Q&A: Taking junk removal from $1M to $10M by opening a 2nd location, plus more! Ep. #028

I think you're really smart with thinking about the concept of momentum because that second location can make or break you. And even if it's more simple to launch with just junk removal, the lack of momentum could be a net negative for you. All else equal, because you've already cracked the complexity code on offering two services. Right now, the complexity you need to crack is going three hours away to a not just a bigger market, but a different market. Welcome to the Kerner office. Today was an awesome episode with four call in questions. One was pre submitted. First guy asked about his junk removal business. He just hit a million dollars in revenue. He's in Tiny Bend, Oregon and he wants to expand to Portland. He also has a moving business and he wants to know, do I lean into moving? Do I lean into junk removal? Do I go to Portland? Do I go to Eugene? What do I do? Great guy, great business. Next guy was pre submitted. He wants to buy a tortilla route like on Biz. Buy, Sell. And he said, is this a good idea? What do you think, Chris? Next guy had a very interesting question. He and his wife, or his wife and a friend answer questions for a very popular fitness influencer with 1.1 million followers. And he wants to take all of her DMS and comment and turn it into some sort of a digital product, newsletter, a book or something. And I'm not gonna lie, I had some really good ideas for him. Okay, and the last caller wants to start a flow rider business. Flow rider is like a. An inflatable faux surfing concept that's getting really popular in Asia and it's kind of starting to come to the US more. You can find them on cruise ships. So we broke down the unit economics of a flow rider. Honestly, there's no filler in this episode. Okay? You're gonna like all of them, so enjoy. Brett, how's it going? Good. How are you, man?

Living the dream, man. Living the dream.

Good. Well, welcome to the Kerner office. It's a good looking whiteboard.

Trying to set up the org chart, get things organized. You know how it goes.

Nice. You need a much bigger whiteboard. That organization is just going to keep growing, man.

Hopefully that's the goal, man. Thanks for having me on today.

Of course. Yeah. So let me summarize your question. You've got a junk removal business, right?

Yes, we do. Junk removal and residential and commercial moving now.

Oh, okay. So junk removal and moving. You're about to hit seven figures in revenue. You've got 150,000 people in your town and you're in that messy middle and you're trying to grow, right?

Yep, exactly. We're in Bend, Oregon, if you know where that's at.

Yeah, beautiful. It's changed a lot over the last 10 years, huh?

Yeah, especially as a after Covid too. It just blew up. So that's been good starting a business here, but we want to test a bigger market and really see what we can do.

Okay, well, let's hear what you're struggling with. Do you mind sharing your business so I can pull up the website? Absolutely.

So the business name is Live L I V E Junkless. J U N K L E S S dot com.

All right, so let's hear what you're struggling with.

Yeah. So we started the business about three years ago. This is our first real business. I got basically put a $2,500 investment into the company. And since the first job, we've been running off the cash flow. We're up to about 10 employees now, one office staff, and then we have a virtual assistant who helps organize kind of our back end metrics. They just all our financials. And so we've got a relatively small crew of guys. And we're at this point right now where on the junk removal side we are the market owners in terms of market share. So we probably. It's hard to guesstimate, but based off of revenue and the amount of jobs that we're calculating through just reverse engineering Google, probably roughly 40 to 50% of jobs are going through us on the junk removal side. And then moving is growing. So that's probably closer to 10 or 15%. We've got one franchise here in town with college hunks and we pretty much, you know, we're playing neck and neck with them. And so we feel like we want to grow into Portland. It's a three hour drive north from us and that's about a third of Oregon's population. So we feel like this could be a good market for us to expand into. The issue is with growth, especially in the cash flow side, starting a new market in a bigger area like Portland. We're trying to project how long is going to take for us to become profitable, but also take a little bit of market share. We're going back and forth between should we grow with, invest with just cash flow or try and take investment and go that route. And so that's where we're at right now.

Okay, have you done any research yet as to how much competition you have in Portland?

We have, yes. So on the junk remote side, we've got the three big franchises in the junk removal space. And then we've got about two local players that actually answer their phone and don't just sound like Chuck in the truck. So we've got about five competitors in the entire Portland Metro, which is about an hour drive. Let's say you're smack down the middle.

Well, I thought. Wasn't Portland three hours away?

Three hours away. But if you're. Let's say you're smack dab in the middle of Portland.

Oh, okay. Okay, gotcha. So five potential competitors. So you'd be the sixth.

We'd be six. Yeah. Big player, ideally.

And Port Portland's like eight, 10 times bigger than Bend.

Yeah, I think it's about 10 times bigger now, maybe a little bit more.

And how many competitors do you have in Bend? Just the one.

In junk removal we've got about seven and then on the moving side, about three.

So you have seven competitors in Bend but only five in Portland.

So we have seven good competitors in Bend. Actually, Like I would say they answer their phone, they're out every day actually working majority in Portland. It's a lot of one man trucks with a dump trailer. And it's, you know, we called about, we scraped about 50 companies, called them all and about five actually sounded like they run a real business. Yeah, they're going after the same competitor, the same customers. We are the ones that actually will spend for brand versus just like I want the cheapest guy. Basically that helps.

