Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast is live!

What? Oh, door. Okay, let's see if this works. Oh, all right.

All right, all right, all right, here we go. Singapore, where's everyone calling in from?

What do we got? What do we got?

Athena, not uppercase, welcome. Junk Removal Omar, welcome. Back in business, I assume. You guys can see me now? Can you see me? Oklahoma, Minnesota, Tennessee, Aerospace Engineer, India, Texas, California.

Ontario.

City of Angels. 55 people in here. Sandy, Utah, right next to Draper. Hardly know her. Welcome. I'm going to be in— I'm going to be in Utah this July. Hey, tell me what your business is or ask me any business questions.

Tell me what your side hustle is.

I'm glad it works now. Alabama, what city in Alabama? Zimbabwe, let's go!

Missouri, St. Clement.

All right, CDA, Coeur d'Alene, baby! Beautiful part of Idaho up on the finger. Appliance repair, that's a good business. Restaurant business, tell me about your restaurant. Cleaning business owner. Magnets, okay, okay. The Hat Bar. Hey Rachel, that's awesome!

Congratulations.

Calgary.

Okay, it's like kind of bumpy right now and the font is very small, so I'm having a hard time reading that. Calgary. Oh, thank you. All right, Oklahoma, Calgary, aviation photographer, trash can rollout business.

Welcome everyone, ask me your questions. So Right now I'm with my buddy Braden.

Yo, what's up?

He is my friend/videographer, and we are driving from Dallas to Fort Worth to film a video about an ICE— like, an automated ICE business. So I sent out a poll, you guys want to learn about it, and, um, and then later today I'm gonna go deliver for DoorDash. I just downloaded the DoorDash for Dashers app. I got approved, my background check passed, and and I'm gonna deliver food for DoorDash this afternoon, and I'm gonna livestream while I do it. So I don't know what time it'll be, maybe 3 to 5 hours from now. Yeah, call it 3 to 4 hours from now. And, um, I'm just gonna see how much money I can make DoorDash, and we're gonna like turn it into a nice edited polished video, but we're also going to livestream it as I do it. So I— one of my favorite jobs of all time was when I was 16. I delivered pizzas for The Hut. I tried to out-pizza them, didn't work. They're still around. But it was my favorite job ever because, you know, the contrast of me going out and delivering pizzas in Titusville, Florida, compared to, uh, all the people that were stuck in the store— it was hot, cooking, cash register, answering phones, you know. I would just go back to the shop, I would see, all right, Here's some pizzas. Here's my address. Here's my order.

We'd have to look at a physical map.

This was like 2004. This is pre-Google Maps, pre-smartphone. And I would just go turn on my punk, punk band music, brand new Take Me Back Sunday, Jack's Mannequin, Manchester Orchestra, Blink-182. And I would just deliver sauce with my bras. And I had a, I had a girlfriend at the time, Evan.

Shout out, Evan.

You married my friend. Not happy about that, but you know, whatever. Water under the bridge. She would go with me to deliver pizza sometimes, and that was a good time.

And so I want to get back.

That was like a really, really fun job, and I made a lot of money. Like, I ended up making like $15 an hour, which was a lot as a high schooler in 2004. So I'm gonna do that for DoorDash today. Uh, it's not sponsored. DoorDash doesn't know who I am. I just want to see, do I have that same feeling? Um, when I'm like driving all over the Metroplex and having to pick up here and deliver there, it's like more variables, right? I'm picking up from all kinds of restaurants and I'm delivering to all kinds of people. Um, so can I do anything to influence my tips? Can I send them messages like funny jokes or whatever to influence how many tips I get? Like, I just want to test all these things with DoorDash and then publish the video and hopefully you can learn from it and make more money from DoorDash. So I'm going to be doing that this afternoon, right? Is that what we're doing?

That's what we're doing.

