We recently connected with John Maiella and have shared our conversation below.

Hi John, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

After many years of working in the Casino industry, in 2006 I experienced an unexpected job loss and drastic reduction in income. Just several weeks before the loss, a friend of mine convinced me to partner with him on the purchase of a commercial power washing / window cleaning business. The work was physically very hard and demanding and it was a graveyard shift, which was difficult to adjust to.

I really never dreamed that I would one day find myself working in that industry, but in hindsight, I’m so glad that I did. During this time, I did a lot of soul searching and contemplating what my next move would be to replace my income. This time was still sort of at the beginning of the e-commerce craze, so I was looking for something I could sell that would fit into a set of criteria that I came up with:
1. It had to be something people wanted
2. It had to be lightweight
3. It was something I could produce myself, with a good profit margin and
4. It had to be easy to ship.

One night while cleaning storefront windows on a commercial building, I became fixated with the hours of operation on a business door. I thought, to myself, “that’s it!” It fit all 4 of my criteria and I knew I wanted to sell decals online. There were just a couple of problems, first I didn’t have a clue how they were made, and second, I needed to find something that people wanted, so I came up with the idea of selling Bible scriptures and inspirational quotes that could be applied to the wall.

From there, I have also been a part in founding several other businesses, including a brick and mortar retail sign shop, a fingerprinting business and a junk removal business.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I did some research and bought a vinyl cutter and taught myself how to use Photoshop and began creating designs and created an e-commerce website. It started off slow at first, but I kept plugging away at it, coming up with new ideas and designs.

I started off with one vinyl cutter working out of my bedroom at home, and it spread to another room, then another. My kids who were in their teens at the time also became involved and helped with the business growth. Eventually, we decided to rent a commercial warehouse space as we continued to grow.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I’ve learned that the only thing constant in life is change. As a business owner, you must always be willing to adapt and pivot.

2025 has been the most challenging year I’ve ever experienced to date in the e-commerce industry. When I started my business, the cost was just over $1 to mail a 4 oz package anywhere in the continental US. Now, it’s upwards of $8 in some cases depending on the zone you’re shipping to. USPS has a plan to continue raising rates each year until 2030. The cost of shipping has gone up 800-900% over time.

Inflation has also eaten away at profit margins and suppliers keep having to raise prices. Unfortunately in retail, you can’t always pass those increases on to your customers, so it eats away at your margins.

All e-commerce platforms now have highly competitive (PPC) pay per click campaigns. Prior to this, we ranked organically at the top of many search results. We had to learn how to compete using PPC effectively. Over time, with the advent of AI, sometimes being the highest bidder with the best search terms still isn’t enough to rank on top.

The competition is now fierce. You are competing on a worldwide marketplace with people, ideas and products from all around the globe. Many competitors are able to produce similar items to you, often at a fraction of the price which has made things challenging.

Consumers have also been hit hard by higher costs, so people have become much more selective on what they are buying, what they’re spending their hard earned money on, and whom they are buying from.

Seeing the pattern of this evolving trend in the market, I decided to create other revenue streams, including a brick and mortar sign shop, a Fingerprinting agency and a junk removal business.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

We are in the process of doing this as we speak. Our brick and mortar sign shop started out as just a side hustle selling to friends and business neighbors. For years, we really made little to no effort to market or grow the business up until mid-2023.

Since then, the business grew over 100% in 2023 from the year prior, then 187% in 2024 and 50% in 2025.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://goodjobgraphics.com

Image Credits

Jean Widner