Transcript

The Side Hustle King: 11 Easy Businesses Anyone Can Start

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0:00 He's back. Part two. We called him the side hustle king last time, which by the way, pretty sick nickname we gave you. Pretty good. You're welcome. I don't know anything about anything other than business ideas, so let's go. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'm putting my all in it like my day's all on the road, less travel, never looked at the first.

0:23 downloads across all the platforms. And when you get a million downloads across all the platforms, that's the best way to get back in the vibe for part two. So we got to do part two. I want to cue like the Chicago Bulls, ninety six bulls. intro music for you because you came on, you had a legendary first performance Do you feel the pressure of following up right now?

0:42 No pressure. You kidding me? And the reason people love your business ideas. Is because You have that girl next door energy. You have that

0:52 relatable I could do that. That seems that seems in my wheelhouse. I could get to fifteen thousand a month. I can get to ten thousand a month off that. That doesn't seem too hard. And

1:04 I love that. Sam loves that. We all love that. So if you've been If you're one of the listeners who uh is looking for that kind of relatable Um achievable side hustle idea. Not that these are all easy. I don't mean easy. I just mean like

1:18 It's not rocket science. Those are the types of ideas you got. Chris, welcome back to the pot. Thank you for having me. Man, so uh I wasn't on that. I I was off at day and I get messages From people.

1:30 Trying to use me as the metal man to get you or Sean asking to do the driving range thing. Yeah, the golf thing. Okay, the golf thing got out of hand. We're we'll talk about that later. So Chris, let's start. You brought some ideas. We're gonna bring in some, we're gonna riff off these, we're gonna react to these. So where do you want to start? Give me Let's start with the banger. Give me give me one of the best businesses that you've seen. That you think.

1:52 Wow, some anybody could do that. Somebody else could do that. Yeah. You wanna go porch pumpkins? Okay, so explain the idea and then let's talk about it. All right, so I'm on Instagram. I see this woman decorating portraits with pumpkins.

2:05 I thought That's genius. That's brilliant. It's just all visual. It it sells really well on short form video. So I reached out to her, we spoke. Learned about our business. She's doing seven figures a year across three months.

2:16 It could be seasonal. People want her to decorate her porch for Christmas. Thanksgiving, flowers in the spring. Uh, but she doesn't want to. She just wants to do pumpkins. Uh, and so over the last couple of years I've learned of other people doing You know, quarterly flower delivery like front porch flower decorations, Christmas decorations, Christmas lights. This could be a year round business that starts with porch pumpkins. Who who is the lady can you say she's just give her a shot. Sean, is this the same person that we've we talked about? We did talk about this once before. But there's actually a little twist to it now. So

2:50 Originally. And we we can pull up if you're on YouTube, you'll see the we'll see what this means. So what do porge pump because it means basically During fall, Halloween season. People want their house to look festive. They hire this lady and she comes over with like you know, like throw pillow overload of pumpkins.

3:08 And we'll just decorate the front of your house. Cool. You pay her how much does it cost roughly for like a a a custom package. So Five hundred to fifteen hundred. And she's there for like an hour. You hired you did this, you portion. My wife saw it and she's like, I need that in my life.

3:23 And uh okay. So and th it was it her who came or was it like a minion? She hasn't come yet. They're my our week is like two weeks from now and it won't be her, it'll be someone from her team. Okay. Amazing. So someone for her team comes out, they put Porsche Rumpers and Give me give us a sense of how well she's doing. What do you know about the business, uh this one woman in Dallas who started this. Yeah. She's doing uh between thirteen hundred and two thousand orders per year.

3:48 Average order size is eight hundred, twelve hundred dollars, call it a thousand bucks. Okay. So that's something like a million and a half to two million in revenue. Mm-hmm. And what's her cost? So she's got An inventory of pumpkins. Yeah.

4:03 Yeah. It's about a twenty percent Cogs. Twenty percent cogs. That's the labor and the like and the pumpkins, which she reuses, I'm sure. Uh she takes she takes it away after what? How long does it last? Well she charges extra to take'em away. 'Cause people don't know what to do with them. So that's an upsell. Okay, so uh okay, so you can pay to have them removed.

4:23 Um, it's basically the Christmas lights business, but she's just done it. Uh not on Christmas lights. It's actually much easier. You don't have to like scale the roof. And you know, do all this dangerous stuff. Okay, amazing. And um so you know, this woman might be clearing a million dollars a year.

4:37 doing this. Do you know the origin story of this? Like how did she start doing this? Did she stumble into it? Was she like a stay at home mom? What's her story? Yeah, she's a just a mom. She did it for herself. She posted it on Instagram and her friends freaked out. She wasn't trying to start a business. So she started doing it as a favor and then She monetized it. Okay, amazing.

4:55 And so you uh well one thing that it wasn't there last time we talked about this. Now, same if you scroll down to the middle of the page. It's one on one business coaching for your pumpkin business. And she's got No way. She's got the boss lady pose. She's standing at a forty five degree angle with her arms crossed, which I think is also the pose I had for this podcast cover art. Yeah. Yeah, she they put her in the boss lady pose.

5:17 And she's selling one on one coaching now. So you get two sessions, an hour each. For five thousand dollars. So you too can become a pumpkin preneur. There you go. And she owns the trademark, so people can't start businesses with porches or pumpkins in the name. Without talking to her first.

5:34 Interesting. No way. What say say her uh I I'm looking at your Instagram. What's her Instagram again? Yeah, it's uh it's just porch pumpkins, one word. Oh my God. Forty three thousand followers now. Is this now more successful? Oh, look, uh so on her like linked like her link off thing, she's linking to your video that you did with her. Oh, I didn't even know that.

5:54 That's funny. Yeah. Do you have any association with her other than you just think she's cool? Nothing. No. She's just awesome. And so is this coaching thing doing better than her actual uh main thing? I don't know. I haven't talked to her about it, but She also started a fajita business. During the same season as Porsche Pumpkins. She's got like two retail locations where she cooks fajitas.

6:15 To go only and she's crushing it at that. To go fajitas? Fajitas, yeah. Alright. questionable decision on that one. Uh okay so so what would you do? Let's say you're um You live in um

6:28 Sam, what's like some middle of nowhere place like we wherever you're from? Kansas City, Missouri. You're from Kansas. You're in Kansas City, Missouri. And Your stay at home mom? You're entrepreneurial, you got that itch. What are you doing? How are you getting this business off the ground, Chris?

6:42 I'm gonna go buy pumpkins for retail at the grocery store. I'm gonna Like Basically, Heather, but I'm gonna Copy Heather's design. Based on what I see on Instagram.

6:51 Uh the same colors in the same places, the same sizes. I'm gonna film a time lapse. Just using my iPhone and I'm gonna post it to all the local mom groups, buy sell groups, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere. Uh, and then just watch the comments come in and start doing it for people in the comments. By the way, not to be dismissive. So really just me showing my own lack of skill, but

7:11 You say design. Doug, it's a pile of pumpkins. Dude, is this a design? Apparently there's something to it. I hear there's something to it. Like a flower arrangement. Like it might be a little bit more. Where does the hay bell go? Where does the hate. If you gave if you gave Sean a pumpkin patch in a in a in an empty porch, it would look nothing. Porch pumpkin my own porch.

7:35 And I'm gonna post it. Just to see how I do with my own. No, there's there's a little like You're drinking her Kool Aid. She's got you all under her spell. Yeah. All right. So Chris, you're gonna go buy a retail, you're not worried about your margins, you know, on that front. Yep.

7:52 You're gonna make an Instagram account. You're gonna name it something not porch pumpkins'cause she's got the trademark for that. So what are you patio pumpkins? What are we talking? Sure. Petio gourds. Okay. And now um

8:04 How do you go how do you go get customers? 'Cause that's the hard part of any business. Yeah, I mean you post five to ten organic videos, you see which one pops off the most, then you push paid ad spend behind it. to people in your zip code. Okay. So you're gonna post uh or organic content just as testing your creative and then you're gonna run paid.

8:22 On this. Yeah. Yeah,'cause you're ba you're basically selling a five hundred a thousand dollar ticket item. Yep. So you have You you ha y you have a lot you have a lot of room to work with to even acquire customers free now. Uh yeah, fifty, fifty bucks, hundred bucks.