Okay. And so five competitors in Portland that are legit, that would be direct competitors. You're not even counting Chuck in a Truck as a competitor competitor.

No, because a lot of their customers are going to be the people that just want to pay the lowest amount.

Yeah.

And that's we're trying to go for.

And so in Bend you have five legitimate competitors or seven legitimate competitors.

Seven where we've called them, we know most of them and they actually do a pretty good job. I would say there's two that are just about. They're organized, they have good pricing set up and they know how to run a business.

Okay, so on paper, like there's significantly less competition per capita in Portland than Bend, right? Like significantly less.

Absolutely. There's more. So from a marketing perspective, PPC is how we gain initial traction. And there's a lot of competitors playing on the PPC side. So there would be a lot of money that would have to go into developing the marketing there. But in terms of actual competition, I'm pretty sure we could rank up there With Junk King and Got Junk and. And blow them out of the water just because we're small and we can act nimble and we're not a franchise.

Yeah. Have you looked at starting in Eugene just as like a. Because that first second market is a big deal. Right? Like to go from two to three, no big deal. One to two is a big deal. Have you thought about dipping your toe in the water in Eugene, especially since it's closer and smaller?

Yeah, we have. We actually. We've definitely considered that the population is a little bit smaller and we don't know the demographic as well. And so that was our.

It's a college town.

Our hesitation there that, yeah, U of O is there and it's definitely a college town.

Do you know what the competition looks like there?

Yeah, there's two franchises. There's Junk Luggers and I think there's Junk King in Eugene as well, I believe. And then there's just some local guys. We're mainly worried about the. The franchises because they actually know how to market and brand. That's really the big thing in junk removal.

Yeah. It looks like it's not even that much closer than Portland. Right? A half hour.

Half hour.

Okay. Same with Salem.

Salem, Yep. It's about a half hour closer.

Okay. So when it comes to junk removal and moving, what do you like more? What side of the business are you wanting to lean into?

When we first start in Portland, I really do think that junk removal overall is more profitable from the beginning, but moving has more demand. And so it really. I'm torn. 50. 50. And looking at the data, moving has about double the search volume as junk does. And so for us, operationally, we would send down one of our team leads that's currently here and set him up as an operations manager down there. And we would handle the marketing. But he has experience in both moving and junk removal. And so we could honestly play it both ways. It's just. I actually would love your opinion. Do you think that's too much to try and do both or would you focus on one to start?

If I were expanding into a new market, I would definitely start with one. Because that's what you did here. Not really by design, but you started a junk removal company. Right. So that's more familiar. You're using the same truck for both services, Right?

So we utilize for Portland. Let's say we started both there. We would buy a dump truck and we probably rent a box truck from Pence to get going.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. So pretty low cost to start because you are able to rent.

Exactly. Most of our cost is honestly marketing and then the operation manager salary.

Okay. How often are the two services paired together?

About 50% of the time. Okay.

And that's just like without you having to to push it. It's just like if someone needs junk removed, 50% chance they're going to need.

Moving as well within six months to a year is what we're finding. Because a lot of junk removal clump. Usually it's the reverse. If someone's moving a lot of times they need junk removal right away. If someone needs junk removal, we'll pitch to the fact that they do moving and then six months down the road they usually call us to do the move.

So you're remarketing to these guys. Are you keeping them in an email list and all that?

Yes, we utilize jobber and then we have. They just unleashed their whole new marketing campaign. So we've been sending out. Wow. I think we have 3,000 people that are on that.

Okay. So in your opinion it makes sense to keep doing both. It's not too difficult to do moving as well. Like you want to keep leaning into that or you're on the fence.

They're so similar. And that's why it was a natural progression. That's why college hunts really did that is because they're. They go hand in hand labor wise. It's just some of the systems in plan here a little bit different. That's it.

How is your pricing compared to college hunks or junk king?

On the junk side, we're about $30 cheaper on a full load basis. So if you fill up a full.

Truck, how much is a full load?

So every franchise usually from what I've seen is between 750 and 800 depending on the market for a full 15 yard truck.

So we were within 5% cost of the big guys.

Exactly.

Okay.

And we really take the approach like we want to be the Chick Fil a or less Schwab of these industries. So we try and clean cut Polos good customer service and then our pricing is super comparable. So it's like, oh, you can choose the local guy. Are you going to choose the franchise? Which that's why we've had success in that. Moving though is really just a customer service game because it's very regulated. Your prices are decided for you and so everyone's the same.

I don't understand that. What do you mean?

So in Oregon and a lot of states, if you're doing an intrastate. So like a local move less than 50 miles. We have to follow a tariff that defines our prices. For us, if you do long distance, it's based on weight and distance. And so it's just everyone is very similar, similarly priced, and I had no idea. Super regulated.

