A Billion Dollar Travel Business Idea Hiding in Plain Sight ft. Connor⏐Ep. #106

This is a billion dollar business cruise line.

International association says that 70% of cruises are booked through travel agents. That's just a middleman who's taking a margin.

This ugly website, 8 million customers served. Do the math on that. You know, $1,000 cruise times 8 million.

Are you kidding me?

Yeah, it's stupid. These are people that we eat dinner with every night. They paid six times as much for the same experience.

I think that that would be a really good niche to try to disrupt the cruise agent booking market.

All right, well, Connor, welcome back. You've been on like six or eight times now. It's always fun.

Happy to be here.

And yeah, you brought some ideas today.

Always, man. Yeah, this is. This is my best. My most. My most. View, tube, dm, whatever that metric looks like, show that I will go on from a podcast circuit standpoint. So I want to come with good ideas, and I want people to either rip them apart or tell me that they started it and they want my blessing afterwards. So we can go down any way you want.

I'm.

I'm excited.

All right, well, let's do this. Golf club one.

Yeah. Cool.

All right.

Do you golf?

No.

Okay. Neither do I, but I'm trying to get into it.

Okay, cool.

Right now I've just said no too many times to people that golf, and so I'm trying to get into it. So if you look up Golf club dude.

Golf club dude.

So I don't know if this is big or not, but this is the one where I think this guy takes used golf clubs, okay. And he refurbishes them, and, you know, his whole thing is villainizing, right? Like if. Hey, if you're a beginner, don't spend money on the new sets, whatever. Like, come to my website. I'm going to buy all this stuff. I'm. I'm like an expert golfer, and I'll show you what you actually need and sell them to you for way cheaper.

So you said golf club dude, but it's golf set dude. Is that right?

Yeah, it's. It's totally golf set dude.

Okay, cool. I just want to make sure.

So really interesting guy and really interesting business. And it got me thinking. I think Facebook Marketplace is the new Craigslist by a long shot. And this is not new or crazy information, but if you start looking up all of the different things that Facebook Marketplace will sell, I think that you'll quickly realize that, like, there's a lot of opportunity to buy used stuff and refurbish it, polish it up, make it Better and try to sell it as a more branded way online.

Okay. Like golf sets.

Golf sets as an example. So this is the first concept is like, what can you find that's also on Facebook Marketplace that you can either be like the de facto guy for and, like, build a brand around that. Like, if you're on X, you can constantly will see, like, there's so many, like, something guys.

Like, you know, there's a mattress guy.

Now there's a mattress guy. There's a luxury watch guy. Right. And there's like all of these channels where you specialize in one niche and. And something that has a ton of volume for it already. And now you can become the expert on it. And I think that people are willing to pay a premium on that, where it's, hey, I'm okay buying secondhand products so long as I'm not getting screwed. And this is where, like, the information and expertise comes in. You know, the reason there's the mattress guy there, the reason that there's the luxury watch collection guy or the cigar guy, right? It's because I'm willing to spend the nice money. But, like, I'm an amateur golfer. I don't know too much about whiskey or Rolexes or whatever. Like, come educate me. And so finding. Finding niches that can cater to that, I think is very smart.

I like it because social media is perfect for building trust at scale. Right. So I was actually just emailing with the mattress guy, like, last week, and I was like, what's your website? I don't have one. Well, what does, like, your funnel look like? I hop on calls with people, and I sell them $7,000 mattresses for $2,000, and I make a margin there. Oh, okay. And it's like, well, people trust you because if he were to screw over one person, they'd blast about it on Twitter and he's out of business. It's a beautiful way of doing business. Right. So I think it's great for that reason. And I think it also needs to be high ticket. I think golf sets are about as low ticket as you can get, and.

There'S still 500 bucks or whatever.

Yep.

