https://www.listennotes.com/e/06548b3a8b0a4adea0f0d6d4b81a352c

There is no excuse for you to not be able to build something right now.

I just had a call with a guy that's selling a $7,000 a month service and this is a service that anyone could do Automations as a service. AI Automations.

I met a kid this week and he's like, I sold my first company and I have eight duplexes. And then I have kind of a side business that is showing people how to implement automations. I have 140 clients, so I'm like, wait a second, you're making 16 grand a month passively. Why the freak are you here? He's like, honestly, I just want a steady paycheck and to feel like I'm safe and I'm just going to make bets on all these other things. It blew my mind. He's 24 years old and it's all automated. Could you imagine having AI when you were 24?

Yeah, I can, because I feel like it right now. I feel like a kid in a candy store and everything's free. Welcome to the Kerner office and especially welcome to all of those coming over from mfm. I appreciate you joining me here and I want to give you a quick little intro about what this podcast is and what this episode is today and. And who I am. I live in Dallas, Fort Worth. I've started about 80 businesses, several of them reaching eight figures in revenue. I've had a couple exits. I've had some good success, but I just love starting and building businesses and I love putting it all on the Internet. I started about 70 businesses before I ever started talking about it. But I also have a series on YouTube where I talk in detail about every single business I've ever started. If you're ever interested. I'm also the partner on an RV park investment fund. We have about 31 RV parks worth about 150 million collectively. I have four kids. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I like camping, doing stuff outdoors, but I love, love, love business. My wife of 17 years was my high school sweetheart. She's incredibly supportive. We have a good life. Today's episode style is called Holdco Bros. I own a holding company with my best friend Nick. This style of episode happens about once a week, sometimes once every two weeks. And we just talk about business ideas. We talk about businesses that we're building or starting or experimenting with in real time. It has a similar vibe to mfm and Nick has found a lot more interest in acquiring businesses over the course of his career. Whereas I've been more interested in starting businesses. So he brings a really unique perspective. He's taken part in over $100 million worth of business acquisitions. He's had some really good exits. He also has four kids. He lives in Idaho. He's a super, super smart guy. His podcast is called Nickonomics. It's also really good, and it focuses more on the economics of business and on buying businesses as opposed to starting them from scratch. Today's episode, we riff on a ton of really exciting business ideas. Some about home services, some about AI and everything in between. I wanted to make sure that if you are new to this podcast, the first one you listen to is really, really good. So you're going to love it today. And if you're interested in binging more episodes like these, at the end of this episode, I'll list out a ton of other episodes that are certified bangers, so you don't have to go and find them yourself. But without further ado, please enjoy today's episode. Nick, has it ever been easier to do mass outbound outreach to people that you're trying to sell something to? No, never been easier. We have so many tools. AI tools. One prompt, few clicks instantly Lenless gmass. You can send hundreds and thousands of cold emails.

Right?

AI calls, ringless voicemail drops, text messages. Right. We are getting inundated with sales messages. And as marketers, we're inundating others with sales messages. Correct?

Correct.

All right. So you got to stand out more. More than ever. So I just had a call with a guy that's selling a $7,000 a month service to Fortune 500 companies, and he's doing it exclusively through three things. Are you ready? And this is a service that anyone could do automations as a service, AI automations, stuff that a lot of people listening to this are already doing or playing with themselves. But ironically, people at Fortune 500 companies have no idea about. So he's doing three things. He has a really good pitch in his cold email.

Okay.

He only sells in person, and he has a 33% close rate in person. And he has a guarantee as part of his offer. Okay. And this is a guarantee that you and I have kind of seen floated out there in different contexts, but not like this.

So he's pulling from the Brimozzi playbook.

He's got a good offer. Yeah, he's got a really good offer. But this is a very simple offer guarantee. So he says, I want to meet with you for 30 minutes in person. I promise you I can Find ways to save you so much more money than what my service costs. If I can't, for whatever reason, if you don't want to be a customer of mine, I will donate X amount to a charity of your choice.

Really?