I know. I knew Oregon was very regulated, but I didn't know that was a thing. How common is that in other states?

Super common.

Because what was happening is back in the 90s and early 2000s, movers were holding cargo hostage until they price up. And so they forced a very regulated system. So now every state has some type of department of transportation that you have to be aligned with. And then obviously the US Dog to do anything across state lines.

That is fascinating. I had no idea. I'm. I'm so cheap. Like, I don't pay movers. I'd like. I'm so cheap and I'm so lazy that I don't move. So I don't have to move my stuff. But if I did move, I would move my own stuff. So.

I hear you, man.

So right now, gun to the head, what are you going to do to grow? Go to Portland, do both at the same time, or start with one that really.

We're kind of torn. We have the experience and the systems right now to where we could. We're. What we're really trying to do is build a training system to improve our leadership in the current staff we have and use them as chick fil, a method of, hey, we'll give you partial ownership in this business, pay for performance. You've got to train the guys under you. So I'm pretty confident we can do that successfully. That's easier said than done. That next person can go to the next market, introduce both services, and we could run both spontaneously.

Do you have a specific person in mind for Portland yet?

We do, and he's. His name's Ryan. He's been on our crew for about a year and a half, and he has about 3 years moving experience prior to that as well. So he's pretty versed in the industry.

Who would step in for him in Bend if he were to move to Portland?

We've got a guy named Bryce on the team, and he's shown initiative and he understands the systems and how we work. And so he would replace Ryan. Okay. Yeah.

Do you think Bryce might be the second guy to go to Portland?

I think he. If that model worked, I think he would actually want to take it to a different location.

So that's why Portland seems so big.

Super big. And so that's. We don't want to overextend ourselves with the cash flow we do have. Which is why we're in this weird middle ground where we've maxed out what we can do in Bend. Yeah. So it's the only other option. Unless we just want to stay content.

Who wants to do that?

Jack. That's too boring.

We got to progress. That's why we're on this earth.

Yep.

Have you already talked about territories? What was the first guy's name?

Ryan.

Ryan. Have you ever already talked about a territory of Portland with Ryan?

Yeah. So we've already had this conversation and he's very interested. We would focus. Really? What, what we want to do is narrow down Portland into one small circle to start in. And that would be the west side of Portland. So we're Nike's based. So be rich. And the. The higher end suburbs. Portland is where we can start.

Have you done more granular PPC research or competitive research based on territories within Portland?

We have. So we've done keyword research and what the average price is. And it's super comparable to Bend. So it's okay. It's ranging between fifteen to a hundred dollars for an actual conversion.

Okay.

Expensive. It's competitive.

Yeah. And if you were to use Ryan for this, would you start with one service or both?

To be honest, my gut tells me to do both because I know I can create instant demand off of moving.

Yeah.

But I know it makes it more complex. Junk. It's going to probably take longer because people vet junk companies more.

Actually.

They actually look into them versus movers. They just need their stuff. They don't care as much.

Yeah.

Which I thought it'd be reversed. Right. But it. It's not. So it's just this weird area I'm in right now.

Yeah. I think you're really smart with thinking about the concept of momentum because that that second location can make or break you. And even if it's more simple to launch with just junk removal, the lack of momentum could be a net negative for you. All else equal, because you've already cracked the complexity code on offering two services. Right now the complexity you need to crack is going three hours away to not just a bigger market, but a different market. Like a different culture altogether. Right. Like someone living in. Near the Nike headquarters, I would imagine is completely different than someone living in Bend, Oregon. Right. Bend is like it's on an island. It's very unique.

Yeah.

Is there a part of Portland that is more like Bend than West Portland?

Actually, West Portland's probably The most comparable, because what happens is people visit Bend for corporate retreats, so through intel or Nike or Tektronics, and they end up saying, hey, I love this place. As soon as I retire or have the option to, I'll move to Bend. And so the last five years, the demographic from Bend has gone from dirtback skier to more like, hey, I've got a lot of money and Bend is a vacation market. Let's move there.

Yeah.

And so what we like about Portland is it's more white collar and folks don't have trucks. They don't have access to dump trailers or moving equipment. They don't want to do it themselves. And the demographic between Bend, Portland, like, you can look at the moving data. Everyone from Portland or Seattle or San Francisco is moving to Bend. So it's super similar in terms of the person. Okay, I don't know if that helps.

Yeah, it does. And how long have you been open in Bend? And how long has Ryan been with you?

So we're coming up on three years in July. So we started 2021 and then Ryan's been with us for a year and a half now, so about half the time.

