Q&A: Towing biz for drunks, startup for job seekers, roof repair lead generation + more! Ep. #003. Small Business Ideas and Entrepreneurship

This is Kerner's Corner, episode three of ten. We're going to keep this going in seven weeks if it's any good. If it's not, we're going to abandon it. Because I've got, you know, 852projects going on right now, and I don't need another one unless it's showing some signs of life. So the purpose of Kerner's Corner is to ask any questions, such as help me with my business partnership dispute. Help me decide whether or not I should start this business. Should I start this job? Should I go all in on crypto? Should I marry my high school sweetheart? Should I get half barbacoa, half chicken or full barbacoa? These are all good questions, but really, like, evaluate my business idea. Roast my business idea. Here's my business. Tell me how to grow it. Tell me how to acquire customers.

What.

What is my customer segment? What is a revenue line that I might be or a revenue stream that I might be missing? So the way it kind of goes is you'll start by kind of posing a question or a problem, and then I'm going to ask you, like, five to 20 questions to really get to the heart of it, and then I'll kind of give you a prescription, and then that's it. So also, if you just have a really cool business that you want to brag about, please do. I'd love to hear about it and I'd love to tweet about it, but most people are hesitant to do that because they want people to copy them, and I get it. So, Heath, do we have any people requesting to speak yet? No requests yet, but if you're interested in doing any of the things Chris just said, hit the request button and I'll add you a speaker and we'll get this show on the road. All right, so a few people sent in some questions beforehand so I can get to those while we wait. Live is always better. What were you saying? I said, let's do it. Let's do the one from Tamerlone. That was. Was that the H Vac one?

Yeah.

All right, so he says, I have a working demo for a tool that gives historical data on a building's H Vac systems, outputs to a custom website. No one gives good data on the. What the heck happened this morning before my shift? How do I reach the managers of these buildings when they aren't on LinkedIn? Slash, anywhere? So this guy is looking for the commercial property managers specifically so he could sell them software that spits out data on H VAC system systems. So first of all they are on LinkedIn, you just don't really know what their title is yet. So if you don't have any customers then I would drill down on what their title is first. If you do have customers, then just look up what their titles are or look at what companies they work for and then use Apollo to search for them in LinkedIn by title and just start doing cold outreach. Otherwise, whenever I have trouble finding a customer segment to market to, I just go to Upwork and ask for help from VAs that can do the job for me because they're going to be full of ideas. This is all they do for a living. So when in doubt, ask a VA on upwork. But I I do agree that this seems kind of like a hard customer segment to sell to, but that usually means that it's offset by great recurring revenue or software that's really integrated into their systems. Therefore low churn or just high ticket. So persist, don't give up because it sounds like it'll be a good business if you can find some customers all right, we got 40 people in here but no one wants to talk. No requests. All right, I'm going to go to the second question. It usually takes a good 15, 20 minutes to warm up the room. So second question this guy so I've tweeted about the great solar eclipse happening in April and so this guy says, I'm guessing you get a million messages asking for advice, but I'm going to anyway. I had the idea for eclipse glasses back in 2017 after I paid $40 for a pair. In April of 2023 I started the process of building a website, finding a certified manufacturer, etc. My plan has been to target event spaces and schools, sell in bulk, and then travel to Austin and sell in person the weekend before. I've sent several thousand emails to event spaces and schools in my largest cities. I'm originally from Maine, family is still there, so I've sent them a couple thousand yada yada yada. My email marketing has not worked well. My end goal is to roll the profits into a couple of the product ideas I have and hopefully escape the 9 to 5. Do you have any thoughts on other approaches or potentially connections that would have any interest in glasses? Yes, I do. So you might not like this advice, but you're putting all this work into developing these glasses for an event that's going to last literally two and a half minutes. Minutes. Now that might sound hypocritical because I wrote 2500 word newsletter on making a profit on this event. But it was based around making a profit at scale with like a race that could really make you six, seven figures and that you could roll into other eclipses in the future. You don't need glasses for every eclipse. So I feel like if you already have these skills and the hustle and the, the wherewithal, you to build a business that will only last for a day, then transfer those skills over to something else that's more sustainable. Also, like there's so many people in on Alibaba selling these glasses, I would just not worry about a manufacturer. Just buy some and flip some. So that would be my suggestion. Awesome. Well, we have to have a couple people. Yeah, Corey was first. So Corey, why don't you come off mute and ask a question.

Hey guys, if you remember me, I talked last week about a lead gen agency. So I have a question about pricing for that.

Is this that cold email?

Yes sir, that's correct.

Okay, yeah, hit me with it.

So I was talking with a business owner. I mentioned last time that my parents are owners of self storage properties and that puts me in an interesting position. I manage one of their facilities and all day long I get to talk with different business owners for all these different, different enterprises. A lot of them are landscapers, but we also have somebody who does Amazon fba. And I was talking with him about it in passing yesterday and he mentioned to me that I probably need to charge a little bit more for my service than I was anticipating. He likened my cold email service to like a wholesaler, for example, in real estate. And all they do is make a connection between a buyer and a seller and they get a commission. And he said 10% commission is fairly standard. But what I was looking at was much less than that. I was looking at about a 2% commission based on what my target audience was. So in terms of pricing, if the deal that I would bring to a recruiter or a staffing agency is worth anywhere 20 to 50 grand, what do you think a realistic offer could be for pricing? For me, I was originally thinking a $500 onboarding fee with maybe like a small like 250 to $350 fee per booked meeting. But maybe it'd be better to go for something like a commission on their commission, which is what he suggested. Maybe like a flat 5 to 10% of that commission.

So.

So I just wanted to get your insight on that.

Yeah, great question. So I like doing this 6 12, 18 months down the road, this type of a Model, but not from the outset. And here's why. You don't know yet what your conversion rate is going to be. You don't know the quality of the lead that you're going to be passing on to the recruiters. You don't know like what the funnel looks like. Is it going to take 10 calls to get one sale or two calls to get one sale? And so there's always going to be a trade off between the size of your ticket and how much handholding or tracking or preventing of the recruiter bypassing you. That goes on. And so if I were you, I would start with no onboarding fee, no flat monthly fee, but a pay per, like call booked lead fee, call it 50, 100, $200, whatever you think is fair, and then just maniacally follow up with your recruiter. How's it going? How's that guy work out? How'd that guy work out? How'd that guy work out? Now only going to want to hop on calls with people that look good on paper in their resume. So these should be good, solid leads. And then after a few months once you learn. All right, all right. It's taking five calls on average for a recruiter to close a lead. Then you can blast that on the front page of your website and say, you know, we have a 20x ROI. Like, that's huge. Then you can start kind of testing, pull a client to the side and say, hey, I want to test this percentage model. I think it'll save you money. Right now you're spending $1,000 for every person you bring on. What if I took 2% of the. The close and then it'll be $500. And so you're probably wondering, why would I do that? But I, I just want data, right? I just want to learn. You're going to net out ahead. I'm going to get some data, a great case study, and then I can put that on my website. So you just, you just got to start testing and you got to be patient with the pricing. It's, it's really like the guy who's, who's telling you that you could take 10%. Yeah, you probably could, but not yet. Nobody knows who you are and you don't know how good or bad these leads are. So I would just start super cheap. Get your foot in the door, get some traction, get some data, get a case study, and then charge more later on.

That's very good insight, Chris. I appreciate it. I also just want to say one last thing. I, I love Your ability to very quickly analyze and give, like, what seems to me to be, you know, million dollar advice in one minute, it's just phenomenal to me. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Corey, Good luck. All right.

Thanks.

Corey. I'm not sure how to say the next person in line, but your user handle is AA Oritz1124. You're the next. So go for it.

Hey, yeah.

Yes, Mr. Ortiz.

So I'm driving right now, so let me know if I cut off or anything. But nobody wanted to talk, so I figured I'd jump in here. It's kind of a funny business idea that. It's just a spitballing business idea that I would like to tell you just to see, get your thoughts on it. So before I do that, quick question for you. In what scenario would you tow your vehicle? Would I tow it or have it towed?

Well, if I had a flat tire or it broke down.

