Learn. Share. Evolve…

0:00:05 All right. This guy might be the king of side hustles. He makes about $3 million a year off of
0:00:09 six or seven different side hustles, different streams of income. And normally all the advice
0:00:13 you hear is about focus, focus, go all in on one thing. This guy’s like Mr. Shiny object syndrome.
0:00:18 So I loved having him on. He’s very fun. And he comes on, he tells you the side hustle ideas that
0:00:22 he loves. So things that you could do, it’s kind of weird businesses, but you could do them really
0:00:26 in any local market. And on this podcast, sometimes we have really brilliant people,
0:00:29 but they talk about stuff that’s for most people, not something they could go do. It’s
0:00:33 interesting to hear, but you can’t really do it. This is an episode I’m going to send to my sister,
0:00:37 you know, my brother-in-law, because I think they would like to do these businesses. And I think
0:00:41 these are things that anybody actually can do and get to where he’s gotten, where I think he’s making
0:00:47 $8,000 per day of free cashflow off of these side hustles per day. That’s pretty crazy. So enjoy this
0:00:52 episode. It’s all about the weird, crazy side hustles that anybody could do. If you just got a
0:01:06 little bit of hustle. All right, what’s up? We got Chris here. Chris, you are a crazy guy.
0:01:12 You’re a madman. And one of the reasons I wanted you on here is because most business advice on the
0:01:18 internet sounds like this. You got to focus, you got to lock in, you got to grind, you have to just
0:01:24 go all in on one thing, focus, focus, focus. And you’re like the exact opposite. You’re a dude who
0:01:29 you see a shiny object, you chase it. And you’re not ashamed to say it. That’s actually your strategy.
0:01:36 We were talking before this and you were telling me that you have, I think, started 30 different
0:01:42 businesses that crossed over 50,000 in revenue, maybe 35. You said you have six different revenue
0:01:46 streams right now that each produce over a hundred thousand dollars of cashflow for you. And I was doing
0:01:51 the math on some of your numbers. And I think basically just on your side hustles, you’re
0:01:57 making like $8,000 a day of cashflow. And I think that is amazing. I want to hear what your side
0:02:03 hustles are. I want to hear what other side hustles you’ve found because you find these like random,
0:02:07 simple businesses that are cool. I want to hear which ones you think are cool that other people
0:02:13 can go do for their own side hustles. And I want to hear your philosophy as you go, because again,
0:02:17 I think you defy some of the odds. That sounds perfect. Absolutely. Let’s do it.
0:02:20 So tell me about some of the ideas you have that other people could do.
0:02:24 Dude, I think you should pull up that video of the hole in one golf challenge.
0:02:27 This is one that I can’t get out of my head.
0:02:30 All right, so here we go. Look at this freaking thing right here. And I see a,
0:02:37 basically a golf putting green. So like the, we’re just the part where the hole is and it’s just
0:02:43 floating out in the ocean. And you said that this driving range in New Zealand pays out $10,000. If
0:02:49 you hit a hole in one, it’s 111 yards away. You get this like plaque if you hit the hole in one.
0:02:55 And so what is the business here? They basically, they, it’s like a carnival game. They charge you a
0:03:00 little bit to try to hit a hole in one. Is that it? Yeah. It’s kind of like, think of like
0:03:05 unbundling a carnival. It’s the business is math. They’re just using math. Right. And here’s the math.
0:03:12 The, the average amateur golfer, and I don’t golf. I hate golf, um, has a one in 25,000 chance of
0:03:19 getting a hole in one on a par three, which this is. Okay. And so this company in New Zealand,
0:03:24 it’s right off the road on this Lake, um, they have announced multiple times that they pay out
0:03:30 on average once every two weeks. So I can use math, uh, to say, all right, these guys, and I know how
0:03:35 much they sell balls for it’s like 40 bucks for 25 balls or something. Uh, and they have a sensor in
0:03:39 the hole and they have divers go get the balls every couple of weeks. Yeah. There’s like a scuba diver
0:03:44 swimming around the thing. Is he there all the time or he just does that once a week goes and gets all the
0:03:52 balls just once a week. And so I can surmise based on math and statistics that this place net profits
0:03:58 like three to $500,000 a year, which is, there’s nothing to see there. It’s a little stand with a
0:04:04 floating green. One guy just standing there with an iPad. So why isn’t this all over the place?
0:04:09 Wait, so you said this is just roadside in New Zealand. There’s one, there’s one of these in the
0:04:12 world that I know of off the side of a road in New Zealand, but it’s off the side of the road.
0:04:16 it’s not even like near a golf course or tourist attraction. You’re just saying this is just in
0:04:22 a random area right now. Yeah. All right. So let’s say we wanted to do this. Let’s brainstorm this
0:04:25 together and maybe we’ll actually do this. Maybe we’ll find a listener to run this for us to make
0:04:30 it happen. But like, we’ll make this an MFM case study. All right. So how would we do this in order
0:04:36 to make this happen, um, you know, quickly, like get momentum and then have it actually work,
0:04:40 have it actually be successful. So to me, it’s all about piggybacking, right? I don’t want to guess
0:04:45 where the golfers are. Like there are no golfers where this place is, but how much better would
0:04:50 they be doing if there was all already a captive audience right there? And so I would just find one
0:04:55 golf course. You know how you go, you go to a golf course and like after the 18th hole, there’s just
0:05:00 like a putting green where you can chill. It would be like that. Okay. Take your nearest pond, put a
0:05:05 floating green out there, put a tee and have a little iPad with a stand and say, here’s your ball. Just like a
0:05:11 driving range, 20 balls, 20 bucks or whatever, $10,000. If you get a hole in one and it’s a way
0:05:15 for a golf course to earn additional revenue. They’re not about to build a floating green and work
0:05:21 out the logistics of the point of sale. So you could, yeah, you could do this as a service and say,
0:05:26 we’ll install this. You’re going to have more net income without doing any work. We’re going to take
0:05:32 30% of all your revenue as a fee. Okay. I kind of love this idea, but you need the water for this
0:05:37 floating thing. Right. Or what do you, what are you suggesting? So like, how would you do this if
0:05:41 the golf course is not situated by like, you know, like in this case is like the ocean or whatever.
0:05:46 I think, I’m glad you brought that up. Cause I think the water is a key point. Like as men,
0:05:52 we want to throw rocks in the water. Yeah. I think visually there’s a, there’s a, there’s something
0:05:56 that like my testosterone went up like 15 points, just looking at this. Like I could, I could do this.
0:06:02 Right. Like if it was literally just like, uh, Oh, like here’s just like a hole. Here’s the 19th
0:06:07 hole. Right. You could do that. You could brand it. Oh, this is the 19th hole. But just having that
0:06:12 obstacle of mother nature there. Yes. There’s something to that. I mean, you win either way.
0:06:17 So you get it on the green, you feel awesome. You get a hole in one, you win $10,000. You really
0:06:22 feel awesome. You miss, you see a splash. You can’t lose. Or worst case scenario, you’re just playing
0:06:26 golf. You’re paying, you’re paying money to play golf, which is why you’re there in the first place.
0:06:31 And you’re going to get content out of this also. You’re going to have your buddy film you,
0:06:36 or we set up a camera here where you get like an Instagram worthy story for, you know, for,
0:06:40 for this thing. How much do you say people pay to take a swing at this? Or, you know,
0:06:44 they buy 10 balls or what do they do? It’s like 30, it’s like 20 bucks or like 35 bucks for 20
0:06:50 balls or 50 bucks for 40 balls, something like that. Oh, so you get like 20 to 40 hacks at it to do it.
0:06:57 Yeah. That’s pretty good. And every guy thinks he can do it. Right. Of course. Or that today might
0:07:03 be a day. And also golf, you’re already like, I don’t know what the average spend is of a golf day.
0:07:07 Like if an, of a golf outing, I don’t play golf personally, but like there’s the, there’s the
0:07:11 actual, like the cost to actually play that day on the course. There’s all the clubs investments
0:07:15 you’ve done. There’s the cat, there’s the tips, there’s the food, there’s the, the beer along the
0:07:20 way. There’s all this like money spent dude to spend an extra 40 bucks to have a blast with your
0:07:24 buddies at the end or to have a story or to just like, you know, do something at the end.
0:07:27 That’s an absolute no brainer. If you actually did this with the golf course,
0:07:32 I thought you were going to say though, that you would do it just on the route to the golf course.
0:07:37 You know, there’s a lot of golfer traffic. Who’s going to take a roadside stop here and try to do
0:07:42 this. I mean, you could do that too. Like I’m picturing like a freeway with a lake over to the
0:07:48 right and an exit nearby. You rent the billboard right above it, arrow pointing down $10,000 for a floating
0:07:52 hole in one and people can just pull off and do it. Like it doesn’t have to be a golf course.
0:07:58 I like, you could use the same principle. And to me, the principle is just math as a service,
0:08:03 right? We’re calling this a mass business. Okay. And it’s like, let’s say you have a one in a hundred
0:08:09 chance. It’s an outdoor casino. Yes, exactly. Exactly. What is a slot machine? What is roulette?
0:08:13 What is craps? What are all these games? These are games where the house just said, cool,
0:08:18 we’ll take an edge. We’ll take a math edge and you get to play and have fun. Right. Yeah. But we,
0:08:22 we take the edge and that you, what you’re saying is to do the same thing. Yeah. Even like a putting
0:08:28 green in a mall or something, or a walkable outdoor shopping area. Let’s say you’ve got like a one in
0:08:33 500 chance of making a 30 foot putt. Right. So you say, Hey, 30 foot putt, you get it. We’ll give
0:08:38 you 500 bucks. And you just do the math and you say, all right, I’m, you know, every $3,000 I get,
0:08:42 I’m going to pay out 500 bucks. Statistically speaking, dude, I love this idea. If you,
0:08:47 if you want to do this idea, email me Sean at Sean Puri. And then me and Chris, we will,
0:08:50 we will help you do this and we will document the journey. We’ll put it out there in the public.
0:08:55 We’ll kind of make it a thing because I think part of it is the branding and the novelty factor.
0:09:00 And you want to see this online first, and then people will actually drive out to do it,
0:09:05 or they’ll plan to stop. Not just whoever happens to see it and understand it while they’re driving
0:09:10 50 miles an hour down a road. You know what I mean? Yeah. I like the name 19th hole. That’s a good
0:09:14 one. It’s good, right? We might need to snag that domain name before this goes live.
