How to Start a Niche Job Board With 80% Margins
A conversational episode (Chris Koerner with Nick) brainstorming small-business ideas and practical launch tactics. Major ideas discussed: niche job boards targeted by personality or hyper-niche communities (distribution via subreddits/Facebook, use plug-and-play job board software, seed supply via API aggregates); seasonal pop-up businesses (Christmas tree lots, lights — site selection via traffic counts and leasing short-term lots, piggyback partnerships with landscapers); an ethically questionable reality-TV spin-off idea (Love is Little); AI-enabled family photography services that auto-generate or retouch family portraits from users' photo albums as a low-cost offering; and a consultancy idea converting Zapier users to Make and charging a share of savings plus ongoing automation support. The tone is informal, practical, and entrepreneurial.
Chapters
Is that going to happen? Absolutely. Is it going to be me that does it? No. Someone much less ethical than me will launch this business. I would never do it. And you reach out to them with this offer. Hey, why are you using Zapier? You're spending way too much money. I will convert you to and charge 30% of the savings. And then the real money is in being like, family pictures are awful.
I would pay money if they were like, hey, look, I'm going to take enough pictures of your family. And I'm now using AI. I'll be able to get everybody smiling.
But this would have been great for my family because my parents got divorced when I was 13 and we never went on vacations after the divorce. So we could have generated pictures of us on the beach and on vacation. We could have been an AI generated happy family.
AI is going to make a lot of families happy. Not yours, but families in the future.
I was on Twitter last week and I saw a viral tweet. 2.2 million views by Felix. So this is what the tweet says. Remote jobs for introverts. No talking required. You can do them in the evening from home after your 9 to 5 job and they pay well in USD. Open this arrow pointing down 2.2 million views. And all he does is go on to, like, list like a Tesla job or an Apple job that, like, would be good for an introvert. So we've never really talked about job, the job board business before, but other podcasts have. It's an amazing business because it's very, very passive. Right? You just. Okay, let me, let me stop. Let me stop. Let me start. Why? It's a bad business. It's a bad business because it's a marketplace. You need buyers and you need sellers. You need people to list jobs and you need people to find jobs. Marketplaces are hard, but if you can figure out the marketplace, if you can go niche and do something a little different, then a job board is an amazing business because it is so passive. You don't have customer support. Customer companies go find it. They list a job for two to five hundred dollars and then people go find the jobs and apply to jobs. So what about a job board for introverts or extroverts? Go.
Oh, interesting. So it's not a job board based on job type. It's. It's a job board based on like, personality type.
Exactly.
I think that's really creative. There is a big trend right now happening and you see it with like decoupling.
Right.
We used to have big cable companies, Comcast. And then what did we do? Now all of a sudden we've got Netflix and Hulu and ESPN plus and cb whatever. Like now we're like buying all those things individually. You see it large social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. Well now like local communities are becoming more and more popular and the same thing is happening with hiring. Right. And job boards. Like there's a. I think there's a physician job board that's pretty small, but it's doing like $80 million a year because it's just targeted at physicians or there's nursing job boards or. And it's not necessarily as high tech as some of these other job boards, but it's very niche. And so, hey, I know exactly what I'm going for and I know that it's going to serve me and my community. But those are all job type specific, which I still love them. Like you and I have talked about doing a job board, but I've never thought about doing it based on like personality type.
Yeah, how would you? Why not? Well, you're gonna go find all the subreddits and all the Facebook groups for introverts. I mean it is a religion. Like in my household we talk about introverts and extroverts on a weekly basis. Really split down the. Yeah, it's just like a thing. I don't know how it started, but all my kids refer to it. There's three introverts and three extroverts in my family. And as our friend Stephen would say, labels disable. He would not like that. But forget it. Labels are awesome.
Labels are for disables.
I like this also because you don't need to have any coding experience. JBoard, IO and Niceboard Co, those are both awesome out of the box. Plug and play job board pieces of software. So I think if you can find the community, have them rally around your cause, then you can go aggregate a bunch of jobs that are already listed on other websites that might be befitting to of an introvert and list them yourself so you're not an empty marketplace. That way you can have the, the supply side full before you get the demand side. And then once you get some traction from the job applicants, then you can actually go out and start soliciting people to put paid listings up.
Talk to me about the technology for it because that kind of just. It's always scared me. Oh, it's a job board. Someone's got to go online, they got to apply. I wouldn't know how to build the platform necessary to handle the, the inbound, the screening, the communications, et cetera. Think of like upwork, right? You post to upwork, you don't want them going around or upwork at least or fiverr. They don't want them going around and billing you. They want the transaction to go through their platform because that's how, that's how they get paid. They, they charge a percentage of the transaction. So in my mind there, it just would be technologically complicated. Is it not like, would it not be hard to build a platform for a job board like this?
That is literally what I just said.