So pretty much if you think of towing, you think of something negative, correct? Something negative happen. So, yep, it's fair to say that towing has a bad PR problem. Okay, so this is what I'm thinking. What if you, in quotations, rebrand towing? So let's say, for example, a use case, somebody after work, they go drive to the bars with their buddies and they have a little bit too much to drink, and they know they shouldn't drive home, but they don't want to Uber home because then they gotta come wake up in the morning the next day and come pick up the car. So what if we offer them a home delivery service or not a toy home delivery service. And then when in the morning after they get home, the car's already in the driveway, so the responsible thing to do is not going to cause any convenience.

And then.

Would the tow truck driver give them a ride home or they would Uber home?

I'm sure for now they would have to Uber home like they were going to do anyways or like they would have to drive home when they know they shouldn't have. But in this case, they. They Uber home and then they just, with a few clicks on their phone, they schedule a pickup. And when they wake up in the morning, their car is going to be home. So obviously not everybody can afford this. This is for a specific. A guy that's already dropping 400 at the bar, he wouldn't mind spending another 200 or something. Whatever the towing is. And how that would work is we wouldn't own any of the towing vehicles. There's 30, 30 mom and pop shops already towing vehicles. They would put, we would have the flow of orders and then we just go subcontract a towing company and there's no rush.

Yep.

The car just has to be there by the time they wake up at 7am or whatever.

Okay, so I was, as you started, I was prepared to hate the idea because I don't like the idea of rebranding a whole industry. I don't, I don't. I don't think you have to do that. I like the idea. Also, the domain name drunk toes.com is available. Someone wants to snag that. I like the idea because tow trucks sit idle, you know what, 90, 95% of the time. So what are they doing between 10pm and 3am every day? They're probably contracted out with, you know, bar owners and restaurants that are parking illegally. But aside from that, they're probably just sitting. So I like the idea of calling a tow truck owner a smaller company, giving him this idea and saying, hey, do you mind if I just test this with you? Like, as my fulfillment partner, I'll do all the marketing and everything. And I don't even want to make money on this yet. I just want to see does this work? Can we generate some good local pr? Do bar owners care about this? Like, I just want to test it, but I want to know, like, if I call you, you're going to know what I'm talking about and you're going to happy, you're going to be happy to go do this and then get like a list of his prices. And then I would try that like drunktoes.com and I don't think you have to go into like, towing is negative, but it doesn't have to be like, just forget all that. Just reposition the whole service as towing for drunks. Right. And I think it's even more attractive if the tow truck driver will give them a ride home because then they'll save money on an Uber. They don't have to go get their car the next day. But I like that idea. And you could, you could take what I did in college. I had an iPhone repair store and we marketed by getting Tyvek wristbands with our ad printed on them. And then we gave them out to bars for free. And then bars would just distribute them to people as they walked in. And then people get drunk, they would break their phone. They would have a coupon on their wristband for phone restore. They would bring it in. And it was amazing marketing. So you could do the same thing. You could go to A bar owner say, hey, you know how you're buying wristbands? Don't buy them anymore. I'll give them to you for free. And then you put their ad on there and you can see what you can make.

Yeah.

Another cool way I was thinking of advertising this would be go to the bars at like 5am and the cars that are still parked, they're probably gonna get picked up in the morning by the owner. You can leave a. Something on there saying, your car could have been home already.

I like that. Yeah. Yeah. My only. My only question to this is, how much money could you make? Right. What could you charge? What could your margin be? Especially if you were just middleman. That's my big. That's my biggest.

I was thinking like, Uber, there's a gross booking and then our fee on top. So the person pays whatever the towing is, and we just charge a little fee on top since we're not. We don't have any equipment, no employees, no nothing. It's just. Which is the lead generator for the towing companies and we're the. The service for the homeowners or the nothing.

Yeah. I feel like it needs to be just a flat price to the consumer, and then you work out a percentage fee on the back end with the. The tow. The tow truck owner. Just keep it simple to the consumer. But, yeah, that's a good idea.

It's kind of a meme idea. I just wanted to. Just. Does nobody want to speak?

No, it's. Sometimes the meme ideas are the best ideas. So thank.

Yep.

Thanks, man. All right, the next speaker we got is Kevin C. You're up, Kevin. Hey, Chris. First of all, thanks for. For doing this.

I joined a little late, so I.

Caught the very tail end of your solar eclipse talk. So you may have already kind of spoke to this, but I started back in 2017.

I'm in Virginia.

I ended up paying like 40 bucks for two pairs. And so, yeah, I. This is the question I just answered, actually. Okay. So I've already started. It started about a year ago.

I've got a website, glasses, bunch of stuff.

My, My. I guess my biggest question. I've sent about 2,500 cold emails out to event places and schools. I thought those would be, like, good.

Places to kind of get some bulk.

Orders since I bought 40,000 of these and I haven't had a block with, like, the marketing. I'm flying out to Austin because I have a friend there, and there's a.

Million people there just to try and sell them.

Yeah, I was Wondering if you had any thoughts on, like, I haven't done cold calling yet.

It's kind of my next step.

But I can. I can link my website if you have suggestions for that too. I think I know what to tell you. So if you already have 40,000 glasses, like, okay, you got to get rid of them. I would join local Facebook groups all along the eclipse path that are, like, targeted. I mean, ideally they're targeted at business owners, but you might not find a lot of those. So at least just targeted at the locals, like buy sale, garage sale, Facebook groups all along the path and say, hey, anyone want to make some money and just go the wholesale route? Let's say you pay 50 cents for these. I would just try to unload them honestly, like free shipping, you know, different price breaks for 500 or 1,000. And like, you. You could sell these, you know, buy them for a dollar and sell them for 20, or buy them for $5 and sell it for 20 and just try to unload them. And based on the demand you see or not, start adjusting your price from there because obviously if these don't sell in the next couple of weeks, they're never going to sell.

Yeah.

And then. And then take some with you to Austin and try to sell some yourself for full margin. That was my. I'm going up like, four days before.

So I thought I'd hit up, you.

Know, a couple universities, a church, couple churches, and then just like, kind of set up in parks and stuff. Yeah. I just. I don't know how much luck you're going to have going through these schools, churches, businesses, and buildings, because they're. They're not going to put much mind space into an event that only lasts a couple minutes. Right. It's just not on their radar. But if you appeal to everyone's get rich quick gene, because we all have one, then just appeal to them. The individual that has a thousand bucks that wants to turn it into 5,000 bucks in two hours. Right. That's what I would focus on. They're a lot easier to reach. You could copy and paste the Same post in 100 to different Facebook groups, and I bet you'll unload them. All right, awesome. Thanks so much, Chris. Appreciate the advice. Yep. No problem. Yep. All right, thanks. Let's see, we have Alex next.

You're up.

All right, thanks for taking the call. So I want you to roast my idea about this lead gen business that I just thought of last night, just because I recently had a roof refer done to my house. So I would via I don't know, door hangers, signs, whatnot. Facebook to try to sell drone to homeowners, basically, as a roof inspection. And if there's any issues with that, then I would try to kind of package that and try to sell to. Are the roofers in the area.

So what is the pitch to the homeowner? Does the homeowner have to pay for.

This just to cover the cost? I think so. They'll, you know, I'll probably do, like, you know, twice, you know, inspection, twice a year, like $99 or something like that. You know, no issues.

It's all good.

If they have issues, then if they agree to, you know, get quotes from roofers, then I can maybe, you know, sell the, you know, these are pretty good leads to roofers.

So.

And then I. But I have no idea what, you know, it would cost or how to package that. So I just want to hear your thoughts on that.

Would you be taking these pictures, like, with or without their consent? First with. Because they're.

The homeowners will pay for it. Yeah.

Okay, what about the idea of just proactively taking pictures of everyone on the block and then offering to sell them to them? What do you think about that? My uncle does that. Actually. He. He does it, like, on a commercial scale. Like a new high school was built in the area, and he took a bunch of drone pictures, and he's like, hey, do you want to buy these? And he has, like, a 60% conversion rate or something. And so I don't think anyone would really get pissed if you took a picture of their house from a drone. And, like, it's going to happen a small percentage of the time. I don't think it should be enough for you to worry about, but I would. I would try the. The positioning of it and think, like, all right, like, some people just want a picture of their house.

Sure.

