Skinning hides to pay for fun: The side hustle

Editor's note: This story is part of an occasional series on solo entrepreneurial ventures known as "side hustles."

Richard Selheim organizes production of large industrial orders at Marvin Windows. That's his day job, and it's a good one, especially for northern Minnesota, but locals don't think of windows when they think of Selheim.

Many know him for his ability to skin and stretch a beaver pelt in less than 20 minutes.

He can skin just about any hide — from beaver and coyote to mink and muskrat. He's really good at skinning small animals, and just about every trapper within driving distance knows it. Over the last 40 years, he perfected the skill, turning it from a hobby into a money-making side-hustle.

What's a side hustle?

If you don't know the term, a "side-hustle" is an entrepreneurial venture nurtured in the early mornings and late nights of a 40-hour work week. Side hustles can grow into full-time businesses, or just net a little extra money for extras or essentials.

Some basic Census Bureau data suggest side hustles might be on the rise in Minnesota. The bureau keeps track of non-employer establishments, non-incorporated businesses that don't employ anyone — just one person working on their own, aka the side hustle. That number was just about 389,000 in 2012 — up from 333,000 a decade earlier.

It's a slippery figure, according to Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development Analyst Cameron Macht.

A good number of those 389,000 businesses, he said, are folks selling merchandise on the internet, mowing lawns, or cutting hair in their free time — side hustles basically. But a lot of them also are guys who work construction full time — not side hustles.

A few thousands dollars

I heard about Selheim from a state Department of Natural Resources wildlife manager, and tracked him to a parking lot outside the massive yellow Marvin Windows factory in Warroad. He's a tall smiling guy in jeans like a lot of other northern Minnesotans. We talked about his side-hustle.

"I've done thousands of pelts," he said, "so I can do it dang near with my eyes closed."

Trapping is still an industry in northern Minnesota. It's much smaller than it was when fur traders paddled Lake of the Woods a few hundred years ago, but it's still there.

Selheim's hustle swings into high gear in the fall. The most productive trappers in the Warroad area, about 15 people, run trap lines from October through Christmas. They load up their haul and take it to Selheim's garage, 10 miles west of Warroad. When Selheim gets home from Marvin, he sets to work skinning and stretches the pelts for $1.50 to $20 each, depending on the animal.

"One night I got home and there were 72 beaver on my garage floor," he said. "I had to take a day off of work."

The key to Selheim's side hustle is efficiency. Skinning is really hard work for most people. Beaver have hard, fragrant fat deposits. It can take a long time to get the pelt scraped clean but he has been practicing for 40 years.

Selheim got his start in his hometown of in Grafton N.D. in the 1970s. His father taught him to trap and skin when he was just 6 years old.

"My dad used to use it as leverage," he said, "He'd say, 'get them all skinned and we can go trapping again.' So I'd be out there right after school cleaning."

His hustle started in 1987 when he tried to get a loan to build the house in Warroad where he still lives. The loan officer happened to love trapping, and hate skinning. Selheim got the loan and his very first customer.

"He told some friends about me and it just expanded," he said. "Sometimes I have to turn people away."

Selheim's side-hustle makes solid business sense. A beaver pelt, still attached to the beaver itself is worth about $20 to a local trader.

That same pelt, artfully removed from the beaver and mailed to an auction house in Toronto Canada, is worth $50.

Selheim only charges $7 per beaver. He makes more than $20 an hour, and the trapper still doubles his earnings. Last year he skinned out 250 animals, mostly beaver and coyote for a total of about $3,000.

"I don't get rich off it," he said. "I like to hunt and fish and this sort of pays for it."