Indie Bites

<p>Today I’m joined by Jared Maddern, the founder of <a href="https://beamhouseleather.co.uk/">Beamhouse Leather</a>, a leather supply business he’s grown to £45k in sales in the past 2 years. Some of you might know I run a handmade leather wallet business on the side, called <a href="https://whitstablecraft.com/">Whitstable Craft Co</a>, and so this is a little look into the other part of my life.</p><p>Although Jared doesn’t run an indie SaaS, I wanted to bring slightly different perspective of being an indie entreprenuer. We discuss how building a business in a growing market has and selling pick axes to gold miners strategy has led to his growth, what it’s like working with physical goods and why he put £10k of his own money to take the business to the next level.</p><p>📹 <a href="https://youtu.be/Y3rb1zS58ZQ">Watch this episode on YouTube</a>.</p><p><strong>What we discussed in this episode:</strong></p><ul><li>Jared’s taco truck</li><li>How he started leathercrafting</li><li>Where he got his first leather from</li><li>How to learn leathercrafting</li><li>How Beamhouse leather started</li><li>Starting on Etsy instead of his own website</li><li>The effect of the pandemic on hobbies</li><li>Investing £12k for leather machinery</li><li>Investing personal money</li><li>Wanting to keep the business as a side project</li></ul><p><strong>Recommendations</strong></p><ul><li>Book: <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/a/5782/9781785044229"><strong>How to Win Friends and Influence People</strong></a></li><li>Podcast: <a href="https://www.mfmpod.com/"><strong>My First Million</strong></a></li><li>Indie Hacker: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/orramanleather/?hl=en"><strong>Chris Orraman</strong></a></li></ul><p><strong>Follow Me</strong></p><ul><li><a href="https://twitter.com/jmckinven">Twitter</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/indiebitespod">Indie Bites Twitter</a></li><li><a href="https://youtube.com/@indiebites">Indie Bites YouTube</a></li><li><a href="https://indiebites.com/membership">Join the membership</a></li><li><a href="https://jamesmckinven.com/">Personal Website</a></li><li><a href="https://whistablecraftco.com/">Buy A Wallet</a></li><li><a href="https://2hourpodcast.com/">2 Hour Podcast Course</a></li><li><a href="https://podpanda.co/">PodPanda</a> (hire me to edit your podcast)</li><li><a href="https://indielife.fm/">This Indie Life Podcast</a></li></ul><p><strong>Sponsor - </strong><a href="https://ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools"><strong>Ahrefs</strong></a></p><p>Thank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring Indie Bites. Ahrefs is the most complete and valuable SEO tool on the market. Bootstrapped companies such as VEED and Transistor have used Ahrefs extensively to understand how to craft their SEO strategies, which have been such a pivotal part of their growth.</p><p>If you want to get more traffic from Google on your side-project, I’d recommend first trying out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free. You’ll see what keywords your pages are ranking for, understand how Google sees your content and discover what changes you need to improve your search ranking. You should also check out their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/AhrefsCom">YouTube channel</a> to understand both the basics of SEO and some more advanced techniques.</p><p>To try out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, head to <a href="https://ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools">ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools</a></p>