Right. Especially if it's a really nice house or especially if they recently bought it. And then some people might just want to know, you know, how does their roof look? I just don't know. What I don't like about this idea is that it's. It's new and novel, and so you don't know. You know, you could just be spinning, spinning your wheels, trying to test something that's not already proven. But if I were you, I would start with, like, a cul de sac with, like, 20 homes, and you're like, okay, this is my test subject, and if it doesn't go well, then I'm not going to do this further. And take pictures of every house. And then, honestly, I would just knock their doors in the evening and say, hey, I'm taking pictures of these homes. And then insert pitch A, B, C or D. You could go for the angle of just, do you want a nice frame, like a professional picture of your home? Or it's like, hey, would you like your home inspected once a year, twice a year for a hundred dollars? And. And then like. Or would you like your home inspected for free? About that. And then you just sell the leads. Like you with any marketplace. You can. Marketplace or you can. You could monetize the buyer or the seller or both. And so I would start with one and then six months down the road, be like, okay, can I monetize the other side of this? Like, 80% of homeowners would love to see a free picture of their house. What percentage of them would be willing to pay?

I see.

But if you start charging both sides of the marketplace in the beginning, then you're not going to know, is this a bad idea? Or am I just charging to. Am I trying to charge, too?

Got it. Yeah, that makes sense.

But I'm curious to see how it goes. So if you try it, let us come back and let us know. Okay, thank you. No problem, man. Cool. Thanks, Alex. Chris, we have one in the comments, actually, this time they are unable to talk right now, so I thought I would just. Why don't you. Why don't we save the comments for, like, near the end or if there's any empty space, just since we have four people waiting. Sure, no worries. All right, Odetta, you're up.

Sweet. Thanks for having me. I have two questions. So the first is I'm a data Engineer for an IoT startup in the waste hauler space, and we have some customers via data subscription for what we provide to their customers for ERP initiatives when they have corporate customers. But I recently went to a conference and, you know, I had kind of a hard time, you know, identifying kind of who to approach or how to kind of break the ice there, because the profile of a waist hauler and kind of the area of prowess that I'm coming from for the product are a little bit different. So I was just curious for this first question, if you have any advice on how to kind of show up and communicate or, you know, when it is that I'm looking for more haulers to add to the book of business there, like, what. What are some approaches I can take?

So it's an IoT software that you sell to waste haulers Is that correct?

Yeah. So it's twofold. So there is a data portal that they offer to their customers when they're corporate customers who have ESG initiatives where it is that they need to track how much waste is diverted from landfills. And one of the ways we enable that is through Second Piece, which is an IoT device that sits on top of waste bins. Well, not on top of them, but below them, actually measures the amount of waste in the garbage can versus measuring it on the truck beds.

Interesting. So that device sits on, like, the homeowner's. Like underneath the homeowner's garbage cans.

Yeah, yeah.

So whether you're an education, educational institution who has to measure how much you're composting from the cafeterias, or if you're just a regular, everyday homeowner, we have these devices that sit underneath the bins which will measure how much is in them every 10 minutes so that you can figure out how much you need to pick up what you're, like, route planning to figure out how much tonnage is actually on your route planned or for more accurate invoicing.

Okay, so let's say, for instance, an elementary school hosts a big conference of teachers in the whole county, and they cater all this food and they throw half of it away. And your device will tell the waste hauler, hey, alert, alert. Like, there's a lot more waste in here than there normally is. So plan your route accordingly.

Yeah, yeah. Or, you know, they're on 123 Main Street. You and your neighbor have the same bin. The hauler typically will take the total tonnage of the street that they pick up for their route and then average it out for what they charge you. But if you have a bin full of paper and your neighbor has a bin full of soup, then you're not going to be very happy with being charged with the soup.

Okay. Yeah. So you're. You're selling this to waste haulers that serve consumers and homeowners and also, like, in a B2B setting as well?

Yep, that's correct.

Okay. And did you say this is a startup?

Yeah, this is a. It has funding. It's a startup. I'm a data engineer for the company, but because of where I'm located, I went to a conference and they're like, hey, you know, if there's haulers in the area, like, let's try to build up that book of business. I'm like, all right, I'll do my best. But, you know, sales isn't my natural language. So.

Okay. All right, so. So your question is, you know, you were kind of thrown for a loop. You went to this conference, and they're like, hey, let's. Let's go sell. And you're like, I'm a data engineer, so you're kind of. You're calling in to ask how you should approach selling. Is that correct?

Yeah. Or not even selling, but, like, how do I, you know, start a conversation with some of these folks who are. Who are supposed to be servicing but aren't, you know, isn't really who I hang out with on a daily basis?

Yeah, yeah. So what are these folks doing today to solve this problem? Nothing. Or they have. Or you have a competitor that they're using.

So either they're losing customers, so they're not solving for it, because there are now actual government policies for requiring waste haulers to report, like, landfill diversion and corporate customers who need that for, like, carbon accounting and. Or the other way that they're doing it is by. They actually have, like. So, for example, composters are some of our customers, and they'll have, like, an actual, like, luggage scale, like, handle and will individually weigh in with the luggage scale.

Okay, so are you specifically trying to sell them in person or just in general?

I mean, really, it was in person. I think that was the canon event here for how I was, you know, trying to learn to speak with these folks. It is more in general. I think that this is a skill set I'd like to develop on, but I know it's not really even just, like, selling up front, but kind of getting to know and start a conversation with these people.

Okay. All right, so if I were you. And what city is this conference in?

Yeah, so it was actually in the Wisconsin Dells. I'm from Wisconsin, and, you know, it's the Midwest area. I previously was working in New York, but I kind of came back home here. So just a lot of Midwestern, you know, hauler folks whose families have kind of owned these companies for generations.

Okay, and do you guys have any customers yet?

Yeah, we have some out in New York and Boston, both of the city cities out there, and then also some of the largest haulers out there.

And what is a typical customer? Are they usually more sophisticated or are they usually very old school?

They. It really has been through strategic investors that we've gotten our first few customers. It primarily has been educational institutions and haulers who do have corporate clients who they're trying to keep their contracts with but are at risk of losing them because they don't have the ability to report accurate tonnage information to them on a regular basis. They typically, you know, if they are sophisticated, quote unquote, they have like a intern who's an Excel monkey trying to put this together.

Yeah. Okay, so even though you acquired your first customers through referrals and investor partnerships or friendships or whatever it is, I would think that those customers like still would not use you if it just wasn't on their radar or wasn't in their wheelhouse. And so I would take a profile of the customers that you have already acquired and just try to copy and paste that. And like I would go to Outscraper or Google Maps and find all of the potential customers within a one hour drive of the conference and go look at their websites and see are they mostly targeting consumers. It's going to be pretty obvious. Or B2B and make a list of the top 10 B2B and just start knocking doors. Like it. It's always kind of, I think entrepreneurs, a lot of times they're like, all right, we're selling this new software, it's going to really improve their business. So we need to go find a customer that is most likely to not be using something like this. But that customer is most likely to never use something like this. Right. Or to not adapt to it until it's too late. So I would look for the more sophisticated customers that actually like have their ear to the market and know that these ESG initiatives are not going away. In fact, they're going to get more and more onerous. And then just, I would take five and like try to reach out to them beforehand and set something up and take another five and just show up and then ask them how are they solving it. Like I would lead with some fear tactics like, hey, did you know about X, Y and Z, you know, ESG initiative coming down the pipeline? Like, we're just kind of doing a survey on what you're doing to prevent against that. And either A, they have an answer or B, they don't know what you're talking about. And now they're like, oh, what? You know, and then just like start learning from them and don't even try to sell that. Just learn what their pain points are and, and learn like what type of pitch is most effective with them. What do you think about that?

Yeah, yeah, it sounds like typically for like some of the feedback around, being able to block and tackle around this conference event, it would have been kind of setting up some warm leads beforehand so I could go in, you know, kind of Looking for a familiar face. I think it was really being there and you know, I got friendly with some of the, you know, like regulators who are in the area and the municipalities just because they are a little bit more accessible, whether we were sitting down for lunch or something. But yeah, rather than kind of looking into, see people of faces, I don't know, and be like, all right, which one's a hauler? How do I, you know, who do I target here? Does walk up. Hi, I'm, you know, I'm so and so. Nice to meet you.

Are you able to like buy an attendee list beforehand?

I don't know, I'll have to ask. It was a rather smaller event, so probably in reaching out to the coordinators, I might be able to.

Yeah, I would check for that. A lot of times they'll sell it to you beforehand or if you buy like the most premium package, you'll get it included. Okay, sweet.

Yeah, no, that's awesome. Yeah, thank you. Now I think the idea of just kind of setting up something warmer beforehand would have been helpful and then also just showing a natural curiosity and you know, what they're seeing face to face. Sounds like a really nice accessible approach.