0:09:22 All right. This episode is brought to you by HubSpot. They’re doing a big conference. This is their big
0:09:27 one. They do called inbound. They have a ton of great speakers that are coming to San Francisco,
0:09:31 September 3rd to September 5th. And it’s got a pretty incredible lineup. They have comedians like
0:09:37 Amy Poehler. They have Dario from Anthropik, Dwarkesh, Sean Evans from Hot Ones. And if you’re
0:09:41 somebody who’s in marketing or sales or AI, and you just want to know what’s going on, what’s coming
0:09:45 next, it’s a great event to go to. And hey, guess what? I’m going to be there. You can go to
0:09:51 inbound.com slash register to get your ticket to Inbound 2025. Again, September 3rd through 5th
0:09:53 in San Francisco. Hope to see you there.
0:09:58 All right. So I love the hole-in-one golf course. All right. Give me the next side hustle idea.
0:10:04 Okay. Well, I want to talk about Facebook Marketplace. I feel like there’s an entire
0:10:09 economy in Facebook Marketplace. There are seven-figure business owners, let’s say fencing
0:10:15 business. All they do is post to Facebook Marketplace organically once a week to get all their leads.
0:10:20 By the way, Facebook Marketplace has 1 billion monthly active users. Just that tab.
0:10:23 Crazy. And no one’s talking about it. What are we doing?
0:10:28 So I’ve got a story for you. I’ve got a story.
0:10:32 And by the way, just explain the thing you just said real quick before you go to your story. So
0:10:37 you said there’s people who own like local fencing companies. Their entire sales machine is posting
0:10:42 on Face Marketplace fencing services. Is that what you’re saying? Or answering the request for fencing
0:10:43 service? What are they actually doing?
0:10:50 Yeah. Like they’re just posting, hey, I put up fences, cedar six foot, $8 per linear foot. And
0:10:54 then people message him and he goes out and gives a quote and he has a $7,000 job. Like there’s nothing
0:10:59 paid. There’s no paid ads. This is just one organic post that takes him five minutes and he’ll refresh it
0:11:00 every couple of days.
0:11:05 Dude, I don’t know if you saw this. We did this episode with high schoolers. I think it was like
0:11:06 a high school version of Shark Tank.
0:11:07 I saw that. Yeah.
0:11:11 And there was a kid who was, I think, 17, 18 years old and his entire business, I forget even
0:11:13 what the service was. It was home services of some kind. I don’t remember.
0:11:15 It was like window washing or something.
0:11:17 Yeah. It was like window washing or like gutter cleaning.
0:11:18 Gutter cleaning.
0:11:22 Actually it was their highlight thing. It was like gutter cleaning. And his entire business
0:11:27 model was off of Nextdoor. So he’s like, yeah, I just started this in my neighborhood where I live.
0:11:32 I went on Nextdoor and I said that I do this and I serviced, you know, the last year I serviced 60
0:11:37 homes in this neighborhood of 600 homes or whatever it was for gutter cleaning. And that
0:11:39 generated, I’m making up the numbers now because I don’t remember off the top of my head, but it was
0:11:44 like 500,000 in revenue. And we were like, what? And he’s like, yeah, I just post on there that this
0:11:48 is what I do. And then it’s people in our neighborhood. And I was like, so could you post
0:11:52 in the next neighborhood? He’s like, yeah, I’m trying to figure out how to get around the, you know,
0:11:56 like, yeah, I can. I just haven’t done that yet. It’s like, wow, this is, everybody should do this.
0:12:01 Like, you know, what is my kid doing? What are they teaching you in pre-K right now? We got to get
0:12:06 after it with this Nextdoor, you know, Nextdoor lead gen, basically. And so you’re saying the same thing is
0:12:10 happening at a bigger scale on Facebook Marketplace. Yeah. Both great opportunities.
0:12:12 Okay, great. So tell me the story you’re going to tell me.
0:12:20 Yeah, this is, this is an outlier example. Okay. Results not guaranteed. But 2021, China had
0:12:26 canceled Bitcoin mining, right? 2021 was a crazy year, a lot of money being printed. And we started
0:12:32 a Bitcoin mining facility and people were selling Bitcoin miners and hosting services on Facebook
0:12:38 marketplace. And so these miners cost $10,000. So you go type in the name of the model and you see
0:12:43 them listed. Cool. But I thought, huh, the hosting price, because if you buy a Bitcoin miner, you have
0:12:49 to host it at like a data center. And it’s usually like 200 bucks a month for the hosting fee. So I just
0:12:55 posted organically to Facebook marketplace, Bitcoin mining hosting service. But instead of putting in the
0:13:00 price of the miner, which turns people off $10,000, $10,000, right? Yeah, I put in the price of the
0:13:05 hosting $200. And then when you click into it in the description, it’s like, it’s actually 200 for
0:13:11 hosting. Here’s the cost of the miners. I’m not exaggerating. That one ad, and I had it going on
0:13:19 multiple accounts, we would refresh it, but no paid, no paid. Did $9.8 million all on Facebook marketplace
0:13:25 in three months? Profitably. Like this isn’t like you’re, oh, and we spent $9.8 million in ads, like
0:13:32 profitably. That’s like the potential and kind of an extreme outlier, but I have other more normal
0:13:36 examples. Just to be clear, you were selling miners that you had, that you already owned or what were
0:13:41 you doing? We were pre-selling them and then ordering them from China. So we had a positive cashflow
0:13:46 conversion cycle in addition to all that. All right. So you went on Facebook ads, you specifically did the
0:13:50 marketplace ads. Is that right? Not even ads. We were just posting. Just posting. All right. Just
0:13:55 organic posting. And you’re posting every day. You’re posting it and you’re posting it in every
0:14:00 city. Did you set up like a farm to post these? How’d you do that? Yeah. We used VAs and multiple
0:14:04 Facebook accounts and we posted in multiple cities because most people want to buy from someone
0:14:12 local. Um, and the funnel was, you know, VA answers, uh, response. Then they pushed them to a sales
0:14:16 call because it’s hard to sell something so expensive over the internet. Once they got on the
0:14:22 sales call, we would close like half of them. Right. So, and so, and then you would close them
0:14:26 and then you’d go order that same thing from China because there’s like a knowledge arbitrage here of
0:14:32 like, I don’t know how to go, or I don’t trust spending $10,000 on Alibaba or Aliexpress. And so
0:14:36 you would then do that and you’d have a margin. What was the rough margin on something like that?
0:14:44 Call it 30%. 30%. But like high ticket. So. And this one I’m guessing didn’t last in the sense that
0:14:48 like, you know, in 2025, maybe the same market dynamics, the demand, the supply are not the
0:14:54 same. Is that true? Yep. Really? The biggest variable here is like the frothiness of the mining
0:14:59 market, which is not good right now. So I think this would work again if the mining market turned
0:15:03 around more. When the time is like, like, would you do this? Like, are you planning to do this again?
0:15:06 If the mining market, you know, gets, uh, gets hyped again?
0:15:13 Yes. Yeah. And how do you spend your money, dude? So let’s say you make a few million dollars
0:15:16 doing something like this. What do you, what does Chris like to spend his money on?
0:15:24 Oh man. Um, on my family, we go on cool vacations and starting more businesses. Um, I invest in real
0:15:30 estate, but I just, I like starting businesses is my, it’s the only thing I know, but it seems like
0:15:36 you start businesses that don’t take a lot of capital. Yeah, that’s true. But I like investing,
0:15:43 uh, like tripling down on businesses that are more mature along the way where I can see a clear path to
0:15:48 growth with more capital. What’s another Facebook marketplace idea that somebody could do? Like,
0:15:52 is it as simple as, Hey, I noticed that there are garage shelving companies. They’re not currently
0:15:57 active in my area. I go talk to 10 business owners. I say, Hey, if I bring you a customer,
0:16:03 give me $300 or whatever it is. And you do lead gen because that, that business owner doesn’t even
0:16:08 think to do Facebook marketplace activity to, to drive leads. Most, most service people,
0:16:13 most small business owners don’t even think this way. Right. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can literally
0:16:17 build an agency that just posts to Facebook marketplace for business owners, sells them the
0:16:22 leads. Right. Right. But you mentioned shelving. I interviewed this guy named Alex on my podcast.
0:16:29 the Kerner office. And he has a six figure business just building, not shelving, but garage shelving
0:16:35 on wheels with Costco totes. Like that’s it. Uh, only with organic Facebook marketplace posts.
0:16:43 And he net profits $180,000 a year. That’s the whole business. Right. Garage shelving on Facebook
0:16:50 marketplace. I mean, he has a $300 saw and he goes and buys two by fours. And he didn’t even have a truck
0:16:56 for like the first year and a half. Right. Okay. What are your other ideas? I see a list of 10 here
0:17:03 and we’ve probably done two or three. So give me, give me more. All right. Any idea? No, no. Any
0:17:07 idea. You want me to just call out one of these? Just tee me up. Yeah. Take local tourist traps and put
0:17:10 them in your home market. Is this like the whole in one challenge or are you talking about something
0:17:15 else? Different? Yeah. This is a good one. So I went, you’ve seen a rest development, I assume.
0:17:22 Of course. Okay. So there’s money in the banana stand. We all know that. Um, I went to first day
0:17:27 of business school in Harvard. That’s what they teach you. Yeah. So I went to Balboa Island with my family
0:17:34 last year and we went to the banana stand for whatever reason, this one street, it has like seven banana
0:17:39 stands. And there’s one that’s supposedly the best. And I shelled out like $8 each for these bananas
0:17:45 covered in chocolate and nuts. And I made a video, uh, about, you know, how much profit these guys
0:17:50 make, because as I went to the window, I had to, I asked her, how many of these do you sell the day?
0:17:54 What’s your busiest day ever? What’s your slowest day ever? All these people are behind me. Do you
0:18:00 want nuts or no nuts on the banana? People were waiting, but I had to know. And then to make matters
0:18:04 worse, I pull out my phone and make a video about how anyone could copy them. So I’m a great guy,
0:18:18 steal your banana. This one little shop that’s like 300 square feet is doing like 7 million a year
0:18:24 in frozen bananas. Like, and what’s the margin on an $8 banana with chocolate and peanuts? And so I just
0:18:30 thought like, why isn’t this like, why isn’t this a thing? I didn’t go to Balboa Island for the bananas.