We don't have anything else to book. Oh, and I'm interviewing a kid in Allen, Texas, 15 years old, who— he finds rare ants, ants, ants, and he sells them for thousands of dollars to people in some weirdo Discord group. Colorful. He drove all the way out with his parents to West Texas and like went out in the desert and found colorful ants and sold them to people on a Discord group for $5,000 as a 15-year-old. So I'm gonna interview him later this afternoon as well, and that will go live. Oh, you gotta pay, you gotta pay.

Oh, 5 bucks! Hey, that's half my Chipotle order. Thank you.

Of course.

He says, uh, GHL 2103, if I start a for-profit kids market, do I charge the kids to have a booth? Absolutely, you do. Charge between $30 and $50, but they have to bring everything.

Hey, I like that. He paid me $5 and the question got ahead of me.

So I don't need you guys to pay me, but I will say it will be easier, like on the UI, the user interface, it's easier for me to see your comment if there's money attached.

So pay me 1 cent and all you provide is—

you don't give them a table, a tent, or chairs. They got to bring their own stuff. Don't even offer it as an option for an upsell. And then if you're doing a farmer's market for adults, you can charge, you know, $75 to $200 per space. But I just posted an episode a week ago about the farmer's market business, both as a vendor and as an owner organizer of the farmer's market. It's really good business. Anyway, so we're talking about— oh yeah, the kid with ants. And I was thinking for like— so yesterday we did— we filmed 10 videos. 7 were with people we found on Facebook Marketplace. And so my team just went to Facebook Marketplace and just started scrolling and like, oh wow, this woman rents out, uh, bouquet bars. Like, so like a— if a bridal shower wants, you know, a bar of flowers so women can make their own cookies. She rents out the hardware to enable that. A woman that rents out coffee cart, a guy that has a basketball hoop trailer for parties and events. Anyway, I interviewed 7 different people from Facebook Marketplace on my front porch, and I was thinking we should livestream that as well. We should like just set up a camera and people can watch live as I'm interviewing them. We'll still publish the published version or the edited version, but then once I'm done with the interview whoever's like behind the, the camera that's live streaming can be like, Chris, so-and-so wants to know this.

So, and like, you guys can interview them with me. How cool would that be?

So we should have done that yesterday because you and Molly are just kind of like hanging out, you know.

We can do it on Saturday.

Oh, hey, let me know in the comments if you, if you guys would like that, where I find like— these aren't just random businesses on Facebook Marketplace. My team goes out, they find random businesses, and then they send a poll to my newsletter. And the poll says like, which one of these do you actually want to learn more about? And then only if you guys vote yes, then we reach out and invite them to my house and interview them. So if that sounds interesting and you want me to livestream so it can be like an interactive YouTube video, let me know in the comments if we should do that.

JC, we'll give you a dollar.

Oh, a dollar.

No question.

No question. Thank you, guys. I'm honestly not doing this to try to make money. I appreciate you. Um, I'm just driving. Again, my truck is driving me. I am looking at the road. You can see I'm like— now is when I'm looking at you, but if I do that, my truck will yell at me. So I am looking at the road, but it's in full self-driving anyway, so it's literally driving safer than I can drive, which isn't saying much because I'm not a good driver. But, um, anyway, What's your question? So just to get people caught up, we're driving to Fort Worth, uh, we're gonna film a video about ice machine, uh, businesses, and then we're going to be delivering for DoorDash while live here on YouTube. So I would love to learn about your businesses, your side hustles. If your story is interesting enough, then I'll send a poll about it, and then if the— if it does well in the poll, I want you to come on My Pockets. I have no interest in interviewing like billionaires and like just like finding more and more higher, you know, high-profile people. I want to interview the most random, you know, 15-year-old that sells ants. Like, I just want to find the most off-the-wall business ideas that, uh, that are approachable, that are affordable to start and have high profit potential. That is what I love doing. Any other questions? Anything coming through I should address?

Uh, no, not really. One person asked, they asked when the right time to start an LLC.

