Forget AI. These Offline Hustles Make $10K - Ep. #311

Does AI have you bummed out? All these terms, acronyms that you don't understand. That's fine, because today we're going to talk about 5 different business ideas where you can make $10,000 in either a year, a month, a week, or a day. And they're all offline. No AI stuff, no internet stuff. This is Sweaty Startup type stuff. Please enjoy. Tell me about your temporary fence friend.

Yeah, so I have a friend that started a temporary, a temporary fence rental business. In a suburb of Sacramento, not a big town where he focused. And he had no domain expertise at all before starting this. But he's a smart guy and he's a good salesman. And so, he decided to do it. And so, the first thing that you do is you have to buy the panels, you have to buy the temporary fence things.

Like chain link fence?

No, it mo— I think mostly he did, um, like plastic.

Okay.

So they, they'd be like plastic barriers. Okay. And then the panel between.

Okay. Yeah.

And they're like 12 feet apart and you know, you got the, so you just put those to protect the job site.

Yeah.

And then you put the plastic panels.

Commercial job sites.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. So, so he bought those. I don't know how many feet he bought, but he bought enough. Um, so there's obviously cost. You don't, I don't think you have to buy them before you get your first job. You just have to be ready to buy them when you do get your first job.

Probably make money on your first job.

Yeah. And then how he would get his customers is he would just go to construction sites that are new that didn't have any temporary fencing up yet. And he would just say, do you want a temporary fence? I'll rent you mine.

Yeah.

For cheap. And he would start making bank. And he did this.

They're about to buy it from someone.

Yeah, because they need it. Yeah, it's like a liability thing.

Well, it's a legal thing too. They probably like zoning laws.

Yeah, so you have a hot buyer, like they know they need it, they don't have it yet. Worst case scenario is they already paid for something that hasn't shown up yet, I guess. Uh, but I would assume legally, like, oh, if you start construction, you need within X amount of days you need your fence up. That's probably the rule.

If you wanted, you could— like, anyone in the world can see building permits when they're filed. Yeah, those are filed days, weeks, or months before they ever show up on the job site. Yeah, so you could get way ahead of it.

Yeah, yeah, you totally could. So yeah, he didn't even do the— that version of it. He was just literally, when he would drive around and when he would see a new construction site, he would go there, he'd go to the little mobile, you know, whatever that thing is, the trailer set up, and find the person in charge, and then he'd pitch it, and then he would sell it. And then he would charge by the foot and then sort of length of time. So, the longer you have it, it'd be less per square foot. And he would charge like $4—

Linear foot.

Or linear foot. He would charge like $4 a foot and then maybe eventually, he'd get down to like $2 a foot if they had it for a longer amount of time, which he said was super— Everybody knows in construction, things always take longer than you think. So, you get this passive income. That just really starts to add up because the amount of work you have to do on this job other than make the sale is setting up the fence. Yeah. And then whatever, 8 months later, taking down the fence.

Yeah. It's active on the front end.

Yeah.

Active months or years later. Yeah. Right. If you build a, you know, commercial building, it could take 2 to 4 years even.

Yeah. Um, so for max 2 days at the very start and 2 days at the very end, you're working.

Yeah.

And for the rest, you're just collecting a check. There's no maintenance. You don't have to clean these things. You don't have to remove them. If they like accidentally hit it with a tractor, they just move it back anyway. It's their job too. And yeah, you have to buy the pan— whatever, enough panels.

Yeah.

You have to buy the temporary fence. But other than that, there's no extra ongoing cost of any kind. And he started growing it. And he was making— I asked him, he'd make like $20,000 to $30,000 a job. That was like his average job.

And you could set up a job in a day?

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Depending on how big your crew is or whatever.

Yeah. Okay. And he started it, um, in like the summer of a couple years ago and then sold the company. Well, he made several hundred grand while doing it and then sold the company for $600,000 18 months later. Which he said he now regrets because he sold it 'cause he was bored.

Yeah.

Honestly, probably bored that he actually wasn't doing anything.

Yeah.

Because all the panels—

It was too passive for him.

It was too passive.

Yeah.

'Cause all the panels were just rented out. All the panels he had bought were on jobs.

Yeah.

So he's literally doing nothing.

You get to a point where you gotta either like triple down and keep buying more and more and more panels, or you just start cashing checks.

Yeah. And it was literally too passive for him. So, he's like, "I'm just going to sell the company." So, he sold the company, $600 grand after 18 months of very passive— Plus the property along the way.