But I completely agree, right? Like, it's. It's not worth getting into this business if you're going to be the book guy and you sell somebody on a $12 book that you're like, they're great. But I do think that if you wanted to do it from a really any form of sport, I guess as long as you can get like, close to a $500 AOV average order value as the minimum. I think that that's smart. Other ones that I can see working out really well would be like all things gym, renovation wise or you know, making sure that that's a kit. I think just building a business around what is something that you enjoy that is a large enough cam that also is expensive. And so there's another one. This Guy has over 10,000 followers on on X and his name is Kevin Shen and he does home video studio build outs. So he'll sell two versions of this. It'll either sell the DIY course and the DIY course is, you know, all right, here's the best webcams based on the price range. Like here's how to configure them, here's how to set it up. You know, if you put one little light in your background, like it makes the effects ten times better, whatever, right? And like you can buy the course on that or they'll actually fly out to your home office, your home studio, whatever, and they'll do the entire build out for you so that way you don't have to lift your finger. And the cool part about that is like that's a. I have no idea how much it costs, but I bet it's like a $20,000 package. And like the other one is an info product business that probably is littered with affiliate links that can probably scale up very well as very efficiently as well. Like I'm on his website right now. Dream Studio Course.com is what it's called. And if I scroll down to the pricing. Okay, so just the essentials for video curriculum, it's 500 if you want to join a cohort based course, 1200 and then the done for you. Consulting, which is everything from professional background, design, expert guidance, I think they fly out is $8,000. So like jeez. Yeah, but, but here's the hack on this, right? Is like he's done it for all the big guys. Like yeah, the Sam Pars, the Nick Sharmas, the Tiago Fortes. And so like if you're doing it to that degree and you're just good in your tech focused, like there's not a whole lot of extra variables. But now everyone sees these guys like they are a public billboard for you, especially as their audiences grow. And I think that that can increasingly be a big business, especially if you.

Do it for free for them. It's like, hey man, just mention me one time, I'm cool. Oh man, why isn't there like a travel agent guy? Do you know that travel agents are still a thing, like in person, old school. My wife uses a travel agent and like you don't really pay for them because they're paid by, by the, the travel companies.

So two things on that I think one, one of my friends who, like, I don't know, I kind of think of, when I think of travel agents, I think of like my own. My grandparents would use a travel agent. Like, it just feels outdated right now that you have all these middlemen, the Expedia, whatever. But I do have a good friend of mine who's very tech forward and everything and his whole thing is like, they went on their honeymoon and they went to South Africa and like some spots it just is way more beneficial to have the travel agent because you can't get the reservations you need. What I have found, and I'm trying to find it on my Twitter to make sure that like I actually have the right thing. It's some crazy number of cruises are booked through travel agents. Like I think like I'm going to make up this number and somebody fact check me on this. But like I think it's like 80% of all people, all cruise tickets sold are booked through travel agents.

I believe it. I mean we, we've been on like 12 cruises and we've booked most of them through an agent.

Really?

Yeah. The, the agent would like you to believe that they save you money. And I think sometimes they do or they can. I don't know. It's just kind of how the industry operates. I don't even know why we do. But like when we start talking about a Royal Caribbean cruise again, we have like a lady that we call like, hey, hook, hook us up. And it's funny because she's always like, well you, you know, if you sign up Today, you'll get $500 of onboard credits. And it's like I go to royal Caribbean.com, it says the same thing. Like what?

So, okay, so here's, here's the thing. Cruise lines Cruise line International association says that 70% of cruises are booked through travel agents. Okay, that's just, that's just a middleman who's taking a margin. Like, can you build an Expedia only for cruises, A job board only for cruises, where it is the de facto everything that you need to know about. And then like going back to the creator LED brand if you're really into cruises or like you want to be a travel influencer and you want a niche, like one of the not so cool, like you're probably not going to get flown out by Emirates and the $20,000 suite.

Right.

You probably could get a suite on a Royal Caribbean cruise line. And so I think that that would be a really good niche to try to disrupt the cruise agent booking market.