I know, I heard there's plugin. I freaking hate when you do that.
I just thought it's easy.
What I'm saying, what I'm saying is those two things solve that like you would, you'd be able to have a job board platform that allows for private communications, payment processing. Okay.
All that stuff, it does all that.
How would you charge for it? Would it be the same as like every other model? It's just a percentage of placement or is it like a current.
It's a flat fee per post to pay to the employer.
Paid by the employer, you mean?
Yeah.
Okay, so people who are joining it aren't paying.
It's not a right.
What would be the way to work up to it? I feel like you'd have to work up to the marketplace because you have to have, like you said, it's, it's double sided. You have to have the supply and the demand. It's just really hard to bring them both together at the same time. Seems like you want to start like locally, right?
You go to other job boards and you, you take their listings that seem to be like a listing for an introvert and you just put it on your website.
So just your gut, like I think this looks like an introvert. You wouldn't necessarily beforehand kind of write a script and say these are the job functions and titles that I want and then just go run it.
Most of these job board platforms have like API integrations with the indeed of the world. So you can, you can, with one click you can fill the job board with jobs and like they're not paying you, but who cares? You're just trying to make it look like an active marketplace.
Oh, so the supply is done, supply is taken care of. You don't have to like convince anybody to go do it. It'd be the demand side. And that's where you're saying Reddit going on to the Reddit subreddits.
Yeah, that's to find the demand.
Dude, I like it. What else could you do? Okay, introverts and extroverts.
You could do it with like, you know, Myers Briggs type stuff.
You know, would be an interesting one is ex professional athletes. I know that's like hyper niche, but I love hiring ex collegiate and ex. I haven't hired that many professional athletes, but like ex collegiate athletes, like, they work hard, they know what it takes. They usually are disciplined, they're driven. Like, if you could go to a, an employer and or like market it as like, hey, this is the profile. And we only market these two professional athletes, let's say. I think you get a lot of people signing up and probably even charge a premium because it is so much more targeted.
Yeah, I mean, you could do. I mean, you could get a lot more niche than that if you wanted. You could do like D2 athletes. You could do like D2 track and field athletes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You could do return missionaries, like lds. Return missionaries.
Yeah, dude, I like that idea. So I know, I know you know the answer to these questions, all right? I know you know, but I'm gonna ask you anyway because I'm trying to set it up for the listener, Chris.
Okay? Don't type.
Hey, hey, hey, hey. My eyes, they're up here.
Okay, buddy? I'm getting, I'm eating gum. Okay? Can I pull some gum out?
You know what spirit Halloween is? And anybody who's listening probably knows what spirit Halloween. And if you don't know what spirit Halloween is, think of the Halloween store that pops up every year around this time of year in the vacant, closed down, you know, sports chalet, sports authority, whatever you, whatever Sears, whatever company that went out of business and they just haven't filled the rent. Spirit pops up. And they sell Halloween costumes and Halloween accessories. I want you to, to first take a guess for me. For companies that are in the space of Halloween costumes, decorations, the Halloween industry, whatever you want to call it, how much do you think they generate every year in revenue? Costumes, decorations, accessories, toys, all that stuff. How much do you think they generate?
A few hundred million.
Okay, thank you. You just softballed me, dude. $12 billion a year. 12 billion with a B. Now the next question. Spirit Halloween. All right, that little company, it's literally a pop up company. They operate for a short period of time. How much do you think that they generate every single year in revenue?
Half a billion.
Okay, 1.2 billion. They're about 10% of the total market. One point it's a billion dollar company that just does pop up Halloween sales. So my gear is going, dude, got Papa Nick thinking about this. And I wanted to bring this up to Chris the observer. All right, Chris Ristopher. James Kerner. I wanted to talk about. In my mind, there are seasonal opportunities for businesses that you don't think about until it's happening, that are interesting. And so I'm going to name a couple Christmas tree farms and Christmas tree lots. I think those are fascinating. We've talked about this before. Fireworks, Fourth of July and New Year's. The problem is because they are seasonal, you aren't necessarily thinking about it all year. It takes a long time to get them spun up. There is a potential investment. So my question to you, distribution guru Christopher James Kerner, how would you think about spinning up a seasonal business? Like, how would you go about. All right, I want to do Christmas lights. What would be like, your next step?
One word. Oh, you ready?
Oh, yeah.
Piggyback. I'm gonna see myself out. I'm done. We're done here.
I want my piggyback. Piggyback, piggyback, piggyback. What do you mean, piggyback?
You gotta go find the service brands that are not too small, but not too big and borrow their customers. Say, hey, you own a landscaping business. I know you've got a crew, you've got six trucks. Do you do Christmas lights? No, we think about it. Okay, I. I do. Can you just, like, refer us for, you know, we'll give you a cut. Or would you just, like, white label us? You can charge, you can collect the payment and just pay us 70% of it and we'll come do that. The actual work, just tap in like.