And there's a second part to this. He proactively tells them how young he is. And he's like in his 20s or 30s, like early 30s, mid-20s, somewhere in there, he's not insanely young. And he says that combo of being young yet offering to donate money to a charity of their choice to that market to like Fortune 500 white collar workers just crushes. And so he has a 33% close rate, $7,000 a month. Very, very low churn. What do you think?

What's his offering?

He basically helps save them money by automating tasks that they have employees do. So he'll go look at how many jobs they have posted on LinkedIn and on Indeed. And basically say, hey, I'm not trying to like take your jobs. I'm trying to prevent you from having to hire more people. I want to sit down with your employees in person, face to face, teach them how to use AI. But first I want to ask them questions about their roles and responsibilities and use that to build automations that will make them like have superpowers in their role. So I'm not going to go in there and say, hey, AI is going to replace you. Answer all these questions for me. It's like, no. Answer all these questions for me and you're going to be a rockstar employee.

I met a kid this week. I say, kid is in his mid-20s who's doing something very similar. So I won't say the company, but I went and met with a kid who's an accountant at a company. We're having a conversation and in the middle of the conversation we're talking about AI. And he's like, yeah, actually after I sold my first company, I decided to get more into AI. I was like, wait, what? You're an accountant here. What are you talking about? He's like, yeah, well, I sold my first company and I have eight duplexes that we own and that income actually supports us. And then I have kind of a side business that is showing people how to implement automations into their companies, specifically focusing on CPA firms. I was like, what? How many clients do you have? He's like, I have 140 clients.

What?

What is he charging?

This part blew my mind. 50 bucks a month. Oh, dude, listen to this. 50 bucks a month and he's providing accounting services. He's automated the whole process. He's like, they love me. We automate accounting services. But then he also upsells them for implementing automations, right? So then he makes more money that way. But just the accounting services are also eight grand a month. And he's like, these are sticky customers. They're not going away. I'm like, wait a second, you're making 16 grand a month passively. Why the freak are you here? Like, why are you an accountant at this company? And he's like, honestly, some stuff happened with my dad when I was younger. I saw how rough it was for him, and a job is so important to me. I just want a steady paycheck and to feel like I'm safe and I'm just going to make bets on all these other things. I was like, it blew my mind how simply He's 24 years old, but just how simply he apparently has acquired all these accounting customers and it's all automated. He's like, I spend an hour a week basically on this business. So not only has cold outreach become easier than it ever has been, but the ability to implement and, like, actually do what you say you're going to do has become easier than it ever has been. And you get people here who are just. They're going into these businesses and creating real money for themselves. Like, how much was this guy you interviewed making a year?

I don't know. I don't know how many customers he had, but he was doing really well.

Could you imagine having AI when you were 24?

Yeah, I can, because I feel like it right now. I feel like a kid in a candy store and everything's free. I'm in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory and he says, take all you can hold. I'm in a Mr. Beast video where he gives him 10 grand to go in a grocery store. This is the best period of my life. I'm in my renaissance era, baby.

You are in repl it four hours a day.

Oh, and I love every second of it.

What I just said. Like, not only has it never been easier to do cold outreach, but the ability to fulfill has never been easier. And that's where I think you have, like, your superpower's always been on cold outreach. So juice that up a little bit.

Okay?

You're a little bit better at cold outreach now with AI but now you can fulfill, bro. Like, the opportunities are endless. You can build literally anything you want. What did you build? Last week we were on whole cobras and you're like, hey, I have this idea and what did you throw up? How to use AI?

How to use AI.com.

Yeah.

Unbundled subreddit.

Yeah, you got to log in, you got to submit ideas, you can vote on them, you can comment. You built the whole website and now you've got a community of people who are contributing AI ideas. Like, there is no excuse for you to not be able to build something right now. It's insane.