Yeah.

Yeah. After months of passive work that became too passive, which is like the dream of most people.

Right.

Yeah.

So, let's crunch the numbers. You said $4 per linear foot?

Uh-huh.

Okay. So, I have a 2-acre property. That is 900 feet by 100 feet, right? It's very long and narrow. Okay, so 900 by 100. Um, so if he were to set up temporary fencing on my property, 2-acre property, which is not unreasonable at all for a commercial property, yeah, um, that's 1,000 linear feet times 4, so that would be $4,000. Okay, so to get to 10 in a day, you need like a 5-acre lot. Yeah, right, because I multiply that by 2.5, Yeah, you would need a 5-acre lot of temporary fencing to fence off the whole thing.

I would assume these are monthly numbers that he was charging.

Oh, really? Oh, and it comes down based on— Yeah. Wow. Okay.

Yeah.

So holy crap.

So before, for yours, you're saying it'd be $4,000.

So if it's a 10-month— Yeah. So if it's a 10-month project.

Yeah.

Then geez Louise.

Yeah.

So $10,000 in a day. Sorry. You're not collecting $10,000 cash in a day in this. If we want to get technical, you're signing a $10,000 contract that you collect over 10 months and you're doing the work for it in a day. If we really want to get ticky tacky.

Yeah, true. But some of these are bigger where they might pay you the $10K right away or more.

Or you just, you give them a discount to pay up front.

Yeah. Because yeah, he said his average was $20K to $30K a job. So yeah. Right. And I, I bet a lot of them were like 75% upfront, 25% at the end or 50/50 or something like that.

So we could sit here and talk about like, oh, you gotta make this AI agent that goes up, but like really get in your truck or car and go talk to these job sites.

Yeah. Drive around or when you're going out to dinner, yeah. Keep an eye out on what, what looks like it's going to start soon. What construction site looks like it's gonna start soon. Yeah. Call, they all, I feel like they all have the big old banner like, ah, whatever, Koerner Construction and the big old phone number, right? Call that number and say, hey, I saw your thing, I saw the site, I saw you don't have the temporary fencing.

Yeah.

I've actually got the best rates in the city. Who do I talk to?

And don't go buy your fencing first. Sell your first job.

Yeah.

Then go buy your fencing.

Yeah.

You probably need all that money to buy your first fencing.

Yeah, yeah.

So theoretically, this could be a business that you don't, need any money to start if you get paid up front. A lot of ifs, right?

Yeah, yeah.

But still, yeah, totally. Um, that's a banger.

Yeah.

Okay, so tell me the rug story.

Yeah, so my oldest kid, uh, it now just turned 16, but when he was about 15 and a half, he started thinking about buying his own car. I told him he had to. He wanted a car. He thought I was gonna buy it for him. I said no. I had to buy my first vehicle. I feel like it taught me a lot of stuff. Anyway, I'm like, I'm sorry, but I want you to have the same experience. And at first he was bugged, uh, and then he came around. And so anyway, he at the time had a part-time job because he's in high school, he's a sophomore. He had a part-time job at an indoor swim school.

Okay.

Just teaching little kids how to swim. He's super good swimmer and all trained and all that, um, in Utah where we live. And like, after taxes get taken out, like, I don't know what his actual hourly wage is,, but he gets like $11 after all the taxes.

Okay.

That's how he calculates it anyway. So that's what he makes. And he works like 2, 2, 2 days of like 6 hours and 1 day of like 4 hours a week anyway. But this is in November. I said, do the math on how long it's gonna take you to buy a car. And I started showing him cars for sale on bringatrailer.com, which I love just browsing that site. And I'm like, now do the math on how long it's gonna take you to get the thing that you actually want with your current job?

Mm-hmm.

He did the math and he was not happy. It would be like, he'd be like 22 years old. Yeah. So, so I was like, so he is like, well, what should I do? And I'm like, well, I've been telling you forever, like you should do your own thing. Like you can, there are different ways to make money. So I showed him like 10 episodes of yours. We just listened to them actually while driving home from Vegas, just 10 in a row.. And I was like, how about this? And he already had listened to you before, at least some episodes. So I'm like, let's just listen to Chris and you just pick, like, tell me an idea that stands out to you. So anyway, we listened to a bunch of episodes and then somebody said something about selling stuff and then it kind of centered around, okay, what could we sell and what do we have room for? And you know, what could he, do, like, he can't like sell vacuums. He doesn't know anything about fixing vacuums or whatever, right? So then we were just kind of going back and forth like, what is like the easiest thing to understand that you would have to sell where you like can't get it wrong? And we settled on rugs.