You'Re just like, all right, who already has access to the target market that I want access to, and I'm going to go to them. That makes total sense. Landscaping companies. What about, okay, Christmas tree farms?
Like, how would I launch a Christmas tree farm?
How would you go about identifying who would have access to your target demographic? Like, I always see them in, like, a grocery store parking lot or like a Home Depot, or maybe that's a market where it's like they've kind of already got their people, right? Like, my town, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, already has the tree lots that everybody goes to. And maybe that's. Maybe that's a bad one. But here's. Let's do another example. Seasonal.
I got an idea.
Okay, on here.
So we're assuming that we're launching a Christmas tree farm, right? Yes, Is that what you're saying? Okay, so.
Or Christmas tree lot that sells the trees, right?
Yeah, yeah. And we're also assuming that we're not going to be, you know, raising these trees ourselves. We're going to go buy them.
Exactly. Yep.
Okay. So with that in mind, I don't think there's any loyalty to the Christmas tree business. I think it's one of those things where, you know, every November rolls around, families driving around, they see it in the corner parking lot out in front of the Home Depot or whatever it is, like, oh, time to get a Christmas tree. They don't know what company's behind it. They don't care. They just. They want a real Christmas tree. So they always buy it from the place that they see it. And maybe it's at this intersection one year and that intersection another year. They don't know or care if it's the same business or not. So what I would do is I would not worry about any competitors. I would go to the Department of Transportation website and look at the traffic counts at all the intersections in my local area, however far away I'm willing to drive. And I would find the one with the, the most cars. And then I would whittle it down. Look, look at Google Earth and find the intersections that actually have space for something like this, because many of them won't. And then I would go to the tax records and find the owner of that land and try to try to lease that land for two months every year. All right? And then I would just pop up shop.
A genius idea. I'm going to try to level it up a little bit. So you are talking about getting customers by the busiest streets. All right, because. Because that's, that's traditionally how they're done, right? Hey, I'm going to see it, and then I'm going to pull over and I'm going to go buy a tree. How could you find them before the impulse buy? Like, could you target on Facebook like, hey, reserve your Christmas tree today, 20% off and like, pre. Sell these Christmas trees and then go to a commercial. I'm. I'm sure you could find a commercial tree farm because, like, surely the tree farms are not the ones who are also popping up in the Ralph's or Kroger's parking lot. Right. I'm sure you can find a commercial tree farm and, like, negotiate a lower rate. And you're essentially just wholesaling them. And then obviously you'd have to, you would have to solve for the delivery. But is there A way you could go upstream and digitally market to those people, either through Facebook or for the Google or Instagram, and get them to buy even before they're on the road with the impulse buy for trees.
I think you could. I think that makes logical sense, but I've never seen anyone doing it, so it would just make me nervous.
Oh, so if no one's ever done it before.
Okay. I mean, really, like, I just don't want to be the first person to try that.
Right.
I would go to the. The guy who is doing it and just kind of like, talk them up a little bit. Oh, it's a cool business. Oh, how many. How many of these trees do you go through every season? And I'm sure they get asked that all the time. And it's like, okay, 2,000 trees every season. In two months, this intersection has 20,000 cars. So I can expect to do 10% of the amount of cars in trees. This intersection has 75,000 cars. Oh, I wonder if I could do 7,500 trees in two months. Huh? Like, I need to pull out all the stops to get one of those four corners of that intersection. And then I would just try to open hopefully a little earlier than the other guy. It's not really necessary. It's just a location game, I think.
Yeah, I love it. Well, like, Christmas trees are just one. But there are a ton of just seasonal businesses. Snow cone stands, ice cream stands, car washes in the summer, fun, like, fundraising things. I. I saw one that was an ice rink. I posted about it. Like, someone just, like, made an ice rink in their backyard that I thought was super cool. I think there are the seasonal businesses that by the time you see them and you're like, oh, dude, I want to launch that business, it's just too late. So I like the idea of, like, working my way back and thinking, all right, next year, if I was going to do a Christmas lights business, what am I going to do? And I like. I really like that idea of just go and find the landscaper. Like, go and find who already has that target demographic and then reverse engineer it with them. Like, piggyback. Gosh dang it, Chris, you're good at this. You're good at this.
I don't know. I'm a framework guy. What do you want me to say? Tattoo it on my forehead? Nick.
All right, what you got?
All right, I gotta. I got a funny one. It's kind of funny little comedic break for you. But this. This could be a thing.
You had me at funny.
I know you don't watch the show Love is Blind. Do you get the concept? Yes.
Okay, well, dating, and they take their sticks and they, like, feel the other person's face.
They're like, I think they're good looking.
Right. That's how it works.
That's bum fights.
No.