8:36 Yeah, and then you can worry about wholesale pricing and going to a farm or whatever. Like there's just unnecessary friction if you do that up front. Okay. So you said that she you said that she was gonna do something that prevents us from being just a October thing. Is that the course? No, she could. Other people are. She doesn't want to. She's got kids. She's like this is her busy season and she doesn't want to work. In on this business during the other seasons.

8:58 She got kids, she got fajitas, dude, she's got her hand. And how what what do you think our take home is? What's your guess? I would guess Forty to fifty percent net. Do you think she's she's working her ass off for two months out of the year and then

9:12 She's like she's like in deployment mode. Like she's like I I getting up at five A. M, getting home at eleven PM and just grinding her ass off for two months and make six hundred thousand dollars. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like if you took my family's like, you know, life expenses, it'd be like oh whatever, rent. Utilities

9:33 You know. Insurance And then not that far down the list. You'd be like, Who is the balloon queen? And that would be this lady that my wife

9:43 Needs to hire. For every kid's birthday For every a you know, special occasion that we're throwing. Dude, you're like her patron. You know, you're like the you're you're like the king of Italy and this is like uh, you know, Michelangelo and you're keeping her afloat because the world needs more balutar. She shows up and I'm just like oh twelve hundred dollars just you you knocked on my door and twelve hundred dollars just left my bank account Because this woman is gonna make a beautiful balloon arch and a backdrop that we need, I guess, for every part. We need. We need for every part.

10:14 Okay. And so I got three kids, but we're spending like Seven grand a year, ten grand a year on balloon arches. She's the She's the porch pumpkins of my neighborhood, basically.

10:25 And one thing I've noticed with this is that You can kinda set a norm in any area. So like Christmas lights is one of these things where like there's almost like a visible Pure pressure.

10:37 And in i in visible, invisible peer pressure, right? Like The more houses on our block that do something, uh we feel like we gotta do something. Yeah, I think I read about this in like a Peter Tw Teel tweet. It's called Mimetic Desire. Yeah, it is. It's so mimetic. Bro is so mimetic right now. And my my life is so memetic. And so

10:57 You got kids' birthdays, you got graduations, all the stuff where people are doing stuff on their front lawn. To kinda like If it's your special day. You wake up and you go outside and it's like oh you guys did the thing for me And so I think there's almost like a

11:12 Porch Pumpkin's like birthday skew and a graduation skew that she could create. Which is basically just like Yo, we dress up your lawn so that, you know, you have this moment, your family did something for you, and everybody knows it's your special day today. And so I think you're right, Chris, that this is not But that the the sort of fall Halloween season is really like

11:31 not where this thing is limited to. It might still be, you know, forty percent of revenue. But it's not doesn't need to be a hundred percent of revenue. But yeah, how cool is it that so my my mother in law is like this. She has a a pillow company and she's killing it. She pays herself a lot of money, and I'm like, Smithy You know, how much are you spending how much are you sp how much are you spending on ads? And she's like, Well, I spend like a hundred dollars a month and I'm like, What's that turn into? And she tells me, you know, a thousand or something, and I'm like Okay. So why aren't you spending more? And she's like, Well,'cause I work three days a week and I'm happy and I'm like but

12:00 But but and uh and that's kinda what this lady is. She's the same thing where you kinda have your lane and and you're happy. So it sounds like she's winning. Yeah, you know, for the rest of the novel about the the banker and the fisherman. Yeah. And I was like, yo, those banker's on to something. Hey, real quick, if you like this episode of Chris and you want more, he's actually agreed to give away his entire database of two hundred business ideas, just like the ones he's talking about on this podcast. And um he's giving it away for free. So if you just go to the QR code that's on the screen or the link in the description below, you can get his database of ideas and these are like his blueprints for companies that he thinks can work. And this guy's done it before. He's built a coup a bunch of businesses that are successful. So go ahead, take advantage of this resource and now back to this episode. All right, Chris.

12:49 Uh, give us another one. What's another idea you think cool, small, niche cash flow type business? Yeah. So I'm gonna take what you just said about like mimetic desire, keeping up with the Joneses. And it goes perfectly into this next one. So We we just got a sport court.

13:04 And I think sport courts are the next pools. Okay. Explain what a spore court is. Spore court is a multi purpose slab of concrete that you can put tiles down on or you can paint lines on it and do pickleball. Uh, volleyball, soccer, basketball. You can do multiple sports on the same thing. Right. It's a thing you put like in your backyard, concrete, and then they have this like almost like uh

13:25 What do you call that like kind of the the mesh looking rubber thing on top? They're just like tiles, sport court tiles. Yeah, like so then you could play like any kind of sport. You know, on on top of that. So you turned your backyard into some fun. Okay, go on. Yeah. So like three five years ago during Covid, everyone was getting pools out here. They're all getting pools. And pools were like seventy five grand there now, they're a hundred and fifty. But now it's all about sport courts.

13:47 If you want to keep up with the Joneses And I'm I'm trying to keep up with the Joneses too. So we just got uh a sport court this year. And I got a bunch of quotes. And half of the the companies wouldn't even call me back. The ones that did

14:00 They were just dudes like me. They look like me, rap truck, and I was like I know you're not gonna be putting this sport court in. You're just subbing it all out. You're just a dirty marketer like I am. Uh And so

14:11 I wouldn't tell that them to their faces. I only go on podcasts and say that about them. They would quote me Now we're talking a uh thirty by seventy foot sport court, which is good enough for half court basketball and and pickleball. Okay, that's what I got. It's what I wanted. They were charging me fifty to sixty grand. Okay. I can't do that.

14:33 I can't do that. Uh so I start getting quotes fr from subcontractors. going on Facebook marketplace, looking for a concrete guy, a painter. Fencing guy'cause you want to fence it in so the ball doesn't fly everywhere. And long story short,

14:47 I got quotes to do all of it. It's in my backyard right now. Uh for about thirty grand. Huff. Right.

14:53 So then I start thinking, Hm, okay. There's a business here. I already have the subs, they're all affordable. So what I'm I'm doing is took my tree trimming company and my operating partner.

15:04 And we're pivoting. We're going away from trees with a one thousand dollar average order value. And we're going. Full time support court. Oh my gosh. What's it called?

15:13 Uh well, there's no website for it. It's not like a cute name, though. I do have a cute name. I got the domain name. There's just nothing on it. It's called Backyard Funhouse. Cause we're selling the dream. We're not selling sport courts. We're selling You want the backyard that all your kids' friends want to come to. We're selling the drink. So you start with the sport court, get your foot in the door, then you go putting green, then you go pool, then you go fire pit, outdoor kitchen and Pretty soon they split two hundred grain. What you're doing is you're taking

15:39 the business model of pool installation, which is a popular business model. Uh and you're basically saying Look. That's a pretty saturated market probably now. Pool weather friendly. There are gonna be multiple pool installers and and and and builders.

15:57 In that area. But you're noticing this trend where some people are like, Hey, instead of the pool Or in addition to the pool. We want our backyard to be fun in a different way. Maybe maybe for us the right market the right thing is pickleball or basketball or s or whatever soccer. And you're like, okay.

16:14 Whatever that pool market is, there's gonna be this new market where there's not established players and I can come in and basically do that in my town and then you know, anybody can do that really in their town. Is that the is that the right way to summarize this idea? If you look at Google Trends, if you look at the keyword tool. The search searches are exploding for this and the supply is not keeping up with demand. Yeah, I've I've seen this a bunch'cause I was house hunting and uh saw a bunch of these and I had the same it's funny you were like You're selling the dream. 'Cause I saw it and I was like, Oh, so me and my wife are gonna

16:43 We're just gonna play pick a ball. Have we ever played bigger ball together? No, but the obviously we'll start Obviously that'll be the new us and then my kids and they're their friends will come over and it'll be so cool. And it's like this like Almost like this.

16:56 It became a wow factor for certain houses that we were looking at. They were trying to sell that as a as a bit of the the the the the X factor for that home. So I kinda believe this. We also, Sam, we have some friends, um, Sieva and uh Xavier, who have a business called Enduring Ventures where they buy businesses. And one of the businesses they bought

17:14 is a pool construction business. Sam, have you have you looked into or you've heard them talk about how Great of a business this was for them. Yeah, I mean the one in Arizona. Yeah, they have a business in Arizona. I think it's called Dolphin Pool. So if you're in Arizona, go get a dolphin pool. And

17:28 It's just been this steady compound. I think it's like a twenty, thirty million dollar a year. Cool business that just serves that one geography. And it's a very pro you know, it's a profitable business. I think it's cash flowing. Let's call uh I I mean I w I don't know the specifics, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was

17:45 four to five million dollars a year free cash flow generated from from this pool business. And then obviously, you know And and they're able to just serve in that's just one market, right? So like I think the sport court Alternative to pools.