Okay.

Because they're squares or rectangles. Mm-hmm. And whatever is on the rug is what the rug is.

There's design, nothing to fix. There's no moving parts. They don't expire.

Yeah.

Okay.

So we figured it was the simplest thing.

I guess the one downside is they're heavy and they're kind of big. Yeah. Which also means other people probably aren't interested in selling them as much.

Yeah.

So there could be more demand than supply.

Yeah. Yeah. So we settled on that. So I was like, okay, well I'll try to figure out where to buy them from. And then we looked on B-Stock, which is like a popular site for this kind of thing. And, um, and so I started tracking different auctions., and would keep my eye on others for him. But, uh, we found a rug auction and I'm like, do you wanna, do you wanna win this thing? And so we won the auction and after shipping it was like $1,500 for 115 rugs.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Like, like $8 apiece.

Yeah, it was pretty cheap. We were like $12 apiece.

$12 apiece.

Okay.

Yeah. $12 apiece including shipping.

Uh-huh.

For 115 rugs. 115.

How much volume did it take?

Like that would probably fill up this whole room.

Yeah, yeah, it was bigger. So I was actually out of town when they were delivered and it was on two different pallets. And we have like a steep driveway, but the guy helped luckily. So anyway, brought it up, put it in, I have a barn that wasn't all the way used. So it probably was two times the size of this room amount of rocks.

So like a two-car garage?

Yeah. Yeah.

Give or take?

It wouldn't have fit, it wouldn't have filled up a whole two-car garage.

Okay.

But yeah.

1.5-car garage. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

'Cause it adds up. 'Cause some of these are like 8 by 12.

Yeah.

And then roll it up, that's still, it's pretty huge.

It's heavy too, right?

Yeah, they're heavy.

2-person job to move one of those things.

So I would say the biggest one might've been more like 10 by 14 or something. Okay. And then some, they weren't actually rugs. Some were literally just doormats. So it got as small as a doormat.

And you weren't expecting that?

No.

Okay, that happens sometimes.

Yeah. So it got as small as a doormat and then yeah, as big as a 10 by 14. Of the 115, probably whatever, 90 were rugs with some doormats. And then I guess some runners, just long and skinny things.

Okay.

Yeah.

And did you do any research on like how much demand there would be for these in your area? Did you post them to Facebook before you bought them?

Yeah, good question. Coulda, shoulda, woulda done that. Didn't do any of that. Yeah.

That's fun.

I just figured like people need rugs.

Yeah.

I don't know how many people need rugs. I don't know how many people need rugs in Utah.

But did you go— did you go look on Facebook to see if other people—

yeah, we did do that. We— and yeah, people were selling them.

What were some like prices?

Like, it was, it was a pretty broad range between like $20 and like $200.

Okay.

So, so, and that's kind of why we decided yes on the auction that we won. Yeah, it's like, okay, if we can get these for like $12 to $13, worst case scenario we sell them for an average of $20. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, if we could move 115 rugs for $20. Yeah, it's not a ton of money. You profit $1,000 bucks money.

Yeah, yeah, that's like a year of working at the pool place.

Yeah, yeah, so that was, that was sort of the justification for just being willing to jump in. Yeah, to do something that, you know, he didn't— yeah, again, you don't need to learn too much about the industry, but he didn't know anything. But I also figured— I thought, I thought that it was a good choice, but I was happy he chose this as the thing that he wanted to do because I didn't want him to do something where it would require like being on a screen all the time. Like, yeah, building an app and trying to do the new marketing for that, even though that's sort of where, how I'm built skill-wise. I didn't want that. And by selling rugs, you, you actually do have to learn a lot. You have to take pictures, learn how to position them the right way in a way that looks aesthetically pleasing. You have to then list things for sale and figure out what they go for. You have to learn how to negotiate. You have to have people skills cuz he was just having them pick it up. In person because he couldn't drive. So, um, you know, he had to have people skills. And I tried to teach him like how to do upsells. Like, hey, if they come for a $50 rug, try and sell one of those doormats that we don't really want, right? Try and sell that for $5. Yeah, like that kind of thing. Um, so anyway, he learned a ton of skills.

So did he worry about like lighting for the pictures?