That got canceled. Now, for those who don't know, Love is Blind is like, one of the biggest shows on Netflix, and there's like seven seasons now they're releasing three seasons a year, which tells me it's very, very popular. Of course it's Netflix. They don't have to disclose how many viewers they're getting. But clearly it's very popular. The whole concept is you have men in pods, about 15 men and women in pods, and they don't have their phones. They don't bring in their phones with them. They just have each other. And then they date, like, through a wall. So you can hear each other's voice, you can talk, but they're not allowed to talk about each other's appearance, and they're not allowed to see each other until after they have proposed, until they're engaged.
So it's like online dating. But you. But no pictures.
Yep.
Okay.
You. You hear their real voice, but you are not allowed to talk about your appearance, and you're not allowed to see each other, and you don't have your phone. So you literally, it's. It is. It is a pure show.
Yeah.
In the sense. In the sense that they can't see each other. And in every other sense, it is a very impure show. Okay.
Yes, sir.
So it's very entertaining. And the best part. There's two best parts of the season. Number one is when they first see each other. Right. The sliding doors open and they're like. And it's just like. You can just read on their faces. Do they like what they see or not?
Because there's two emotions that are potentially at play. There's excitement as the viewer. You're, like, excited for them to see. And then immediately there's. There could be the cringe of, like, oh, she doesn't like him. Oh, you know what I mean?
Yeah. Well, it's just. You watch their faces, right?
Right When.
When they first see each other. And sometimes they're like. And you can, like, just for a split second in their eyes, you could be like, oh, no, no, no. It's like that Leo DiCaprio meme where it's like. And he's pointing. He's like, you think he's ugly. You think she's ugly. And so it's just so good because then they embrace and they hug and they kiss and they share rings. And you can just tell if one of them is not into it. Sometimes neither one of them is into it. And I just love it because all of them in the pods are like, honestly, I don't even care about looks. Honestly, like, like, for real, though, I don't care about looks. I don't even care. You could be £500. I just don't care. They all say that to each other and it's like, dude, stop. Yeah, stop. Anyway, I haven't even gotten to the idea yet. That's the concept. So that's the best part of the season. And then the other best part of the season is when they go to the altar. Because a lot of times at the altar, even most of the time, one of them says, nevermind, I'm out.
Oh, they're getting married.
Yeah.
Holy.
Okay.
Oh, wow. That's high stakes, dude.
They get engaged before they see each other and then they go on vacation together. Like all the couples to, like, a resort in Mexico, like, day day, and then they go back home to, like, live in the real world together. And then they have a wedding day and they're not allowed to, like, break up before the altar. They have to break up at the altar if they're going to break up.
Oh, my gosh, dude.
They're contractually obligated. So. Okay. All right. If you are watching this clip right now, you are watching this on YouTube. And if you are a fan of podcasts, please check out my podcast while you're at it. Because sometimes I have podcasts that aren't on YouTube and sometimes I have YouTubes that aren't on podcasts. So check out the Kerner office on any podcast platform. Or you can go to tkopod.com Also, my newsletter will throw that in there. There are no ads. It's weekly. It's different content than my podcast and YouTube newsletter.chrisjkerner.com you'll see the link and we'll see you there. Here's the idea. Are you ready for this?
Okay.
This could be done on a small scale. It doesn't have to be a Netflix show. It could be done with iPhones. Okay, you're going to love this. You ready for it? It's Love is Blind. Except one of the genders. It could be male, could be female. Doesn't matter. Are little people and the other gender are normally sized people and they are not allowed. The little people are not allowed to disclose it. And then there's a reveal.
Do they know before going into it?
No. No, Chris, you're lying. The little people assume that it's a show like Love is Blind, only for little people. And the other people assume that it's just. It's kind of like a Love is Blind copycat. And then you have the big reveal and we will truly know if Love is Blind. Tell me that wouldn't be good television.
Of course it'd be good television. I don't know. Can you imagine more than one season, though?
Oh, you could. You totally could.
Do you remember when we were growing up? I mean, even now they have movies and, like, in the movies is like, the ugly girl or the ugly guy or the guy that's gross. Or like, whatever. I think about those people probably because I identify with them. But, like, that would suck to be like, oh, yeah, I'm reading the script. I'm a movie star. I'm in all, you know, like, Steve Buscemi, like, I'm a movie star. And it's like Ugly man enters the.
Room and Fat Amy.
Yeah. It's like you're just always known as that.
Yeah. At least.
At least when you're famous, you have a lot of money to kind of, like, console yourself. Do you think there could be some, like, emotional damage? Emotional damage for either one of them? Like, the little people when they're like, wait, they didn't like me. Or for the, I don't know, regular sized person when they just feel bait and switched. I don't know. That feels to me like you're upping the stakes and upping the likelihood of there being even just some. Just some mental. Mental trauma there.