17:59 It's got got some legs. Dude. I mean I'm already generating leads for it. Like this isn't just hypothetical, okay. Where where are the leads coming from? Facebook? I mean, where do all leads come from, Sam? It's all meta. It's all meta, right? That's where we all get our leads from. I don't know, but where do leads come from? Facebook. That's it. There's only one place. Short form video, fifteen seconds, selling the dream.

18:25 Oh you're making me blush. You're making me blush. Um all right, what's another one? Well, I want your grades for these first two. Okay. Uh I love the pumpkin lady. On the same scale, what is it? Yeah, so for a very particular type of demographic who wants that lifestyle, I honestly think that that's a nine out of ten.

18:44 Okay. For uh sports court, I think that's a three out of ten. I don't wanna work with subcontractors. Like I don't wanna deal with people who are hungover. Wha how's that been? Where how's that been like working with I used to I used to do landscaping. I can tell you I could I know what they're like. Like you know what I'm saying. Like there's gonna be pill bottles all over the place. You just gotta work through some bad ones to find some good ones. Just like employees, right? Oh well there's like different ratios of like how many got to work there. Yeah. It's like are we talking about. To quote Harrison Ford Sam, that's what the money's for.

19:26 Okay. That's that's what thirty thousand dollars net profit per job is for. It's for dealing with annoying subcontracts that show up with meth in their system. So you got a nine, you got a three. Hit us with your next one, Chris. Alright, so Right next to my sport court, we put an in ground trampoline. Okay. Why in Grand Trampoline? Because our trampoline blows over into the neighbor's yard every two years like clockwork.

19:48 And I've dude, you're a great dad. You you got everything. Uh we're we're working on it. We wanna be the backyard funhouse. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So we put in this in ground trampoline. Sam, I want you to guess.

19:59 What it costs to put this thing in. Three grand. Ten grand. Yeah, Ten grand. Really?

20:05 Yeah. Forty forty five hundred For the trampoline itself. From a Shopify store. That I found from Facebook ads, right, of course. And then five grand for

20:15 The digging. For digging it out. And so this dude with an excavator. That he didn't even own, he just rented it, shows up with another dude, they spend four hours digging it out.

20:24 Putting down some weed barrier. And they walk out of there with five grand. So I read it Dallas dads are keeping the economy afloat. Telling you. So I start talking to him on the job site and I'm like, Where are you getting all your jobs? And he's like, From this e commerce brand. They like they they can't sell trampolines unless they have someone to dig'em out for'em.

20:42 When he does. Uh which the e commerce it's trampolines.com. Believe it or not. So No affiliation.

20:49 But uh They they can only sell trampolines. that are in ground if they have someone to dig'em out. And there's not like the guys that own excavators are too busy digging pools. They have no interest in trampolines. So you don't need to go buy a hundred thousand dollar backhoe.

21:03 You rent one when you get a job. You dig the sucker out and you get paid five grand. Sorry I I I I kinda zoned out because I thought this might be the same idea as support corp, but actually sounds like this w is what you're saying That Trampolines.com Get demand.

21:17 And they sell the trampoline, but they don't want to go do the backyard dig and you can get the leads from them. Is that what you were saying this? Yeah. And how does the get the lease from is it like you're saying like you gotta know a guy who knows a guy and go get do some biz dev with them, or there's like a portal you sign up for you say, I do this in this area. Yeah. And I reached out and they're like, Yeah, we don't even have our paid ads turned on right now because

21:39 We can't sell like we don't have enough people digging these things out for us. Dude, trampolines dot com, by the way, is owned by someone who's part of the tribe, a Mormon or he went to BYU. You guys do all the f all the best stuff. What can I say? Brad Mills owns trampolines.com. That's a gr that sounds like a pretty fun job. I mean you can't drink, you can't smoke, you install trampolines. Yeah, so they have this map on the thing where they got certified installers and premier installers and all these different areas.

22:05 And then you basically If you're on tradepleys.com, you get a you get a quote. Uh from the installer and then they do all the work, yeah. Something like that. Yeah. So you're saying become an installer.

22:15 Yeah, or just like Like we have uh an excavator guy for our tree trimming business. And we talk to him about other jobs that he does. And he gets paid five grand to dig out pools. And it takes them a day, just him, you know, playing with controls.

22:28 Uh My my overall point is like high ticket home service. In general, in a strong economy, there is way more demand than supply. In any of these little backyard businesses.

22:47 Okay, I like this backyard business theme. Uh you've given us a bunch of those. Let's do a non-backyard business. So you wrote something in our notes document. That one's a four, man. I don't wanna dig holes. I don't want to dig holes. I think you do want to dig holes. A hobby you would actually have. Yeah, on my time. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to get paid to do it. That ruins the sacred art. Yeah. Don't meet your heroes. All right. So you have this sentence on here that I don't understand, but I I'm cu it's provocative. It says, what starts in Dubai will make its way to America.

23:22 What does that mean? So I've been there twice, and they just live ten years in the future. They experiment with all this stuff, they're very entrepreneurial. And a lot of the stuff they experiment. With never takes off. But if you see it in Dubai for like one to three years. It's probably coming out west and we can get ahead of the trend.

23:38 What were examples of other things that like kind of Dubai was early into that then propagated. Do you know of any others? Um do buy chocolate. For one. You familiar with that?

23:48 No, what is Dubai? Dude, it's all the rage right now, and I've been getting it. I I've I've fallen victim. I've eaten so much like Dubai chocolate pistachio right now. What is this? What's different about Dubai? Oh my gosh. I have no idea. But it's just like a chocolate bar stuffed with like pistachios that looks cool on Instagram. You know how like three years ago the theme was pineapple. And like last year it was like I think it was like pair like there's always like a theme. Uh in food and in like wrapping paper. And like the two big categories. The America's two largest exports. And right now, for some reason, it's pistachio flavored chocolate. And if you go to like a bougie

24:29 yogurt or ice cream place, you get yogurt or ice cream with pistachios like crushed up and chocolate on it. And honestly, it's amazing. It's great. So I I'm all I'm on board the hype train. Well they got whole mall kios selling just to buy chocolate now.

24:46 Like it's a whole industry. Uh will it be around in two years? I don't know. I don't care. Right. Right. Um but another thing. Uh perfume vending machines started in Dubai. Uh now they're everywhere.

24:57 Okay, and what's this one that you're referring to? This manicure thing. Yeah, I mean they're in airports in Dubai and like outside of nightclubs and You just stick your hand in there and it gives you a manicure.

25:09 It looks like a printer almost. So it's like you basically put your hand in the robot. Printer. And you get a manicure. Uh is it cheaper? Is it faster? What's the like

25:20 kind of core edge that this has over uh, you know. Go into like a Nails, traditional nails along. Yeah, it's like a to one third the price and a lot faster. All right. That's interesting. Oh, what speaking of, have you guys seen Rizbot?

25:36 What's that? What's a Risba? Alright, so you've seen like Tesla's like humanoid robot.

25:44 Sam, I think you invested in figure Um you know, people like the next big thing It's basically these Artificial intelligence super cutting edge. Robots.

25:54 Well, somebody made Rizbot and is going super viral on TikTok right now. So what this robot does basically like Runs up to a human and the run is hilarious that the robot does. And then it'll like stop in front of a girl. And then it'll put out its hand.

26:10 to like kiss their hand and then it'll like from its audio, from its speakers, it'll start playing romantic music. And this person in public, this woman's just like uh what's happening right now. What's the outcome of this? The owner is like sick. I have no idea. My robot just uh can read you the views on their last ten videos. Thirty seven million, fifteen million, eight million, nineteen million, eighteen million My robot just seduced a lady. It's just this funny lovable robot that wears a little like cowboy hat. And he runs around like Trying to like spit game at at people. It's it's amazing. It's just this amazing viral thing that's happening.

26:47 Like I th I I think the what's gonna happen here is that you're gonna have like Before you have the humanoid robots that can like do warehouse work and like assemble cars on the assembly line. You're gonna have basically like pet robot. You're gonna have just like a goofy robot that's kinda fun and like a little party trick. That you can make like that doesn't have it has like

27:06 You know, one one hundredth of the functionality. But can make, you know, a hundred million dollars, you know, off of an idea like that. Dude, do you guys want to see a sick robot? I have nothing to do with this company. I just think it's cool. Go to Matic Robots.com. So and Rumi I see. Okay, yeah, let me tell you the story. I met this guy And uh I just thought his robot look looked awesome. So I started DMing him.