Okay, right time to start an LLC is once you've tested it enough to know that you have like a repeatable process that's actually going to scale. So not pre-revenue, but like, all right, post-revenue, I'm going to stick with this, this is a thing. That's when you would want to start an LLC. Uh, Man That's Funky asked, I'd love a series where you Hormozy style walk into a business and interview them to kind of do business breakdown analysis. That's kind of what you're doing with Facebook marketing calls. So what I'm doing with Facebook Marketplace is like, it's more me asking them about their business, their numbers, how they've been customers. Occasionally I'll get an idea for them and I'll tell them. But so I'm not quite doing that like a consulting thing, but I want to do that, kind of like a Dave Ramsey for small business owners, whether their business is healthy or failing. Like, I think that would be really fun. That is a concept I want to try. It's a great idea. A furnace filter club. I gotta hear about that, Yemi. That sounds interesting.

Family lives in Granbury. I think that's down by Maybank, uh, down by that lake.

There's Cedar— Cedar Lake or something. So I know Granbury. Who else we got? Any other questions?

Oh, Jason gave me— okay, Jason's my buddy.

All right, okay, Jason, I see you, I see you. Jason's over here like, hey, you owe me a text, Chris. Uh, and I do, I do owe you a text, Jason, but you can see I am busy right now. This is live. It is 10:30 5 in the morning on Friday. Is it Friday? Friday.

Friday. Yes.

Right now I'm, uh, I got Six Flags out the window.

Did you see that?

Thoughts on Sendinblue? Sendinblue, that is like, uh, an app where you can text message people in blue, and I haven't used it personally. I use straighttext.com. and it does the same thing. It's like $30 a month, but I see ads for Sendinblue. I assume they're good. I don't know. I think they, they, uh, sync with GoHighLevel, so that should be good.

Totally Ryan, $2.

Thank you. Sweat equity strategies for equity and private equity deals. Uh, Ryan, I would love more, uh, context on that. Strategies for— okay, so let me, let me give you an example. I think you guys should find this interesting. I love it when you guys ask questions that are broad enough that could apply to most people watching. So, um, my friend Hector, he just invested in a forklift repair business. I say business, I'm using that term loosely. The owner is 65 years old. He has no CRM, right, like customer relationship management software. He He just had a phone and like people like, hey, come fix my forklift. He's been doing that for 30 years, turning people down like, that's too far. He charges like $300 an hour. And my friend Hector met him through like a church contact and invested not a ton of money in his business to kind of like take it over and help him grow it and capture all the upside. So, but now like Hector had to invest more money. He bought like a couple vans, a couple trucks, he rented a warehouse, but it's only been like 6 months and he's crushing it, um, because like this business just needed to be operationalized a little bit. I just needed some software.

Ask Papa, give me $20.

Oh, Papa, thank you!