Or— yeah, I talked to him about that. Yeah. And, and the background. Like, there's a difference of having a rug 'Cause at first it was like a rug on grass or on dirt. And I'm like, well, if you put the rug in our house, if you could, then that'd be better. Or like make a better background in the barn that you could do. Or turn one rug upside down, then do all the other rugs, pictures on top of that rug.

I mean, I bought a bunch of appliances to do this and it wasn't that hard to list 'em 'cause they're all right there and I just ch-ch-ch-ch-ch walk around it. But with this, you gotta roll 'em out move them inside from the barn.

Yeah.

Take pictures of them. You might need 2 people to move them.

Yeah.

Times 115. Yeah. It's a lot of work.

Yeah.

All right, so how did it go?

Yeah, it went good. So he kept that part-time job, you know, at the swim thing. And, but he started doing this and I had him sell through my Facebook account 'cause he doesn't have one. So I was just like, yeah, just in the description, just say I'm actually Brandon's son. I'm trying to sell these. And, you know, I wanted him to be like, hey, I'm trying to sell them to buy my first car. But he didn't really want to do that very much. But I think he only did it sometimes. Anyway, he has been doing that. It's been a few months, a handful of months. And then he did do one garage sale.

Oh, okay.

Where— well, it was just pitched as a massive rug sale. And he put signs up all over our little town. And And that was— that worked really well too. So anyway, he has sold about 80 of the 115 so far. Wow. And as of this last week, he bought his first car. So he is—

no way.

Yeah, he's pumped. He bought a— he bought a 1995 or something Toyota 4Runner in his favorite color and he is pumped.

Yeah.

And I think he's going to take good care of it because he had to buy it.

Yeah. Yeah. So how much did it cost?

Like $3,000.

Wow.

Yeah.

Okay.

So he made enough. Yeah. The average price of the 80 is probably like $4,500.

Geez. So almost 4 times his money on each rug.

Yeah.

Somewhere between 3 and 4 times. After a good bit of work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. But learning a ton of different skills. Yeah. He's made over $3,000 from the 80. The rest will just be gas money or whatever. And he's still got the part-time job. And honestly, I don't think he loves rugs anymore. I think he might be anti-rug as an adult, but it helped him get his first car.

So did you like charge him interest or anything?

I did charge him a little bit of interest 'cause I had to front the $1,500 to buy him the rugs. So I charged him $300 interest, which if you do the calculations, yes, I am aware it's 20%. It's pretty high, but, uh, but I did give him free rent in the barn. Oh yeah, for the rug space. That's more value as well as 300 licensed my Facebook account to him to sell it with, which you can't put a price on.

That's a deal.

And, uh, and provided, uh, very expensive consulting services to him as well. Yep, for free. So that 300 covered a lot. I agree. Um, but yeah, but yeah, no, I mean, he, he learned He learned a lot of stuff.

Yeah.

And, uh, he's— I don't know that I've ever seen a bigger smile on his face than when he bought his first car.

That feels good.

Yeah, man. Yeah, I'm feeling so— can you make $10K in a year doing this? Yeah, I mean, he's made $3K in like 4 months or whatever during a very part-time—

he probably had weeks where he didn't do anything.

Yes, there were weeks when I was bugged. I'm like, hey dude, you've still got 100 rugs. Yeah, in my barn. I don't want them there when it's summertime. So he had This is through the winter, so it's like the worst time to sell rugs, theoretically. Yeah, I would, I would assume the best time to sell rugs is spring and summer. Um, but, uh, but yeah, he's only got like 30 left or whatever.

How many did his garage sale sell?

He sold a lot there. He probably sold like, he probably sold like 40-ish of the 80, and they came to him.

Yeah, that was, that were, those were the easiest sales he made.

Yeah, man. And it was the easiest to upsell in that situation too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so today we're doing ways to make $10 grand in a year, a month, a week, and a day.

Yeah.

Okay, so that's the year option.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, you probably can't do $10K in a week off rugs unless you have a super dialed-in plan, right? But yeah, $10K a year, there's lots of ways to make—

anything can scale. The question is, how hard is it to scale and is it worth it?

Yeah. Um, yeah.

Okay, so Did those rugs come from Costco? Costco?

Like, yeah, they were Costco returns.

And there were other rug listings.

Oh, like, yeah, yeah, there was only like one other one that we were tracking.

But this was months ago. There's probably more.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there is.

So anyone in the world with $1,500 or a credit card could do this business.

Yeah.

Or anywhere they buy rugs, which is everywhere.

Yeah.