Well, so, dude, go to Vacations to go dot com. Have you been there?

Never.

This is what you're talking about. This is a billion dollar business. I did a deep dive on Twitter a while ago. It's literally a billion dollar business. This ugly website. Yeah. Eight million customers served in the last 40 years. Do the math on that. You know, thousand dollars cruise times 8 million.

Are you kidding me?

Yeah, it's stupid. It's, it's worthy of a deep dive.

Why is this not just like the number one thing that people are, are building right now?

I think for like, anyone age 50 and over, which is like 80% of the cruise market? This is the thing. This is their Expedia.

See, man, here's, here's the thing that some of these, like, business idea podcasts, right? There's, there's business ideas where I'm like, ah, that's such a good idea that I got to keep it in, like the bottom parts of the Notes app so that way, like, it doesn't come up and we're not too public about it. This would be one of those ideas that I feel like somebody should genuinely start. Like, cruises are such a big market, and if this is the website that is leading it for 8 million travelers, that's insane, dude.

Here's where I think the opportunity is. I've had this idea since the first time I went on a cruise, which was like 2009, okay, 15 years we're talking. So I'm a cheapskate. Total cheapskate. If you go on a cruise, it's all a racket, right? They're going to break even on you, hopefully luckily on the ticket. And then they're going to make money when you gamble and when you drink. But guess what? I don't do any of those things. And I eat more than the average human being, so ain't no cruise line making money on me. But there is a third way where they make a lot of money, and that's on shore excursions, okay? You want to go snorkeling, you get to Costa Rica, you want to go ziplining, it's going to be 179 bucks a person. And when have you been on a cruise?

No, no, haven't done a cruise.

So you get off the boat and then there's Going to be someone waiting for you, a local in a nice shirt. They're going to be holding a sign and you're going to go with them. And it's concierge. You're going to get in a, like a rickety school bus. They're going to take you in the middle of the jungle, and you get there and then there's like, a shack, and you, you swipe your car. Well, you've already paid, I guess, and it's tons of money, and you're there for two or three hours and you have fun. And then they drive you back to the boat. They make sure that you're there in time. And when you're on the boat, it's this big scare tactic. It's genius because there's. There's, like, sales pitches and announcements 24,7 on these boats. And so they're always like, all right, be sure to stop by if you haven't booked your shore, shore excursions yet. And of course, they're going to do everything they can to get you to book that before you ever step foot on the boat. If you haven't, please go to our concierge travel service and you can choose from many options. Once again, we will remind you, be sure to book only through Royal Caribbean, because you won't be able to guarantee that you'll get back to your boat in time or that you'll be safe or that you won't get murdered and left in the jungle. Like, it's all scare tactics, but it's all a racket because it's the same companies, it's the same businesses.

I was going to say, like, we. I travel. I travel a good amount, and I haven't really done much stuff through an agency. And, like, you know, I'll go to some spots. My mom's like, be careful. And it's like, hey, it's. It's fine. Like, you'll get way more scared based on the news. But if you look at the average American, I think there's some crazy stats of, like, 33 have never left their state and, like, 70 have never left the country. So it's like if to a lot of people, Mexico is a very scary place. Yeah, like, for others, it's like, all right, it's Mexico. So, yeah, I, I can agree with that 100%. And I think at an older age, too, like, because I know now my parents also just got back from a cruise or whatever, like, and they're going with a bunch of their friends, and, like, they just want to Be pampered. They don't want to have to think. They don't.

They don't want to think about it.

Right, exactly. They want. They want. And they want to get excited about somebody else's idea of, hey, we're coming up to Germany. Like, this is the oldest castle. Like you have to check it out. And it's like 60 years of their lives have gone by. They've never thought about this castle. But this is now the number one thing they want to say because somebody said it's the best thing to do. And so there's definitely an exciting element to that.