27:29 And I got one. And it's basically like a twelve or eleven hundred dollar Roomba, but it vacuums and it Maps, your house. But it there's a bunch of like really like nifty features on there. And this is only like cool if you're into gadgets, but it looks you know how Roombo like you'll hear it like bumping into shit, because that's how it like tells if it's like it like uses cameras and it maps out your house. But it has all these tiny features. Like when I got it and I turned it on, the battery was fulge and it said Uh hello, Par family. I'm here to clean for you. Like it like

27:58 It like was like accent. Yeah, like these little tiny features. But the guy who started this company, he's been working on this for eight years and he uh raised a bunch of money and he's just like been in the lab now for eight or nine years. And after eight or nine years of tinkering, his goal was to build the perfect Roomba. And he It has it, I think, after like nine years of working on this and it's finally for sale. And I thought it was really cool. Chris, what do you think?

28:24 I'm thinking of how I could monetize it. Well, by selling a twelve hundred dollar vacuum, I think that's ideal. I can buy Yeah. I would go to cleaning businesses and rent it out to'em for a hundred bucks a month and They show up to a house to clean it and they could just hit play, then they could do everything else. Save an hour on every cleaner.

28:44 And then they just put their room but pushed play and walked away. Or they just sit on their phone for like two hours. Listen up, the old playbook is slowing you down. AI. Broke the funnel. Loop marketing. Fixes it.

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29:29 Back to the pod. What other ideas you got? This is the same idea. Is this the one that says dollhouses for men? Parentheses. Sam will love that.

29:38 What's this idea? Should we watch it? Yeah, let's watch let's watch the video. Freaking guy right here. He's tapping into a billion dollar market that nobody is serving right now. Ask yourself real quick, what's the male version of dollhouses? Day three of Genius Business Ideas, follow for more. There isn't one, and that's the opportunity. Men are builders. We want to create with our hands, but nobody's selling us the materials to build miniature homes and structures like this. Look how many views this thing has. There's your demand. Grown men would pay serious money for high quality miniature building kits, myself included. I'm calling this the guy dollhouse market. Full business plan here.

30:11 Yeah, I'm sold. So it's basically all right, so uh we're watching this video. It's bas it's exactly how it sounds. You are literally building a home, like framing it with like the drywall and everything else. And this guy's crazy. He's using a a proper nail gun. And you're building a very real life replica of a house. I'm in. This sounds awesome. I spend my time doing this with engines. Like when when my wife's pregnant, we like you know, you can't like do too much. You gotta like kinda sit around a lot. We got into Legos and now we like to build like uh replica

30:42 VA engines. It's a very nerdy thing, but it's kinda like what we like to do instead of watching TV. This seems so much better. I would love to build a house. Is this a company that's making this or is this uh hobbyist? This guy just did it. Wow. Yeah, you're right.'Cause th this is basically like You know people who love to play um you know flight simulator? And it's like, Oh, you're playing a video game They're like, There's not a video game. Like I'm flying this plane right now for real. It's like it is so realistic that it like moves into another category.

31:12 And it seems like that's what this is, right? So like instead of like Lego or like oversimplification, this is almost like Just miniature complexity. So it's like, no, this is like as real as the real deal, but just on a small scale, we don't have to actually do all the like The true work. And so it's like this like escape. It's a it's this is this is a whole new category, basically.

31:31 Does this video have a lot of when this guy posts this does it have a lot of like organic Traction like people like, I want this. Oh yeah. And that video that you just watched of mine got like twenty million views. Like there's demand for this. Yeah, that's cool. So you you would basically just create these as kits. And then

31:49 The sales process is just to do this over and over again. Like you just make content. you know, elaborate or funny or like, hey, I'm gonna like Make the house from full house.

32:01 So it's like that's the TikTok content. Yeah, just buy the kit. And uh and make the thing. Like be it. Be a man, but kinda not for real. Yeah, yeah. It's called be a man kinda.

32:17 Yeah, this is pretty cool. There's a store near my house. It's called Tiny Dollhouse.com. And you walk in and it is tiny dollhouses. But It is the most meticulously made dolls and dollhouses that I have ever seen.

32:32 So for example, instead of a doll house, they'll have like a a store, a a replica store. And like the little bags of Lay's potato potato chips are like hand painted or like uh you know like the race's peanut butter cups that you can buy at the counter and like each human being or doll is like a perfect like reenactment of like whatever period it's supposed to be a r uh replica of and As everyone listening, it's one of those things where you're like, Oh, it's so weird into that, whatever. Everyone who sees this is like This is amazing. This is so cool. I get it. Now I'm not gonna buy my daughter A three thousand dollar doll house.

33:05 But you'd buy one for yourself. I buy one for myself. This is crazy. I mean Do the police just like oh there's a murder? Oh Let's just stop by the tiny dollhouse because those are the creeps who are definitely finding all these murder. Yeah, like if you walk in, you automatically join a watch list. We're not saying you did it, but we're saying it. Yeah. That's the point of a watch list. You haven't yet, but maybe you will. Uh and and you definitely sign one of those when you walk in.

33:47 Okay, I like this business. This is my this one, uh Sam You gotta give it a strong score on the SAM scale. So I think I would give it an Seven or eight. It's r these this is hard. Have you guys ever put together a complicated Lego set? It's amazing how they think of all this stuff. It doing the directions for something like this is so freaking hard. But

34:05 I do think you could sp you could charge a thousand dollars plus for it. So yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I I like'cause you know, the hardest part of any business is How are you gonna get customers? I think that's Unless you're doing a hard tech startup where it's like We're gonna try to create a robot or a machine that does something that no machine has ever done before. Like that's one class of business.

34:25 Where The hard part is Can you make science fiction a reality? For most businesses. The hard part is

34:32 Great. How am I going to get customers? And I think the like sort sort of amateur approach is always like Ooh, this product is cool. I think I would like to make and sell that product and it's like cool. You know that most of your life, ninety percent of your life is gonna be spent Just doing the marketing to try to get customers for the thing.

34:49 And what I like about this is that You can work backwards from the content that would go viral. Like this is content that would go viral repeatedly. And that will be your sales engine to sell your kits. Is this a huge business? No. But could you Basically have, you know, three SKUs. And charge, you know, a thousand dollars per each one of these kits and just get this like

35:08 Hobbyist market that people other people have Yeah, sort of ignored or overlooked. Yeah, I I definitely think you could do that. I think and you could do it with Just viral content. I mean really any of these ideas you could film yourself doing and sell.

35:20 Right, digging out in grand pools. Uh porch pumpkins. What would you do for this GubDs dot com? So there are these liquidation marketplaces where you can buy Costco returns and everything that T the T S A confiscates. you can buy for like pennies on the dollar.

35:36 Well, Chris, you wrote good headlines. You should start with the headline. So the headline here you wrote was How to make a thousand dollars a day selling TSA liquidation items. Yeah. Okay, you have my attention. So tell me more. Yeah, so I mean you go through the T S A and they take your pocket knife. And then they give it to this website. It sounds like a nonprofit. It's not a nonprofit. It just has the word govern it. It's very much a dot com.

35:58 And they sell this crap. And then y you it's you're in the liquidation game. You buy pallets worth of crap and then you split it up and sell it on Facebook marketplace. So if I go to govedeals.com. This is where you go buy the stuff, right? So what should I click? You go you go by by category here or to do. Yeah. So the other website that does this is B Stock.

36:18 B stock dot com. They have like a a contract with Costco. And this is not their return. Who the heck's making this and how do they get the inventory? Some freaking dude. That has a friend at the government. I have no idea. But

36:31 The the the alpha here is setting filters for your local area. And finding things that are too big, too expensive to ship. Right. Like old police cars. Or something.

36:43 Um I've been on this website, by the way, to try and buy and School bus? Humvee. I wanted to buy like you could buy like mil uh uh military equipment. Yeah, I've definitely been on this site. Okay, so I'm looking near me. And um Let's see. I got a

37:02 I got a refriger a vaccine refrigerator, an electric scooter. Uh, what am I looking for? What's the what are the needles in the haystack that I really want here, Chris? Well, what you should do and can do is build an agent. Right. Like just vibe code and agent. That finds

37:18 Items for sale according to your filters, right? Like Let's say under three thousand dollars within a hundred miles of your zip code. And then it just posts them all. for sale on Facebook Marketplace at a set markup. Call it like eighty percent.