Yeah, I mean, just make sure to convey that you're genuinely interested in their industry because they never ever see that and they'll be, you know, flattery is profitable. They'll be flattered, they'll be grateful and they'll just want to, you know, spill the beans to you.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'll come up with some, some ice breaking compliments for some middle aged men. It'll be fun. Yeah. Sounds like my second question to piggyback off of that would be, I think in some of the things that I'm doing, I know that to get to the scale I want to be at, I'll have to hire people and I, you know, I've been, I've been hired. I've otherwise only heard really like horror stories of having bad employees just from, you know, what actually gets, you know, liked on the Internet. So I was hoping that you can maybe just kind of reset kind of like expectations or impressions of what it's like to actually have any sort of employee or hired contractor in managing them. Is it, is it truly hell on the other side of doing it or is it, you know, is there some sort of piece you're able to find because you are hiring?

Yeah, no, it's, I, I think you're going to have a harder time if you try to hire, quote, industry experts or people from Competing companies or people in the trash business. I would, I would hire fresh, like young people out of college that are humble and moldable and they're teachable. I think you'll have a much better time. Like, you'll bang your head against the wall less, but you'll. But you'll train them. You'll have to train them more, but I think you'll. It'll be a net positive in the end.

Okay, gotcha. And is that just from, you know, just reduced workload or having, you know, more. More brains in the same room for the same thing or what. What is the true, you know, benefit other than just like delegated work that comes from having a hired team?

The true benefit of hiring people?

Yeah. Yeah. I would love to hear if there's anything above and beyond, like work delegation that you've really found in your experience.

No, I mean, you're a startup and you're funded. Like, you're going to have to do that to grow. And so what will these people be doing? Will they be selling or more data scientist stuff?

Yeah. So it probably would be more in line with some. Probably like technical customer service or like onboarding and early implementation work. I would say that this is also only one of the contracts that I hold. So I'm also thinking about this from a data digital transformation, data engineering agency kind of route, because I have a few different companies that I'm working with alongside this one.

Okay. Yeah. I. If it's a route, a role like that, I would just hire someone fresh out of college. And don't. I don't be afraid of hiring like, you're, you're funded, your investors are going to want to see growth and it's just necessary and it. Honestly, I have a lot more positive experience for managing and leading people and hiring them than I do negative. So I would just go into it with a positive, you know, confirmation bias and look for the good. And I think you'll do great.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Well, you know, it might be a little abstract. I do appreciate having another data point saying, like, you know, it's a good thing, like, do this. So thank you.

Absolutely. Thanks for your questions.

Yeah, of course.

All right, thanks, Odetta. The next one we have is Andrew Hill. I know you mentioned you might be having some connectivity issues. Well, let's give it a try.

I think it's better now. Can you guys hear me?

Okay? Perfect.

Okay, good deal. Good deal. I apologize for. Had to jump off and jump back on, so. No, I appreciate it, Chris. Thank you. This is Great. I love, love what you're doing here. This is, this is awesome. Yet you'd mentioned early on, yes, I DM'd you about that. There's a, the nil thing that we're talking about, this is actually completely different from that. So I'm wanting to get some, some, I guess some other feedback from someone else on an idea that I've, I've started that's about 80 to 90% done, it's bootstrapped and, and just would love to hear some feedback on it. Basically what it is, it's a service for job seekers that are feeling like they are just blending in, in the, in the job search. And so what I mean by that is all LinkedIn profiles look the same. You know, you can have different, different bullet points on your LinkedIn profile, so on and so forth, but you're really going to blend in, especially right now with, with how many job seekers there are. And so the idea that I came up with is called beyond the Page. And what this is, is a service where a job seeker can, they can go onto our platform which we use a third party video recording service called Video Ask where they go on and they can actually do a two minute video on each position that they've held. So each experience that they've had, they can do a very quick video that says, hey, this is what I did here, here's my successes, here's where I excelled, you know, so on and so forth. So they've got a video for each one of their experiences. They can also do a video for their education. And then at the end of it there is an option if they want to, they can do what is kind of like a mock interview questions on there that they can pick and choose from and answer those questions, you know, between a minute and two minutes. And what we do on the back end is we will, we take those videos when they're, when they're done, we put them into a professional post production. I guess if you will have a graphic with their name on there and so on and so forth, give it back to them. So they can actually then post it under each section of their LinkedIn profile. So if, you know, in my latest experience I can post a video of what I did there, you know, the, the positives, all the successes I had. And so they've got a video for each of their experiences, one for their education and then, and then at the top they can also put that, that mock interview, if you will, they can also take that link for that mock interview, put it on their resume if they'd like. So a potential employer can actually instead of just. And I know it goes through an ATS system, I get that. But when a potent, when it reaches a potential employer's inbox, they see the, they see the link or they go to their LinkedIn profile, they can actually see and hear from the job seeker as opposed to just looking at these bullet points and guessing. And so, and this stems from, you know, I was in staffing and recruiting for over 20 years and I hired a lot of, I hired a lot of salespeople. I interviewed even more, of course. And so you don't know until you don't know what you're getting into until you actually talk to them. And so the idea is to give these folks an opportunity to kind of let themselves stand out from the other job seekers that are there. You can see and hear from these people. And then the final part of this is we would have them, we would give them the option if they would like to. We're going to do a, I'd like to do a beyond the page experience, which is a pod, like a video podcast where they can come on and talk even more about their experience and in more of a, you know, like a talk show type format. All of this would be for $99 for a job seeker. So they get all of that, all of these videos done and then, and then, and then the podcast as well. So I'm just interested to hear your thoughts on that. Having with your experience and obviously with hiring people, all that fun stuff. So would love to, love to hear your thoughts.

So is it meant to, to like, is the main purpose of it to integrate with LinkedIn or to go outside of LinkedIn like you were saying, which.

Is like the primary purpose, primary purpose is actually LinkedIn. So there is a space on there under each experience where you can add a link for media and it will post underneath your, your under your experience and it'll show the thumbnail of that video and the, the employers or anyone can click on that video and watch that video.

Okay, and is it 99 one time.

Or no 99 one time fee. And then from there after that we, each year it'll be 25 bucks to host the videos for them. So, so 99 gets you all of the videos done plus plus hosting for the first year and then 25 bucks a year after that.

And what are you targeting? A certain type of role or a certain industry?

Yeah, so that's the interesting part. I, not necessarily industry specific, more of this would be huge, in my opinion, for salespeople. Salespeople, you know, they want to talk, they want to, you know, they, they've got to, they've got to be able to articulate, you know, what they're selling, of course, but it's not necessarily just for salespeople. And that's the big thing that I, that I want to. It's such a broad opportunity for folks that are even in, you know, management. If you're operating and you're an operator, you're a manager and you've got people, you need to be able to, you've got to be able to articulate what you want these folks to be, be doing. And if you can do that and show, show yourself as well as show your passion, show what your, your true colors are to a, to a potential employer, then that's kind of a. I would consider that to be kind of a big deal for potential employers as well as job seekers to be able to. You're going, I mean, not to sound, you know, you're going beyond the page. So it's beyond the resume, beyond the, the profile, I guess.

Okay. Have you tested this yet?

Not yet. I am, I am still, I'm like, I'm about 80 to 90% done with it and I bootstrapped it. It's not, you know, it's not been a big expenditure, but I tend to jump into things and do them and then, and then research late research later on, so not, not a good method, but that's what I do, so.

Well, that's okay. All right, so here's what I would do. I would like this week or next week, I would test this in a low tech way with five to 10 people. Have them like just open up their camera, loom, iPhone, whatever. You don't have all the systems ready yet. I get that. And so find five to 10 people that are looking for jobs, preferably all in the same industry. So you can keep that variable constant and just test it like without launching, without having a full website ready to go. And then like a couple posts on LinkedIn and just see, you're gonna have to measure. How do you measure if people are actually clicking on the video and watching it? Within LinkedIn?

Yeah, within LinkedIn.

Would it be a third party tool?

Actually, we load the videos into Vimeo so we can actually, we can pull the analytics off of, off of Vimeo.