Okay. Okay, man. It might make for really good content for me to just turn your model on, on its head and just send you a different direction. But I think you're just like, I just want to confirm the path that you're already on. If I were you, I would like you're been in business for three years. I would do exactly what you're planning on doing. I would go to West Portland. I would use Ryan. I would make sure that he knows what his territory is. I wouldn't promise equity yet. I would promise a rev share to him based on the business that he brings in that can convert to pro rata equity. Maybe the same, maybe different. Maybe it's 10% rev share that converts to 5% equity or 10% equity or whatever in that territory. I would be very cautious on everything that you promise him today because a lot can change. And you're much more likely for him to feel bummed that things didn't go as you thought it might go than you are for him to just suddenly become a bad employee. Right. Like, I feel like he's already proven himself. But like, offering equity to employees can be logistically tricky. And I've made that mistake in the past of offering ownership. And then when push came to shove, it was actually hard to make that work due to external circumstances. But I think it would be a net negative if you Launched in a new market with just one service. I feel like you need that momentum. You want to get revenue in the bank. It just feels good to get that first job. Like the dopamine hit of your first revenue is better than the dopamine hit of like your first hundred thousand dollars a month. So I would just continue on the path that you're on and go to Portland and you could be a $10 million company after saturating Portland. Right.

It's awesome.

No, I appreciate the time and I agree. And the other thing on the compensation is we might just put him on a salary and make it performance based and create a spreadsheet. Hey, if you climb our revenue ladder, this is where you'll end up. And these are the benefits you'll get versus the ownership model, which is, I think, probably a better bet, but there's still upside, you know, so. Great.

Yeah.

Thank you, Chris. I appreciate the time.

Absolutely. Also, I meant to say that your website looks awesome. It seems like you're doing everything right, so just keep crushing it trying.

Appreciate it. Keep doing what you're doing. It's awesome.

All right, thank you, Brett.

See you, Chris.

See ya. I'll go ahead and read a pre submitted question. This is a topic suggestion for a future podcast. Something I see for sale occasionally are sales routes for things like tortilla brands or soda brand. I would also add like FedEx routes. The numbers are always. They always throw around, always seem too good to be true. But at the very least, I figured it would be cool to get your take on them. Loving the podcast. So keep it up. So I know exactly what you're talking about. You go to biz by sell and you say, all right, I want $200,000 per year profit businesses with the lowest multiple. Oh, this is a Mission Tortilla route in northeast Texas that nets $200,000 a year and they're selling it for $400,000 a year. I don't like these businesses. I've looked into these businesses before. I don't like it because usually, if not all of the time, you are buying yourself a job, and a really sucky job at that. Usually to make those numbers work, you either have to do it yourself or you have to hire a driver at $75,000 a year, which comes with all kinds of complexities. My good friend Keith, former owner of Heartland Bread company, The bane of his existence was delivering that bread and picking up the bread that never sold to all of the grocery stores. It's not fun. Like, logistics is hard and so if someone's selling a business that's in logistics at an attractive multiple, I would stay far away from it. Especially since there are thousands of other industries with attractive multiples that you could buy into that have much less headache. Brigham, I've seen your name pop up in my email a few times and on Twitter, and you seem like a guy that's a lot like me, just always hopping from thing to thing.

Yeah, it's a curse. Honestly. My. My parents sat me down a couple months ago and said, son, if you're going to provide for your family, you really need to focus on one thing. And I said, I'll do my best.

Okay, well, they love you. That's what matters.

They do.

They do a lot. Okay, well, let's hear about. So from what I understand, you and your wife are working for a popular fitness influencer, managing her comments. And you want to productize that somehow, right?

Yeah, more or less. So I actually do digital marketing. My wife, she works for this influencer answering dms and my sister also works for her. So I hear from both of them a lot about what this influencer does. And I'd like to keep the name of the influencer quiet just because a.

Lot of this is still. How many followers development, how many followers does she have?

1.1 million. Okay, so there, there's a lot. And a lot of them are. She's a mom and kind of plays into the mom thing. And so a lot of them are in similar phases of life. So anyway, they've got like fitness and some of the health, like foods, and they have a line of health foods and protein powders and stuff like that that they've released as well.

Okay.

A lot of the. I'll just give like a quick background on it. A lot of what. A lot of what my wife does is she just answers questions. So she pretends to be this influencer answering in her tone. They give trainings on all of that kind of stuff. They have a lot of backend resources, but they're all like Excel spreadsheets where they have common topics. Like when somebody asks about a certain thing, these are the canned responses. And it's pretty unsophisticated on the back end. And then on the client facing end, all of her content is being put out just on stories. And like Instagram essentially is her landing page. And so they've got a website, but it's a crappy website, hard to follow, not super easy to navigate, and a ton of affiliate links and other stuff like that. And then they've got on the website, there's a whole section where they have ebooks with a lot of her thoughts and education and stuff, and then a ton of podcast material and other things like that. But it's. None of it is centralized in any way. It's all just on Instagram. So as my wife's answering these questions, they're all questions that have been posted about, or there's an ebook about them, or there's a whole podcast episode about it. And so then my wife's whole job is responding to these DMs and saying, oh yeah, I actually have great content about this exact thing. Here it is. My thought was I actually reached out to a couple of Fiverr creators to see if they could create like a kajabi or teachable course. And my goal is to just take all of the content that's publicly available, like on this lady's Instagram account or her ebooks, like the free ebooks or even paid ebooks that are on her website, and then podcasts and scrape all of that content, compile it into an easily digestible thing, and then pull a list of her most active followers and run a retargeting campaign on Facebook. My question so this kind of gets into the nuts and bolts of it is I've got this lady's phone number because I've been to like company parties with my wife and things like that. And I've asked her questions and come to a point now where not like a, you know, a best friend thing, but at least familiar enough that I could probably reach out and say, hey, I've got a great idea. I'd love to sit down and ask you about it.