All right. So month, $10K in a month. I've got an interesting one for you. I was on Facebook Marketplace and there's a guy that makes mini, mini, mini golf holes.

Okay. Mini, mini or many mini?

Mini, mini.

Okay.

Right. They are mini golf holes that are portable and smaller than a normal mini golf hole. So they're mini, mini golf holes.

Yeah.

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Yeah.

So he rents this thing out once on Facebook Marketplace. His customer acquisition channel is free because it costs nothing to post them. Yeah, and it's paid for, and anything after that is just gravy.

That's awesome. That's a super fun idea too, as like somebody who— I don't throw events, but if I were to, that would be a very fun thing to have at the event. Oh yeah, very unique.

Yeah, it is. I think it would be a hit. Yeah. And, um, to, to, you know, math into this $10,000 a month, you basically need to rent out 35 of them, um, if it's $300 apiece.

35 holes.

35 holes, um, or one hole 35 times, which is less likely, or just 2 sets of 18 holes and you're good. Yeah, and you've got 10 grand. And your first month, let's say you do that your first 3 months, you pay off all your materials. After that, it's basically net profit. It's your time, it's your gas money, posting for free to Facebook Marketplace.

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.

This is in Dallas-Fort Worth.

I'm—

there's 8 million people here. I'm sure it could support more than one guy doing it. Yeah, I'm sure Utah could support a handful of people doing this.

So yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, yeah, that could totally do $10K in a month.

Yeah.

Okay, off of that, I saw very recently, like this week for the first time ever, it is some RV resort or something. Mm-hmm. But this is just like an amenity there that you could do a version of this for too, which is they had a mini golf course at this RV thing in like Arkansas. Uh, but it's all cornhole, which I've never seen before.

So, huh.

It's just a bunch. Well, and it's not as fancy as golf because with golf you need to have the thing where the, um, you know, the ball goes in and around and through and whatever. So this is just a bunch of cornhole, uh, what do you call 'em? Boards.

Yeah.

Holes. Yeah. Uh, and then your bag and then, so you just go from thing to thing and they have like obstructions. You, I'll, I'll send you the thing. Oh, okay. So you can like put it here, whatever. They have obstructions where you kind of have to throw it around or over or through. And, uh, and so, and it's like themed or whatever, but it looks super fun, man. What? And no one's ever played cornhole mini golf before.

Yeah.

And so they had, I don't remember if it was 9 or 18 holes, but it looks amazing. And I bet the cost of that would be even cheaper cuz you can get a cornhole board. You can make 'em even cheaper.

Just, yeah.

Thing of plywood in a stand and a hole. But you could buy them for like $30 off Amazon. So you just need a handful of those, a handful of bags. You don't need a ton of bags cuz you just walk with the next bag each time.

I mean, like, I own RV parks. We could, like, I would pay someone to install these. I don't want to go through the headache of working out like what obstacles to put. Like, that's one avenue is go to the RV parks. Yeah, just show them the website of that RV park. I do this for you. Yeah, I charge $700 per hole. Yeah, and it's yours forever. Yeah, um, and then I'll maintain it. Maybe there's a small monthly fee to come by and check on things.

BYOB, bring your own bags.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Or you could do the Facebook Marketplace route like this mini mini golf guy. Yeah, you could sell them. You could just, you could just make and sell cornholes, right? Forget the course.

Yeah, yeah.

Or you could, you could rent them out to events.

Yeah, right. Well, you wouldn't even need like for mini golf, you need turf for the ball to roll on before it goes in. With this, you don't need anything. You just walk on a path.

Yeah.

Any place that is walkable, grass, gravel, dirt. Plop down the board, throw some obstructions there, and you're done.

Oh man, that needs to be more than just like one random RV park.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I saw it, it just came up in my algorithm. I was hoping because of that it was in Utah. Yeah, but I was sad it's in Arkansas.

It will be after people watch.

I hope so. Yeah, somebody please do it.

I mean, Utah, the land of copycats.

Yeah, yeah.

All right, so while we're on this Facebook Marketplace slash outdoor theme, What do you know about like outdoor inflatable movie rentals as a business?

I don't know much. I've seen it a little. I would as a consumer pay for that. Yeah, I think that would be good. What do you know?

So you can buy all of this equipment for $500 to $3,000. What you need is an inflatable movie screen.

Okay.

Okay. And it's just like a bounce house.

Yeah. Okay.