Okay. Because there's, you have no way of knowing today if people actually watch these. Right. And I said this a couple people ago where I, I Very. I'm always hesitant on new ideas because you just don't know. And to me, $99 doesn't seem like a lot of money for you. Right? Like, I think you either you need to charge more, but the market might not bear it, or you need to pivot into something that enables you to charge more. I love the idea of focusing exclusively on salespeople because there's a whole industry built around selling salespeople because salespeople directly generate revenue. Right. Whereas if you focus on anyone looking for a job, then your results are going to be all over the map. But we know there's already a precedent for people paying a lot of money for a killer salesperson. I think what else you should do is start with one type of video and that is call it 30 seconds of the salesperson. Let me back up one type of video, but with two segments. So the second segment is going to be like a two to three minute live recording of the salesperson selling whatever it is that he's selling in the wild. Like, and he can, you can curate this. He can pick and choose whichever one, it doesn't matter. But it has to be real. And so let's say he sells Salesforce, right? It needs to be a video of him with audio from both sides, like, working it right? Maybe even it's like a highlight reel. Like, think of like a, like a sports highlight reel for salespeople. So it's not just one call, but it's five to 22nd segments of a dozen different calls all aggregated into one. And I'm sure there's, there's a cap cut, there's clap app, there's a bunch of like AI video softwares out there that will allow you to just upload a bunch of stuff and it will tie it all together for 80 bucks a month or whatever. And so the, the second segment will just be like a highlight reel of them selling in the wild. And then the first segment will just be them introing what they do. Like, hey, my name's John. I've been a Salesforce for three years. I'm in the top 4%. I made 375 grand last year. I'm about to show you some clips and this is what I'm selling. I sell their suite of X, Y and Z tools and I'm really good at this. I'm not so good at this. I would love to chat. And then it goes right, right into their highlight reel. And then, and then you put that in there in their LinkedIn. And then you watch the analytics on the back end and see how that.

See if it gets clicked. I like it a lot. Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah. Then you get to see them, like you said, in the wild. You actually get to see them doing their thing, I guess, if you will. Love that.

Okay.

Yeah, no, that's great. That is great. I guess as you'd mentioned, the pricing as well, and I, and I, you know, I toyed, you know, obviously we're not live yet, but I toyed with that a little bit. And so my, my thought was if you've got a job seeker, if you've got somebody that's out of work, you know, you don't, I don't want to gouge them, of course. You don't want to go too high. But then again, you know, we, we want to make money at this, of course. So I don't, you know, providing videos and then possibly going on to a podcast is, is that you think that would justify a higher price point for these folks?

I don't like the podcast idea because I don't think many people are going to listen to it. Okay. And I think with the people you're selling to, they're going to realize that. So it won't be much value conveyed. But I do like the idea on the pricing side of somehow tracking who's viewing their profile and charging someone at the end of the transaction, either, you know, the employer or the employee, a multi thousand dollar fee. Like it, like a, a discounted placement fee, so to speak.

Right.

Like a light placement fee as opposed to just 100 bucks. And maybe that's to, you know, traditionally to the employer, but you'll have to figure out ways of tracking that. No, absolutely.

That's great. That's great. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's, that's helpful. I'll, I will, I will diligently get back to work and kind of, kind of rework a little bit here.

So.

No, that's, that's, I love it. Well, let us know how it is.

Thank you, Chris. I appreciate it.

Yep. All right. Hey, Heath.

Yeah.

The next one we got here is Shawam. Go ahead, Come on. Hey, Heath.

Yeah.

I was going to ask you, from now on, when you announce the next caller, could you announce the order of the ones after? That way people can know where they sit in the queue.

Yeah, no problem.

So Shawam's next, then we have Char Wire, and then after that is Build for Growth. Go ahead, Shawam.

Hi. Hi, Chris. Hi. Thank you so much for doing This. I just had a simple question. I just had an idea the other day. Just to preface my question. I worked as an investment banking intern at JP Morgan Chase last year. I am based out of India. So the offices we have here are not the front end offices in which that we're not the ones actually pitching to the clients. We're kind of a middle office wherein the administrative stuff or if the, you know, the onshore bankers want to do some kind of, they want some research work done or some pitch decks to be made. So we are the guys that do it. So with that I thought this can be done for the things as well. And then I came across, okay, virtual assistant agencies actually do exist. So what I want your opinion on is that since I'm based out of India, the labor here is quite, quite decent in price. Like I can get people for about 100 to $150 per month who can work like eight hours a day, five days a week for this kind of stuff. Stuff to actually work as virtual agents. What I want to know from you as a business owner is that is this kind of a business viable? As in, would you as a business owner use this service of virtual agents? And if so, what are the potential use cases that you can actually use VAS for? And what do you think in accordance to that would the pricing would be a good deal for you?

So are you thinking of just kind of managing your own small VA agency there in India and then working with business owners such as myself that just need a variety of tasks done? Okay, and then what would be your pricing model? Would you just like mark up the 150amonth and charge that to the business owner?

Correct.

And do you have like a certain industry that you'd like to, to target, like investment banking or anything?

Anything, actually we have those. I have a few peers in my. I'm actually a student right now. I have a friend whose father actually owns and similar kind of an agency. It's not a VA agency directly, but what it is is like they do hr, payroll and other admin work for companies and they charge the companies a flat fee and they pay their employees a flat fee as well and just make the difference. Okay, so yeah, but not really fixed. And I just wanted to know from your end, okay, this is the kind of what use cases I can potentially tap into that are actually lucrative for you.

Yeah, so I think this is a great idea. It's a lot of people are doing it and I think that we're still in the very early innings of VA agencies, especially if you are yourself overseas, that's competitive advantage. Most aren't. Most are just working with people like you. I think 100 to 150amonth is outrageous. Like, I know that's, that's market know less than a dollar per hour, but I think that just means that you could be the cheapest and still mark up your services a bunch.

Right.

Okay.

I know a lot of people have VA agencies that are focused on like the Philippines or focused on Pakistan or focused on Latin America, and they do really well. I think that your whole brand could be India. Like that's come to India. It's more affordable. We work really hard, we specialize in xyz. And then if, if your niche or if your brand is India, and it's funny to call that a niche because there's like a billion and a half people there, then the, the services that you offer can be all over the map. And that might not be niche enough. You might want to be graphic designers in India for 400amonth. You know, flat fee, unlimited graphic design. There are companies charging 30, 40 times that, 10,000amonth, 5,000amonth, and companies pay it. It's going to be race to the bottom on pricing. So I would, you know, everyone wants to be the cheapest. No one wants to be the most expensive. I would embrace cheapest. Honestly, I would go that route. I know a guy doing that same model and he's doing really well, so I like it.

Okay, just to reiterate my previous question, I really like your opinion on this, but in particular, as you, I read about, you know, you have a ebay and whatnot in accordance to, let's say, for example, you. I am, you know, pitching to customers who have similar SMBs. So what kind of a service would you think, okay, if I outsource this to someone for like four or five hundred dollars a month, that can be very helpful for me. Are you facing similar kind of a problem that you know, can potentially be solved by VA cheaply?

Yeah, my problem is I just have like 5 different VAs doing 5 different things, all working part time. And so if someone were to approach me and say, hey, I. I will be your sole point of contact. I know you have five different needs, only interface through me because I have five, you know, snipers at all five of those things and I'll interface with them. I'll be your middleman. You'll charge less, you'll have four less people to interface with or you'll pay less, you'll have four Less people to interface with. And I will be the one. Like, I'll be your VA Cell CEO. I'll be the one to make sure that all of your jobs get done that way. You're not holding five people accountable. You're holding me accountable. And I'm seeing to it that it gets done. So maybe that's kind of the brand is the VA CEO. Right? You're just playing that middleman layer between a busy entrepreneur and, you know, two to ten VAs.

That makes a lot of sense.

Okay.

Thank you so much for your time, Chris.

Absolutely. Good luck.

Right.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, Shawan. Charbwire, you're up. And the next after that is build for growth.

Hey, everybody, can you hear me?

Yes, sir. Awesome, Chris.

