes you need a different product.

Different audience.

Different price.

Different headline.

Different image.

Different offer.

Different channel.

The modern side hustler has access to something my father’s generation would have killed for:

almost immediate feedback.

Use it.

Sales Isn’t a Dirty Word

I’ve spent a lot of my career around creative people.

Writers.

Designers.

Marketers.

Artists.

People with ideas.

And I’ve watched talented people sabotage themselves because they believe the work should somehow sell itself.

Occasionally it does.

Usually it doesn’t.

You can write a terrific book nobody discovers.

Create a brilliant design nobody clicks.

Offer a useful service nobody understands.

The quality of the product matters enormously.

But so does your ability to communicate its value.

That’s why learning sales doesn’t make a creative person less creative.

It gives the creativity a chance to survive.

From the Suitcase to the Sofa

Sometimes I think about how strange my working life would look to my father during his traveling-sales years.

I can create a product at home.

Publish it without owning a printing press.

Sell it to someone I’ve never met.

Market it while sitting on my couch.

See whether people clicked.

Change the message.

Try again tomorrow.

He needed plane tickets, expense accounts, presentation equipment and a suitcase.

I need Wi-Fi.

But beneath all that technology, the fundamental exchange hasn’t changed very much.

Someone has a problem.

You listen.

You understand it.

You explain why what you’re offering might help.

And then they decide.

That’s sales.

Not trickery.

Not pressure.

Not convincing somebody to buy junk.

Understanding people well enough to make something useful — and communicating that usefulness clearly enough that they recognize it.

If you’re building a side hustle, learn that skill.

The platforms will change.

The algorithms will change.

The software will change.

The trendy business models will definitely change.

But somebody will always have to answer the customer’s most important question:

“Why should I buy this?”

Learn to answer that well, and you have a skill considerably more durable than whatever platform happens to be hot this year.

My dad needed a suitcase to do it.

You can probably start from the sofa.

Want to Build Something of Your Own?

Curtiss Wayne Andrews is the author of Side Hustle Revolution: Launch Your First Money-Making Project With Zero Experience, a practical guide to moving from “I should really start something” to actually testing, launching and selling your first side project.

Because the goal isn’t to spend another six months thinking about starting.

It’s to find out whether somebody will pay you for what you can create.