Honestly, it gives me like as cheesy as it sounds. I get tingles just thinking about it. Up until six months ago, what did I do if I had an idea that was technical, that required some code? I'm going to get Justin, my brother in law on the phone. Justin is extremely bright. He's a 10x developer, he's busy, he makes a ton of money. He's like, yeah, I'll get to you when I can get to you. Because he has worked on so many projects for me, you, us, that just never materialized and he put ton of hours into them. Now I don't have to bug Justin at all. I'm going to his house in a couple of weeks and we can just bro down about disc golf. I can build my own stuff now. If he were to see my code, he'd probably laugh me out of the room. But I don't care because it works. I don't even know how to read my code. What do I see? My code, I don't know what is a computer.

The files are in the computer.

Are you my grandson? I've got some piggyback ideas. All right.

Okay.

So for those new to the pod, we like talking about piggybacking, which is instead of like starting from scratch and finding your own customers fresh, just plug into another business and piggyback on their customers in a non competitive way. For example, I want to start a stump grinding business. Let's go find a bunch of homeowners. No, let's go find a bunch of tree trimming businesses that are willing to outsource all of their sump grinding on a weekly basis. Right. Piggybacking one on one. I've got two ideas in one here and I'll just explain what people are watching.

These are called fabric ceilings and they're super popular in Greece and elsewhere in Europe. And I think they need to be here in the us and here's how you should do it. I call it the piggyback method. I've already done content about people that install pergolas. It costs like 8 to $12,000 to install a pergola. But look how they look. They're ugly.

Who wants that?

If I were you, I'd go find a dozen or two of these pergola installation businesses and piggyback on them. Say, hey, I install fabric ceilings on pergolas. You need to offer this as an upcharge.

I know how to do it.

You upcharge a thousand bucks. I have 200 of that for you just for referring me. And I'll do all the work. Let's say Your costs are 200 bucks, your labor takes a couple hours, and.

You'Re making two to three hundred dollars.

An hour to install something that objectively looks awesome and that people would pay for. So I made a business plan for it.

What do you think, dude, I think it's amazing. Like, literally, I just got a quote last week to have a pergola on our deck. $15,000. And, like, what are you doing? And we want it now. I wouldn't do that because we want it for the winter. And, like, the snow's just gonna, like, wreck that. But I think it's an amazing piggyback method.

Yeah. For those only listening, a fabric ceiling is, like, it just looks all wavy. It blows with the wind. It offers more shade. It looks really cool. And it's something that's being done in the Mediterranean but not really out west. And so bring something over there over here. Piggyback. With pergola installation businesses, they make more money. You tap into their customer base. Bada bing, bada boom.

Okay, Bada bing, bada boom.

So, Nick, one of our most popular Holdco Bros. Episodes ever was from July 10th. Episode 37, B2B Stump Grinding. For those just catching up, we talked about, hypothetically, B2B stump grinding. Then we did a public experiment. We called every tree trimming business in Houston, yada, yada, yada. And this guy Tyler and subsequently several others went out and started B2B sump grinding businesses, which, as far as we know, wasn't a thing. Like, sump grinding was not a B2B type of business, but now it is. So you could say we kind of invented a new industry, But I found a new. I found a new B2B stump grinding for us. Okay, you ready?

I'm here for it, dude. Yeah.

Story time. So I went to my friend Ed's house. You've met Ed. He just put in a pool. And Ed is like me. He's kind of cheap, doesn't spend too much if he doesn't have to. And he used to be A home builder. So he knows a bunch of subcontractors and he can get stuff done around the house very cheaply. He put in a pool, nice pool, not plain, not extravagant. Middle of the range, middle of the pack pool, little slide, little waterfall, medium size. And he like, was very prudent about what he spent on it. What do you think that thing costs, $50,000? 150,000 home.

What?

Yeah, that's like going rate and that's like a good price for a pool like that. And you'd be like, yeah, it's nice.

So I have a pool and it has like a liner in it. I don't even know what to call it. Like acrylic.

It's like a proper.

It's like a real pool. What you have is a doughboy that.