Thank you for having me. So I have a couple of things I'd like to ask you. So basically I have, like two parts to this question. One is my main background is merchant services and point of sale. That's like, where the majority of my income comes from. My family used to run a recreation center where my mother. At one point, I started a trophy and awards business where we do laser engraving, sublimation awards of all kinds. When they retired, I bought the business from them with seller financing, of course. Basically, I was super ready to just about move this business and take it to the next level. And then I got a text message in the middle of the spring during the pandemic, saying that school would be closed for the rest of the year. That was just something I had never anticipated. But at this point, things are going pretty well. During the. During the pandemic, we decided we would get a better online presence. We would collect some Google reviews. Just knowing that, look, there's always going to be a need to award and recognize achievement. These events and things will come back and when things come back online, we want to have a good digital presence to capture that audience. So far, that has kind of worked, but Basically it's the 8020 rule, right? It's like the majority of my income is coming from my other business. The amount of effort I put in to keep the other business running versus the amount of effort I put into this business. It made more sense to focus most of my efforts on point of sale. But at this point, I'm really passionate about the awards business. Like, I love laser engraving. I love the creativity behind it. I like working with those people. The end product, it's not exactly as crowded of a space as the point of sale and merchant services space. So, like, basically at this point, like, my number One question would be like, I'm looking at how to scale this where it's not something super local. It's kind of like, you know, it's still named after my mom's, you know, name, the name that she named the business because that was on our advertising. That's on, like, the stickers that are on the back of all the plaques and trophies. So honestly, like, one of my questions would be like, like, just looking for some ideas of, like, how I could scale this business, rename it and make it something that's not, like, that's a little more broad and not, like, local to our area. And beyond that, I have, like, another, like, I've. I've found a couple of areas where, like, like, for instance, in the trophy business, like, yes, some of this stuff can be done on E Commerce. Yes, some of this stuff can be done on Amazon, but some of it does take a little while for the personalization. Some of it is heavy. So there's some logistics. And I think I found and like, identified some friction, like, in the ordering process. So, like, I have some ideas on, like, how I've, like, gone out to market and differentiated ourselves from, you know, someone just going online and buying them anywhere. So really, like, my, My. My question would be, like, around, like, just some suggestions on, like, how I could name this. So it's like, a little bit broader than, you know, my local market. And then I had some random other stuff happen. So my second, I don't know if you want to respond to that or if you want to hear my other part of the question, but in trying to figure out how to differentiate ourselves and where we make margin and what works and what we want to focus on, we have a couple of MVP products that are high margin, easy for us to deliver. But the problem with the trophy business is also that there are thousands and thousands of SKUs. So, like, not everybody is looking for the type of MVP products that we sell, which are like, plaques and metals, right? Like personalized plaques and metals. Within that, I have found some really cool areas where I'm focusing, where I've gotten, like, for instance, like, I live in Saratoga Springs, where there's a famous horse racing track, and I have an exclusive deal with the Museum Racing hall of Fame. And I produce the reprint plaques for all the hall of fame horses like Seabiscuit and Secretariat and Man O War, right? And I have the exclusive ability to sell those in their store and online. So, like, these are some ways that I found some ways to differentiate myself and maybe have Some recurring revenue where it's not just like we're sitting around waiting for the phone to ring from a previous customer or a school or a booster club, right? So, like, those are some ways I'm growing it, but I have this random thing. So, like, this is where, like, I kind of wanted to ask you about this. So, like, this is where just kind of thinking out loud. One of the phone calls I get constantly is, do you recycle trophies? Generally, the answer is no, because they change the. You know, someone who got something 10 years ago, that particular supplier may not make that part number anymore. Or I need 12 of them and they only have three. So there's really no reason for me to onboard that, you know, take them and put them in my inventory on the shelves in the back.

Right?

But sometimes I do entertain that. And this is what brings me to this. Like, where this light bulb went off in my head is not long ago, this. A new. A tenant called me from like a strip mall down the road. They were taking over a space to put in this dog food store. Well, what was previously in there was a karate instruction school. And the karate instruction school had tons and tons of like, trophies.

And the guy was like, do you.

Want to come over here and take a look at. I'm like, you know what, I normally don't do this, but let's take a look at them. And what I found was like, they had a lot of these really large, like larger than life, three post, you know, four or five foot tall trophies, all geared for karate, which I can very easily take the tops off and make them into a basketball trophy or make them into, you know, a golf trophy. So I did take some of these trophies from this guy and I ended up reselling them.

Did you buy them or take them?

I got them for free.

Okay.

So essentially it was like, maybe there's something here.

What did you sell them for?

So the interesting part about this business, like, the margin is pretty good in the trophy business, right? It's like there is some leg work to do. Like, I do have a laser engraver. I've got overhead. But the margin is generally pretty good and it's not exactly super crowded. So, like, these trophies, especially the larger ones, go for sometimes over a hundred dollars a piece. So it's like, now what I was doing is like, hey, look, now I think I am interested in recycling trophies. So long as they're like that type of trophy where I can have it on the shelf here and then use it at the right time, you know, and I just did this recently. Someone just, you know, they're cleaning out their daughter's bedroom and they found three larger than life gorgeous trophies. And she was just going to throw them away, but she didn't. But now they're sitting here in my shop ready to be retooled and resold to another customer. As long as they're in good shape, right? If they're not great shape, then there's nothing I can do. So, you know, part of me is like, you know, how, how can I come up with a way to make a business idea out of this problem? I get this phone call all the time. You know, they're literally giving me free inventory.

What is, what is all the time? Like, can you put some numbers to that?

You know, I'd have to go back and look at my phone program just to see. But like, quite honestly, a couple times a month, someone calls up and asks if they, you know, they've got a ton of trophies, they're going to throw them out. Would you like to recycle them? Is there a way I can recycle them before I throw them out? Because obviously some people are conscious consumers, right? They just don't want to see a thing thrown right in the trash. And they have inherent value, right? So like, some people just have like a sentimental value attached to them. So the first thing they do is try to see if it can be repurposed instead of thrown right in the garbage. So I normally just like did not even take those phone calls, but now that I've had a couple of instances where I've gotten some good product out of it, and it's not like that's what we're trying to sell, right? It's like repurposed trophies. Like, I want people to buy the beautiful plaques and beautiful metals that we make that are custom, but those trophies, you know, I have a miter saw. I've got all these things. They do take like some effort to put together. They're kind of a pain in the butt, to be perfectly honest. So if I have someone come in and have like three larger than life trophies that are all worth like 100 to 200 a piece, and I don't even have to build them other than literally putting a new figure on them and using my laser engraver to make a new plate to repurpose them, I thought that was cool. But it kind of got me into like thinking, what if I take these others? You know, what if I take everybody's trophies and there's a way to like go through the marble and the lead and the plastic and the stuff in them, and see if there's, like, a local recycler, a local garbage company that might be able to put a value on that. And I just thought there's. There's literally people offering me the free product. Like, is there a way to monetize this? And I found out one way to do it, but not quite sure how to harness or figure out the rest. And this is just, like, one facet of it, right? Like, ideally, I just want to sell people, like, the custom license plaques and the metals and the beautiful products they make, right? But, yeah, you know, these people are calling up a couple times a month. And in the case of the Karate store, the karate store had a ton. You know, I threw away quite a bit of them, but there were a few that were ideal to keep.

What percentage would you say are recyclable? On average? Not just the karate store, but on average.

Not. Not quite a. Not a lot of them. You know, like, that's. That's where I think the brainstorming has gone to. Like, okay, like, if these have marble on them and these have certain, like, other recyclable materials, what is that worth to scrap yard or something else? You know, like, essentially, since it's like, quote unquote dirty, right? Like, if you brought, like, aluminum or copper somewhere, they'd be like, this is dirty if it's connected to something else.

Okay, so last question is, what? Like, what is the revenue size, if you're comfortable, of this business?

So this business is like, you know, it's kind of my side hustle. I hate to call it that, but, like, you know, last year we did about $90,000 in revenue in sales. And as far as a percentage of that all being recycled trophies, that was all just new sales and existing the products I normally sell. Generally, I'm turning away the people saying, can I recycle the trophies? I already have not enough space to keep my inventory and the things I keep on the shelves. So I don't want to take on someone's dancing trophy that is sitting here and sits there for six months before I find a way to repurpose it. But what I do want to do is, like, essentially, at this rate, be like, hey, we do recycle trophies. You know, please inquire, you know, if they look like this or they're like this. We're interested. If they're not, we're not. But even the ones we're not, I'm like, is there a way to recycle these. Like, is there a way to like, scrap these? Because people are literally calling me up to give me free inventory, you know, so how can I monetize it, you know?