Yeah.

But I don't know if it'd be. I'd make 100 of the money if I just push the course out myself versus bringing her in and having her be the distribution. The only issue is just that it comes down to I don't know what copyrighted, I don't know what's.

Yeah.

Like if I can steal her kind.

Of a gray area, she has nothing to do with it.

Yeah.

So I figured this is right up the Texas snacks alley where you're the legal third party seller for all of the Texas snacks stuff. And worked out kind of a comfortable like, hey, I was working relationship. Step on mine. Yep. So I'm, I'm just curious for your thoughts on that.

Yeah. So I think that whatever you might gain in like revenue by just doing this solo, you will more than make up for by partnering with her somehow. And one thing that comes to mind immediately, which I didn't think of before this call, is using her content to make a book, like a physical book and audiobook or multiple books. I'm pretty close friends with a guy that he has like reverse engineered the Amazon algorithm to get like reviews and to get Amazon to promote you and to get like certain Facebook groups for readers and writers to promote you and Goodreads and audiobooks. And like he wrote 20 to 25 books, him and his wife. And then now he's packaging this up as like an alternative to the traditional distribution model, which they take 70% and he takes 20 or 30%. Right. And so I, I think there's a world where you could take all of our content, use AI to organize it, and then use a human, like a similar, a human of a similar demographic that speaks this language. Maybe like a mom that's really good at writing, right? That is kind of in this mom Instagram world. You could use them to take like the outline that AI gave you and actually write a physical book or use AI to tell you, like, all right, what are five really popular books, a whole series of books that I could write about all of these topics that this one person is always talking about. It's actually surprising how much physical books and audiobooks can make and the shelf life on these years or decades. Right. And if you were to do that, it doesn't have to compete with a more expensive course. It could just go side by side. Right. Some people would rather read a physical book or an audiobook or have an ebook. The physical book could be top of funnel for something more expensive. But I like the idea of you acting as an agent for her to go find a ghostwriter or to go find a company like I was just talking about with my friend, that can actually do all of the work and you're just frankly acting as a middleman. And maybe this third party company takes a 20 or 30% cut and you take a 20 or 30% cut and she takes 51%. Or maybe you take a 50% cut and she makes 20 or 30%. Because a traditional publisher is going to keep 70% anyway, right? Now granted, a traditional publisher would probably give her an advance of 50 to $500,000, which you wouldn't.

I wouldn't want to do that.

Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't suggest that. But here's the thing. So my friend approached me with this and I was immediately interested because the hard part is writing the content. And that's done. I write a hundred Thousand words a month. It's all there on Twitter. Right. And for her that's done. It might be more video format, but you can easily take the transcripts of these videos. You can automate that. Right. And so I was a very, I was a very easy quote unquote sale for him because I don't have to sit down and write this and I don't have to do the work and I still get a lion's share of the profit.

Yeah. Interesting.

What do you think about that? Do you think that could work with her and then actually partner with her to do that? So she, her distribution could just be the cherry on top and you could tell her like, listen, you're going to help throw gasoline on this fire, that there's going to be a fire with or without you, you know?

Yeah, I like that idea. As I was talking with my. I like the swig cup by the way.

That's my wife has.

That's way more, that's way more Utah than mine.

Utah thing you've ever seen.

That's the good. Quick call out for my subject line in the email I sent you.

Way more Utah than my accent. That's hilarious.

For those. I, I just mentioned a subject line that I sent in an email to you. It was a wider whale than a Utah dad.

That's good. It's one of the best I've seen.

But I like the idea of the book. As I was talking with my wife, I, I brought that up actually and she was saying that they've got a really wide horizon on products that they want to, that they want to roll out and they've got a limited team. I think they've got something like 20 full time employees, including some warehouse people and stuff like that. So they, they're spread really thin. But I think a book is on the horizon. It's just a matter of whether that's five years out on the horizon or in the next couple months. I'm not sure. Yeah, but so maybe if I just said, hey, I'll, this will be a, I'll accelerate service, then maybe that would be a lot more attractive.