Yeah. Is that going to happen? Absolutely. Is it going to be me that does it? No. Someone much less ethical than me will launch this business. I would never do it.
I thought you're going to say, like, business is blind.
It's going to be called Love is Little.
What about Little Lovers?
That's something else entirely.
What about Little Bit of Love? Oh, that is the weirdest. I love that you brought it up, but that is one of the weirdest, the weirdest ideas. All right, I got one for you.
Would it not be good entertainment?
Of course it'd be good entertainment. It would just be. It'd just be hard to pull off. You'd have to actually have the know how in the infrastructure. All right. Two weeks ago, beautiful Saturday, 80 degrees here in Boise, Idaho. And what did my family decide to do? We decided to get dressed up as if it's the fall and go take family pictures.
Okay, same. We did it, too.
Family pictures are awful. At least when your kids.
At least when your kids are here.
Yes. When your kids are little in particular, and they're not listening and they're fighting with each other. And then it's like, oh, we got to retake that. Because so and so didn't smile, or so and so messed up. I freaking hate it.
I just.
I hate it. It was much better this year than.
It was the year before Nick pooped his pants again. We got to retake that.
Dude, don't give me Taco Bell an.
Hour before I was gonna take family pictures. That's what I'm tacoing about.
Anyways, I made a run for the border. I'll tell you what. Anyways, so we're in the middle of this field. We're taking pictures, and it just hits me, and maybe this exists, but so I'm bringing this up. I would pay money, more money to a photographer if they were like, hey, look, don't even worry about everybody getting on the same page. And a few pictures. I'm going to take enough pictures of your family. And I'm now using AI where I'll be able to get everybody smiling and looking. And if there's a specific thing that you want, like, I'll be able to render it or model it. I don't even know what the right terminology is, but sure, there is editing technology that's existed for a long time that could, like, put a smile on someone's face or take a blemish away or, you know, make your eyes a different color. But the ability now of AI to generate images of people is almost indistinguishable. Like, now I can tell that there's a difference, but when you first saw it, you didn't really know. But now you're like, oh, the skin's too smooth or the hands messed up or, like, whatever. So my idea would be somebody who's AI savvy, would go figure out the optical software necessary and just reach out to videographers, photographers, family photographers this time of year in particular, and sell them a package that makes their job way easier. It's just, like, instantly creates the perfect family portrait. And I think that they would crush. What do you think?
This is an amazing idea, and I love it. And I love you for saying yes. And I'm going to edit this idea to where it comes from my mouth. When this becomes published.
I don't care.
All right, let me Let me do you one further. Are you okay? You ready? Yep. Just share your Apple Photos album with me or your Google Photos album with me. Done. Or, you know, hey, mom, curate some of your favorite pictures of your kids. Maybe they're running around the house in a diaper. Maybe it's like a school picture. I don't care. Just share them with me. I, I'll do all the rest. And then you just, hey, here's the family at the hayride. Here's the family in a Halloween setting, at a Christmas setting, at everything, anything you want. Here's the family on Mount Everest. Whatever you want. It could be goofy, it could be real, it could be a western saloon style. And it could cost next to nothing. And I love your idea of piggybacking on the photographers because that makes distribution easier. But you don't even have to. This is just a website. This could just be a website. 50 bucks, 49 bucks, 19 bucks. You just link your Google Photos album or your Apple Photos and you just make it happen. And it just auto generates.
Okay, I'm a little, I'm going to take your level, level it up. 1. Have you ever done one of these? Have you ever like gone to AI generating websites and they're like, yeah, upload 10 pictures of yourself? I have.
Yeah.
And I used my, and I used my Apple Google Photos and the AI Nick was not good. It did not look like me, but it was because the pictures that I had just weren't either consistent or like not a good angle or the resolution wasn't great, et cetera. What if we brought back the mall photo booths? Not photo booths, but like Photoshops where you go and as a family and take photos and it's like instead of family pictures and dressing up to go in the middle of the sun on, you know, in a field or whatever, you just go to the studio, you take X number of pictures per kid and then those are the photos that they use for that year's Christmas card, right? Like, and then you don't have to worry about like, oh, I want it during the golden hour. So I'm gonna make sure to get there between four and five. And we can't be too early, we can't be too late, right? Like, so you go, it's studio lighting's really good. You get really good pictures. And then like you said, you use AI to edit it and you spit out the family Christmas card.
I think you could do that, but I don't think you have to do all that. I think you just Say like, hey, mom, just take your iPhone and get a few pictures of your kids smiling, and I'll take care of the rest.
Maybe it's gotten better now. I'm just saying that when I took my pictures and I took 10 of them and I uploaded it and it was like, gonna generate me the Nick AI. It was not. It was not good.
I think. I think Mid Journey and Comfy UI has better options now because I did a headshot generator as well for Jesse, and it was Jesse's looking passable, but it wouldn't be used for this.