0:18:36 Once I was there, I got them, but there are Balboa islands all over the world. And most of them have
0:18:41 no banana stand. Like, so it’s, this idea isn’t just about banana stand. It’s about taking something
0:18:47 really unique and novel. Maybe it’s like the old Western timey photo booths that you see in Pigeon
0:18:54 Forge. Maybe it’s like, um, funnel cake or like the mini donuts that you see in Gatlinburg, like take
0:18:59 something like that and just test it. I’m not saying it’s going to work, but you could test it very,
0:19:03 very cheaply in other tourist markets or in non-tourist markets.
0:19:07 Yeah. That’s interesting. I wonder if that would work. Like, I wonder how much of the
0:19:14 appeal is that, Oh, humans just like these kinds of frozen chocolate bananas. Or is it that in that
0:19:20 area on that street, it’s kind of known for this and you see a line. And so you see the line and you
0:19:24 start doing it. Like, I wonder if that, like, it’s kind of like an organ transplant. I wonder if there’s
0:19:29 like that, you know, donor rejection or the host rejection of the, of the organ when you put one
0:19:34 of these in a new, in a new area. It could be, but I think that the greatest chance you’ve had,
0:19:41 you would have for success is taking specifically a tourist trap and putting it in a different tourist
0:19:45 trap where it’s like, right. This is a unique novel thing that people don’t buy when they’re home.
0:19:50 But like, for instance, um, I have a friend in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee that owns an indoor
0:19:55 sledding facility. You can’t tell me that wouldn’t work in other tourist traps that have the same type of
0:20:00 demographic there, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Um, okay. Give me another one. How
0:20:07 about, um, toasted tours? What is this? This is a, all right. This, this is a Northern California
0:20:13 by you. This guy took a, a 40 foot shipping container, put it on the back of a semi truck,
0:20:20 cut out the walls, put handrails on there, put tables in their chairs in there. And he takes people
0:20:24 on wine tours. It’s a party bus, but it’s not even a bus. It’s a shipping container.
0:20:31 That’s open air. Open air. Yeah. They like cut out the sides. Yes. And so I’m swiping Instagram one
0:20:35 day and I see this video that just broke my frame. It’s the shipping container and people are like
0:20:41 dancing inside as it’s going around a bend at a high rate of speed. And it’s like dangerous.
0:20:48 What am I looking at? But this guy crushes it like his first year. And he had experience
0:20:53 doing like wine tours, but nothing like this. I think he did like over a million bucks his first
0:20:59 year with like 60% margins. What I like about some of these is that they are visually viral.
0:21:05 So, you know, the definition of virality, people get it wrong. People think it’s word of mouth.
0:21:09 Word of mouth is actually a different thing. Word of mouth is, I like this so much. I want to tell my
0:21:14 friends about it. Viral is actually more like a sneeze. You spread a virus without even wanting
0:21:19 to spread it. Right. This was like back when, uh, you know, Hotmail started. I’m just sending you an
0:21:22 email. I’m not trying to tell you to use Hotmail, but because I’m sending you an email from my Hotmail
0:21:27 address. And at the bottom, it says, I sent this via Hotmail. You know, they, they added that to the
0:21:32 bottom of the email. It spread like a virus. And that’s how, you know, a lot of the big viral
0:21:37 services actually spread. Facebook was like this, right? I’m, I’m uploading photos. I’m just tagging
0:21:41 my friends. I’m not trying to tell them, Hey, you should join Facebook. I’m having a grand old time
0:21:45 here. They tagged a friend. It sent them an email said you got tagged in a photo and people can’t resist
0:21:50 being like somebody put a photo up of me on the internet. I must see this. And that’s how Facebook
0:21:55 grew early on was like this, this one viral loop. And then there’s other types of virality. One is like
0:22:01 this visually viral where it’s not like the people on this truck. We’re trying to go tell everyone
0:22:07 about it, but it’s so novel looking that I can’t help, but look at it, learn about it. You know?
0:22:13 And, and I think the whole in one challenge has the same benefit, which is like, you see it. It’s super
0:22:18 interesting to look at. You get the concept right away. And it’s worth remarking on. You’re talking
0:22:22 about it with people. You notice it, you want to do it. The act of somebody else doing it made you want
0:22:28 to do it. And so I like these things that are sort of walking billboard style businesses because you
0:22:34 know, they market themselves once you get them going. This episode is brought to you by HubSpot
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0:22:59 Dude, I have some really good, uh, good examples of visually viral stuff.
0:23:04 Have you seen that guy that does like, he’ll mow people’s lawns for free?
0:23:05 Please tell me you’ve seen that.
0:23:06 Who’s this guy?
0:23:10 Okay. This guy out of Kansas or something. Young guy. He owned a lawn care business,
0:23:16 small kind of struggling business. And one day he sets up his tripod, SB mowing and SB pressure
0:23:19 washing. He sets up a tripod. He’s got a big YouTube channel now, right?
0:23:27 So this guy has 45 million followers across platforms combined. 45 million. And all he does
0:23:31 is he sets up a tripod. He puts on a mic. He walks up to the door. He says, Hey, your lawn looks like
0:23:37 crap. Mind if I mow it for free? What’s the catch? I publish this to YouTube and make money. Cool. And
0:23:40 then he mows it for free with a time-lapse video visually viral.
0:23:40 Transforms it.
0:23:40 Yeah.
0:23:45 Yes. We want to see the outcome. The retention is there. So the platforms push it. Like,
0:23:49 what is it going to look like when he’s done? And this guy, I mean, what is the value of 45 million
0:23:52 social media followers versus the value of a local lawn care business?
0:23:57 Right. I mean, dude, look at this, by the way, like if you just sort by popular,
0:24:02 you know, he stacks the thing. So there’s the visual viral part of, uh, before and after,
0:24:08 which humans want to complete that. They want to know that the solution, then you have, um,
0:24:13 the sort of novelty surprise factor. Like, Oh, this guy’s doing this for free. That’s interesting.
0:24:18 Why? I want to know what’s the answer here. But then he stacks on drama. So the top videos are angry
0:24:24 home homeowner confronts me while I’m mowing this vacant home. Cop approaches me while I’m mowing this
0:24:31 deserted home and tells me this homeowner stunned at how wide the sidewalks are. Right. Her tears said
0:24:37 it all. My prayers have been answered. So this guy has this great skill stack where he’s got,
0:24:41 you know, the, the lawn care, this sort of, that’s one skill that, okay, is worth,
0:24:46 you know, only X dollars in the market of, of the economy, but then he stacks on being really good
0:24:51 at content. And those two together created a, how many lawn care guys are really good at content?
0:24:55 I don’t know. Zero. Like, you know, the, the numbers less than a dozen. And so suddenly he became
0:25:02 rare. And when you’re rare, you’re valuable. Exactly. Yeah. That’s really cool. Okay. So let’s jump in
0:25:08 side hustles and the ones that you currently have. So let’s do some of the fun ones. The one I met you
0:25:14 on is about Bucky’s. And so for people who don’t know, could you explain just how crazy of a business
0:25:20 Bucky’s is? And then the side hustle you created off the back of Bucky’s. Yeah. Bucky’s is like your
0:25:27 redneck Disney gas station. They’re about half the size of a Costco. There’s 51 locations and they do
0:25:33 like 60 to 80 million in revenue per year each. And it’s just, if you haven’t been there,
0:25:38 there’s nothing like, it’s like a religious. So the math on that is like 3 billion in revenue
0:25:45 on 50 gas stations. Yeah. Yeah. What? I’ve never been to a Bucky’s. What, what makes a Bucky’s so
0:25:48 great? Is it even a gas station or is it just something else that happens to have gas?
0:25:52 It’s a brand with a gas station. They have over a hundred pumps. You walk in,
0:25:57 there’s just things happening everywhere. You’ve got tacos being made. You’ve got people shouting
0:26:03 about brisket. You’ve got beaver nuggets, t-shirts, like beavers walking around the cleanest bathrooms
0:26:08 you’ll ever find. There’s nothing else like it. You just walk in and you’re, you’re amazed from the
0:26:13 get go. Okay. Before you tell me your side hustle off the back of that, what’s the quick kind of origin
0:26:17 story of this? Has this been around for like a hundred years? Who started it? Like, why is this so
0:26:21 successful? I mean, I’ve never heard that $3 billion in revenue on 51 gas stations.
0:26:27 They founded like 40 years ago. There’s a guy named Arch. He was called Bucky as a kid and he
0:26:31 opened a gas station and then they just started going bigger and bigger and bigger. They just kept
0:26:37 pushing the envelope and their whole signature was this mascot, just this cheesy looking beaver that
0:26:43 people just loved. And so once they started selling merch, t-shirts and tumblers and all that,
0:26:48 they just exploded. And they’re really unique in that they put themselves in far-flung areas.
0:26:55 They’re not like in the city. They’re on the way to a vacation or close to a vacation destination.
0:27:00 Oh, so it’s like the perfect rest stop, right? Because if anything, like I was just on a road
0:27:05 trip, we drove to Tahoe and it’s a three, three hour drive roughly, but there’s these patches where
0:27:11 you need to stop in the middle and the bar is so low for rest stop experience, right? It’s like,
0:27:16 you know, it’s basically a porta potty in a, in a good scenario. And then you get like the trucker rest
0:27:22 stops and you get a gas station. Then you get like maybe a little strip mall with the Starbucks. But
0:27:27 what you’re saying is they built something actually like really cool out in that’s on those drives. And
0:27:29 that maybe it’s like one of the golden insights for them.
0:27:35 Yeah. It’s just that you walk in and you’re a captive audience. You can buy lunch, you can buy gas.
0:27:40 Most people just park at the pump. You can buy a t-shirt and the average ticket. I don’t know what it is.
0:27:44 They’re privately traded, but people spend hundreds of dollars there. You’re not just like buying a
0:27:46 Celsius and hopping out.
0:27:50 All right. What is this business you created on top of Buc-ee’s or like your side hustle for Buc-ee’s?
0:27:55 Yeah. So back to what you said about me not being able to focus. I was in the middle of running this
0:28:00 business that was growing and demanding all of our time and attention. And I took my business partner
0:28:05 to Buc-ee’s and he was from Utah. It was his first time. And on the way home, I distinctly remember
0:28:10 this. I remember the overpass. I was driving. I’m ashamed to say I pulled out my phone and I said,
0:28:16 Kirk, these guys must kill it online. And I said, do you know what Disney does like X billion just
0:28:20 through their online merch store? These guys must kill it. So I go to Buc-ee’s.com. I look for the
0:28:25 shop button and it wasn’t there. They didn’t sell online. Anything, not food, snacks, shirts, anything.
0:28:31 And I just like, I just sat there in silence. I felt like capitalism was being murdered.