You can get them from Alibaba for cheaper. You can get them on eBay. You can buy them from, you know, whoever else. But you just plug it into the wall like a bounce house.

Yeah.

And it inflates and it's just a big white screen with like a frame around it and it stands up and then you can stake it down in case it gets windy. And then you buy a projector. You can buy those as cheaply as like $50. I wouldn't suggest that for this. Yeah, you can buy nice ones. We bought like a really nice one for our family that's like a smart projector. It has all the apps, like all the Roku apps on it.

Oh, that's cool.

Those are like $200 or $300. Okay, and then a Bluetooth speaker. Okay, and you can get those nice, like nice ones for $100, like a stand-up Bluetooth speaker, maybe two for each side of it. Yeah, and backyard parties, birthday parties, events like neighborhood stuff, HOA stuff. I just went to an HOA party and they rented one of these for the kids to watch while everyone else was like eating food and stuff.

Yeah, that's fun.

There's a few companies that scaled this to multiple millions and tens of millions of dollars.

Oh, that's great.

So there's one in California called Funflix.

Okay.

They're like a franchise. They have over 40 locations. Southern Outdoor Cinema, they're in Atlanta. They do $3 to $4 million a year in revenues— in revenue. They've been in business for 17 years. There's one in Austin that, that has 20 other locations outside of Austin. Um, and I just, I love it because it's much like the, um, the mini golf businesses, you, you pay off all your equipment in like 1 to 6 rentals.

Yeah.

And after that, it's, it's just gravy. Um, it's a great side hustle.

Yeah.

Or it could scale if you wanted to scale.

Yeah. Well, and you lightly mentioned bounce house. Everybody knows bounce houses. Everybody knows like the blow-up obstacle course versions of bounce houses and stuff. And I've rented those for some kids' birthday parties over the years. I'm, I'm amazed how much money those guys still make too. And yeah, you have to pay up front for the big old bounce house things. But every time I return mine, there's a line. I'm waiting in a line behind everybody else who's returning because everybody's always returning them like Saturday night because the party was like Friday night or Saturday day. And it's always like, oh, you got to return it by 8 PM or whatever, at least the one I get it from. So there's always this massive line, but things are frankly not Well, the companies don't seem that well run. Yeah, the things don't even seem like that well taken care of.

They don't clean them in between.

Yeah, and they're raking in the cash. Yeah, every weekend. Yeah, sure, it's a little like weather dependent, but depending where you're at, you can make a ton of money with that still.

I did a deep dive on the bounce house business last year. We'll link to that. But that's one thing that she said, like, if you just clean your bounce houses between every rental, you will be in the top 10%.

And just say that.

That's it.

Say we clean it every time. 'Cause I, that's like my main thing when I, that's my main hesitancy in doing it as a, as a dad. Yeah. It's like, oh, those things are gonna be gross. Yeah. Yeah.

And they are.

And in this new world of AI, I think people are going to treasure real outdoor in-person experiences more than ever. Yeah. Because the like pushback of being like too online and stuff. Um, so I don't necessarily see this slowing down, or the outdoor movie or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

Um, all right, so next one. Now you were telling me a story and I had to interrupt you because I wanted to hit record first. Oh yeah, about a family member that buys artwork in Europe. Tell me, tell me that story.

Yeah, so, so my wife and I, we like to travel, and when we travel we try to find um, a piece of original art. Like if we were in a different country for a meaningful amount of time, we'll try to find a piece of original art there that we think could go on like our art. We have like a section in, uh, one of our rooms where it's like our art wall.

Okay.

And it's just stuff from every place we've been. It's, it's super fun and, and, and it's pretty and all that kind of stuff.

Now, how much are you spending on this art on average?

Like maybe 20. $60 per. Okay. They're almost always, or pretty much always, originals. We try to find originals. Every now and then we might splurge for one that we like absolutely love and it's already framed.

Yeah.

And that would be like $150.

Yeah. But these aren't like big names. It's not fine art.

Nobody I've ever heard of. Yeah.

Yeah.

And it always has to still fit in a suitcase on the way home. So like it's not going to be huge.

It's offline stuff. Like this is not sold online. It's not found online. It's from local artists. In whatever area you're visiting.

And ideally we find these in like little nook and cranny type stores, like antique stores, not of course whatever the version of Walmart is in Italy. Yeah.

Not Hobby Lobby.

Yeah. Yeah.

They are originals.