You have above ground. That's what they have in Alabama. No. So 150 grand. And in all seriousness, 20, 19, you could get that pool for 70 grand. You cannot get a pool in Texas under 100 grand. You just. It's not going to happen. Okay? So that's the, that's the backstory then. I'm talking to our business partner, James Fast Tree Care, and he says, chris, I just met this guy. Or he operates excavators. He doesn't even own an excavator. And for those listening, excavator, it's a. It's a frigging. It's a bucket truck.

Excavator. Hardly know her.

You know, it's a big digging machine, okay? And I rented one to dig a culvert. It's a lot of fun. I'd never used one before. I just hopped on it, started pulling levers, and I dug a bunch of holes in the ground. Anyway, this guy has a B2B pool digging business. He has no website, is no Google business profile. He has a phone number and a handful of relationships with pool companies. Okay? Pool company goes into Mary Jones's house and says, yeah, 150 grand for this pool.

Cool.

Can you show me an itemized invoice?

Sure.

Digging. $5,000. This guy. Hey, hey, I got a job for you. Five grand. You good for it? Yeah, sure. He goes to United Rentals, he picks up the excavator. He pays about $700 for it for the day. These things cost about 70, 80 grand to buy, which you can finance them and lease them. And he goes there for about four hours, digs out a pool. He's on his merry little way. $5,000. What are we talking about here?

So who's he piggybacking off of?

Pool companies. Pool companies just sub everything out. Then they're going to go find a framing company to put the forms in all the two by fours, and they're going to find a plaster company. Then they're going to find a landscaping company, put all the tiles in around it. Then they're going to go buy the slide from a third party. They're just like home builders. They're just subcontracting everything out. And the homeowner just. It's just another line item. So they're not super price sensitive. The pool companies aren't.

Okay, first of all, I love this idea because effectively what Tyler did is he bought a stump grinder and then rented it out. That's effectively what he did. Right. Like these two trimming businesses don't want to spend $20,000 or whatever the. No, it's more than that. $50,000 on a stump grinder. And so they are renting it out from Tyler and Tyler goes and he fixes it. This is the same problem, right? These pooled contractors, they don't want to have an excavator, so they're renting it.

Out from this guy.

I really like this idea of piggybacking. And I was doing it while you're talking piggybacking off of high ticket home services. So literally, as you're talking, this is what I did. I asked chatgpt what are some high ticket home purchases like a pool and tree trimming. So pools it names tree trimming, landscaping, redesign, and hardscaping. So this is just off the top of my head, all right, go find contractors that do the landscaping and maybe you're the guy that they don't want to run it to the dump. So you're like, hey, dumpster rentals, right? What's the big ticket purchase item that they don't want to do? Maybe it's disposal, deck and patio installation. It's going to do. That's going to be disposable as well. That would be an amazing one to piggyback off. If you just contact all these contractors and say, hey, I have a dumpster.

I'll come pick up your old deck.

Don't even buy a dumpster. Do what I did last weekend when we took down our bubble in the back over the tennis court. We just had two trailers and then loaded the trailers up and took them to the dump. So you could start just cash flowing by getting a trailer and, you know, having a hitch on your truck. But then you Buy a dumpster. Anyways, that would be really interesting. Oh, fencing installation. How could you piggyback off a fencing installation?

You could have like auger as a service. Like digging the post holes.

Yeah, that's.

I've hired guys to come out and do that. Like I'll get my fence repaired and I'll plant trees at the same time. So it's like a 350 bucks. Come out and dig 13 holes for me. Dude.

That could be the same for landscaping. Let's like if somebody's going and doing a big backyard landscaping, having somebody come out with a bobcat or something just to grade the land right. Because they don't want to have the expense of that bobcat. Okay, cool. I'll be the guy who actually comes out and moves dirt around.

Let's remind our listeners what Tyler, the stump rental, the stump grinder did. He bought a $60,000 sump grinder, but he, he financed it. His payments like 450amonth. His truck financed 450amonth. His trailer finance parking. He pays like 250 bucks a month for a lot. He doesn't have a building. Like, he works from home. Like, you don't have to have $60,000 to start a business like this.