0:28:36 Like, what is, why? What good reason is there for this? And this was like six years ago.
0:28:42 And so then we just started talking and we’re just like, what if, what if we launched a website for
0:28:47 them? What if we went online for them? Because we were running a 3PL, third-party logistics business
0:28:52 at the time, really hard business. And we thought we could launch this business for them as like a
0:28:57 permissionless way to get their business end to end and get them as a customer. And maybe they’ll try to
0:29:01 sue us, but worst case, it’ll be a great story. And so what’d you do?
0:29:06 So the first thing I did was started cold emailing the founders, the executive team, everyone and
0:29:09 saying, Hey, you need to be online. We can do it for you. We’ll build a Shopify store. We’ll do
0:29:14 everything end to end. We have a warehouse, shelf space, et cetera. No response, just crickets.
0:29:18 So at that point, it’s like, all right, let’s take this into our own hands. So most people give up
0:29:22 there, right? Try to partner. Most people won’t even cold email, but if you do cold email,
0:29:29 you give up when they don’t reply. Yep, exactly. So we bought beaversnacks.com because that’s their
0:29:37 mascot was a beaver. And I went to Thumbtack and I hired a photographer for like $200. And I documented
0:29:43 all this. I have pictures of all this. I took my four kids and wife to the nearest Bucky’s and my wife
0:29:48 and I split up. I said, you get merch, I’ll get snacks. If it has a Bucky’s logo on it, buy it. Like,
0:29:53 I don’t want the Doritos or the Coke because they white label a bunch of stuff, right? Like I only
0:29:59 want something with a Bucky’s logo. So we spent like $3,000. We had a receipt this long. We took
0:30:03 it back to the warehouse. Was the lady like, wow, what are you doing? They were, everyone was looking
0:30:09 at us and I’m like an introvert. I hated it. I felt so weird. I’m like, don’t look at me. Just let me do
0:30:14 my thing. So we bring it all back to the warehouse. We put it in this office, hire this photographer
0:30:20 and she takes pictures of everything. We upload it in a CSV to Shopify. We launch a website,
0:30:26 beaversnacks.com. And I say launch, like nobody knew it existed. So the first thing I did was start
0:30:33 scraping and cold emailing every Texas reporter I could find. Eater, Southern Living, Texas Monthly,
0:30:40 Fox News 38, you know, San Antonio district, you name it. And I just start saying like, here’s who I am.
0:30:42 Here’s what I’m doing. Here’s who I am. Here’s what I’m doing.
0:30:45 And so you weren’t afraid because most people would try to be laying low doing this because,
0:30:48 hey, we don’t have an official partnership. You took the opposite approach. You’re like, hey,
0:30:54 can I use this story to get some attention, whether it be good or bad? Is that right?
0:30:59 Yeah. Cause I felt like, okay, worst case scenario, cease and desist. We have great story for a podcast
0:31:04 one day. Best case scenario, we get them as a customer or this is a standalone business.
0:31:10 Somewhere in between is going to be interesting, right? Maybe I have to fill my pantry with snacks,
0:31:13 like $3,000 worth of snacks and my kids eat it for the next seven years.
0:31:17 We had a guest come on and he said, you know, do what makes the best story. When in doubt,
0:31:20 like when you’re at a fork in the road, do whichever, take whichever path will make the best story.
0:31:25 You chose the path that will make the best story here. Okay. So yes. And I heard that episode and I
0:31:32 thought that’s me. I agree with that. So I also did my research and it’s called first sale doctrine,
0:31:38 which means anyone can sell, resell whatever they want. They just can’t pretend or imitate that brand,
0:31:43 right? Like the, there’s a guy that imitated Trader Joe’s to do what I did, but he called himself
0:31:48 Pirate Joe’s. The logo was similar. The store layout was similar and he got sued out of existence. So
0:31:53 I thought, okay, as long as I say, I am not Bucky’s, I’m a third party reseller and I’m clear about that.
0:31:59 They really don’t have grounds to sue me. So I started cold emailing people. They loved the story
0:32:04 and I started getting on the phone with reporters. And any tips on that? So, you know, I’ve learned
0:32:10 this with, with, with PR, which is that there’s PR is this very specific niche game. And once you
0:32:17 understand how a journalist thinks you can reverse engineer what you need to actually do. So like,
0:32:23 for example, our buddy Ramon did this recently, he went mega, mega viral because, and he knew this,
0:32:30 he texted me, he called a shot. He’s like, as soon as the tariff dues came out and some people thought
0:32:33 this is going to be horrible for businesses. Some people thought, well, why don’t those businesses
0:32:38 just make it in America? We’ll buy it if it’s made in America. And so he launches an AB test on his
0:32:45 website. So he, afina.com, it’s like a shower, a clean showerhead. So he was, he runs an AB test and he
0:32:50 says, you can either buy, buy the one that’s sourced out of China, or you could buy the one
0:32:53 that’s sourced out of America. And the American one costs a little bit more, uh, because it costs
0:32:57 more to make it in America. But you know, here you go, you have a choice. And the results were
0:33:03 something crazy, 25,000 visits or something like that. And there were literally zero checkouts on the
0:33:08 American product. There was a few hundred on the, on the, on the Asian made product. And he goes to the
0:33:13 journalist. He ran the test because he knew, look, either the results are going to show people will buy
0:33:18 made in America or they won’t. In either case, I have a very strong story and he goes and he gets
0:33:22 it written up. It’s been written up in like 40 major publications now. And he got tons of traffic
0:33:28 to the site, tons of backlinks. His SEO went way up. It was a genius, quick acting move on the back of
0:33:33 the tariff news. When most people were playing defense, like me in e-com, you’re like, oh shit,
0:33:38 I just need to survive. He went and played offense. So I was, I’m curious, do you have any tips from
0:33:41 your experience about how to get people to actually write about you?
0:33:46 Yeah. I mean, you have to understand that reporters want something cool to write about.
0:33:53 I get DMs all the time from people wanting something from me and 98% of them, they have nothing
0:33:58 interesting to talk about. But if someone DM me and said, Hey, I did this cool thing. Will you post
0:34:01 about it? I would. Cause I want to post about cool things. You know,
0:34:07 my job is to post interesting things. Yes, please send it to me. Um, so once you realize that,
0:34:12 like do something interesting, something cool, and then go tell as many people as you can about it.
0:34:17 And a small percentage of them will post about it. Reporters included. How did you frame it at the
0:34:24 time? I framed it as I am doing a viral marketing stunt and I want to get Bucky’s attention. And if I
0:34:28 don’t, then I’m going to run this business as well as I can. Oh, so you told the reporters that up
0:34:33 front. Yeah. Oh, okay. Gotcha. But by the way, give us the headline. Cause you know, we’re talking
0:34:37 about this title. So we haven’t mentioned how well it’s done. Can you give us some numbers that give
0:34:41 us an idea of like the success of this? I mean, I’ll tell you what the headline literally was.
0:34:47 And it was like, Texas man makes 200 grand in his first 30 days reselling Bucky’s goods online.
0:34:54 That was it. And so Texas monthly reached out to me. They’re the biggest Texas news publication.
0:34:58 And they were like, we love this. We’re going to make this a feature story. Give me everything
0:35:02 you can. So we talked, we talked, we talked, talked. And then later that afternoon, they’re
0:35:08 like, Chris, good news. Bucky’s in-house counsel would love to chat. And I’m like, what’s good
0:35:13 about that? Like I’m dead. I’m dead in the water. And so I was like, okay, you, you told Bucky’s
0:35:19 great. I’m glad you were able to get ahold of them. So I get on the phone with him and he’s
0:35:23 like, listen, we actually don’t mind what you’re doing. Uh, I don’t like the name Beaver
0:35:27 snacks. We’re a beaver. It’s kind of confusing. I don’t like that your colors are yellow. We’re
0:35:34 kind of yellow. Uh, change the name, put a disclaimer in your logo that is persist throughout
0:35:38 the whole website, put a disclaimer on every product page and you have our blessing. Like
0:35:42 we’re not going to sign anything, but we’re not going to come after you. Like we will support
0:35:46 you. And so we did, we made those changes and then they linked to us.
0:35:53 Cool ass general counsel. That’s pretty rare. Yeah. Yeah. And then they linked to us in their
0:36:00 FAQs, which is like the most amazing backlink ever. So on one hand going viral meant we got
0:36:05 a million competitors and like all these copycats. But on the other hand, we have like the biggest
0:36:08 SEO moat that we could ever hope for.
0:36:14 So wait, how did you skip to step? You said their headline was $200,000 in 30 days, but you
0:36:18 didn’t say how you got the $200,000 in 30 days. How did you initially get that traction?
0:36:23 It was all based on those viral articles. We didn’t do any paid ads. We just went viral.
0:36:28 Uh, we put everything as in stock, uh, you know, on Shopify, you can do that whether it’s in stock
0:36:33 or not. And we just started selling out. So the articles initially must not have been 200,000.
0:36:38 The articles initially were just like Texas man starts shop to sell Bucky stuff online.
0:36:42 Correct. Yeah. Yeah. They’ve written about us since then, but in the beginning it was Texas
0:36:47 man, they called it Tex Pats instead of expats. They’re like Texas man launches online Bucky store
0:36:52 for Tex Pats. Um, that was like the big headline. Uh, and that’s how it helped us go viral.
0:36:56 Like a person from Texas who’s no longer in Texas, but misses their stacks, misses their Bucky’s.
0:37:01 Yeah. And that, that was the whole thesis because these Bucky’s are in like Ennis, Texas, like these
0:37:05 places that you’d never heard of because they’re on the way to the beach. And so if you fell in love
0:37:12 with this random bohemian garlic jerky, you could never buy it again. Right. And so that’s where we
0:37:16 came in, like buy it from us. And so how’s this business doing now? Was this a flash in the pan or
0:37:23 is it still doing well? This business has grown 20 to 50% per year, every single year. Steady Eddie.
0:37:29 We just, we are completely riding on the coattails of Bucky’s and we are not ashamed to admit that.
0:37:31 So can you say how much revenue you guys are doing on this thing?
0:37:38 We’re doing between three and 500,000 a month profitably with very, very little paid outspend.
0:37:42 And the funny thing is here, you go buy it retail, right? You don’t have like a wholesale discount.
0:37:46 They’re not, they’re not giving it to you at a cut. So you, you buy retail and then you just mark
0:37:48 it up what 10, 20% or something. What do you, what do you do?