37:31 And so you just list all these things on Facebook Marketplace and whatever just starts taking off, getting a ton of hits and inquiries. then you actually go spend the money to buy the thing. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. So you're just gonna relist all of these things. And then and then basically ship on demand. Buy on you know, you sort of drop ship the the government uh confiscated items. Yep.

37:51 Dude, this is fantastic. I'm looking at B stock. B stock dot com has raised eighty million dollars from a PE firm and they do something like two hundred million dollars a year in sales. Uh, I wanna like I'm gonna shop on this. I love I love like Going on eBay and looking for stuff. This is really cool. There's a twenty twenty McLaren for one hundred fifty thousand dollars, Sam, right now. On B stock or on Gub Deals? On Gub Deals. Dude, if it's on Gub Deals, that means it was like repossessed or like used in like a crime. So it's it's got a good story to it. GTA six is not out yet. This is the closest thing you can get to it. Have you guys heard of uh two s uh two sixty sample sales dot com?

38:27 No, what is that? So two sixty sample sale dot com. So basically do you guys know how like T J Max um the like tagline says I Y KY K if you know, you know. I don't know. In fact, I don't know. Should I just leave the site?

38:42 Is that the headline? That's obnoxious. Um two sixty sample sales. So in I think it's uh in Miami, New York, and LA. And so you know how T J Max what they do is they convince like Nike or whatever to give them last year's s uh stuff. The stuff that Uh didn't didn't didn't sell and they don't want to put in their store'cause they don't want to like look bad, whatever. These guys do this. But with typically nicer brands.

39:10 significantly nicer, but nicer stuff. So like Todd Snyder. I've seen him do it with Buck Mason. I think um you know, brands where like something might cost two to three hundred dollars for a sweater. These guys do it all over New York City. And what they do is they rent out a vacant space and it's very bare bones. It's just racks of clothes like portable racks of clothes and you walk in And things are dirt cheap and it's amazing. And every time I see a two sixty sale, they have these pop ups. You sign up to get alerted and then they do a pop up for a week at a time.

39:41 The there's the line is out the door. It's crazy. They are getting they are doing so much volume. The demand is huge. I thought, Sean, you actually told me about two sixty sale. So is it like significantly cheaper, basically? Significantly cheaper. Yeah. Like uh like ten percent of the price. So a three hundred dollar item will literally be thirty bucks. And it looks like they're kinda doing a membership model, right? So like you pay is it you pay to be a member? And then because of that, you're gonna get to shop early.

40:06 I think you get early shopping access, but it is really cool. I've bought so much stuff from these places and it's a It's great. It's great. It's like one of these businesses where you had no I had no idea that this existed. But it makes sense. Like where do you bought? Because every picture on this website is like a very extreme looking piece of fashion. Just like Y nothing crazy like like boxers cargo shorts from Todd Snyder.

40:33 And I and and what happened was I I fall victim. Oh this said it's It was three hundred dollars, but right now it's fifteen dollars. I have to get this. That's like how that's like that's like the energy and I'm leaving money on the table, but not buying it. Yeah. But I love two sixty sale. Let's do another one. What's a what's another fun one you have? How about this uh mobile fuel delivery?

40:58 You see this one? Yeah. I've never seen this. No. Mobile fuel delivery. What is this? So people are paying to not have to go to the gas station anymore. And the churn is next to zero. People get addicted to it. The guy just kinda you y you you have an app

41:13 You set up an appointment, he'll come top off your tank. You pay a markup on the gas and then you pay a monthly subscription fee. His uh I think his lifetime value or his his revenue per year per customer is five thousand dollars. And his lifetime value is

41:27 Super high. That's insane. So this is DoorDash for gas? Pretty much. Yeah. You know how people when they get in the g when they get in an electric car and they're like, Oh, it's so great not to go to the gas station I hate that. How else are you supposed to get like a like a like a diet Pepsi to Slim Jim?

41:41 Do you know what I mean? Like I I need to go to the gas station. Same. I I feel guilty when I pull up to the gas station and my Tesla like everyone's judging me. So how um by the way, one of the comments on this video is Dubai has this. Oh might be another different thing.

41:58 So um what how much more expensive is the gas? Like so if I let's say it's a hundred dollars normally for me to fill up my tank, what would it be with something like this? So he'll take the average price of all the gas stations within like a five mile radius of the customer's house. And mark it up like twenty percent. All right. Um what uh what about this like novelty ice cream thing'cause uh My kids go nuts for the ice cream truck whenever it comes around.

42:22 And I just can't believe he doesn't come around more often. Like it's like a once a month thing. I'm like, Dog We buy we all buy every time you're here. Like why are you just not here more often? Where do you go? Well, I just come here every day, like at the park, basically As soon as the ice cream truck pulls up, every single kid goes and gets an ice cream. And the truck literally looks Like it's nostalgic.

42:41 Like the idea of ice cream chest nostalgic. But also the truck actually looks like it's from nineteen eighty eight also. And like the menu does too. And so I'm just looking at it thinking like This is nostalgic, but actually it's just old. Uh which is not what you want. So, Chris, what's your ice cream idea? So this is like a three or four hundred dollar machine. And it's basically like a frozen cylinder that you pour

43:04 Flavored cream over. Melted ice cream. And then it scrapes it off and you put it in a little container and it's it's ice cream. It's viralable, very visual ice cream that sells itself. You can do it on a busy street corner or farmers markets. You prove out the demand in like an affordable way. And then you scale from there. It looks like a stack of like hay or something.

43:23 Yeah. So on your it's on your Instagram, I'm I'm just reading the tr or TikTok, it just says that you're doing are you saying like a different idea every day?'Cause on here it says you're on day fifty seven. And apparently someone makes fun of you because the top quote was Does the ice cream taste good? I don't know. And I don't care.

43:42 That's just a hack to get more people to follow me. I mean Which is what? It just say this is day fifty seven because then they follow with like Oh, I wanna see day fifty eight but That's the big secret. There's no data. Come on.

43:59 Wait, really? So y this isn't actually day fifty seven, you just made it up? Well, I mean I post three ideas a day. And my editor will add day whatever to any of them. I don't we there's no rhyme or reason. It just helps. It works. Spergazy. Come on, what do you want? It could be day fifty seven. It could be.

44:19 You've posted all these ideas and um You know, you you find something that somebody's doing, you're like, Oh, genius, this could be a thing. Boom, genius, this could be a thing. What's kinda like if you step back and you have a takeaway from from this whole thing. Maybe the takeaway is About the I types of ideas. Maybe the takeaway is what you've seen in the comments or people's reaction, or maybe it's the ta maybe the takeaway is in

44:43 You know J the action you've seen some people take off these like What are the actual lessons you've had now after posting I don't know how many, you know, hundreds of hundreds of these videos? People are very creative in coming up with excuses and reasons why they won't do something. Right. Very creative. If you look at my comments, some of the most commented things are Yeah, what about insurance? What about liability?

45:05 You buy insurance. That's what insurance is for. But this is so good. Why don't you do it? Why don't you? I have like thirteen businesses. I I can't do all of them. I'm sorry for giving you an idea. People like we will if we were as creative at a at actually starting and executing on things as we are of coming up with excuses why it wouldn't work.

45:26 Like we'd all be millionaires by now. Yeah, the comment section of Instagram and TikTok on any viral video. Is Like where I would send my worst enemy If I was like you should learn this adopt this mindset.

45:40 This will serve you well. And I would just send my enemies there and one by one they would all become Incapable people who focus on the absolute wrong things, right? On the on the viral videos, not on like you know, niche small community videos or things with like a a strong loyal audience or whatever. I'm talking about just stuff that just pops off. Okay, it's got ten million views.

45:59 The It's top, you know, it's like, oh, this person made it. And it's like, well, people who've made it are ruining America. It's like, what? Like what that's your takeaway from this like success story is like. Success is bad or you know, whatever, like just The the amount of uh Oh, just like

46:17 Yeah. poor quality thinking and attitudes in the like sections or in the comment sections is is pretty pretty wild on a big video. Do you r do you guys read the comments? I read the comments on our YouTube videos.