Well, and the way to validate it is so simple. It's the same way that Tyler did it. You scrape a list of the type of contractors that you want to piggyback off of. You find a market to test it in, see if there's demand there. If there's demand there.

Before you spend a dollar?

Yeah, before you spend a dollar. See if there's demand there. And then if there's demand, you actually jump into it. You actually start booking jobs and doing it. That's what Tyler did. And in his first month. I can't remember what he did in his first month. I think he did like $7,500 his first month.

He did 9,000 his first and then like 20,000 his second.

Right. And just two months ago, I don't know what he did last month, but just two months ago he did $30,000. He's making good money as a solopreneur and hopefully he expands. But these are the home services piece in my mind is such a freaking cool opportunity to piggyback off of these companies that have effectively distribution. Dude, this is mind blowing. Gen Z and millennials are the most entrepreneurial generation we've ever seen. Check this out.

According to like what metric I'm going.

To tell you right now. So there was a recent study, I think that U.S. bank just published. 36% of Gen Z and Millennials who are business owners plan to acquire a business from a retiring owner. Only 54% of current owners, though, have a formal succession plan. So there's this gap in the marketplace. And I think there's a huge opportunity right now for these individuals who are trying to figure out, how do I take advantage of AI to utilize AI to help them figure out how to take advantage of it. Does that make sense, what I'm saying? I know that's super stupid and meta.

But one more time for the ADHD years in the back, I'll say it a different way.

Last year, 72% of business owners thought AI was going to play an important role. 20, 24. This year, 87%, a 15 point swing. Right. So, like, there's still the value.

Very surprising to me because isn't it? I would feel like there'd be like 25% of holdouts and they're just going to like, out of pride, ego, whatever. Like, no, this is just a fad. But for that margin to cut in half in one year is shocking to me.

It's insane. But not only that they're utilizing AI in their business, and from the report, they're mainly utilizing it as like a better search engine. Right. So they're like using ChatGPT, whatever, as a counselor, so to speak. But I actually think there's a really, really good opportunity for them to use ChatGPT as a therapist and as like a business coach. So I went to ChatGPT and I literally asked it this prompt, are you ready? You've seen people say, like, the best way to use AI and to fix a prompt is to use AI to fix your prompt. This is the same way, like, the best way to find an opportunity for you to take advantage of something is to use AI to help you find that opportunity to take advantage of something. So we've talked about quizzes. I'm just going to bring this up really quickly, but I think that people need to start using AI as an interactive conversational as opposed to just, hey, I put this in and it spits it out. And I think that there's a market for people to create GPTs very simply that enable the interaction. Does that make sense, what I said?

I think so. It removes friction so people don't have to think as much about what to ask.

Yeah, all you have to do is give it, like create a custom GPT that has a prompt. You could have a custom GPT that's like, hey, you're helping this person decide on which business to buy. Ask them these questions. How much capital do they have? What's their experience?

And to anyone listening that thinks that sounds too complex, you're literally just going into chat GPT, you're clicking projects, you're creating a project with instructions. Right?

That's literally all it is, in fact. You want me to share my screen?

Yeah.

All right. So I'm in ChatGPT. I'm here. I have. These are all of my GPTs. Over here I have projects, blah, blah, blah. Now people get overwhelmed because they think, oh, GPT. That sounds complicated. It's not complicated. It's literally just a saved prop. What I'll do over here is I'll come to this business research assistant and I'll just show you what this looks like. Edit GPT. And now I'm looking at what the GPT is on the back end. And you can see here, I named it. Here's a quick description. It generates business research, blah, blah, blah. But then I actually created this. This GPT assists users in drafting a comprehensive business research document using a structured approach.

And let me guess, you use ChatGPT to write its own instructions.

