The Stubbornness, the Spork, and the Side Hustle

Starting before you’re ready, the Upstate Way

The time: October, 2014
The place: My kitchen table in Gilbertsville, NY
The mood: Anxious, but excited.

I didn’t know that I was starting a company. I had a mixing bowl, a bag of baking soda, and a spork. I had some ideas for in-your-face product names, basic camera skills, and the kind of reckless bravery that comes just a little bit from desperation.

My name is Kristina Strain, and I started Badgerface Beauty Supply eleven years ago. I had no credentials, no grand plan. I had $200 in my bank account, and I was about to spend it on little glass jars for body scrubs.

At the time, that felt irresponsible. It also felt necessary.

This is a story about launching before you’re ready. About being unreasonably stubborn. About doing the thing because stagnation isn’t an option here in Upstate. In rural Upstate New York, there’s scrappiness. There’s practicality. You learn pretty quickly that if you want something done, you’re probably going to be the one doing it. No one’s parachuting in with funding or a five-step roadmap. You try. You adjust. You try again.

That’s how my Upstate NY side hustle started — not with a business plan, but with a kitchen table and a willingness to try.

Building a Brand That Stood Out

My “research and development” stage consisted of browsing Etsy and noticing that all the bath and beauty brands out there were trying to “out-lovely” each other with pastel colors and scripty fonts. Everything was delicate. Everything was soothing. Everything looked like it whispered.

I realized two things: one, I could invent something that would actually stand out. And two, I would die of boredom if I tried to suppress my twisted sense of humor in the interest of being respectable.

So I didn’t.

My first products to hit Etsy had names I cannot print in this article. Most of them contained the F word. And you know what? Most of them still do, because through some alchemy of luck and timing and consistency, they started to sell.

Looking back, I can’t really believe it, because in those days? My products were rough. Unsophisticated. Girl-Scout-basic and mostly colorless. The labels were black and white, matte, and prone to smudging if you so much as looked at them sideways. I took product photos on my living room windowsill and prayed the lighting wouldn’t betray me.

But people responded.

Not just to the names — though those helped — but to the energy. To the sense that this wasn’t business as usual. It wasn’t promising flawlessness. It was just… fun. Honest. A little defiant.

That mattered more than I realized at the time.

What I didn’t understand in 2014 was that I wasn’t just mixing bath bombs. I was building a brand voice. And voice, it turns out, is what can set you apart, especially when everyone else looks the same.

Growing a Side Hustle Into a Business

Now, I’m still here because I’m tenacious and a little bit nuts, to be clear. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he crossed it once, right? I’ve been back and forth over that sucker many times. There were seasons where Etsy boomed and then dried up. Years where algorithms shifted and sales dipped overnight. Moments where I wondered if I should tone it down, clean it up, make it softer.

I didn’t.

Over eleven years, Badgerface has shipped more than 40,000 orders out of the Gilbertsville post office. Every one of those boxes was packed by a small team, here at our little shop on Route 51. (We finally moved out of my kitchen in 2019.) Through the ups and downs and loop-de-loops, I built the business, and my own know-how, slow and steady.

That’s the part people don’t glamorize.

But the lesson I like to take away from my journey — and what I like to share with others, especially my gritty fellow Upstaters — is this: you can take your creativity, or your passion, or even just your personality, and you can turn it into a side hustle. Maybe more.

That’s really what an Upstate NY side hustle looks like. It starts small. It grows slowly. And it teaches you along the way.

The Upstate Way of Entrepreneurship

Upstate people are born into a do-it-yourself part of the world. We’re endowed with skills by the adults in our lives. Through 4-H, scouting, FFA, or even just your uncle who ties his own fly-fishing flies at the kitchen table, we absorb know-how by osmosis, as long as we’re paying attention.

That’s all I did.

I wasn’t special. I just had my eyes open. I was a little bit crafty and personality-packed. And instead of waiting for permission or perfection, I started where I was at and let the journey show me what I needed to learn.

That’s the Upstate way, whether we call it that or not. We fix, we figure it out, we keep going. We don’t need a skyline or a spotlight to make something stick.

Sometimes all it takes is stubbornness, a kitchen table, and a little bit of nerve.