Well, dude, it's like there's a whole hack to it. So this is what I do. I don't book anything when I get on the boat. We have no shore excursions planned. When you get off the boat. I would bet 80 to 90% of people book shore excursions through the cruise line. You walk off the boat and you're going to see all kinds of like huts, people standing there wearing branded shirts and they're going to be selling you like, hey, are you going with this? Oh, we haven't booked anything yet. Oh, come do snorkeling and Belize, yada, yada. And like, how much? Oh, 120. Nope, you start walking away. Oh, 100. I did this in Belize as like a 22 year old. This guy's like, it's 120. I'm like, 30. He's like, no, all 30. Come on, bro, come on, 30. I'm like, it's 30. It's $30. No, no, no, no, no. I'm like, okay, I'll go try the next guy. Do the old walk away. Okay, 30 bucks. Because like, like the gas is paid for, the bus is there. They're right there. It's free money to them. They're just going to give you a snorkel that they've given to a thousand other people. And we. So then we get on the bus and we're the only people on this bus that don't have like a fancy wristband that was booked through the cruise. Right. But it's the same thing that everyone on the cruise paid for. It's like these are people that we eat dinner with every night. They paid six times as much for the same experience. And we're talking like, what you pay for this? 180. What? You pay 30. What? How did you. It's like I didn't buy through. So like, I think there needs to be a, a vacations to go or an expedia for shore excursions. We're like vetted local trusted providers. And then that's your whole value prop is like, these are the same providers that Carnival and Royal Caribbean use. But you just have to. You get to skip the middleman.

Yeah, that's great. No, I love that. I think, I think the hard part is getting to that connection. But I think if you go on shore and go on ground, I think it'll absolutely work. I just got back from. This is not really related to business at this point, but like, I got back from Jamaica last month and I was. We were out in the water and I quickly realized that the Mafia just runs everything there because. Oh, really? Yeah, we're just kind of drinking in the water and hanging out and some guy just pulls up like basically the beach with like a tube in the back. And it was like, hey, come on, man, like $30, like, come, come for a ride on the tube. And I like, grab my girlfriend. I was like, come on, let's go. And she was a little iffy on it. And then you see the guys on the shore, like five big dudes look at that guy and go, no. And they're like, if this guy point to me wants to go for a ride here, they have to come through us and they pay us and then we'll give you something because this is our beach and like, you can't just come around and take a cut of it. So that was. We didn't, we didn't end up going.

On the tube afterwards, dude.

But I will, I will say I do think that that would absolutely work.

Dude, real quick, that story reminds me of a crazy story that I just heard on Sunday. Not related to anything we're talking about, but it's good content and it's a good story. So I think you and everyone listening will like it. So I'm in church, I'm teaching Sunday school with this. My buddy Tom. And I don't remember what we're talking about, but he starts talking about his Sunday school teacher when he was a kid. And his name was Gordon Hall. And I'm saying his name publicly because this is all public record, but he had. He orchestrated one of the biggest Ponzi schemes of all time in Arizona in like the 90s, 80s and 90s. And he was all tied up with the mafia doing stock manipulation, right? And he was like, he had a 52,000 square foot house. 52,000.

It's too much.

He had a billboard on the top that said Gordon Hall's mansion. Okay, that's what kind of guy this, this guy was. But here's the crazy thing. He got sentenced to prison. He's in prison today, still alive. He'll be in there for like 14 more years. And he was all tied up with the mafia to manipulate these stock prices and to get a better deal. This is as I understand it, I might be misremembering something. He like sold out the mafia. And you will not find this on the news anywhere. But this is a true story from my friend Tom, who went to church with his whole family A year to the day that he was sentenced to prison. His daughter, Gordon's daughter died suspiciously. Like they, they called it anorexia. But she wasn't even like that skinny. She just like died. And they're like, oh, I guess it was anorexia. And then a year later to the day on this two year anniversary, his son died in a hit and run where they never found the driver. This true story, like this will be a Netflix documentary one day.