46:30 I don't really read them to Okay. Like Feedback though. If that makes sense. Like I read them and I reply to people'cause I'm like, Oh, it's cool that you cared enough to write so I'm gonna

46:42 Like I wanna talk to you. That's cool. But I don't like look at it and think to myself, Oh, I'm gonna do that. Because That would defeat the purpose of what I'm trying to do. Uh you know, uh the Rick Rubin quote, which is the The the the greatest thing the nicest thing you could do for your audience is ignore them completely.

46:59 I if you're a creator, you're an artist, you're trying to make something. Like you should make the thing you want to make and then let the chips fall where they may. That has become like much more the the philosophy. I have if you want feedback on like a specific thing. Cool. You go ask certain people. That you respect.

47:15 For that feedback. But like you don't just You don't just react to what's in the comments. Yeah, it's it's I I I agree with your philosoph and also it's hard. Hard like psychologically to avoid it, you mean? Well, you get a huge dopamine rush. So like if we do something that hits and you're like, I didn't even have fun doing that.

47:34 But it hit. You still get a dopamine rush. And you can record something that people love and it falls flat and you're like Uh, that doesn't feel wonderful right now. Even though it felt great when I recorded it.

47:46 I like to say like you can't go viral without half of everyone thinking you're an idiot. Right. It just comes with the territory. Or else it wouldn't go viral. Doesn't that seem like a pretty like toxic game to play? If you're reading the comments, yeah.

48:00 But not just toxic for your mentality, but like almost toxic in the sense of like uh You know, like I'm a sports fan and I used to love growing up watching sports center. That sports center used to be A bunch of people who love

48:12 Sports. Showing you the highlights, the coolest shit that you missed, and making some jokes along the way. And then like if you fast forward to ESPN today. It's basically like debate shows for one guy's gonna say the craziest shit ever. And the other guy's gonna fight him. And uh you know, and they're like, Cool, do you believe any of that shit you're saying? They're like, Yeah, yeah.

48:32 Well I what does that have to do with what does that have to do with this? The key differentiator is do you believe it. And everything I post, like I that's a That's like a checkbox in my mind before I hit publish is do I actually believe what I'm saying? Sometimes I believe something that's controversial. And that people think is idiotic. And I post it.

48:51 And it usually does well, but I'm not in the game of publishing things. that are just bombastic to get to get views if I don't believe it. Hey, quick message here because you know that feeling when you send a wire and it Actually works. No friction. Well, I've used Mercury for years now, and let me tell you, it just works. And that's why I use it for not one, not two, but eight of my companies. From credit cards to invoices, I have everything in one place. There's no janky dashboard. I'm never told, please visit a local bank branch. None of that tomfoolery. And a few months ago, I landed a big client. And the first thing I did.

49:22 I sent them a clean branded invoice, boom, deal closed, cash in the door. That's the kind of banking experience I want. And that's why I use Mercury. So if you're running a startup and you want banking that feels like it's built in this century, well, go to Mercury.com and get started in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Bank the services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column NA, and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC. Chris, have you done anything else cool in your businesses since the last time we talked? Yeah, so you pivoted your tree trimming business. Last time we talked on here, you were like all right, I got like a dozen businesses

49:55 Mm-hmm. That are doing in total like, you know, two or three million a year in free cash flow. Has anything cool happened in your your portfolio? I'm almost ready to open my secret pickleball club. That we talked about last time. Okay.

50:07 Well what's been so that that's been a little while. So you seemed like you were gonna like open that up quick. Have you run into like real world? Bumps doing that. Yeah, I have to uh expand my metal building and it's really hard finding a company that wants to do that'cause it's a small job. I there's companies that want to build metal buildings and barn dominiums from the ground up, but That was a what was the idea again? Like you had a space in your you had like a a shed or a big big kind of barn in your backyard. Yeah. And you called it a Secret pickleball. Secret pickleball. Yep.

50:36 Yeah. And you were like, I'm gonna have a hundred something member or two hundred members or something like that. Who pay me what was it? A hundred bucks a month. Yep. A hundred bucks a month and I'm gonna basic and all I gotta do is like basically run this kind of like no employee Backyard, pick a ball. Club for people.

50:54 Yep. And it's almost open. Well, Chris, I see one thing in your little uh I'm I'm on your TikTok feed right here. You have it's like kids' gym equipment. And I just bought

51:05 A little bit of this for my home gym. 'Cause like my kids always come down and wanna like be in the gym with me or like kinda bug me while I'm working out. Like they just think it's like playtime. And I need like a thing to occupy them. And so I've bought some of this like Fisher Price looking gym equipment. And there's there's a couple of problems with it. One is like

51:22 Kids get bored of it fairly fast. Two, it's really ugly. So like you have like uh red, yellow, green, blue suddenly like all over your gym, which like was is not that color. So it kinda like trashes up your gym. And I actually like the thing that kids like is basically obstacle courses.

51:40 And so I think the kids gym equipment to make is basically like A Easy to set up. Like little option, of course, or like the equivalent of like a few very like it comes with like Like a McDonald's menu of like twelve different courses you could just set up.

51:56 And that would occupy my kids for 30 minutes and it'd be really fun. I mean, I do this manually every day with my kids. I basically like create obstacle courses in my house. And like Chris, have you seen the nugget? No. Sam, do you know about the nugget?

52:08 Oh yeah. I I'm I'm a nugget owner. So yeah, yeah. These modular Yeah. So the nugget is this incredible business where They created kids furniture, but it's not doesn't look like furniture, right? Because if you if you thought of

52:22 Kids' furniture. From first principles, as Elon would say. Then you would make this. You would make something with no hard edges, no corners that they can get cut on. It would basically look like a toy, which is what the nugget is. It's like You know, a f a couple of foam kind of base pieces and then a foam triangle, foam circle, whatever. And so you get these like shapes.

52:42 That you can just set up as a couch. When you're not using it or when you want to just sit. Or you can fold them up and create like basically a jungle gym. And moms go nuts for this thing. I don't know if you've seen like the Nugget Owners like Facebook groups. It's like a hundred thousand members. Of moms who just like love the nugget and they want the new colors of the nugget, or they want like ideas and like, oh, if you buy two nuggets, you can create this in your house. Kids love the nugget, parents love the nugget, and

53:08 Um It's basically this like modular piece of furniture. It's like a mix of furniture and a toy. And I think like you know, there's there should be more of that. This business has scaled I think their plant is li I think they like started in like North Carolina or something.

53:22 But they do, you know, fifty, sixty, seventy million a year in revenue. on uh on the nugget. It's like a real like legit business. I actually I think that the estimate might be actually v actually dramatically low. Might be I might actually be double that by now. I looked into it for the first time like a couple of years ago and And uh was thinking about Potentially competing with them.

53:41 Yeah, I bought one after he told me about it. It seems i it it's amazing. And what do you think the revenue is now? Um, let me see. They They had post it, I remember it was like seventy five million uh a while back, but I I imagine it's over north of a hundred million now, is would be my guess. And um

53:58 Profitable business. That was bootstrap, no investors, um as far as I as far as I could find. And so they um But there was a there was a bunch of opportunities. Like one The nugget was quite expensive.

54:10 And so making a lower cost nugget was like, you know, one option. Two um You could always like it but basically like if you could do the nugget But get into retail because they weren't in retail. And so like I remember thinking like somebody should do the Costco

54:24 Like Costco basically has like knock off versions of everything. So if you see Peloton, you walk into Costco and there's something called like I don't even know what it's called. You know Echelon. Echelon. It like looks exactly the same. The name fucking rhymes and it's like This is Peloton. Cool. Like There's Ura Ring, which is like the kind of like fancy fitness tracker, and they're like Boom. We have the like Whatever the Zora ring. It's like they'll they'll have like the Costco brand partnered version of these. They Costco doesn't make it. They just find a company who's like,

54:53 plays at the right price points for Costco. Dude, that's exact like that's pretty much what my company they'll also do with the skim. We just aren't gonna raise any V C and I could sell for less and make more money. I mean it's it's the same thing. That's what Ash did. I mean that's the difference. What's the difference? How you guys differ? Well we didn't raise V C, therefore we can make less profit and get more. The spelling I can't do read.