I bet you anything that if a book is on the horizon, which I'm sure I'm not surprised that it already is, she probably already has a title or a concept in mind. Right. And I did too. Like I've always wanted to write a book and I, whether I use my friend or not, I'm going to have a book or multiple. But like he brought to me ideas that I had never thought of for books. And he's like, dude, you already wrote about this. And I was like, oh, okay. Well, if you're just going to accelerate the timeline and bring me new book ideas that I probably never would have launched anyways, then what do I have to lose? So maybe her shtick is, I'm making this up or organic produce. Right. And you're like, listen, like, you talk about organic produce a lot. You want to write a book on that? Great. Still do. But I've also noticed from your comments and there's these tangential topic like organic fruit or holistic eating or healing your body with fruit. I could get written for you that you're never going to write about these anyway. Right. And a lot of times when, let's say an author, they're. They don't have a hit book until book number seven. When number seven's a hit, people go back and buy one through six. It's like a. It's a rising tide situation. I just like that idea because it doesn't have to compete with what you're already thinking, like, course. And doesn't have to compete with her. Do you know how big her business is, like, on a yearly revenue basis and. Or how big her email list is?

I tried to. I know that she does do a newsletter. I don't know how big the client list is from a.

How.

My wife told me. I think it was like one month's numbers. I can't remember what it was, but they're growing really fast is the thing. So whatever numbers my wife would have told me six months ago, they've probably. They're much bigger. I don't have any idea. I mean, I could probably back into them if I had a little bit of time, but I don't have them right now.

Okay. Yeah, you could also say, listen, there's gonna be a lot of work for this book, so I'll give you 30% of it. But for every book you sell through your affiliate link, like, if you think that you're gonna sell a lot more books than me and my team are gonna sell, great. Let's put your money where your mouth is. You're gonna get 30% of everything, and then I'll give you 20% on everything that sells through your links. Right. Or 50% or whatever it is, that could be more bargaining power to keep a higher percentage. And you can also do it where it's like, listen, let me just write a chapter for you. I'll give you an outline. I'll give you a chapter if the chapter sucks, then we can scrap this whole project. But I definitely think you want to work with her and find some very creative AI tools that you don't really share with her that you withhold and use to find some really interesting topics or outlines that she might not have thought of herself. Because she's probably swapped. Right.

Yeah. No, that part is that much is very true. Is that there's way too much on her plate, way too much on her team's plate. They're going in way too many directions. And so I, that was part of why I feel like having a making a done for you offer would be really attractive.

Yeah.

So let me make sure I'm understanding you correctly. Are you saying build the course and pitch the course, but then also separately pitch a book idea as well and come across as like, hey, we'll publish your book for you and distribute your book for you and you can be an additional distributor of the book.

I would just approach her first with kind of both options stated loosely. Right. I'm like, I think the course idea could be very profitable for this reason, but I think the book idea could be very profitable with this reason. Like, for this reason, are you okay with me just taking your content and, and putting a couple things in front of you just to see what you think? And then maybe you put like an outline for a course in front of her and an outline for a book with a title and two or three different titles or concepts and then letting her steer the decision making from there.

Okay.

Cause if you're like, you don't want to go all in on one or the other because you want to hedge a little bit, but you also don't want to sound wish wishy washy. So I would sound very factual. Listen, here's what you're going to expect from a course. Okay. Here's what you can expect from a book. I think they go hand in hand. I think one can be top of the funnel for the other. I want to start working on both. I already have the content here. Are you cool if I just start exploring something and we can work collaboratively and then I'm sure she'll say yes to that because there's really no risk and then start putting stuff together.

Okay. So very cool. I like the ideas. I think I'm going to, I think I'm going to mock something up like a, an example of a course and then go get a couple, like you're saying, a couple ideas on book titles, a couple chapter outlines, and then go.

Sit down with her Yeah, I love it. Well, let me know how it goes.

Can I get one, just one additional thought on how to break down the, like an equity split or something like that, because you were saying traditional publisher is something like 70, 30 in favor of the publisher. Is that. Would you recommend something similar to that and then a 20% kickback on books that sell through her platforms?

I think so. I think that would be very generous to you. So that might just be a starting point, but if you were to shake out at 50, 50, I think that's still pretty good to you.

Okay. And then what about on the core side of things? Same similar setup?

I think so.

Yeah.

I would say just for the sake of simplicity, I would keep em the same. Okay.

Yeah.

Cool. All right, I'll go do it and I'll send you an email and let you know how it goes.

I love it, man. Thanks a lot.

Okay, thank you, Chris.

Yep. See ya.

See it.

Patrick, what's up? Hey. Those are good looking teeth. You must have a good dentist.

Oh man, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for taking the time to hop on the phone today.

Of course. Yeah, I'm really excited about this one. I love unique, sexy businesses and this seems like it's one of them. Where are you in this process? Yeah, let's just chat.