Oh. Huh. I don't know. Did I? Huh? Yes. That's exactly like, I went to ChatGPT and I was like, hey, help me write this prompt. This is what I'm trying to do. And I want to create a custom GPT. It doesn't even have to be like, you can literally say just that. Help me write a GPT prompt for finding the best business use cases at a carnival you don't like. Go do that. And it will help you write this prompt. I literally just took it, copied and pasted it. And now it tells the GPT exactly how to work. I hit update, boom. And now I have a business research assistant. So what I'm saying is you can do this and sell it to people. You can. You can put it on the GPT store within ChatGPT, or you can sell it as a wrapper. It doesn't matter. But let's say that you're really good at helping people understand. I don't know how to write a book. Okay, I'm gonna go take my knowledge. It's here in my head. This is the exact process for writing a book. Please write a prompt for this that enables other people to write books. You throw it into a GPT, and now you have a custom GPT that you can share if you get it approved in OpenAI store, you could actually share that GPT with people. You can sell it or you could.

Just go to replit and say make a very simple chat window, just a wrapper with this prompt and then you.

Can show that anywhere 100%. So my point is I wasn't trying to be overly technical with it. And it's not even a major idea. It's just use AI to help you identify what opportunities are available to you. Like this kid, right? He's going to Fortune 500 companies because apparently he has a skill set with automation. I would bet you could approach Fortune 500 companies or SMBs with your skillset of cold outreach. Or somebody maybe has a really good skill set with, I don't know, some type of architecture. But find whatever your skill set is, build a custom GPT around it and you can actually sell that to help people find their own opportunities.

I kind of love that you told me that that CPA guy is only charging 50amonth. I didn't think you were going there. But I think that people get so partially our old. They get so hung up on like a high ticket monthly recurring revenue. Right? We talk about it a lot that it's like I have an automation agency, I have a short form video editing agency, I have an outbound agency, whatever. It's 2000 month, 1500, 4000 and they have a really hard time getting customers and they're like what is wrong? What happened? But this guy is like, okay, I know what I'm offering. It's very, very low lift, hands off for me. I'm going to charge 50 bucks a month. At enough customers that's a six figure, fairly passive income. But I'm going to have these upsells. Once I get my foot in the door, they see me and trust me and know that I know what I'm talking about. They're going to buy all kinds of stuff from me. And so let's be patient.

You might be listening and think, and you might be think this like, oh, this kid doesn't know pricing. That's what I thought. I was like, oh, he doesn't even know what to charge.

Oh, that's cute. That's.

He's dramatically under undercharging. Right? Because how much is outsourced bookkeeping a month? In our experience, hundreds. Hundreds. Sometimes in the low thousands. In my experience it's like between a thousand and two thousand dollars a month. If you're doing it onshore, if you're doing it offshore, you can do it for cheaper. Right? And so I asked him I was like, dude, do you even know what people charge for this? He's like, yeah, about $1,200 a month. And I was like, okay. He's not like he even knows what the pricing is. And like you just said, he has purposely picked this $50 price because he knows it's going to be sticky for these customers and he can fulfill on it. It blew my mind.

Oh, man. I would have a conversation earlier today, and this guy asked me what my approach is in starting a business, which is a very broad question. But he's like, you want to rush to monetization, right? That's what you talk about, Chris, right? Get monetized as fast as possible. And as he said that, I kind of thought of a framework, and what I told him was, it's not about running towards monetization as fast as possible. It's about running away from friction as fast as possible. Because that's all I'm asking you to do. This is more of a mind game than anything, right? So when I tell you, go get your first dollar, preferably from someone that isn't related to you, it's not so you can, like, get rich faster. It's because every second it takes for you to get that first dollar is more friction slash, less momentum for you to actually do the thing. The higher likelihood that you'll just abandon this whole entrepreneurship thing altogether. You need to keep the momentum going. That is the most important part of starting anything.

Well, how many businesses?

So if it's 50 bucks a month, then it's 50 bucks a month. I've started about 80 businesses.

You started 80 businesses. Why have you started 80 businesses? It's because 75 of them didn't reduce friction fast enough, and you moved on to the next thing. I mean, 75 is too much. But you get my point, right? It's like you're very good about cut my losses, cut my losses. I'm out of here. And to your point, it's not about running towards monetization, because I think probably of those 80 businesses you started, 75 of them did monetize. The question was, how well did they monetize? How quickly could you get to scale? Were there margins there, etc.