All right, so here's my prescription. So I'll tell you what I like and don't like about it. What I don't like about it is that it's, it's going to be really hard to scale. I'm looking up your city and it doesn't look like there's. You've got a bigger city just south of you, but it's just, you know, one to $200 top line. And then you got to, you got to get it. You got to throw away a bunch of them. You got to pull out the miter saw. You got to put some work into it. What I do like about it is there, there are ways around that. I think you could have a lot of success doing like trophy recycling drives at the elementary school or the high school or whatever it is where you work with the school directly. They send out in an email or in a flyer, hey, bring in your old trophies. We're going to recycle them. And then you can just drive once to go pick up hundreds or dozens of these things. And then you literally go straight by the dump, throw away the ones that you can't recycle, keep the ones that you can. And now your cogs goes way down because maybe that's a third. Like, maybe you, you reduce what you're buying by a third with that. Right? And now the, the, the parents get to feel good that their kids trophy isn't completely going to waste. And if you throw it away, that's a shame, but they were going to throw it away anyway, and there's nothing you can do with it. So does that make sense? I like that, but I don't like that for those reasons.

Yeah, I do think that makes sense. And it's like, this isn't like, you know, the sole focus of my business. I also don't want someone to see that, like we, they recognize that it was recycled and repurposed and like that's the type of product we sell, you know, that's true. This was, this was just a way to do that. But I do like the idea of bottlenecking it. Almost like electronics recycling drive or like when they do it with pharmaceuticals or something like that, where people like, they're, they feel like they're doing something good and it's like free advertising for us, right? I mean, like, if people are Googling us, they're finding us and asking us this question, like, you know, trying to turn that into some, some way that they'd probably keep us in mind when they do need new product.

Yeah, well, yeah, that's what I like about it. But I've got your, your website pulled up. I won't say it out loud because I don't know if you want people to know, but I'm pretty sure I found it. I think you should update your website. You probably already know that, but I kind of have a creative idea that I think you should try. And then we've got to go because there's two people waiting and we're almost out of time. I think you should make a TikTok channel doing very funky, funny, like hilarious engravings, right? Like take your dad's favorite mug and then put like an inside, like engraving inside joke on it. And be sure to show in the short form video, like the actual laser engraving process because people love seeing cool stuff like that. So I think you could have, you could get a lot of clicks and a lot of eyeballs on the hilarity of, you know, a kid engraving their mom or their grandma's X, Y and Z and then them noticing it one day, like engraving a toilet or putting a plaque on a toilet. Right. Like dad's second home or something. And then so you get the funny aspect and then you get the, the interesting aspect when you actually show it being laser engraved. I think that would Crush on reels, YouTube shorts and TikTok and it could drive a lot of traffic to your site that you could, you know, you could do e commerce traffic all over the country that all derives from these short form videos. But that all starts with you kind of redesigning and updating your Shopify site.

Yeah.

So I, I agree with you that we do need to update Shopify. That was something we did during the pandemic. I do have another part to the site that's not customer facing, that's actually connected to my suppliers. It's, it's much more robust. It's just. It also, it's almost like Shopify and Salesforce had like a small child. It's a little bit more intense to look at. So like that's what I'm really going to switch over to how people do it. All my suppliers have everything, all their SKUs and pricing all loaded into it. It allows people to share.

It's.

It's a little bit more robust than Shopify. So that's definitely not the one we wanted to Share with people. But like quite honestly on Instagram I've done like with the laser engraver. What's kind of cool is like essentially doing like time lapse videos where it just shows really quickly like the thing and I've gotten a lot of, you know, it's like that's not what I'm entirely using Instagram for. But like when I share things like that in my stories, I tend to get interest. So I do like the idea of. I have not made a TikTok yet, but that's, I've been somewhat TikTok resistant but I guess it's like hard to ignore like the size of the market there.

If you're making the content, you might as well put it everywhere. But we're gonna move on to the next person and I hope this helps. Awesome.

Thanks for having me. These are pretty cool to listen to.

Good. Thank you. All right, go ahead. Growth. Built for growth. You're up.

Cool.

All right, thank you folks. Chris, thanks for hosting this. So, yeah, so what I'm doing is a little out there, I think just generally from a few mentors that I've spoken with. I think the general idea is you should only do one thing. My background is in marketing. I've done marketing for almost 13 years now. I do growth at a pretty big startup. Right now I lead up growth and I'm also a fractional CMO at like two smaller startups. One of them is, one of them is kind of like that VA CEO thing you were talking about. But generally what I'm looking for is, is information about or kind of like your input on everything else that I'm doing which is, I guess at this point it's kind of like a dev shop or I call it a startup studio. So in the past six months I've been kind of, I started eight months ago finding talent and kind of like finding talent that's part time. Designers, developers, product managers. And we've, we've, we've built and launched four products either seeing traction. And so I'm coming at it from like a growth, growth marketing perspective or strategy which is, you know, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Split test and, and, and look for signals. And I'm looking to like scale up this whole thing. Pretty much not scale up each product per se, but scale up the product development process. And I'm looking for like bootstrapped growth. And so you know, I'm only going to scale up a product when, when the, you know, when the return on ad spend or the Return on investment. And so until then it's like organic and you know, low volume. Low volume keywords pretty much that I can actually bid on and make it make sense. And so I guess I'm trying to figure out like I don't want to seek investors in the traditional sense. I want to seek out investors for the bootstrap of building products and bootstrap growth from there. And I guess I'm trying to hear any thoughts on how I could go about doing that. Probably only looking for a very low six figure investment. And you know, it's like, you know, most people want to hear about how can I do, how can I invest in something that's going to be worth a billion dollars? And so yeah, I'm trying to think of like ways to do that. You know, mostly I've just been investing my own money right now and, and I'd like to, you know, I'd like to you know, offset that so that I can increase the pace and maybe increase the quality of the contractors that I have.

So what would the investor's capital be going towards? Like ad spend?

No, just, just it would only go.

Towards paying the contractors. The contractors?

Yeah, I mean I guess like a very small amount would go for, for marketing testing and I would continue to invest my own money so I would really, I'm really looking like supplement my own investment.

And what types of products would you be building? Like what industries? Give me an example of a company or a product.

Yeah, so, so for example, one of them is, is for like job seekers. One of them is like an AI product on the app store, like little.

Little kind of micro SaaS.

Micro SaaS, yeah, exactly.

Okay, and do you have any case studies of like ones that you've incubated and you've self funded and how it went, like how much money you put in and, and what that turned into?

Yeah, I do, I mean, you know we really just barely launched, started launching them about a month ago and we're seeing traction. Obviously it's not like rapid growth, but I don't plan to abandon any of these projects products. My plan is to on an ongoing basis continue to pivot and improve them until I, I find, you know, until, until they truly resonate with the marketplace and I see some opportunities for investing to achieve growth.

So I think what you need to do is, you know, the, the thought that investors are looking for billion dollar exits is true in certain circles. I think you need to go after more local small time investors, small business owners, people that have net worths in the low, you know, seven figures that are comfortable writing 10 to $50,000 checks. And I would make the terms very agreeable to them and just put front and center, like the best two or three projects you've worked on, how much money was invested, what that turned into on a cash flow or an equity basis. Those are your case studies. Even if there's only one, make the terms very favorable to the investor. Don't go after investors that are typically angel investors into moonshot, like angel list.com type products. Go after the local H vac business owner that makes 600 grand a year. Go after those guys that you know in your own immediate circle that already know and trust you and put one deal together, 200 grand, 100 grand, and then just put everything you have into that. That way you can have an even better case study of not just what you built and what it turned into, but what you built with investors capital and what you turn and what you turned it into. Because the first deal is by far the hardest. But if you can knock it out of the park, then it will be easy from that point on. But if you start with kind of not investor friendly terms, then it's going to be a lot harder to get that first deal under your belt.

Yeah. So as far as people that I know more closely, I probably, like you said, probably 10 to 50,000 is what I would be comfortable asking for. And so then it's like, well, how do I scale beyond that?

I mean, you know, what you're saying.

Kind of makes sense. Like, you know, maybe just hustle and just fucking pick up the phone and call some people. I don't, I don't know how else to go about like finding those people without, without doing something like that.

I think you have to, I think you hit the nail on the head. Pick up the phone. It's a lot easier to say no over an email than it is over the phone.

Yeah, that makes sense. All right, cool. Thanks so much.

Yep, thanks. Well, we'll, we'll go with the last two. We've got Mike and Ross. And then after that we will wrap this up.

Cool.

I think, Ross, you're up first. Oh, I'm up first.