Ask Papa, I think I know that channel. I think I know your channel, Ask Papa. Um, anyway, starting a business based on inspiration. Thank you. How would you figure out what to charge local businesses for advertising slots? I'm guessing you're talking about, um, the postcard business that I posted a couple weeks ago. Um, I think anytime I'm trying to figure out what to charge for anything, I like— I don't want to guess. I want to charge based on value. So in, in the case of like selling ad spots to local businesses on a postcard you have to first know what's like, what that is worth to them based on precedent from other people doing it. So for instance, in my interview he said they did it for a cookie business and, you know, they gave away a free cookie, bakery, and every single person that came in bought something else as well. So it's like, in that case, how many people, how many new customers did it bring in? And then what percentage of them do you anticipate becoming like a lifelong customer? Um, and then you back end into the, the price that way. With a business like that where you're selling local ad spots, um, it's all going to come down to finding the best business for that, the best offer, like the, the good match of like conversion rate and ticket price. So for instance, I'm just making this up, let's say you find a roofing business that gets— that averages a 25% close rate on a $20,000 roof and they got 12 leads, and those leads are just as good as any other lead. 12 leads from your $300 ad, that would equal 3 closings, right, at a 25% close rate, at $60,000 revenue from a $300 ad. So it's like, holy crap, I just need to offer ad spots for roofing businesses. Like, even if it's a dedicated postcard just for one business, and instead of charging them $300, right, where you only get 12 leads, I charge them $3,000 and they get the whole postcard and they might get 50 leads, right? So they get— I charge them 10 times as much, but they're going to get at 50 leads, uh, 12.5 sales at $20,000 each, right? Six figures of value from $3,000 investment. So you really just gotta keep testing those ad slots with enough different types of local businesses until you know which one gets the highest ROI from you. So then you can charge the absolute max amount possible. Aside from that, just try to go on message boards and Reddit and ask around. Just call other postcard businesses as if you're a potential client and ask them what they charge. And start there, like start at just market rate, but then try to find like the highest and best use of that space on the postcard. What do you like, don't like about HTO as a business? Okay, I assume you're looking into franchising with them. Full disclosure, I don't drink tea as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, um, so I know the business. There's one, uh, near where I live. They're blowing up. Um, I'm not bullish on that business. I think that it's, it's like catching lightning in a bottle to find a food franchise that is hot that will stay hot for a long period of time, right? Crumble is one. That actually made it, and their sales from last year are way down. So like, even that, like, is a fad. The question is, how much of a fad is it? Like, when all the dust settles, are there going to be zero Crumbles? Of course not. But there will probably be fewer locations than there are today. So if you got in early and your location is killer and your territory is killer, like, you're going to crush it. Like, you'll probably do well for decades, just like a Subway in an amazing location is probably doing well today if it was doing well 30 years ago, right? But HTO, I just don't know. Like, for every Crumble there is that made it, or Subway, there's 100 food franchises that were once hot that didn't make it. And I just don't know if tea is broad enough to really keep up. Even Swig, like, Swig went like this, dirty sodas, and now they're like, they're leveling out. So if you got a really good location, you got in early, you'll probably do well for a while, if not forever, right? But, um, I don't, I don't know enough about HTTO. I just know it's a really high upfront investment. I think they want you to buy multiple territories, and I don't know if it has staying power like something like McDonald's, Subway, or even Crumble. So any other questions standing out? I'm in traffic, so we got even more time now.

What would be a good subscription business for my add-on onto junk removal business?

Subscription business add-on to a junk removal business. I would first ask yourself, like, do you actually want to do that? Everyone wants recurring revenue, but it's not, it's not always worth chasing, right? No one talks about the opposite to recurring revenue, which is just like making a lot of money one time. That's not always a bad thing. I have a friend and he helps like dental offices find new locations and he makes like $40,000 per deal. But he always says, I'm only as good as my next deal. And he like talks crap on his own business, right? I'm only good as my next deal. There's nothing recurring about it. And I'm like, dude, you make $40,000 and you have a system, you have a process. Your system and process is repeatable. Whether that's like this much ad spend in every month returns this much in profit. Like if you have a repeatable system or process, that's almost as good, if not just as good, as recurring revenue, right? So there are no solutions, only trade-offs. If you don't have recurring revenue in your business and you can't think of like a justifiable way of adding it, then just be grateful for the trade-off that you have, which is whatever Junk Removal offers. High ticket, um, like a lot of people acquiring and buying too much stuff. Like, that is a mega trend that you're riding. Um, so I don't— yeah, I just maybe, like, if you were to pair it with, um, dumpster rentals, that's a— that's dumpster rentals, trailer rentals, and junk removal. Those three go hand in hand. And so the other two, dumpster rental and trailer rental, that's more likely to be recurring, right? Because you say subscription, I say recurring. So like a general contractor or some small business owner, B2B, like, they might appreciate a discount, um, from you, uh, in exchange for you having the liability of them renting X, Y, or Z dumpsters, trailers every month, or every quarter, every week, or whatever. That's what I would say to that.

How about this one? Business idea: cutting programming keys at live events. People always lose keys and get keys for $300-$500.

Programming keys?

I think like your, like the fobs.