Yeah. Sorry for the issues with my connection there. I am unfortunately driving right now, parked while we're recording, but that might be the issue on the connection. So it hurts your podcast asking for questions, ideas if you had any. And I thought this might be the type of business that you'd be interested in. Last summer was exposed to Flow rider for the first time. It's. You might have been on a cruise and seen one of these, but best way I could describe it for the listeners is a surf simulator. It's a ton of fun for kids through adults. And got back and thought, man, I would love to take my kids to something like this. We live in Texas, 100 degrees in the summer, even swimming outside is hot. And so started thinking, what could it look like to create an indoor flow rider venue where you give people the opportunity to come and ride one of these machines. You have some food, beverage options, birthday parties. That's what I started thinking about and am interested in starting a business that will serve my community and help families make memories. Have a good time. And so I have done some research, talking to a manufacturer of this machine and got some pricing on that. And now I'm trying to figure out is this even a good idea? Is it crazy? Is this something that people would show up to in a way that would allow me to have a sustainable business. Do you need to have some sort of additional offering besides just the flow rider to go with it? The model I was looking at as a two lane flow rider, so could probably have about 20 people, 10 each side, going for hour sessions at a time and so. Sorry, that was a lot. Happy to answer any clarifying. I feel like I was all over the place there. But I'd say early stages of this. If I could be convinced of the numbers, I'd be ready to move forward quickly and just hard to do validation on an idea like this when you don't really have many competitors to see if this is something people are interested in.

Yeah. So where in Texas are you in?

College Station, Texas. So home of Texas A and m got like 70,000 college students and it's growing quite a bit. There's a lot of young families. Right. Connected to Brian as well. So good population base. Not a major city, but certainly think there'd be enough population to support something like this. Yeah.

Now, does it have to be indoors or could it be outdoors as well?

It could be outdoors. The only reason I was thinking indoors could make sense is in the summertime, even sitting outside, I'm a dad, gonna take my wife and I have four kids. Something like this. If it's 100 degrees and 2 o' clock in the afternoon, even if there's shade at the venue, it would, I think be not the most enjoyable experience if you weren't on the Flowrider machine as well. If it was indoor, it's something I think you could do year round and have people, even when the weather's not great, still use the machine. But it can certainly be done outside.

Does it have to be like built into the structure or is it more like a bounce house and you can.

Place it well, so as I started researching it, they've got an option that is like a mobile version that is the same material as an inflatable bounce house. It's got the similar powerful jets to where it looks like the experience would be pretty similar. You wouldn't have the ability to do the two lane option on that, so you'd have fewer customers that could go at one time. But. And I haven't been on one of those personally, but from what I understand, it's a pretty similar setup to the ones that are installed in the ground.

Okay. So it's feasible to think that you could rent a space, not have to build like a custom built space, rent a Space. Put one of these in there and have the business that way.

Yes. Yeah. So if it was, hey, I could rent a space. There's a big mall parking lot right off the highway that is empty. Could you rent that and put a mobile concession stand, snack shack and put some shade up and run this during the summer? I certainly think that would be feasible. Could be a possibility. And I just was unsure of what sort of traction in a place that gets to 102, 103 during the day, you might get at 3 in the afternoon.

Yeah. Now how does it work with the manufacturer? Do they sell it to you? Do you lease it? Is it a franchise? How does that work and how much did it cost?

Yeah. So I initially had reached out to Flowrider directly and those are super expensive to the point where I was like, ah, that doesn't really makes sense. But have sourced some things from China in the past and started reaching out to some suppliers in China and could get one of them, one of the inflatable ones for about $150,000. It was more reasonable than I had expected and I'd have to have my lawyer check to make sure there's not some sort of issue patent wise with FlowRider. And the supplier said no, it's no issue, but have not done any of that legal due diligence yet.

And what does it cost if you were to buy this one for 150 grand, how much can you make like per hour maximum if it, if there was a line?

Yeah, that's a good question. I'm a big fan of not doing public math, but the what, what I've seen is people will try and sell something like this for an hour. So say maybe sell a hour long slot and you might have 10 to 15 kids that you allow to. That way the line's not too long. You're waiting 45 minutes before you can go kind of cycle through the line quickly. Yeah, I think that you could charge 20, 25 bucks per hour slot. So I think it'd be in a, if you had 10, 15 kids, pretty reasonable to think you can make 250, 300 bucks an hour in terms of revenue just from those ride tickets. And if you did that 10 hours a day in the summer, could you do 2,500 to 3,000 bucks in a day? I certainly think if the weather was nice and you were able to get the word out. It's, it's something that, you know, I've got four kids, I'd take my kids up to, to do something like this.

Yeah. So if it were, if it had two lanes and it was 20 bucks, then each kid, what does it take? Five minutes per ride?

Oh, no, it, it's much shorter than that. Most people are wiping out pretty quickly.

They get a few tries, don't they?

Yeah. So you'd be able to go through. They estimate that you can go through a couple hundred rides at an hour. So if you had 10 people and you were able to have 200 rides over that hour, each kid going 20 times, something like that. And obviously someone who's more advanced might last longer. But when I saw it on the, the cruise, most people were not going longer than a few seconds. They were wiping out.

Yeah, I went on a cruise on one of those and I was not good and it was embarrassing. Okay.

Yeah. Especially whenever you then have the kids who are making it look easy and it's like, yeah, my pride and ego hurts there a little bit.

Yeah.

So.

So if, if you've got two lanes, let's just be conservative. Let's say you can put 15 people on it per hour. Two lanes, so 30 kids per hour for a two lane machine. 20 bucks per ride, that's what, 600. 600 bucks an hour? Is that reasonable?