Was the juice worth the squeeze?

Was the juice worth the squeeze? Right? And if you're trying to get into entrepreneurship, that's the whole goal. As quickly as possible, find the one thing that you can be better than anybody else at, get there really fast, and then exploit it over and over and over and over again. And the Most successful people do that. They don't continue to just test, test, test, test, test forever.

Yep.

All right. Can I bring up an idea?

I gotta hear what you got. Oh, please.

Okay.

No, go.

My dad's here. He decided to drive up, like, last minute yesterday. We have a broken sprinkler out front. It's been broken for two weeks. I've been trying to get somebody out to the house to fix it. I know in my head that it's not hard to fix sprinklers, but I know in my heart that I am not mechanically inclined at all. So I've left it, and I've just been, like, waiting. And now that my dad's here, he's helping me fix it. And it's been a lot of fun this week as well. I started talking to this guy on Twitter, and for whatever reason, I started looking at his profile and. Can I show you? I'm going to share my screen really fast, I promise. This all makes sense. This is his business.

So what I'm looking at is metal shop fantasy camp. So for those listening, what it is.

Is it's a camp where anybody can come, and for four hours, he just teaches them how to make a couple of things. There's a cool video on the website, and you can actually look at what classes are here. One hour introduction to welding, $130 per participant. How to make a cube, $250 per participant. Steel bowl welding class, $190. Right. So he's got all these classes. People come in. He's not certifying them so they can go work on a building. Yeah, they're just learning how to weld. And so, yeah, for funsies. So I had that conversation with him, with this guy. My dad comes over and shows me how much of a man I am not. And it hit me, how many men are there like me who don't know how to change oil, who don't know how to change. I don't know any electrical in the house, who don't know how to do a simple project, who don't know how to fix the sprinkler heads. But they have the means where they could actually attend one of these fantasy camps to learn how to fix things themselves. Maybe it's a fantasy camp around landscaping. Maybe it's a fantasy camp around, like, changing the oil. But they all get together, they have an instructor, and it's one weekend. Again, they're not certifying them to start businesses, but these are local sort of chapters, if you will, where I could just Go and learn how to freaking fix a sprinkler head without having to go on YouTube. Does that make sense?

Yep.

Okay. Because I could go on YouTube and watch how to fix a sprinkler head, but that's not me actually going and getting my hands dirty. What do you think?

I love it. I love it. I'm trying to boil it down to the first principles. Why is this guy. Why is this guy successful? Right. Could you take that model and copy and paste it to anything, like landscaping or. Is welding something special, something unique? And first of all, I think that there've probably been studies done. I'm completely guessing that millennials, more than any other generation, just don't know how to do stuff with their hands. We didn't have to learn, right? Yeah. We've had phones for the last 15 years. Okay. So there's something there. But I also think if we boil it down to first principles, most millennial men would like to learn. My pull out trash drawer was broken, and it was such a small job. No handyman wanted to come out there. So I figured out how to do it, and it took me like three hours. And it was so simple. And I know it probably would have taken a handyman 15 minutes. But you know what? Every single time I open that drawer to throw something away, I feel so good about myself. I feel amazing. It was worth every second of my. The time that it took me to do it. Right.

Yeah.

So I. I guarantee you there's a business to be had here. But my counterpoint is, I think welding is something unique. I think first principles. Men want to create things with their hands. Right. A cube, a metal bowl. Like, I think there's something innate in us of taking raw materials, organizing it into something tangible and something useful that we could show our wives. And hopefully they're proud of us about it. Right. So, I mean, hopefully, like, I know my wife's proud of me, but like, others.

Right. I know my wife's proud of me. So.

So with this as a business concept, I would think you would need to find something that's similar to welding. And maybe it's not like drywall, because that's kind of like fixing something around the house, but maybe it is something like woodworking or cabinetry where they're actually creating something. Does that make sense? I think totally makes sense.