55:18 Facebook ads. Yeah, yeah. That's it. Everywhere you look, it's just Facebook ads. And they did have to be

55:25 Clear, like insane word of mouth. Like um yeah, like people really love this product and we'll show you know, like When We do play dates like Inevitably the parents are like, Oh, what is that? Hey, right. Like we we tell people it it has some virality to it as well. It's a great product. Uh and they did a great job, but Yeah, there's

55:42 I I think there's more opportunities like that in the kind of kids space where you make something that's like functional that kids find fun, but like Doesn't clutter up and make your house look ugly at the same time. Yeah. I wonder if you could do like the the Casper mastress version of this and build a nugget competitor that

56:00 That you can like shrink down. To make shipping costs cheaper. Yeah, it does come like that. It comes uh like rolled in a thing and then you like let it expand for two days when it gets to your house. Hm.

56:14 Chris, what's your favorite business of all the businesses that you own? I'm curious. Oh man. Of the ones I currently own? Yeah. Yes. Oh man. Um

56:23 But what's the best business? When you the one when you're like Oh this R V Parks. I like my R parks. Say more say more words.

56:31 I just I don't understand why people invest in single family or multifamily, right? With a mobile home or an R V park. You don't maintain the units. You just maintain the infrastructure under the ground. Um, it's a hedge against the economy. When the economy's good.

56:44 The millennials and the boomers are traveling, you got short term stays when the economy Economy tanks. You got people living in your R V parks full time. So You hedge it both ways.

56:54 What what's your R V part called? Well I have Ownership in nine of them. And what's like one of them. Moose Creek.

57:02 Near Glacier National Park. Why don't you just uh buy more of these then? Uh well I am. Okay, so I'm looking at this moose creek. Uh what is stream side?

57:13 That's our holding company that owns all of them. We have twenty nine. Uh, and then I'm looking at there's a very nice website. So when I think RV Park, I thought like Trailer Park. Fancy thing. What am I dumb or there's just like

57:32 Yeah. This is more like KOA. This is for short term stays. They're near national or state parks. People stay one to three nights at a time. Trailer parks, people live there full time, month to month or year to year. So you went near a national park, you buy a piece of land. You get it zoned and permitted, I assume. And then basically people bring their RVs there. So you're not building mobile homes.

57:53 They bring their their R V there and they get to park it and they pay you Uh Fee to park there? That's what this is? Yeah, we d we don't really build. We'll expand, but we're usually buying existing parks.

58:05 And adding value. Okay, great. So that uh but that's what this is. And then how do I if I just want to come short term stay, you have stuff sitting there that I could just go use or I have to bring I have to bring it up. You bring your R V. Yeah. Okay, so there's no. It basically just has like a a way to uh a way to easily change the water. It has electric hookups and it might have a pool or like some type of like lounge that you can hang out. Walk through the business of one of these. So you said you buy them, you don't build them? Yeah.

58:30 You bought I whether it's this one or another one. So like how much do you buy this for? This one we bought for eight million dollars. Um And it was doing Seven hundred thousand a year. So like a nine percent cap rate.

58:42 So you go, you put down two million, three million, what'd you put down? We put down um twenty percent. So one point six million. We raised forty percent from investors. And we finance through a bank the remainder.

58:57 Okay, so you okay, so you put down one point six And then forty percent of the eight million. You also put out as equity. So you have like less debt than than typical. Um so you have forty percent debt on this thing.

59:09 You buy it. It was making what you said, seven hundred Thousand Profit. At the time. And then you said we add value. So like what was the play to add the value to this one?

59:19 So this one was open five months a year? Whereas it could have been open six months a year. So it it opened on May fifteenth. Closed on like October fifteenth. We opened from May first to October thirty first, right? So we added a month of occupancy. Sounds pretty simple, right? Genius. Okay. And and by the way, you talk to the owners and you're like, Hey guys. How come

59:39 You don't Do and they were just like, Ah, we just that's how we do things. No good reason. Yeah, we're good. It makes good money. Um and then we bought an acre next door or two acres next door and we expanded into it. So the rents were under market.

59:53 We raised rent. We added more pad sites. We expanded the season. And now it's doing like one point two million a year. I've never.

1:00:02 And it would be maybe still a uh nine cap rate, or you know, or was that like a sign of the times? We bought it under market. It was probably worth an eight cap when we bought it. So It at like a seven and a half cap, it's It's like a it's an eight figure park now. Yeah, so that's like a 15 million dollar thing now. So if you went and you sold it today, if it's stabilized and it's working well because you did raise the rents, you add more pads.

1:00:26 Um, you extend the seasonality by fifteen percent or you know, you the the open window. Uh and whatever else you said you did. And so now let's say it's a fifteen million dollar thing. You go sell this. you will end up turning, you know One point six

1:00:40 of equity into something like Yeah, three point two or maybe more because you have carry on the investor thing, something like that? Well, more because we're packaging it with twenty eight other parks. We so we have a hundred and fifty million dollars worth of parks under management. And then we have a portfolio. worth a hundred and eleven million under contract right now. So by the end of the year we'll have two hundred and sixty million. Worth of parks under management.

1:01:03 That way our cap rate comes way down and we can sell the whole thing for A six cap. How do we? Me and my partners. I'm a co GP in this fund. Do you have two or three?

1:01:13 Uh, three partners. Do you operate in this or you're just not you don't you don't want me operating, Sean. Come on. What do you do? I help with marketing. And with fundraising. Um I'm an idea guy with a great personality. Somebody ever something everybody wants up. That's that's usually my pitch. Strategy quote strategy.

1:01:34 Uh okay, so R V Parks is your best business. Yeah. But I've been doing this for s seven seven years. So I've been doing it with this company for two. But I was doing it with a couple of other partners seven years ago. Did you ever have a job or you're always doing your own thing? Always doing my own thing.

1:01:48 Which of the eight things has uh been the biggest financial success for you? This will probably end up that. Uh when we exit. Um which will probably be within a couple years. But I had I've had two different e commerce brands. That were eight figure businesses. Uh one I exited.

1:02:04 Uh and one I did not. Which one did you exit? Um it we sold wholesale iPhone parts. For seven years. to iPhone repair stores.

1:02:13 Okay. And so um W if you were if I cleaned your slate, if I took away all your businesses, gave you all your free time back, right? You know everything you know today about the world. But I give you all your time back. What would you

1:02:24 go really hard at if you if I was like, Hey Do something, you're gonna go do something now? You're starting from scratch. Mm-hmm. You know everything you need, but you got to do one thing. Yeah. What where does your brain go? Not like what would you do specif like specifically, maybe because maybe you don't know that, but like What immediately comes to mind when I ask that question?

1:02:42 I would want to ride a tidal wave. Uh, and I would want to ride what I know. And I know small business. Right. Medium, large, know nothing about it. I know small business inside and out. And so the tidal wave is AI and I would want to implement AI in small businesses.

1:02:57 Um, for free to get my foot in the door, earn their trust. Show myself as an expert. And then start charging. Yeah, and I would just have a simple AI automation slash implementation agency for small to medium sized businesses. What do you think is an example, like a h what would be like a hero example? of like small business here's a here's an example of a small business and here's an example of how AI

1:03:18 would help that small business like clear no brainer. Boom. You know, like that's the one I would kind of try to rinse and repeat. Yep. The simplest thing is setting up an AI voice answering agent twenty four seven. for small business owners that don't pick up the phone after hours because they're with their family, right?

1:03:35 Uh it's just An AI robot and you can plug into other, you know, software services that already offer this. You don't have to have any technical knowledge. You charge a flat monthly fee. And If there's an emergency, then it would

1:03:47 patch the call through to the business owner, like if it's a plumbing emergency. Otherwise it would just it's just like a smarter voicemail system. Um I would start there. We've had a lot of people say that. I've had a couple of friends do it. I know Alex Lieberman's doing it. Sean, um I I don't know if do you know Grant Wilkinson?