0:37:52 We mark it up a hundred percent. Oh, okay. Cause you’re like, if you want it,
0:37:57 if you want it that bad here, this is the, you know, this is your way to get it.
0:38:02 Honestly, we mark it up as much as we have to. I mean, you know, e-commerce to make a 15,
0:38:06 20% net margin. And that happens to be about a hundred percent markup.
0:38:12 Right. That’s amazing. Okay. So that’s one of your side hustles. We said that there was,
0:38:16 you know, like six that were each, uh, you know, six figures. I don’t know if we’ll get to all
0:38:20 six, but give me another one. So what’s another of your side hustles right now that are contributing
0:38:27 to your, your cashflow? So we started a pet cremation business. Uh, and that’s a fun one.
0:38:35 That one’s actually very profitable. That’s a fun one for you, maybe. Okay. So explain how’d you get
0:38:41 the idea and then what is it and how’d you do it? Okay. So it all started with a relationship that my
0:38:47 business partner had with a very high volume veterinary clinic here in DFW. They do as much
0:38:54 business as five veterinary clinics. And he learned about the industry and how pet cremation has like
0:39:00 90 plus percent net margins. It’s a very old school business. And so there’s a, but you know, we’ve had
0:39:06 this puppy boom during COVID. So all these puppies are five years old now. Uh, there’s more dogs than
0:39:11 children. That’s, that’s like the whole thesis. There’s more dogs than children. It’s only getting
0:39:17 crazier and cremation has 90% margins. Most of the operators are 60 plus years old. They’re doing great.
0:39:22 They’re doing fine. They don’t need ads. They don’t need organic. And if you go look at the Google
0:39:29 keyword tool, we saw that the search competition was low. The ticket size was high. Uh, and the,
0:39:35 the, um, the search traffic was high. So we launched a business around that thesis.
0:39:40 Sorry. So explain, you went to, you went to, uh, the Google ads keyword tool, right? That’s where you
0:39:45 went to, to kind of diligence the, the, the demand for this. And you found obviously the holy grail,
0:39:50 low, low competition, high ticket. And what was the third one? Growth or demand?
0:39:57 Like volume, high volume, low competition, high ticket. Yeah. Holy grail. And so you start
0:40:01 one of these and you’re, you’re actually the service that does it or you’re the lead gen?
0:40:07 We are both. We have two different businesses. One is a programmatic SEO site that generates leads for
0:40:12 cremation facilities all over the country. And then the other one is we’re just a middleman. We have
0:40:19 refrigerated vans and we pick up the pets frozen from the facilities and deliver it from the
0:40:23 veterinarians. And then we deliver it to the cremation facilities and take a margin.
0:40:27 Okay. Gotcha. And so tell me a little about this business. I don’t, I know nothing about the pet
0:40:32 cremation business. What did you do in the first 90 days to make this business come to life? Cause I
0:40:37 like the speed with which you operate. We’re going to talk about another one in a second that I think
0:40:42 is like a quick off the ground version of these ideas. And you very much are a zero to one
0:40:48 kind of guy. Like, I like that you do a lot of different things. I like that you’re high energy
0:40:53 and you’re basically like not lazy. There’s a lot of people out here who sell this kind of like
0:40:58 side hustle, passive income. There’s nothing passive about you. I feel like you are Mr. Active actually,
0:41:03 in the sense that you get after it. Once you have an idea, you know, I have this phrase, like, you
0:41:08 know, inspiration is perishable. Ideas are avocados. They go brown very quickly. And I think what’s
0:41:12 great about you is that you don’t let the ideas and the inspiration perish. You
0:41:17 actually act on it very quickly and you have, you have a high, high bias reaction. So what are the
0:41:22 first 90 years, 90 or so days look like when you have a new idea? And maybe you could use this one
0:41:29 as an example, or if not, you could use a different one. Yeah. I focus most of my energy on validating
0:41:36 the idea with like some ad spend or a couple of conversations or whatnot. I, I don’t do any like
0:41:42 extensive market research. I don’t talk to any potential customers and I’m not saying there’s not value in
0:41:47 that. That’s just not how I roll. I really, really like using tools like Facebook, like
0:41:53 general publicly available tools that most people know and love. Stuff I can do from my boxers at home.
0:41:58 That’s what I like. Right. Yes. And a lot of times by the end of the day, I realized, oh, this is a dud.
0:42:03 Let’s move on. But also a lot of the times by the end of the day, I’m like, oh, wow, there’s something
0:42:07 here. My thesis was true. Let’s, let’s put another day into this. So, so like what, what would you do in
0:42:12 this pet cremation business? What did you do? So the thesis here started with this relationship that my
0:42:20 business partner had. Uh, and the pitch was let’s get the, the cremation facility owner and the veterinary
0:42:25 clinic owner in the same room together and pitch them this like win, win. Hey, we’re going to get you more
0:42:31 veterinary clinics because we’re really good at sales. Okay. And then to the vet, Hey, uh, you need to raise your
0:42:36 prices. You’re way too low. Uh, you’re going to make even more margin working through a middleman,
0:42:40 believe it or not, because we’re going to be, we’re going to only do one thing. We’re going to pick up
0:42:45 pets and we’re going to drop them off. And so there was a big conflict of interest interest here because
0:42:51 the cremation facility owner was about to lose some margin, but he was like, we were selling him on the
0:42:58 fact that we would bring him a lot more customers. And so basically this was a good like example of what I
0:43:02 normally do. If that conversation doesn’t go well, I don’t launch the business. I just move on.
0:43:06 And you weren’t afraid that when you put those two in the same room, they’re like, great. Yeah,
0:43:11 we should do this. Who’s this guy. What is it? Why do we need this guy? Did you see any risk in
0:43:15 putting yourself there as the middleman with this and actually connecting the two dots, the really high
0:43:20 volume vet clinic with the information service that you thought they should be using? Well, the thing is,
0:43:26 is that they were already working together. Right. And so what you’re saying was correct. That was the
0:43:30 risk. We insert ourselves. You’re saying there was some friction. There was some friction that you were
0:43:35 offering to remove. Is that right? Yeah. And the friction in this case was what? It was that the
0:43:41 veterinary or the cremation facility owner made all his margin on the actually doing the cremation and he
0:43:47 was losing money on all the logistics. Okay. But this customer we were talking to was one of his biggest
0:43:51 customers. And so we were saying, hey, you’re going to lose some margin on this biggest customer because
0:43:55 we’re inserting ourselves. We’re going to take some of it, but we’re going to more than compensate for it
0:44:01 by A, removing that logistics off your plate and B, finding you more veterinary clinics.
0:44:07 And then for the vet clinic, you were saying, hey, raise your price a little bit. And we need to be
0:44:13 able to do that for, to make this work. Yep. And so our thesis was, if that conversation doesn’t go well,
0:44:19 the business never launches. Right. It’s an asymmetric bet. But if it does, then we have,
0:44:24 you know, the hardest part, we have customers and revenue through the door from day one, if they’re,
0:44:28 if they agree to this. Exactly. Yeah. And then you went and tried to recreate that with, you know,
0:44:32 getting 15 other veterinary clinics. Now, most of them, I assume would already have had a partner or
0:44:38 some vendors for cremation services. And so what’s your sales pitch to them? How did you go and get more
0:44:44 customers on board? Yeah. Our sales pitch was like, our competitors were very unsophisticated. Like they
0:44:49 would literally walk through the front door of a veterinary clinic, get the frozen dogs, put them in a bag,
0:44:54 and then walk out the waiting room. And so our pitch was like, that’s our competition.
0:44:59 We will never do that. We’ll pull out back, unmarked van, we’ll be very caring and respectful.
0:45:04 In some cases, they don’t even have to pay anymore. And we’ll just be, we’ll just pick up the phone and
0:45:08 be reliable. That was the pitch. And is there something to learn here about like,
0:45:14 you know, there’s so many of these simple businesses where the bar is really low or people
0:45:19 are simply not doing any outreach. They’re not doing any door-to-door sales. Like, have you made
0:45:24 a killing and just, you know, Warren Buffett has said this before. He goes, the secret to winning
0:45:29 is low competition, is weak competition, right? Like he’s not looking to prove that he’s a genius at the
0:45:33 hardest games. He’s looking for very weak competition where he can simply be competent and
0:45:39 he could just do best practices. Oh dude, like it is so true. We see it on Twitter all the time. Like
0:45:44 just go, go find a business with the fax machine to compete against him. Like, yes, that actually
0:45:51 works. I, we own a tree trimming business and a big bottleneck for us is stump grinding. So we thought,
0:45:58 I thought, man, there needs to be a business that’s just stump grinding, but B2B. Not stump grinding
0:46:03 that goes through homeowners, but only the ones that goes through, uh, the other tree trimming
0:46:06 companies. Cause we own a tree trimming company and we could see it from the inside. So I had a thesis.
0:46:13 I hired a virtual assistant and today I would just use an AI voice agent. And I took the city of Houston
0:46:18 and I scraped every single tree trimming business in Houston. There was about a thousand. And I had this
0:46:26 virtual assistant call every single one and notate, did they answer? Did the number work? If they did answer,
0:46:32 say, do you use grind stumps? If yes, then would you ever outsource that? If yes, then how much would
0:46:38 you pay? So I spent like $200 getting this research. I, I, I’m not familiar with the tree trimming
0:46:42 business. Surprise, surprise. So why does a tree trimming business not also do the stumps? Why is
0:46:47 that a separate problem that they don’t like to deal with? Yeah. Great question. So a tree trimming
0:46:53 business needs sometimes a bucket truck to get up high and a chainsaw, right? But that’s only half the
0:46:56 battle. Then you got to get the stump out of the ground or else, you know, you can’t grow
0:47:01 grass there. And so it’s a, a stump grinder. You’ve got to pull on a trailer. Whereas before
0:47:05 you don’t even need a trailer. It’s just a whole different system and they got to go rent
0:47:09 it. They stand in line. They pay $300. They rent it. They put gas in it. They drive it back
0:47:13 to the job site. They grind it. Then they got to bring it back. And it’s like, it eats into
0:47:17 their profit. And so I thought, okay, if a tree trimming company could just outsource
0:47:21 all of their stump grinding B2B only, is there an opportunity there?
0:47:26 So the assistant goes, she calls everybody. She asked them, would they be willing to outsource
0:47:29 that? And are people just saying, yeah, yeah, we, we’d be willing to outsource that. Is that
0:47:33 like a, can you get that clear of a signal just off of a VA’s phone call?