So you really think it has to be married with creation?

I think so, yeah.

Because I'm looking at it from the. From, like, my perspective. If there was something local where I could go and meet up with somebody. And I could learn about plumbing. Here's some of the lists. I have plumbing, electrical, landscaping, yard maintenance, DIY projects. I would go. For me, that's the biggest hang up. It's like, I'll go watch something on YouTube, but I still want somebody. There is like, wait, is this how I hold it? Is this how I actually get the joint to fit? To get. Like, I don't. I don't understand how to.

Yeah.

To do it. And I'm like, yeah, insecure about it.

And I think a key part is being in a class full of other people that are, like, openly insecure about it too. You know, there's like a judgment free zone.

Well, and that's what, like, our generation is unique in that sense. Like, our parents, generations, they would never show that. But we're all like, yeah, I don't know how to do that, man. I'm an idiot. Can you please show me how to do it? Yeah, but like, this house, I have hundreds of stations. There are hundreds of sprinkler heads. I'm going to be like, I need to learn how to change the sprinkler head. Otherwise I'm going to pay, like $10,000 a year for some handyman to just come over to my house and show me how to fix it.

Yeah.

Can I tell you the domain I bought?

Oh, dude, you're asking a junkie if he wants some crack. Like, are you kidding me? Please, I want some crap.

Fantasy handyman camp.

Oh, that's a good one.

Yeah. Yeah, I know you hated it just by the way you said it. Gosh dang it. Cancel it.

It's seven syllables.

Cancel.

Seven syllables. That's my only. That's my only beat.

Seven syllables.

Seven silver.

But I do think there'd be a local component to where you could kind of organize these. Let's say you're a flipper in an area. Let's say you're just a general contractor and you want to increase your business. It's. It's the Bro Mosi example where, like, yeah, you'll show them exactly what to do, but they're going to call you for the implementation. Like, you'll give away all the secrets. This is how you, whatever, change the oil on a car or change the brake pads, carburetor, whatever. But they're still going to call you the handyman because they're like, oh, wait a second. He showed me how to do that one time, but I don't know if I want to do it. So I could see this as A really cool lead magnet situation for a young contractor of some sort. Mechanic, plumber, electrician, whatever. Where on the weekends or during the week they just hold these classes and show guys like us how to freaking change stuff.

I love it. All right, I hope you liked today's episode. Come back a week from today for part two of this episode where we discuss other handyman, home service, AI business ideas, and one idea about sending out wedding invitations that I think you're really going to like. Just so you know, I have a regular cadence to this podcast. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, every single Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I release. And if there's a Holdco bro style episode with my friend Nick, it's almost always going to be on Friday. I have Q and A episodes where you can submit questions to me@tkopod.com, scroll to the very bottom and you'll see a little audio widget. You can send in your question and I'll answer it. I have deep dives where I interview a business and ask him outright, how can I copy your business? How can I reverse engineer it? How can anyone copy it? Then I have a lot of solo episodes where I talk about what I'm building, how I'm building it, I'll share my screen, how I'm using AI cool hacks that I'm finding and learning about, and then a couple other types of podcast episodes that I'm always experimenting with. But if you're new to this podcast and you want to go binge some of my most popular episodes ever, here they are. And I'll also put them in the show notes for you. A lot of my best ones happened in April and May, but then I had some last year that were certified bangers as well. So here's rapid Fire episode 1641-611631-69162, 73, which is about starting a porch pumpkin decoration business. Episode 1561-671711-73123, 125, 160, 170. For whatever reason, all of the 160s, almost all of them were bangers. 170 is how to get a yes from anyone and change your life. So if you look at the show notes, we'll list all these out. If I record an episode that doesn't seem like a banger, I just don't publish it. If I publish one that ends up not being a banger for whatever reason, I'm gonna tell you. I don't wanna waste your time. I take it very seriously. We'll see you in one week. For part two of this, I would love it if you shared with a friend and left me a five star review. Have a great weekend.