I think it'd be reasonable to. I think that math checks out. Would you always be 100 utilization? Probably not. And I think it would vary on the weekends. Summ. I think it could be reasonable to hit those sorts of numbers. But again, that's where I struggle in terms of projecting this out. It's not like there's someone doing this down the road that I can go and just see, hey, how many customers are they getting? Yeah, yeah. But even if it was 50% utilization, could you get 300 bucks an hour? You know, I certainly think 50% in the summertime would be reasonable.

Have you ever looked for one of these for sale like on Facebook, Marketplace or ebay? A used one specifically?

When I talked to Flowrider, they had some used ones for sale, but they were still going to be several hundred thousand dollars. So I think getting something from China would be cheaper, assuming that the quality is what the videos show. And there's resorts throughout Asia who have these similar types of machines that were not manufactured by Flowrider but from some of the suppliers there in China. And maybe is there a scenario where if it failed, could just go and sell it and make my money back or minimize the loss? I think it's probably a niche buyer, but I've not checked Facebook marketplace for them.

Okay.

All right, I've got a bunch of ideas. So I just actually this morning I interviewed the owner of Dig World, which is like a kids amusement park for heavy machinery that isn't going to go live for a couple weeks. But it was super interesting because he placed Dig World right outside of one of the most popular shopping malls in Houston. And so he had bacon in demand. And it's basically, it's a three acre lot, grassy lot right next to the parking lot. And so it's just really easy. He doesn't own the land, he just leases it. And so if I were you, I love this idea. I would get find as many Chinese manufacturers or suppliers of this as possible and maybe there's only five. And I would ask all of them, talk to three to five of their previous customers. And they might be someone in Saudi Arabia, they might not be American, but try to get them on the phone and say like, all right, what do I need to know what? And pay them for their time. What are the expectations here? What's a good day, what's a bad day? What do you charge? How many people can you get through per hour? What type of location do you have these things at? And try to get an idea of how much money he's actually making from that exact machine that you would be buying as well. And then I would even see if you can put these outside of a mall or inside of a mall. I think water is the hardest part. Did you see my tweet about the, the inflatable bull riding business? Yeah, a few months ago.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was. Yeah, that was, that was awesome.

I look at this very similarly and all the commenters like, what about insurance? What about it? Like you just buy it. Like people insure bull riding places. That's why there are bull riding places. I look at this very similarly. A lot more expensive, but potentially higher upside because if you can make, let's say full capacity 10 hour day, which you might never have a day like this, six grand, then let's be conservative and say that an average day is two grand. That means you pay off the thing, not including labor costs. You pay off the thing in 75 days. And maybe you're only open on the weekends. Well, that's less than a year. Include the labor cost. Maybe it's two years. It's pretty good roi. You could even start calling up malls today and say, hey, would you ever allow something like this either outside or inside? And law of large numbers says that someone would. And maybe it's a crappy mall Maybe they're desperate. Maybe it's worth testing it in a crappy mall. Maybe you go find the crappy mall and you walk around and just start talking to the business owners and you find, all right, these guys are not doing well. But this type of business, maybe an arcade, is actually still, really still doing well. So I would start doing the research by getting on the phone with previous buyers of these machines and like leasing offices at malls and see if they would allow something like it. I think you're onto something with the indoor aspect, but the outdoor aspect is also interesting because you could, if these are portable, you could just start testing these at fairs and farmers markets just to like learn and like. All right, I'm never going to pay the bills by doing, yeah, farmers markets or fairs on the weekend. But I'm going to learn a lot about pricing and consumer behavior. And if you pay $10, you get five tries or three. That's going to be my testing ground for this. And then use that research to make a decision. But I bet you that there's a market for buying something like this. But like anything, when you're buying something from China that's that expensive, buyer beware. Because those things could leak. You never know. There's of course risks. But.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I appreciate the feedback and I've talked to. It seems like most of the customers are in Asia and I've talked to one of them and that seems like most of these are placed at large resorts, water parks, and there are some here in the States, but they're part of Kalahari Indoor Water park, this massive water park here in Texas. And so I appreciate your suggestions and plan to make some calls and see what I can find out. And I am getting close to just saying worst case scenario, if there's a way to test it in the parking lot of a mall or do this in a low risk way, be interested to see if it could lead to anything. So I'll keep you posted. But really appreciate your time and suggestions today.

Oh, sorry I lost you for a second, but I got the gist of it. Yeah, I think it's worth testing for sure. And I want to hear how it goes. Even if you don't end up launching. I want to hear what you learned from this research Church.

Awesome. Well, I'll keep you posted, man. Thank you so much for all that you do. I really appreciate it.

Of course. Yeah. Thanks for coming on.

Yeah.

Have a great weekend.

You too. See it. Thanks for joining us on the Kerner office today. Hope you learned a bunch, and I hope you subscribe and share with a friend and we'll see you next time.