That's crazy.

Terrible.

I can't even fathom like how people get into these schemes that are that elaborate that then have people. I don't know, I guess with all the united like living in Manhattan right now, like all the united health care stuff, I don't. I know it's a big thing throughout the whole country, but also just right now too, like, yeah, people putting out hits, people like covering up murders, people going to jail for 20 years.

Like it's crazy.

We live in a weird world.

We do. Anyway, that was a little tangent. We both have add so it makes sense.

But well, like to bring it back to the full beginning of the golf said, dude, the thing that I was going to say is of the other verticals of things that can be done, one that I think would be really good that nobody talks about today. I've just new to me. So I don't know if it's new to everyone. Aquascapes. So aquascapes are basically like the love of trying to build up an aquarium. And so you're trying to build up a tank. You want to have, you know, these types of pebbles on the ground. You want this water filter, you want this base for your thing, whatever. Like it's the same people who geek out about their home office setup or their, their desk set up or whatever else. Like want a cool aquascape. And so this is a really big community. Like there's 162,000 people in this subreddit and I guarantee you if somebody goes on Instagram and picks up the tagline, the Aquascape guy, and start just reviewing all of these different products. And, like, if there's all this stuff, like, you have to be passionate enough about it and you have to, like, know what you're talking about. Like, eventually you'll probably get into the game of, like, all right, I now know all of these rare fish species. But if you're. If that's something that interests you, this business would work. It absolutely would work. Like, tanks go for, like, anywhere from 100 to, like, a several thousand dollars, and you can do so many different ranges that, like, even just building out content on this, like, the money from the affiliate revenue alone would be enough for a very viable business.

Dude, it's making me think of this video I saw that had, like, a hundred million views. I'm going to text a variation of it to you. It is a. An aquarium with, like, a hollow. I just texted it to you. A hollow cavity built out in the middle for a cat to sit in and look around.

Yeah.

And so. Oh, geez. You could totally be the Aquascape guy. I think that the magic is high ticket, preferably like, small enough to ship, like, watches. Perfect. Right? And, like, car dealership guy. Perfect, because people ship cars across the country all the time. Right. Even though they're huge. It. The price point, it works.

Don't do, like, the couches unless, like, maybe, I don't know, like, the Facebook marketplace is. It's furniture go lower. And so, like, it just seems hard. Like, people. People want somebody to come by and pick up their stuff. So if you're willing to do that and you can refurbish it. Well, maybe there's a game there, but. Yeah, that's. I think that's a good one. The one that I'll just throw out the opportunity here. And I don't have a clear solution, but I know it's a big problem is pianos are a nightmare to get rid of. I don't know if you've run.

Dude, I tweeted about this.

You did?

I'm doing a whole video about this. Yeah, dude.

Oh, like, you tweeted about this recently.

Like, two months ago.

So, I mean, we own storage facilities. Like, it's. Every time you take over a facility, you have to go through and, like, look through all the units and figure out what the junk is, whatever. And, like, we opened up One actually in Fort Worth, and we open up, like, four. Four units, and each unit had, like, 10 pianos. And I was like, oh, no. Like, what a nightmare. So. Because, like, they're hard to dispose of. Like if you take it for the dump, the dump freaking charges you, like by the pound, basically. Pianos, like heavy as hell. So like, truly the best thing that we could do is a try to like just try to auction them off. Like, not even auction like free, free pianos. We would call local churches, see if anyone wants them donated. But like, not all of them are even in great shape. So I don't know if there's a business model here. I just. Really big problem. You know what?