0:47:43 So only 22% of people answered the phone. Um, that’s it. And of the ones that did almost half
0:47:49 of them said, if I could outsource this, I would gladly. And then we, then we even got further down
0:47:56 the script and said, would you pay seven, uh, $7 per inch or whatever of diameter? Yes. And then
0:48:02 I published all that info on my podcast and people went out and started some grinding businesses with
0:48:08 the exact thesis. And we learned, yeah, pick an industry where people seem to be doing well and
0:48:13 call all of them, see how many answer their phone. You can cross-reference that against like the Google
0:48:18 keyword tool and, you know, publicly available stuff and see how much demand for supply is there in any
0:48:27 given market. Hey, this episode is brought to you by Mercury. They’re the fintech of choice for over
0:48:33 200,000 companies. I myself use it for eight different companies. The reason why we all choose it is
0:48:37 because it has everything you need under one roof. So like my e-commerce company, it’s super important
0:48:41 for us to be able to easily wire transfer, pay all our different vendors and suppliers all around the
0:48:46 world. And the old way with our, you know, more traditional bank, uh, that shall now be named. I try it
0:48:49 online. It would say, no, it would freeze my account. Then I’d have to go in, book an appointment,
0:48:54 speak to a specialist who would try to upsell me on something I didn’t need. And then finally,
0:48:58 after, you know, 30 minutes there, then they charged me 50 bucks for the pleasure of that terrible
0:49:03 interaction. And now with Mercury, I just go online, push two buttons and I’m done. It’s such a seamless
0:49:07 experience. It’s very intuitive. Everything’s under one place. They basically took all the things any
0:49:12 company would need for their financial tech, and they made it super easy to use and put it into one
0:49:15 platform. So highly, highly recommend it. If you’re not using Mercury,
0:49:19 I question your judgment. So that’s it. You’ve heard on my first million. For more information,
0:49:23 check out mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes
0:49:30 for details. Okay. I like that. You did one recently. You had this, um, Instagram video. I’m going to
0:49:36 actually play it here, but I love this video for a couple of reasons. Uh, one, just the idea is fun,
0:49:41 but the, but two, like, you know, your energy and what you’re describing here is, is pretty great. So,
0:49:46 uh, here, I’ll love this. This is you talking about starting a pickleball facility.
0:49:51 This frigging thing right here. I’m right here in my warehouse slash shop. It is 2,100 square feet and
0:49:55 I’m putting a business here. It’s called secret pickleball and it’s going to be 99 bucks a month.
0:50:00 I’m going to cap it at 200 members, $20,000 a month. There are 7,700 people within 10 minutes of here that
0:50:05 play pickleball every week. And I just need 200 of them to make this a six figure business. No employees,
0:50:10 24, seven key card access right there. Cameras, bathroom, vending machines already in the next 60
0:50:14 days. We’re adding drywall. We’re painting lines, adding the bathroom back there. If you want to
0:50:17 watch me fail or you want to watch me win follow and I’ll document the whole journey or get the
0:50:24 business plan. Basically you’re standing in this warehouse and it’s, and you’re like, look at this
0:50:27 freaking thing right here, which is how you start all of your videos, which I think is a hilarious
0:50:31 little hook. So can you, uh, add some color to this? So where’s the, what’s the origin of this idea?
0:50:36 How’s this going? Tell me, tell me more about this idea. Yeah. So that shop that I’m in, in the video
0:50:42 is in my back backyard. Basically it’s at the back of my property. Historically, I’ve rented it out to
0:50:46 landscaping businesses for like 20, you live on like a ranch or something. What is this? It’s three acres
0:50:51 and it’s very like, yeah, it’s at the back of my, of my property. And so I was just thinking like,
0:50:57 what is the best and highest use of this property? And have you ever been to a secret pizza in,
0:51:02 I think it’s the Cosmo in Vegas. Yeah. Yeah. I love that place. Yeah. That place does like
0:51:06 9 million a year in pizza and they don’t have a Google profile. They don’t have no website.
0:51:11 Yeah. If people haven’t been there, it’s like five feet wide. It’s like a tidy hallway. Like
0:51:16 in high school, if your locker was like on the side, it’s basically that. And they just sell slices of
0:51:21 pizza at the Cosmo hotel in Vegas. Yes. So I was going for that. Like I call it secret pickleball
0:51:26 and I just thought, okay, I’m going to run some Facebook ads. I’m going to go to my shop. I’m
0:51:31 going to take three videos. I’m going to ABC test them on Facebook ads, instant form,
0:51:37 six mile radius. Sorry. Was your ad a video like this where you’re saying I’m going to build this
0:51:42 here or was it like a mock-up? That was one of the three. Yeah. The one you showed was one of my three
0:51:47 ads. Yeah. And what were the other two? Were they like finished product, like a rendering or what did
0:51:53 you do with the other two? One of them had like an AI, really bad AI image rendering, like overlay for a
0:51:57 split second, but that’s it. I’m just standing in this empty warehouse. And when you say I ran some
0:52:01 Facebook ads, give people a sense of how you do that. Right. Everyone again, I know who does this.
0:52:06 They have a, you know, a certain budget, like, Hey, I’m going to run five, I’m going to spend $500
0:52:11 and I’m looking for maybe this cost per click, or I’m looking for this much net conversion of people
0:52:16 signing up to my wait list or, or they even have a fake checkout. And then they refund people
0:52:19 afterwards saying like, Hey, sorry, this doesn’t actually exist yet. Or, you know, I’m still,
0:52:24 we got delayed, but it’ll be out soon. I refunded you for now, but you know, it’s coming. And they’re
0:52:29 looking for that funnel, the metrics to sort of validate that, Hey, cool. If this works at $500,
0:52:34 I think I’d be able to spend maybe a thousand or $5,000 in order to get my 200 members or, you know,
0:52:40 $50,000 to get my 200 members, whatever it is. Can you explain your method for Facebook ad testing
0:52:47 this? Yeah, for sure. So I used one campaign and then three ad sets and three ads, one video for
0:52:54 each ad set. And I started it at $25 a day per video. So $75 a day total. My ad was a Facebook
0:53:01 instant form asking for name, phone, email. Then after the instant form, it, it forwarded them to a type
0:53:06 platform with 19 questions that are very granular. What is your skill level at pickleball? How often
0:53:11 do you play? How much do you do doubles or singles? Cause all of this is going to determine how many
0:53:17 members I can take on. And the whole, the whole thesis is to be one pickleball court indoors, nice
0:53:22 private air conditioning, uh, that people pay one to $200 a month for. So I don’t want the pros that
0:53:29 play twice a day. I like, it’s a very finite resource. I want people that hardly ever play like the
0:53:34 planet fitness model, except expensive. I want, I just want to have my cake and eat it too.
0:53:40 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I knew 5% of Americans play pickleball weekly. And I knew within six miles
0:53:47 of me, there’s 200,000 people. So I needed like, there’s like five to 7,000 people in my TAM, my local
0:53:53 TAM. Right. And I was hoping that I could convert someone for a hundred dollars because my guess is
0:53:58 that the LTV, the lifetime value is going to be about a thousand dollars. But I think it’s actually a lot
0:54:02 more because no one plays pickleball alone. So I get one customer, they’re going to bring two to three
0:54:10 or four. Right. What I learned was I’m converting, like, I don’t, the LTV is still to be determined,
0:54:14 but I’m able to convert new customers at $12 each.
0:54:18 And so how many members does this secret, does this exist now? Like this, I don’t know when you
0:54:19 posted this.
0:54:23 I’m building it out. I’m, I’m literally putting a septic tank in the building right now. Like it’s
0:54:24 being built out, but I’m accepting three orders.
0:54:27 How much is it going to cost you to do this? All right. So you already had the structure there.
0:54:31 How much are you going to put into making a pickleball court to bring this idea to life?
0:54:35 On the low end, 20,000. Realistically, 30 to 40.
0:54:38 That’s it. Wow. I would have guessed it’s more.
0:54:43 Yeah. Well, it has air conditioning. I need to expand the building because I need room for a
0:54:47 bathroom and then I need to add a bathroom. So if I didn’t need a bathroom, it would be much less.
0:54:49 And then I need to paint lines.
0:54:54 So anybody could just Google maps, pickleball court in your area, right? Like wherever you live,
0:54:57 you could Google maps, pickleball. You could just take a map and you could be like,
0:55:02 where is there not space? And then you could go drive them and just see, oh, wow, that one’s kind
0:55:07 of shitty or it’s outdoors. Right. Or this one over here, it’s always overrun. It’s always packed.
0:55:13 And you could literally just map out that, oh, wow. I just need to take an industrial space and
0:55:19 convert it to a private pickleball gym, a membership, right? One court, two court, three
0:55:23 court, whatever. And so the math you’re saying here, are you charging a hundred bucks or what’d
0:55:29 you end up charging? I’m going to end up charging 149. All right. So you’re, so you’re charging 149.
0:55:33 Are you still targeting 200 members or did you find out that that assumption was too high or too low?
0:55:39 It’s, it’s, I can accept around 150 members if I accept the right members.
0:55:46 All right. And so you’re talking about 22,000 a month of top line revenue from this. And you’re
0:55:51 saying it might cost you in this case, 20 grand, 30 grand to build. I think somebody else, let’s just
0:55:58 assume it’s even $75,000. Let’s triple the price to build out because maybe their space needs it or
0:56:04 you’re just being conservative. So you got 22,000 coming in top line. Is there any OPEX here? Do you need
0:56:09 a person there? Is it like, do you have a key membership thing like that? What is your monthly
0:56:13 cost in terms of like, you know, roughly you think utilities, everything else?
0:56:21 Yeah. Uh, key card entry 24 seven online booking system through a third party app cameras, no employees
0:56:25 cleaner that comes there. And I’m going to use the cleaner I use for my house. She’ll go there like
0:56:31 two to four times a week, depending on how dirty it gets insurance, utilities, internet. It’s like,
0:56:37 we’re talking, including cleaning 1500 a month, 2000 a month. All right. So you’re talking about
0:56:42 like, you know, 90% profit margins on this, but let’s be conservative. Let’s even say 80%.
0:56:51 That would be roughly generating about 17 to 18,000 a month in cashflow off of pickleball off of one
0:56:59 pickleball court. Yeah. That’s pretty crazy to me. Yeah. And it’s actually pretty unique. I use deep
0:57:03 research to, to see if other, any other private indoor courts that only have one to two courts,
0:57:08 because there’s a lot of franchises that have 15 courts. And a lot of the haters on Twitter were
0:57:13 saying that like, no one, no one would pay for this because people, they want multiple courts.