Yeah. Okay. So anyway, we love doing that. My sister-in-law recently was on a trip in the UK with her husband and kids, and they were there for a little longer., than just like a quicker trip. So she had the idea to do this, but to kind of do it at mini scale, let's call it, and to then sell them back when she got back into Utah to use it to pay for her trip. So that was her thesis.

Put the trip on a credit card.

Yeah.

Also use a credit card to buy artwork.

Uh-huh.

Bring it back home, sell it to pay off the credit card.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. I, I don't hate it.

Yeah. So she, I wanna say, bought like 12 to 14 originals.

Okay.

Across the UK. I think it was mostly from Ireland, and they're stunning. So it's like Irish countrysides, coast, uh, beautiful homes, like little streets, just a bunch of different ones.

Do you know what she spent on average?

She— I don't think she's telling that many people how much she actually spent because she's selling these for like a few hundred bucks each.

Okay.

And some even a little higher than that.

So she's probably paying like $50 to $100, I'm guessing.

Yeah. Or maybe, maybe, maybe more towards the $50. Okay.

I'm sorry, sister.

Yeah. Don't watch this, friends of her, please. Um, but, but whatever, like she did the work. She, even if she bought it for $50 and is selling for $400, I, I can't just be like, oh, well, I'm just gonna go there and buy it for $50.

Yeah.

Well then I have to fly out there and find the store. Yeah. And like, right. That's not feasible. So. I don't think it's wrong in any way to buy something for 50 and sell it for 400. It is worth— art is worth whatever anyone wants to pay for it.

Yeah.

Anyway, we're gonna buy one from her, um, that she is about to sell cuz she kind of just like sells it in waves and she has an Instagram account that is set up that is just for these. Um, and they're all super pretty. They're all originals.

It's not like a big Instagram account. No.

Oh no, no. It's more just like a personal little side thing. And, um, yeah, I mean it probably has like 100 followers or less because she shared it from her personal, right? To say, hey, if you want my art that I bought, go to this new new account. But I think she'll be able to pay for a meaningful part of a longer trip in Ireland with her family just from this art, because she can probably clear at least a few K from just these originals that she bought.

A few K from the UK.

There you go. Geez.

Yeah.

But I mean, how cool is that? Retroactively pay for a trip with the unique stuff you bought in the country.

That's amazing. It's free vacation plus spending money.

And it takes a little work, but for some people it's actually not work. Like, I love going into her little shops.

But dude, like, if I'm her, I'm going to— like, those shops are listed on Google, right? They're online.

Probably how she found them.

They might not have a website even, but you could find them online. I would just call them up and say, I know this is weird. My name is so-and-so. I live in Dallas, Texas. Yeah, I love artwork. Yeah, I have no idea what your artwork looks like. Do you even have artwork? Yeah, we do. Can we FaceTime? Can we like WhatsApp? Can I see your artwork? Yeah, like I'm willing to buy it. I'll pay for shipping, right? Sure. So we're FaceTiming. That one, that one, that one. All right, those are $50 each. I'll take 10 of them. Could you do $350 for all 10?

Sure.

All right, how much is shipping? Can you roll it up in a tube? Shipping's $50. That's okay, I'll pay for it. You're getting 10. They're all in the same Yeah. You could scale that without having to fly.

Yeah, you totally could actually. Yeah. There was, uh, last time I was in the UK was a few years ago and we were in, we stayed in the Cotswolds, which is like 2 hours west of London. Anyway, there's a lot of cute little towns there and shops and there were tons with amazing art.

Mm-hmm.

And so I didn't think about what you just said, but I'm gonna call one of 'em. Yeah. Because Some of them were like, it was too big for us to like fit in our stuff to bring home. So we just didn't buy them.

Yeah.

But they were cheap and they were beautiful and they were originals. They were just too big. So I should just call them and I'll buy the one or two that we wanted and then I'll say, hey, what if I bought like 7 more?

Yeah.

Um, can you gimme a discount on shipping or whatever? And then I'll just try to resell 'em for fun.

Dude, how about this? Even better. Call 'em up. You have any artwork? Cool. I know this, like, this might take you 10 minutes and it's annoying, but I promise I'm an interested buyer. Can you just take your iPhone, take pictures, like nice pictures up close of each piece of artwork you have, and text them to me, WhatsApp them to me, whatever?

Yeah.

Then you list them on Facebook Marketplace. Original artwork from the Cotswolds, right? $375 before. Yeah, that's it.

Yeah.

Then it's like, hey, shipping, delivery could take 2 to 4 weeks.

Yeah.