1:04:03 Um Grant's one of my good buddies. He started this thing, I'm looking at the website now. So originally this guy He was like Hey, I wanna work on something. Do you have any like ideas I can work on? And I told him like three things and all three failed miserably. And he's uh he's a he's an engineer and he was like I'm just gonna do this agency thing. It's called Rosedale, Rosedale.ai And like he's just doing agency work that automates a variety of tasks using AI and

1:04:28 Like customers are just begging for him to do shit for'em and there's like uh dozens and dozens and dozens of these services. And I'm seeing this firsthand, what's going on with Grants business, and people are just begging like They need it's simple. These you think these businesses are doing well, isn't it? Like they're going gangbusters, like these AI kinda implementer for businesses? It depends what you define as gangbusters, but can you make can the owner make seven figures a year, one million dollars a year? For sure. Can you get to two to three, four million dollars a year in revenue? For sure. Is it a lot of work? Yeah, it's a service. But if you're like your goal is to like make money and work forty hours a week and have a a business, yeah, I think it's like there's massive demand for it. Now, how does that scale beyond

1:05:10 to be as big as, you know, maybe um a hundred, two hundred, three hundred million dollars a year. I'm not sure. But like some people will figure it out and agencies that is a scale people always say agencies aren't scalable. No, it's definitely scalable. You're just gonna have to have a thousand employees. Uh like it's it'll work. It's just gonna be really hard. But that's that's not bad at all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's scalable. Like pain. Yeah. What is your pain tolerance is the question. Not is this scalable. But yeah, I mean, you don't have a bunch of friends that are doing this right now. I met a few people, but my

1:05:43 Uh My understanding was that like, you know, for a lot of these businesses, they don't really know how AI can help them. So you basically have to kind of go bespoke and figure out like, oh, what's your problem set and like how do we use AI to do this? And like the AI part is almost like the easy part. And then it's like, how do you get like the adoption and the buy in and the like, you know, all of that stuff. And so I think there is like di definitely desire and demand to

1:06:07 Like I think e pr everyone generally feels like oh I should probably be using AI to like M do stuff better. Mm-hmm. But when the business owner themselves is clueless about like where the AI can plug in, you need something like what Chris is talking about, which is like hey Here's the generic problem that I can see from the outside. That's ka that you see as a no brainer for you.

1:06:25 And if if I could find that match I could do that specific implementation. I think beyond that's a little bit harder. The more interesting plays to me have always been You understand where like AI is changing the game, and then you basically go buy a business at a fair price today.

1:06:41 And then you're like cool, my value add is that I'm gonna use AI to like drop ten po ten points of margin to the bottom line. You know, I could take this from a ten percent e bit of business to a twenty percent e bit of business just by doing this, right? Like just by doing this one thing. Um you know like I can r get rid of all these

1:06:58 people who I have doing stuff because I can automate. All of that at a you know, higher accuracy, higher speed using AI. Um so I think like The play is you go figure out how to tar how to what's the right type of business for that. Is it bookkeeping business? Is it something else?

1:07:13 And you basically go and you say, All right, I can buy this business for twenty five million dollars, it's an established business with a book of book of clients already. And I know that I have this lever of AI that the like fifty five, sixty-five year old business owner wasn't gonna do. And I bought it at a fair price, but I can make this thing more valuable and I can capture ten, twenty million dollars in two years of work, you know, without the

1:07:34 Without the hustle of scaling an agency. So I like that play of I like that play that version of this play much better, personally. Do you know anyone that's going after that now? There's a lot of people that I th I think there's like full funds that like private equity funds that are doing this. There were they're like Cool, we're gonna do private equity.

1:07:50 But typically the private equity play was like, you know, maybe we offshore things or maybe we just cut head count or we centralize certain things. And now they're like, the play is AI. We're gonna go in and we're gonna add AI in these three ways. You know, kind of what Chris said, like A I on the like sales. automation side, AI on operations automation.

1:08:11 And AI to just like, you know. Maybe reduce headcount across the board on product or whatever, you know, maybe it's engineering, something like that. And um So there you know, there's a lot of people trying to do that. I don't know how well it's going because They're not.

1:08:25 Like. Yeah, talking a lot on Twitter about like how great it's going. Yeah. We'll see. Mm Chris, what do you wanna be Wh where do you wanna be in ten years? I just wanna keep starting businesses, man.

1:08:37 I just chased product market fit. That's what I do. But why? I just I'm chasing dopamine, like

1:08:44 I flavor of dopamine you like. Yeah, I just my focus, my version of focus is focusing on my superpower, not on one business. And my superpower is seeing and executing on opportunities really, really fast. Mm. Worn out.

1:09:00 having to like manage or work with People who run your shit and not as good as you want'em to? Yeah, I mean I've had like fifteen different business partners. Um and so nowadays I I'm much more likely to to find a business partner that takes the vast majority of the business. So I could have Mm like more slices of

1:09:19 Small pieces of pie. So There's low expectations from me. And I just go into a partnership Eyes wide open saying, Hey I'm gonna be super distracted, FYI. If if you think I'm gonna put in ten hours a week, it's probably gonna be two.

1:09:32 So adjust your expectations and equity accordingly. And it took me fifteen years to learn that, but that's just how I prefer to do things. Where do you think ten years from now, what's gonna make it a huge win for you? Mm. It's probably gonna be as a

1:09:46 SaaS business that I launch and promote with my audience. Um With that has a big exit. That's where I see this heading. What kind of sass? Well I'm I'm

1:09:57 I'm building like a QuickBooks competitor right now. And I say when I say I, I mean my brother in law who's like a ten X developer. Um Like an AI enabled QuickBooks competitor. So maybe that'll be it. Maybe that won't even be a thing in six months, I don't know.

1:10:09 Yeah, that's pretty cool. I think that's good like product uh product audience fit for you, I would think. Yeah. That's a Super competitive space, unfortunately.

1:10:21 I know. Yeah. That's interesting. No interesting. But listen, I you know, I've got almost four million followers. That

1:10:31 Like me. You know? And most people hate QuickBooks. They hate zero. And if it's AI enabled and it's cheaper and I use it and I talk about it.

1:10:40 I'm not trying to beat QuickBooks or beat Zero. We're just trying to build a cool business that cash flows. Yeah. Lazy books. Bookkeeping for people who hate bookkeeping.

1:10:51 Lazy bucks? That's pretty. I like that you start with names. You seem like a guy who starts with a name. Well you you get the name early. Yeah.

1:10:59 Yeah. I start with the domain name. And the marketing. Makes it real for you. It kind of like forces clarity of thought around the the the product. Like why why why do you think that's important? It's it's more that I start with a marketing channel. Right.

1:11:12 in mind and then I build an idea around that. And oftentimes the name And the brand goes l hand in hand with the marketing channel. Right. I I don't like building ideas and see if people will want it. You know, I wanna See if they will want it and then build the idea.

1:11:27 What was name uh number two and three? There was there was none. Um I mean lazy books. I tried thin books, I couldn't find that domain. Lazy books was one where I was actually able to convince the seller to to sell it to me. But Uh uh.

1:11:41 I I was really just thinking of like a slim down QuickBooks competitor that had, you know. The twenty percent of features you only really need that never breaks, you know, that never disconnect from your bank account. That was the thought process there. You and our matchman, you're all about the domain names. Did you guys did you see Sean He gave a

1:11:59 The country of Antigua, I think it was. Did you see what happened? No. What did you do? It was a very small article at TechCrunch on TechCrunch.com. I saw that. Uh it said Darmesh Shah, founder of HubSpot. I don't remember exactly, but I think it said He gave them Antigua dot AI and paid them eight hundred thousand dollars to make that their official domain name.

1:12:22 I don't understand why he paid them to make that his official their their official domain name. But they antigua dot AI is now the country's official domain name. Well Dot AI is actually it stands for Dot Antigua, like most of their revenue is coming from yeah. All of those registrations.

1:12:40 Yeah, and so but I don't know why Darbash is just like slowly making making hit uh inroads with uh a variety of countries starting with domain names and before we know it, the next twenty years he's gonna have an army. Uh this like is it out of uh this isn't out of the realm if you know Dharmash. Um Chris. Hopefully you had a great time. We like having you on. This is a blast. Thanks, man. Thanks for coming, man.

1:13:04 You're an interesting guy with interesting ideas and we appreciate your big time. You go ahead, promote it. TKO Pod dot com. It's the Kerner Office Podcast. I didn't want to talk about it, but here I even know I had this on, but TKO Pod dot com. Chris, what's your shirt? W what does your shirt say? Says look at this friggin' thing right here.

1:13:22 Ah that's that's a lie. Short from videos, yeah. Um I appreciate that. I respect Your commitment to the bit. Thank you.

1:13:32 That's it. That's the pod. Thank you, Chris. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'm putting my lawn in it like my days off on the roadless travel, never looking back. All right, let's take a quick break because as you know, we are on the HubSpot Podcast Network, but we're not the only ones. There's other podcasts on this network too, and maybe you like them. Maybe you should check them out. One of them that wanna draw your attention to is called Nudge by Phil Agnew. And whether you're a marketer or a salesperson and you're looking for The small changes you can make, the new habits you could do, the the small decisions you could make that will make a big difference. That's what that podcast is all about.

1:14:06 Check it out. It's called Nudge. And you can get it wherever you get your podcast.