Okay, what you got? Yes. So, dude, I was on threads. I was on threads and I posted something about something I don't remember. And this guy commented and he's like, I assumed he worked for a moving company, but he didn't say. He's like, my boss used to do this when we got slow, we didn't have any jobs. He would hop on Facebook Marketplace and copy and paste the same message saying, will come pick up your piano for 250 bucks. As in you pay us 250 to come get it. And they've got big box trucks just sitting there. They're not doing anything. And he's like, we would pick up five, six, seven in a day, once every now and then. So then I went to Facebook Marketplace out of curiosity. I went to the center of Dallas and I set a 50 mile radius so it got all of DFW. Guess how many free pianos are listed every day in DFW? So many, it's like 55 to 65 a day. Free people can't get rid of them. Like so no, it's like a liability. And so it's just, it's a numbers game. You could literally say, I'm going to be by Fort Worth on Thursday with my box truck. This is my business. We're called, you know, piano movers dot com. It's going to be 250 bucks. We'll take it out of your house. Like we just show up. You don't have to do anything. We'll open the door even and you just, On Monday you DM 60 people. Tuesday, 60 people. Wednesday, 60 people. Maybe you have 10 appointments set up by Thursday, you rent a u haul for 59.99a day plus 75 cents a mile. You don't even buy a box dry. You just go pick all those suckers up, drop them off at the dump.

Yep, I agree on all that. I think the only, the only step further that I would take it is, is there any way that you can make money? Because this dump's gonna charge you, like, to. To dump all of these pianos.

It's still profitable. It is. I believe it.

Oh, 100%. I believe it. Especially when low. Right. Like, you know, you can still make some money there. I think the next iteration is like, is there something you can do to the piano to make money to get paid to pick it up and to get paid to dispose of it? I know that I'm gonna get the entire process wrong here, so I apologize to anyone listening. But, like, there is somebody that I met a long time ago and he picks up tires. He gets paid to take the tires. His tires also are kind of a pain in the ass. And he has some machinery that I.

Converts it into power.

Into what? Into powder?

Into power. Like electricity. Because that's the thing.

I think. I think he just cuts them up. I think he's like, they're used for like 10th pellets or something.

Mulch. Yeah. There's like, it's like artificial mulch and they'll paint it brown. And it's. It's very expensive because it's permanent mulch. You don't have to replace it every spring.

So maybe that's what it is. I'm blanking on it slightly. But like, the business model of getting paid to take the thing and then get rid of it is a very good business model.

It's like negative cogs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Negative cogs. Cash up front. All is good.

Dude, when I posted about this, it was very polarizing because everyone was saying, you can't throw pianos away. What are you doing? That's art. And it's like, we need to stop buying crap. We're buying crap. We got to do something with it. I'd love to sell it. Trust me, I would love to sell it. But what are we going to do?

I just respond to all those people and tell them that you have 50 pianos for them at their doorstep if they want to pick them up. Like, hey, listen, I'm not throwing them away anymore. They're all yours. They're free. Take them.

People were like, well, what if you, like, assemble them in a warehouse and you donate them to like, assisted living facilities? And it's like if they wanted or needed them, they would go get one for free on Facebook Marketplace. No one wants these things.

Yep, agreed. Agreed. We got way more topics than the other ones are. Way more research too. But that was fun. Basically, takeaways here. Find a high price product, build content around it, and like, you can. Like, the cool part here is like, you're not manufacturing stuff. You're, you are becoming knowledgeable subject matters. Like you're basically a travel agent for a product. Like you are, you know enough about the space such that you can say, hey, don't buy this set, buy this set. Don't buy this fish tank, buy this tank. Don't buy this piano, buy this one. Like I bet one for music would also work really well just in general, but besides the point.

Yeah. Like smaller instruments that are higher ticket violins and stuff.

Like I'm, I'm planning on learning how to kite board next month and I think like I'm going to rent all of the equipment at first, but then afterwards there's going to be a subject matter where I'm going to need to learn which kite and what board to buy, et cetera. And like same, same goes with skis, same goes with whatever else. And so like anything where there's like a little bit of a beginner ramp up curve and you can be that person to catch them on that ramp up as they're getting more content and now they trust you in the beginning of that journey and they're willing to have a high ltv. Get them there.

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