Like you said, Jesse's was fine. And that was like a year ago, wasn't it?
You.
Maybe you're right. Well, either way, that's for someone to solve, right? Like, either you could do it, and it's like, hey, you got to have an iPhone 14 or higher, because you need this much resolution and you need to have these lights set up or whatever. Right? Like, these are the parameters. Or you can, for an upcharge, you can come in and we'll do it all for you. Family pictures in particular. I just. I freaking love the idea of never, ever in my life having to go do family pictures again with my family.
Yeah. And I will say my kids are older than yours. 8, 10, 12, 14. And we just got ours done two weeks ago, and it was still terrible. Terrible because my kids were terrible. No, no, actually, they were the. The most well behaved they've ever been, but I was terrible because I was hungry and it was taking forever. It was taking so long. And there was always another shot that she had to get. And I hope she's not listening right now because I hated it. So this is just another unbundling idea, right? There's a zillion AI headshot generators out there. We're just saying, hey, AI generated photos for family pictures, right? Yes, that's it.
Yes.
This needs. This needs to be a thing. I love it. It's beautiful, dude.
And think about.
Oof.
Think about this. If I told your wife, or if you told my wife, hey, hey, you want to do family pictures once a year? Or would you like to send out a card in the fall and around Christmas and in the spring? And what about a back to school card? Oh, what about the summer recap card? Or, oh, it's Royce's birthday. What about that card? Like, all of a sudden, you don't need to, like, once a year, get everybody together and have the family picture. You can generate them, like, throughout the year without all the freaking hassle.
You've heard of chat books, right? Of course, yeah. Shout out to homeboy Nate Quigley, my friend from Live tv. Slash, I say friend, I really mean boss. He was my boss. He founded chat Books in Utah. Big company. It could be a chat books. It could be like the AI chat books, right? Where it's like a subscription. Because all chatbooks does is it syncs with your. Your Google Photos and your Instagram, and every month or every quarter, it will just send you a physical book of your pictures. It could be like that, but for AI pictures.
What Jess does is like she'll go and select the ones that she wants.
Yeah, you can do that too. Yeah, yeah, you can do that too. But this would have been great for, you know, my family because my parents got divorced when I was 13 and we never went on vacations after the divorce. So we could have generated pictures of us on the beach and on vacation. We could have been an AI generated happy family. It would have been nice.
AI is going to make a lot of families happy, actually, when you think about it, not yours, but families in the future.
Yeah.
All right, what do you got?
All right, let's see.
I'm so happy you liked that one.
So am I. Because they're not all winners. What if, like, these episodes are actually two hours long? We just edit out so much of them they land at like 40 minutes. All right, I got one for you. So Zapier and Make. Okay, will you explain the two of them? That's what I'm about to do.
Yes, sir.
Would you stop being so aggressive on my show? I'm sorry, Sir. Zapier connects APIs from all kinds of tools and platforms. It's very cheap on the surface. It's very cheap. Make does the exact make.com, formerly known as Integromat, maybe the most obvious branding change ever. Make is like 85% cheaper than Zapier, but does the same thing, but is significantly more difficult to use. You don't need to be a programmer, it's just clunky. The UI isn't great. Clearly a big company because they have a four letter domain name, but they do the same thing. Make and Zapier are the same company. Zapier is just five to six times more expensive. So you use something like Built with, which is a website where you can know what any website in the world is built with and you can scrape a list of every single Zapier customer on the Internet. Or you can, you know, you can do cold outreach to them in many other different ways and you Reach out to them with this offer. Hey, why are you using Zapier? You're spending way too much money on your automations. I will convert you to make and charge 30% of the savings. Because like our Zapier bill is 300 bucks a month. I know people that pay 3,000 to $10,000 a month to Zapier when their make.com bill would literally be a tenth of that and accomplish the same thing. So you're basically. This is a. This is your foot in the door. You get your foot in the door by converting them from Zapier to Make. You're basically stealing customers from Zapier and then the real money is in being like their automation. Go to Guy for a monthly flat fee. You fix everything that breaks, you add more automations, you fix the old automations. It's just your way to get your foot in the door. You could even do it for free just to get your foot in the door.
We've talked about the automations and the AI companies before, but this is just like you're not even targeting companies who may or may not have it, you're targeting companies who you know have it. Can we debate really quickly, why do you still call it Zapier? Why do you not call it Zapier?
Because I've been using it for 11 years and it's what I've always called it.
So isn't it so funny like how you like find these words and then the first time you hear it after years of saying it the wrong way, you're like, that's wrong. I don't care that they founded the company, they're saying it wrong. I agree with you, but Zapier.
Anyways, I know like as soon as right after my parents got divorced, Ron moved in and I just kept calling him dad because it was like, that's my dad figure, you know. Ah, so silly. What's up? Is that too dark?