0:57:17 They want other people to see them play pickleball. I’m like, dude, nobody wants to be seen playing
0:57:21 pickleball. Well, no, but maybe they just don’t want to wait. Right. You know, they want, right.
0:57:27 They’re not able to get courts. Um, and so there, there are very few of these and, um, anyone,
0:57:31 this is something anyone could do like with some Facebook ads. You don’t need to buy a building or
0:57:36 have a building. You could go rent a building and run some Facebook ads before you even sign a lease.
0:57:43 Like what are we talking about? What are we doing here? All right. Now let’s be realistic. Uh, cause
0:57:48 you know, there’s a lot of people on the internet who will say it’s so good. So easy. Look at this.
0:57:53 The math is the math is math. And where does a business like this actually suck? You’ve done
0:57:58 enough businesses now to know that there is no such thing as these like perfect businesses. So in this
0:58:05 one, realistically, why would this fail? What might you be getting wrong here? Or maybe at least like,
0:58:11 why would the numbers not be as rosy as they sound right now? Yeah. It’s going to be like, uh, customer
0:58:17 support inquiries like that are a lot higher than I thought things breaking the AC going out in July in
0:58:23 Texas, um, zoning issues. Uh, it’s not the type of business where you’re going to have a hard time
0:58:28 finding customers, but pick your problems. There will always be problems. I think it’s going to be
0:58:33 customer support. Um, and you know, getting calls at three in the morning from someone that’s playing
0:58:38 this random game in the middle of the night and the AC went out. What sort of problems do you like to
0:58:46 pick? I would love to not have to worry about customer acquisition and operations. Like I am terrible at
0:58:52 operations. I would much rather try to sell or market something than operate it. So if it’s marketing
0:58:57 heavy and I don’t have an issue finding customers, that’s my business.
0:59:02 And then the operations either being simple or you all floated it to somebody else.
0:59:03 Yeah, exactly.
0:59:09 Give me some of your beliefs here. So what, what, like you do all these random things and you have all these random
0:59:14 ideas, actions come from thoughts, thoughts come from beliefs. And so what are the beliefs that are leading you to do
0:59:20 all these random actions, like starting this pickleball secret pickleball court or going in and, you know,
0:59:24 being like, Bucky should sell online. I’ll do it for them. And now I’m going to do this as a publicity stunt.
0:59:27 Maybe they’ll partner with me. Maybe this work. I don’t know. Maybe it’ll just be a good story and I’ll get sued out of
0:59:32 existence. Like what are some of the beliefs that you have? We talked about one at the front, which is like
0:59:37 focus is overrated. Talk about that one and then give me some of your other ones.
0:59:43 Yeah. I think focus is overrated because compounding doesn’t care. Like the principle of compounding does
0:59:49 not care if we’re working on one thing or a dozen things. As long as we stay in the game, whatever
0:59:55 that game is for us and keep going, compounding is just going to keep going with us. Right? So if you’re
0:59:59 curious about something, like, let’s say you’re, you’ve got a side hustle and it’s going well. And you’re
1:00:05 like, what about this side hustle? Test it. Like answer that question. Now, if you have a side hustle and
1:00:10 it’s like, you’re not sleeping because you’re just cashing all these checks and customers are beating
1:00:14 down your door, you’re not going to be thinking about, Oh, what about this shiny object? Like
1:00:20 you’ve got product market fit. That’s a signal, right? So just chase the signals, chase the curiosities
1:00:25 because you’re going to learn something over here that you’re able to apply over here that no one else
1:00:30 has ever thought of because they weren’t doing these seven other things like you were. So net of net,
1:00:35 I like, if I gun to my head, I think you will be more wealthy if you do one thing,
1:00:39 but you’re more likely to be miserable and not have an enjoyable life.
1:00:45 Yeah. So focus actually does work, but it’s not the only way. And it’s a lot of fun to not focus.
1:00:48 It’s actually what I mean. You have a similar thing. I’m going to read you this. I want you to
1:00:53 give a little take on it. You said, say yes to everything, take on way too much, increase your
1:01:00 capacity for stress and let Parkinson’s law do its job. Most people have no clue what they’re capable of
1:01:05 because they don’t take on too much and they never stress test their life. And you had something called
1:01:08 the restaurant hostess analogy. Can you explain that a little bit?
1:01:15 Yeah. Let’s say you’re a hostess at a Michelin star restaurant in New York, Manhattan. You’re slammed 24
1:01:20 seven. People come in and out, people yelling, whatever. And then you’ve got a hostess in Des Moines,
1:01:26 Iowa in a diner, and they’re usually pretty slow. And then, you know, soccer team pulls up and like,
1:01:30 oh, I table for 15. And she’s like, oh my gosh, table for 15. Oh geez, what do I do?
1:01:35 Like to the woman in New York, like that’s nothing. That’s nothing because that’s her norm. That’s her,
1:01:41 her new baseline. Right? So most people that I talk to are like, oh, I could never run a Facebook ad
1:01:48 campaign because I have to clip my toenails that afternoon. Like what? Like they don’t, like they’re
1:01:54 not doing enough. They, they think that like the barometer is down here and they think people like
1:01:59 Elon Musk are just, he’s an alien. That’s not even realistic. And it’s like, no, he just like took on
1:02:05 way too much. And, and now he’s able to do way more than ever before because the less important things
1:02:11 just kind of fall off the plate. That’s Parkinson’s law. You bite off way more than you can chew.
1:02:14 And if you forget about it, then that’s a signal that it was worth forgetting about.
1:02:22 Yeah. I think that if you ask people, honestly, you said, what percent of your potential are you
1:02:29 tapping into? I think that’s a pretty scary question for most people. Um, because the answer is not going
1:02:35 to be what you would want it to be. Very few people I know, right? Like you almost have to be very low
1:02:38 self-awareness to be like a hundred percent, right? Like the answer is not a hundred percent.
1:02:42 Right. I think David Goggins has said this about when he trains and he says like, you know,
1:02:49 the moment where your brain is ready to quit when it’s over, your body still has 30% left.
1:02:53 Like the brain quits before the body and the brain will stop you as a safety mechanism
1:02:58 when you still have 30% left to give. And I don’t know if the number is right, but I think
1:03:03 directionally he’s correct when it comes to like what you’re physically capable of. And then in terms of
1:03:08 what you’re creatively or ambitiously capable of, I think it’s kind of the same thing. I think it’s
1:03:13 probably even a worse ratio than that. I think most people are tapping into less than 30% of what
1:03:17 they’re capable of doing. And it doesn’t mean you necessarily need to work a hundred hours. I think
1:03:24 it’s just like your capacity to output and to be creative and to go for it and go for it with full
1:03:28 force on the things that you’re trying to go for. Um, and maybe it’s, maybe it is take on an extra
1:03:34 project or maybe it is, but sometimes it’s just go faster. Sometimes it’s just think bigger. And the,
1:03:38 you know, these all sound cliche, but they’re, you know, they are, they are cliche for a reason.
1:03:42 They’ve been around for thousands of years because I think humans tend to have this problem where,
1:03:47 you know, we don’t actually tap into, you know, how fast we can go, how big we can go,
1:03:51 you know, what, what truly going for it looks like without, you know, the fears, doubts,
1:03:54 and hesitations that people have. And so I agree with you. You know, are you,
1:03:58 are you a family guy as well? Like, I guess like you’re doing a bunch of these businesses. Is that
1:04:03 cause you’re, you know, the counter argument is, well, yeah, you’re 21 years old and you don’t have
1:04:08 kids and a mortgage. You know, that would be a way that somebody would maybe try to discredit the amount
1:04:15 of output that you have. Yeah. I mean, I’ve, I’ve got four kids. I had all four kids between the
1:04:20 ages of 23 and 29. And I was building all of these businesses throughout that time. I never missed
1:04:26 dinner. I travel very rarely. I never missed a sporting event and I’m in my office, you know,
1:04:31 from seven to four, give or take working. Sometimes I pop out to hang out with the kids,
1:04:36 but I think it’s important that my kids see me work. Uh, but it’s also obviously important that
1:04:41 I spend time with them. So we go on a lot of vacations, four to six a year. We’ve seen all 50
1:04:47 States. We go all over the world. Uh, you can do both period. Right. I think it’s important for my
1:04:51 kids to see me work. Unfortunately, my work just looks like me talking and laughing with friends.
1:04:58 And so I don’t think they get it. I don’t think that’s acting. Um, what about, um, what about,
1:05:00 you know, you said you’re building your family and you work, let’s say the seven to four,
1:05:07 what are you doing during that seven to four to make those hours count for more than maybe the average
1:05:12 person is doing? So like how, what do you do to have more productivity or more effect in those same
1:05:17 number of hours? Like how do you structure your day? What are some things that you you’ve noticed you do
1:05:20 maybe better or differently than the average, the average entrepreneurial bear?
1:05:27 Yeah. Um, the perfect day for me is nothing on my calendar. Um, I definitely time batch. Like
1:05:32 if I have seven calls that week, I’ll try to put them all in the same afternoon. Um, I think a lot
1:05:37 of people kind of feel insecure about having an open calendar because it’s like, it’s kind of like
1:05:42 a comfort blanket. Like, okay, now I know I’ll be productive today. Right. But when you have
1:05:46 so many ideas, like so many ad campaigns, I want to run or newsletters, I want to write,
1:05:52 like, I don’t have time filling, I don’t have problem filling my time. And so I, I don’t use
1:05:58 any fancy CRM notion or anything. If a tab is open in my browser, it’s a to do list. When I close it,
1:06:05 it’s done. My notes app, a lot of caffeine, uh, admittedly. And I don’t worry about context switching.
1:06:10 I used to really stress like, all right, let’s, we could do this for 30 minutes, do this. Don’t
1:06:15 context switch. Like, I feel like with anything in life, we can evolve to it. We can become a lot
1:06:22 more acclimated to it. And so I’m always context switching always. And I feel, I feel like I’m good
1:06:27 at it because I’ve done it so much. Another one of your beliefs, you said the longer I’m in business,
1:06:32 the more I realize this to be true. If you want to be a billionaire, you got to innovate and focus,
1:06:36 but to be a millionaire, you simply need to copy paste. Don’t even try to copy something
1:06:41 that works and put your own twist on it. No twists, stop twisting, just copy what’s working. And
1:06:44 organically over time, you’ll discover the tweaks on your own, but you don’t have to lead with all
1:06:48 the twists or you’ll just screw it up. Yeah. I think there should be like, there needs to be a school
1:06:54 or something on reverse engineering. Like it is an underrated skill. I’m in like the meta ads library
1:07:02 and the web archive all the time. Let’s say there was this taco restaurant that just in my town,
1:07:08 that had a line around the corner 24 seven and they, all they sold, uh, were steak tacos.