You spend a week selling them, collecting deposits. Yeah, right. And then you come back and you say, hey, remember me? You sent me the pictures.

Yeah.

I actually have some friends that wanna buy these.

Yeah.

You're honestly just telling the truth.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And then, um, I'll pay you upfront.

Yeah.

Just ship 'em to me.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the only downside to that is you could sell something that was then bought. Yeah. Before. But I think that's gonna actually be pretty rare.

Yeah. Because they probably sit there for months. Yes. It's like, I'll send your deposit back. Sorry, it's sold. It's no longer available.

Yeah. The people— that's going to be rare anyway. And even in that situation, be like, I've got 10 others ready. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, that's—

yeah.

You and/or I should do that. That'd be fun.

I should do it for a test video. Like, I should record myself calling these shops and actually doing that.

Yeah.

I like that idea.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good idea.

All right, what's the— so this is $10,000 in a week. Someone could do this. I think this would be harder, but like we're talking 30, 30 pieces of artwork for $300. That's $9,000, right?

Yeah.

40 pieces of artwork. So like you'd have to make them craft.

You could do 10 in a week. You could have the little Instagram account before you could talk about the pictures. You could, you know, about the paintings, all that kind of stuff. You could tell people that they are all going for sale to the highest bidder the last week of May or whatever. And boom, do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm just thinking like you don't really gain all that much by flying there. If you're there, sure, of course. But like if you, if you make $300 in profit and you buy 10 pieces of art in person, that's your whole trip.

Yeah.

You basically break even, which is still great. You get a free vacation. I'm not knocking on that.

Yeah.

But like you don't usually when you go there in person, kind of like we were talking about in another episode, like your close rate goes up when you're in person. But with this, in person, it's just like, it's convenient because you're there. But to fly there purposely just for that, yeah, it's not super efficient because you're gonna buy the same piece of artwork anyway. Yeah, maybe because you can see the texture a little better in person.

But yeah, yeah, I like this idea. Yeah, I, I like vintage watches. I'm wearing one right now. I don't buy them for their resale value. Nor do I buy based off of the brand or whatever, nor do I even buy— I don't even focus on buying ones that are expensive per se. This one that I'm wearing right now probably cost me— I can't remember exactly, but like under $100. I just thought it was really cool and it was unique. And so I wanted to buy it. You can do that. You can do the version of this for watches or apparel, especially if it's in countries like Japan or South Korea. Or I don't know, place, you know, places in Europe too would work. Even like Mexico, you could do it from just places that have some history and unique creators and stuff like that. But I think there's lots of different places and ways to find unique things that if you're there or if you call them up— if I can find a vintage watch store in Japan and just be like, hey, can we FaceTime? Show me your watch collection. Yeah, show me everything you've got that's under $100. That's like original. I don't want to see whatever Timexes or, I don't know, Casios or something. Um, just show me all your original Japanese brand stuff and I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy some and resell, or send me the pictures and do the Facebook thing. I think there's a version of this that is really fun for the person who's doing it, and they're providing value across the board. They're not just a middleman, right? If you can find a watch in Japan for $40 and get them to send you a picture of it and then find me on Facebook Marketplace and I'd be willing to pay $80, well, everybody wins. Yeah, the, the Japanese store won, you won, I win, we're all happy.

Well, I love this business because it's— there's infinite variables. There's 300 countries out there. Yeah, there's thousands of different types of items. Yeah, and there's always going to be arbitrage opportunities. Yeah, right. It's never going to be like a perfectly efficient market between all these, because like, why not like import from Japan to Hungary? Yeah, you know, from Poland to Colombia or Argentina. Like, it doesn't have to only be to the US. Yeah, or Colombia to Poland. Like, like unique food products. Like, Hungary is known for their paprika, right? Yeah. Like, oh man.

Well, in the algorithms these days, especially if you get into running ads, the algorithms are gonna find, if you're making content on social about what you're doing, the algorithm, the algorithms will find the people who want what you are doing.

Yeah.

So if you're making, if you are in Utah selling Japanese watches on Facebook Marketplace, you will pop up in my algorithm.

And even if your video gets 400 views, it's gonna be 400 of the right people.

Yeah. Yeah. So being willing to do that as well, uh, would for sure be key if you wanna scale this up a little bigger. But yeah, tons of potential here.

Brandon, where can we find you?

Uh, yeah, just find me on Twitter, uh, Brandon Doyle or, or Instagram, same thing. Okay.

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It would mean a ton.

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