It was too, it was too close to home actually. But yeah, we. Anyways, I'm not going to keep going. Okay, a couple questions because I'm like an idiot with this. When you say that Built with will tell you who the Zapier customers are. How does Built with work? It doesn't just tell you who built the website, it also tells you what API integrations the website has implemented for certain API integrations.
Yeah, not for everything.
Okay, so. So it only catch certain ones. Yeah.
Like for instance, your, your website might have a stripe integration, like a stripe connection or stripe widget or like a Facebook pixel integration. Connection or widget, but it's not built on a Facebook Pixel, it's not built on Stripe. Right.
And are you just assuming that it's Zapier? Like if, if someone has a Stripe payment automation, is there any other way that it could be something else or is it going to be through Zapier?
It's like, I mean, Zapier has like 80% of the market. So.
Okay, so you're making, but you are making some assumption. It's not saying like, oh, zapier is okay, cool. How does, I don't know this. How does Zapier charge? Is it volume thing or is it like the number of aps or is it going to be through Zapier?
It's like, I mean, Zapier has like 80% of the market, so.
Okay, so you're making, but you are making some assumption. It's not saying like, oh, zapier is okay, cool. How does, I don't know this. How does Zapier charge? Is it a volume thing or is it like the number of API calls or is it the number of unique APIs that you have on your website? Does that make sense what I'm asking?
Yeah, they charge by number of zaps, which is like an integration. Right. So if I want to add subscribers to Beehive from Google Sheets, that's one zap, and then it will charge by tasks, which is the number of times it moves an email from Google Sheets to Beehive. Got it on like a credit system. So I could have one zap that has like multiple steps that could cost like three or four credits. It's not necessarily one. One credit for every task for this purpose.
If I'm just trying to identify the zaps that a website has, it's. It's not also going to tell me the volume that are being transacted across that? No. Okay.
No.
Is there any way that you could identify who the mega users were?
Right.
So instead of just a blanket or a blast, you could maybe tailor your approach to say like, oh, I know this company's using Zapier and they're probably paying five grand a month just based on the, the number of integrations they have. Like, is there a way you could sort of get a proxy for how much they're spending? Or is it just. You can't really do that. It could have one zape, it could have one zap, but it's running, you know, thousands of different, whatever tasks across that. And so they are paying thousands of dollars. But you wouldn't know that because you don't see the volume. Do you get what I'm saying? Like, how would you identify?
There's, there's a lot of ways you could infer you would never know exactly. But for instance, you scrape a list of every Shopify site and you're going to say, okay, if it's Shopify plus, then that is a high volume Shopify store by default. Therefore they are much more likely to be using a lot more Zapier tasks. Or you could built with will also tell you what their monthly traffic is. Roughly. It's not perfectly accurate. You're like, okay, I'm just going to assume more monthly traffic equal more zaps.
This idea would probably be for somebody who has experience in E commerce, who has experience with creating or at least managing integrations with Zapier.
It doesn't have to be E commerce.
Just somebody who would have the knowledge to say like, oh, you're a Shopify premium store. Like, I wouldn't know that. I wouldn't know that just off the bat. Right? But somebody who's in that space or who understand E commerce is going to look at that and say, oh, in order to have that, that's a $5,000 a month subscription. So that's going to justify the spend because they have whatever the volume. But I'm trying to get out like, who would be the perfect profile to do a business like this?
Someone that does not necessarily know how to code, but knows how to use Zapier. Like who is technically savvy enough to know their way around tools like these.
Like Jordan.
Yeah. Or like, like me. Right? Like I like, I think like, like most people our age, I would think, because like if you can code 20.
Minutes today trying to get our VA access to my Facebook business profile.
Well, in your defense, it's a little tricky in there. It gets a little hairy in Meta Businessman.
Is this thing on? Are you my grandson?
No, but I think if you know how to code, then it might not be the highest and best use of your skills or time. It would definitely be easy enough for you.
But yeah, but the added piece to it, because you were saying like this is the foot in the door, the implementation. You probably would need some level of experience creating these zaps because it would, it would be hard to go into a business cold and just be like, oh yeah, you should do a zap for this and a zap for that, a zap for this. Like you don't know how their process flows work. You don't know where and what they should be implementing for their payment processor. You don't know where and what they should be implementing for their, you know, CRM or for their email software or.
For.
Checkout systems or, you know what I mean? Like, you probably want to have some expertise in that space, right?
Or you could use AI. I'm a consultant for X, Y or Z business. These are the tools they're currently using. I'm now a Zapier expert or a make expert. What would you suggest? I think the hardest part about this business, now that I think about it, would be learning make, because zapier is very, very easy to learn. But make is a little more difficult. It's doable. There are YouTube channels dedicated to it, but it would take a little time.