1:07:13 That’s it. And you said, all right, they’ve got more demand than supply. All right. This town could
1:07:17 use another taco shop. All right. I’m going to copy them. I’m going to do it even better. People want
1:07:21 more variety. They want steak and chicken and there’s no drinks. You can’t even get drinks there. Yeah.
1:07:27 I’m going to do this. I’m gonna do that. Every change you make is another variable to like,
1:07:32 to screwing it up. Risk. Risk you value. Yeah. Like you, you’re gonna, you’re, let’s say you copy
1:07:38 them verbatim and you open, you’re going to learn really quickly. Oh, oh, they’re probably using that
1:07:44 as their point of sale and not that. Oh, this is why, because the onions, they have to separate them
1:07:47 from the meat. Oh, like you’re going to learn all these things that are going to force you to have to
1:07:53 change things. But if you do that before, you know, if that copying works or not, you’re just going to
1:07:56 increase the likelihood of screwing it up and thus not being successful.
1:08:00 That’s interesting. You know, Monish Pabrai, who’s come on this podcast a couple of times,
1:08:05 has this phrase, he calls it being a shameless, a shameless cloner. And so he says, you know,
1:08:10 I’m a shameless clone of the Buffett and Munger philosophy. I, you know, I claim to have no,
1:08:15 no good ideas except for one, which is, you know, to copy the good ideas that already exist out there.
1:08:19 If I hear a good idea, I take it on as my own. Right. And he talks about, you know,
1:08:24 the dumbest person in the world is the gas station across the street from a more successful gas
1:08:28 station. He’s like, cause you know, you see that guy and that guy comes out when a customer’s there
1:08:34 and he washes their windows for them and he prices it a certain way. And he’s uses certain bright lights
1:08:39 so that he’s more visible at night. You have to be a real idiot to be across the street, see that guy
1:08:45 doing it. And then for your own stubbornness, not just do those things, implement those best practices.
1:08:49 And so pride. Yeah. Yeah. Pride. And I think there’s like, you know, a version of that in
1:08:54 business. And like you said, you will organically end up putting your own twists on the business,
1:08:59 but you, you know, you bring up an interesting point, which is that baking in all those twists
1:09:04 up front is a bit of unnecessary risk. I think there’s a view that entrepreneurs are risk takers
1:09:08 when actually the risk minimizers and, you know, they’re trying to take as little risk as is necessary,
1:09:14 but, but are willing to take the necessary risks in order to do something unless there’s like,
1:09:18 you know, a big asymmetric reward for it. They’re not going to do it. And so, um, you know, I think
1:09:23 that you’re right. And I think that this is very true for, especially at like the local level and
1:09:29 service level, like it’s not true. If you’re trying to be a founder, go through YC, build the next big
1:09:33 thing, the next breakout app, which is going to be, you know, the next social network, you can’t just
1:09:38 copy Facebook. It’s not going to work, right? The next, uh, the next ride sharing service can’t
1:09:42 just be Uber, right? They do have to innovate. They do have to do self-driving cars like a Waymo or
1:09:46 something like that. So this advice does not apply to people who are playing what I call the business
1:09:51 Olympics, where they’re trying to do the stuff that’s like global greatness, move the world forward,
1:09:57 disrupt a total industry. Yes, you absolutely do need to be innovative there. But in terms of people
1:10:02 who are trying to become financially free, you know, working backwards is not a bad way to go.
1:10:07 I have a very annoying phrase. I say a bunch, which is in my companies, anytime we have run into an
1:10:11 issue and people are bitching and moaning about it, I just say, well, we’re probably not the first
1:10:15 ones to have this problem, right? Because it’s so true. And you’re in an e-com business and suddenly
1:10:20 you have this supply chain problem. Well, guess what? A thousand or a million other e-commerce business
1:10:24 have had that same problem and they figured out a way to solve it. So what did they do? Let’s start
1:10:28 with that. I was talking to actually a friend yesterday who’s, yeah, this guy’s almost a billionaire
1:10:32 billionaire and he’s in the real estate game and he’s just crushed it on real estate on his own.
1:10:37 And now for the first time after 15 years, he’s raising money for his projects. He’d never wanted
1:10:41 to do it. He always wanted to use his own capital, but you know, finally sort of relented and realized,
1:10:45 okay, I could do bigger scale and do more projects. If I, if I raise capital from other people, not just
1:10:51 use my own personal balance sheet. And so I told him, I was like, you know, he’s giving me all his ideas
1:10:55 about how he’s going to raise money. And I’ll go, dude, every real estate guy I know raises money.
1:10:59 Have you first looked at what they did? Like, why are you trying to figure this out on your own?
1:11:04 That’s the hard way. There’s no bonus points for doing this the hard way. Like let’s just start by
1:11:08 reverse engineering what other people do. Like go talk to five to 10 other people who’ve already done
1:11:13 this. See if there’s a common blueprint, go try that and only innovate where needed along the way.
1:11:16 When you run into some bottlenecks or some walls that you hit along the way of trying to implement
1:11:20 that plan, because for most business problems, you can just ask the question, like,
1:11:24 has anybody else ever solved this? And what do they do? And turns out, it’s almost always like,
1:11:29 it’s very common. There’s a common problem. There is a common solution. And we should try that first.
1:11:34 Yeah. Like we, we place our innovation on the wrong thing. We place it on the features and the
1:11:38 benefits when we should be placing it on being innovative about copying how they’re doing what
1:11:44 they’re doing. We had a 3PL and you know, 3PLs, right? And it’s like the worst. Nobody likes your 3PL.
1:11:50 It’s, it’s impossible. And so we saw all the other 3PLs out there when we launched and we’re like,
1:11:56 oh my gosh, they charge for storage and pick and pack and this and that, and they mark up shipping.
1:12:01 These guys are idiots. It’s so confusing. So we set out to like innovate the industry,
1:12:06 simple, flat pricing. And like at the end of that two year experience, like we looked like all the
1:12:11 other 3PLs because we’re like, okay, oh, oh, they charge for storage because some companies go out of
1:12:15 business and then they’re left with this big bill and they don’t, oh, that’s why like, so that’s
1:12:20 another signal is if you see other competitors in your industry and your first thought is like,
1:12:25 they’re so stupid. Why are they doing it this way? Probably for a reason. Like you just haven’t learned
1:12:26 that reason yet.
1:12:30 Especially if they’re successful, right? Don’t copy somebody who’s failing, but if they’re successful,
1:12:35 you can start with that and say, all right, can I do that as well? And you know, the reason I like
1:12:40 this idea is because this is not the only way to win. I spent most of my life playing in the innovation
1:12:44 space and I really love that. It’s super fun to be creative and to come up with the idea that it feels
1:12:49 really satisfying when you’ve, you’re the first to do something. That’s a, I mean, that’s amazing.
1:12:53 I’m very proud of that whenever I’ve tried to do that, but that gets talked about a lot. Cause again,
1:12:58 it sounds super noble and I think that does work, but there are many ways to win. And what I like about
1:13:03 what you’re saying is that it is another way to win. You say, oh, wow, those guys did that gutter
1:13:08 cleaning service using next door and their neighborhood in Massachusetts. I should do that in my
1:13:13 neighborhood in California. Let me start with that. And, and I, and I think that more people
1:13:18 should do that if they want to actually like be successful in, because that is another way to win.
1:13:22 It’s not the only way, but it’s another way. Yeah. It’s the midwit meme all over again. Right. Right.
1:13:29 My, my first business was, yeah, I read about this iPhone repair shop making 30 grand a month.
1:13:35 And I thought I can make 30 grand a month fixing iPhones in my city. Like it’s kind of an ignorant
1:13:40 thought, but it worked and I did, you know, so you gotta, you gotta, you gotta be done. Like I,
1:13:47 like I am. Chris, this is fun, man. I, we still have like half of the doc of other ideas and small
1:13:50 business and like, you know, random businesses that you’ve come across that we could go for. I think
1:13:54 maybe, maybe we do a part two of people like this one, uh, to have Chris back. If you, if you like
1:13:59 Chris, uh, either tweet at me or, uh, put it in the YouTube comments would be best that, you know,
1:14:04 bring them back because I think this is a lot of fun. I really love the little nooks and crannies of the
1:14:10 looking in to find these, you know, stump grinding or the hole in one business or the shipping
1:14:15 container for, for wine tours. Like, you know, this is fun stuff that I think, you know, sometimes on
1:14:19 this podcast, to be honest, we have brilliant people talking about what you can do with AI and
1:14:23 what you could do with XYZ. And that’s great. I love that stuff, but those aren’t episodes I can
1:14:28 send to my sister or my mom because those businesses are kind of out of reach for what
1:14:32 they want to do. Uh, but I think what’s cool about, you know, the businesses you talk about,
1:14:36 you know, your pickleball court, this is stuff that anybody could do. Chris, thanks for coming
1:14:40 on. Maybe give people a shout, uh, shout out your, your Twitter, your podcast, whatever you want people
1:14:44 to go check out. Yeah. Uh, the Kerner office podcast is where I publish three times a week,
1:14:49 spelled like my last name. And it’s on your hat. So that’s right. Never miss an opportunity.
1:14:55 Yes. Always be promoting. That’s right. All right, man. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, Sean.
1:15:14 All right. So when my employees joined Hampton, we have them do a whole bunch of onboarding stuff,
1:15:18 but the most important thing that they do is they go through this thing I made called copy that. Copy
1:15:22 that is a thing that I made that teaches people how to write better. And the reason this is important
1:15:28 is because at work or even just in life, we communicate mostly via text right now, whether
1:15:33 we’re emailing, slacking, blogging, texting, whatever. Most of the ways that we’re communicating
1:15:38 is by the written word. And so I made this thing called copy that that’s guaranteed to make you
1:15:43 write better. You can check it out. Copy that.com. I post every single person who leaves a review,
1:15:46 whether it’s good or bad, I post it on the website. And you’re going to see a trend,
1:15:50 which is that this is a very, very, very simple exercise, something that’s so simple that they
1:15:53 laugh at. They think, how is this going to actually impact us and make us write better?
1:15:58 But I promise you, it does. You got to try it at copy that.com. I guarantee it’s going
1:16:00 to change the way you write. Again, copy that.com.