See, to me, that doesn't scare me off. I, I would just, yeah, if you can get the demand, if you can get the customers, then you can figure out the fulfillment either by going to something you could teach yourself. You could go through AI and teach yourself, or you could go to Upwork or Fiverr or, you know, anybody who has experience with the make integrations and just start outsourcing it. And essentially you'd have to build out a little agency that you're then managing people. But you're going to do that anyways if you had any ambition to scale the business.
Yeah, Can I pivot for a minute? Just kind of a quick tidbit. So you know how we're all like, oh, you know, blue collar business is where it's at. Because AI is not about to take the plumber's job, right? Yes, it's a meme. It's a thing. So yesterday I replaced the light bulbs in my boy's room. And this is normal light bulbs. And later that day, the breaker was flipped in their room. And I'm like, what? And Jesse's like, oh, it's because of light bulbs. And I'm like, okay, being a man, I know that you're not going to trip a, a breaker from some little light bulbs in like a, a fan, right? And she's like, I don't know, it. It's too coincidental. I'm like, no, you're right. But like that. Why would that trip a breaker? Yada, yada, yada. I was about to call an electrician because I couldn't figure it out. Then I just take a picture of the old light bulb, I take a picture of the new light bulb and I upload them to chat GPT and I just tell it what's going on and I'M like, what is going on? And it gave me the most specific answer. It's like, certain LED bulbs have this fault that caused them to spike in usage, where they're like, yes, correct, Chris, you're correct. It should not trip the breaker, but it could be a faulty bulb that's sending the wrong signal to the breaker. So all you gotta do is just return the bulb and buy new ones. I'm like, that just saved me 250 bucks. Like, I don't think AI is about to replace the plumber, but I think it's gonna make some good headway. What do we think?
I don't think it's gonna replace the plumber, but I do think it's gonna make everybody more efficient. If you look at the trend of technology over time, it has made productivity skyrocket, skyrocket, because now instead of sending a letter and waiting for somebody's response, I can send an electronic letter and get their response in, you know, a hundredth of the time. And so there are these, like, incremental time savings that you all of a sudden get back that you're then able to reallocate. What I would argue is that in that instance, now the electrician is able to get to the highest and best use of their time now. Now it makes electricians even more important because they're only going to be called out for the jobs that, like, you can't troubleshoot with AI and in fact, it makes me a little bit more optimistic about the trade shortage that we have right now. It's something ridiculous. Like, for every five tradesmen and tradesmen I'm lumping in H vac repair, electrician, auto body, etc. For every five that are retiring, two are taking their place. Like, we do not have the replacement rate necessary to meet the demand for all of the trades needs moving forward. However, if AI could come in and all of a sudden reduce, like, just by doing what you did, it reduces demand by 20%. Now all of a sudden, we don't need five, we need three and a half. And so there's a one and a half gap. And so, like, how do we, how do we now fill the one and a half gap? So I. That's how I view it is like, it's just going to make us more productive because it's never going to fix the. The, like, oh, how do I rewire my house? There was an electrical fire. How do I rewire this? Like, I don't want to, I don't want to have to guess and say oh, I'm pretty sure Chat GPT told me what to do. And then have an electrical fire and your house burns down. Like you're still going to want to call an electrician who's actually been certified in that.
Yeah, I think it's not going to, it's not going to take any jobs or anything like, in the way that I'm talking about, but it's certainly going to make us more efficient. And I think maybe one big takeaway is you've just got to start rewiring your brain to think, I need to ask ChatGPT. Just like we had to do with Google. I gotta ask Google before I do that. It's like I don't use Google at all anymore. I asked ChatGPT everything. We're best friends.
Have you messed with either Meta's glasses or Apple's Vision Pro? I could see that, you know, being something where it's like, all right, I put on the Vision Pro and it's like, hey, I'm looking at this. Oh, my breaker is off again. Or, you know, there's, there's an issue with my car. And it just. All of a sudden using AI in real time is like, okay, take this off. Like, it could troubleshoot for you. So then it either significantly cuts down on the amount of time that you're going to have someone coming in and diagnosing, or you can solve the problem and not having, by not having somebody actually come out and fix it. So I could see it with augmented reality really, really disrupting things, but the, like, literally coming out and fixing plumbing or, you know, repairing your roof or power washing your driveway, like, AI is not replacing that. Like, those are still things that are going to have to be done by people. But the diagnostic that you're describing, like, what is wrong with it? I think AI definitely will, will eliminate a lot of need for specialized services for the diagnostics.
All I know is that thanks to this cheap guy right here, there's some electrician in the northwest DFW suburbs. It's $250 poor today because of ChatGPT. So I'd say that's enough. That's enough data to make a pretty significant conclusion here, Nick.
I love it.
Okay, thanks for joining us on the Kerner Office, Holdco Bros. And we will see you next Friday.