I had a question for him, but I'll ask him later. So for those of you that don't know, my name is Ross. I run a salesforce consultancy named Pong Solutions. It's growing very rapidly, sometimes at a scary pace. So we're dealing with all those fun problems. But the thing that I struggle with is I have super shiny object syndrome. So we actually had a few products that we built out of some consulting work that we've done that we're going to launch to the marketplace pretty soon. And that's, that's pretty good. I got an operator in there. But I think my question is it actually is on the same wavelength as the last person, which is, I guess it's a two part question, you know, how do you keep yourself focused on kind of growing the cash cow but also positioning yourself for kind of transforming from an operator to I guess an investor or basically starting a larger scale business? This is actually a issue that I face right now where there's a lot of self doubt with something that I really, really want to do that's going to require me going to investors and basically pitching them on millions of dollars. And it's a very solid idea but I don't want it to distract from what's in front of me, basically. So hopefully that kind of makes sense.

Makes perfect sense. It's like you're talking to the king of shiny object syndrome right now. And I'm very public about that, so I get it. But you're in the messy middle or you have to get past the messy middle and you have to get to the place where you can hire a CEO for Pong Solutions and feel very comfortable in the fact that he's doing at least 80% or 70% as good of a job as you are doing. Like you either have to do that, you have to hire someone, I don't know what your profits are, even if it means you're giving him 30, 70, whatever it takes percent of the profits to run the business. If you really do feel passionate about this next idea that that's what you have to do. Because what investor wants to give a bunch of money to someone that you know has shiny object syndrome. Yeah. Speaking from experience. So if, if is your. Is Pong at the level where you could.

I think this year will be the first step towards that. Basically I think where we're at right now is. So for those of you that don't know, the way that my business operates is it's. I usually get a lot of the leads from Salesforce so I have to hop on calls with them. So I'm the guy doing the sales, but I've gotten myself out of the delivery aspect so we have that delegated out. It's managed well until I get myself out of the sales end where I've trained somebody up on how to run that. I'm kind of Stuck in this position. So this year I think we're kind of at that cusp. But I also. I gotta be careful too, because of how the business works. So from my perspective, our profitability allows for this.

It's just.

It's a question of more like when instead of if at this point.

Yeah. Well, in my experience, if you hire a CEO, they're gonna do either 70% as good of a job as you or 200%. Right. And you're just gonna be shocked and be like, wow, this guy's a killer. I think either for. In your scenario, either option is fine. But if you're. If you're selling salesforce, like, there's gotta be a bunch of people out there that can do it. Maybe not super well, but at least that have. You won't have to train them on salesforce or even train them on selling salesforce. I gotta think that you could outsource the sales side of that.

So it's.

It's actually interesting you bring that up because.

So the.

The common. Common career path for salesforce A is either upward in the company to RVP level, which is like five jumps, or you flame out and become a sales rep at a partner. So I get all resumes all the time of these ex salesforce AES, but that's actually not what I want. I would rather. So in my opinion, I'm going to say something different than what you said, but I think the person needs to know salesforce at least from a technical side. But they also need to learn how to conceptualize some of the concepts a client is talking about and apply it to their business. Because that's the secret formula of what I do that's winning. So that person is actually an ex consultant or somebody that works under me that I can train on the sales process. They have a personality. They're great with people. So that's easy to find overall is what I'm saying. So it's a little bit. Because the other guys I compete with have these ex salesforce A's that are just terrible at solid.

So.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think you know what you need to do, so I wish you the best.

All right, cool. Well, I'll go tell Mr. Oldman that.

I need to go hire CEO. So there you go.

All right, thanks, guys.

Thank you, Ross. Cool, Mike. Your last but not least.

I might be least. That's all right.

What's up, Chris?

How are you, sir?

What's up, Mike? Good, how are you?

Speaking of shiny objects, I'll get your blood flowing. Here on this Friday. So two just kind of idea. Childs. I posted yesterday about this idea of like Carfax for home sales. Yep. I originally posted about renters and stuff, but I think, like, is there a market for that, like where an somebody could just pull a report of insurance claims, roofs. That's been done, h vac work, anything that you could just literally pull a $200 report on a house that you're looking to buy. It might end up putting home inspectors out of business, but it's just an interesting idea. I wanted to get your take on that first.

So you're asking if I think there's a demand for people to pay for Carfax for homeowners? Yeah, I think so. Where would you get the data from?

I think that would be the uphill battle of having to create. I mean, you'd almost have to create a place where like with cars, anytime you worked on something, you're almost required to report it to a report reporting service. And then that just becomes an aggregated amount of data between plumbers, H Vac, roofers. Insurance would probably be the easiest and first option because anytime a home owner makes a claim, there's a database of that. So that seems like an easy first step with any major type stuff. But then all the other mini little repairs, you'd almost have to create a system where they report it and they're almost bound to report it. You know what I mean?

Okay, that's a big.

That's a big challenge. That's a big challenge.

It is a challenge. But what I like about the challenge, and I was just talking about this an hour ago, is you're familiar with the company Plaid that connects all the banking infrastructure.

Yeah. All the bank stuff. Exactly.

Yeah. Like Connect Venmo to Bank of America uses plaid. Right. So what is amazing about Plaid is, is that they spent years just pounding the pavement, hitting the streets, going to all these little credit unions and community banks that have no APIs. They don't even know what API stands for and like building it out. Right. And today that's why they're like a $10 billion company, is because they have that moat. And yes, they've got some great tech under the hood, but really their moat is the fact that they spent a lot of money just one by one by one by one building all these little integrations. And so I love the idea of building a plaid for X or plaid for Y. And I would start in like a very small community that has like four H Vac guys, two roofers, Six plumbing guys or whatever. And it's going to be tough because you're going to have to have buy in. And I would take like the top three most expensive or damaging repairs, maybe even like a foundation repair company and saying, hey, for, I don't know what, you've got to give the business owner something. But for X, Y or Z offer, I would like you to give me just a list of addresses with a list of repairs and costs in this area over the last five years. And I, I don't have the time to think of like what is in it for them.

Great.

You've got to, you've got to solve for that. Something's got to be in it for them. Maybe a rev share or something. Maybe that's it. Maybe every time you sell one of these, you give 10% of it to that business owner or something, but that's going to be tedious. But once you have that, then you go to the real estate agents and every time they get something under contract, it's an upsell, right? Like right alongside the inspection, they put this carfax.

It's like Gap Insurance, another car. Like you got to pay for it, but what the heck does it cover really?

Right? Or I wonder even if you could go directly to the home inspectors and say like, can I buy your data? Right, right. Like they're not going to know like if, if a house, you know, replaced the H vac.

Well, actually a lot of them inspectors use a software platform to do their home inspection. So you'd go to that company because then you'd be able to aggregate it on a much higher level. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you could like somehow like aggregate that data, use like CLAUDE or an LLM or some AI tool to spit out something clean, then you could use that to, to, to put on like an address level basis. Right? Like the address is your, is your source of truth.

This, this other quick one might be a little bit better. I might get your. So take Zillow, like residential sales or searches for homes. You go to Zillow, you go to Redfin, you go to Realtor, whatever it may be, right? Commercial, you go to LoopNet or Crexi or any of those platforms. If you're a person right now and you're like, Chris, you're like, I want to build a brand new house. I don't know where to start. I just want to build a house. I don't necessarily want to buy a brand new house. I want to build one my own. Where do you go for that?

Like a custom home from scratch?

It could be, it could be a.

Spec builder in your area or a custom home. Right. Where do you go? Like right now my only option I think is Google Home New home construction builders in fill in the blank city. Right?

Yeah, well, I, I mean I've done this. We built our own custom home eight years ago and it's, we live in a city of 7,000 and there's like six builders here. And we just started talking to our friends, family, and it became very clear that there was only one option with that guy.

I just think, go ahead, Houzz.

Like would Houzz be for.

I think Houzz could integrate with the idea. But my thought is like, imagine Zillow meets like Pinterest meets Instagram, where you have a map of the United States and then you're going to have your different areas. So like let's click on Wisconsin and then you have your big metro areas of Wisconsin and the consumer will figure out their area. Like let's say Green Bay, where I'm at.

Right.

On the back end of that, you've done the legwork and connected with all the builders who are associated with the Home Builders association in those areas who will build. Right. And then you get them to send you. I think with AI, this can actually work well. They'll send you pictures of all of their builds, interior, exterior, all that. Right now you're creating an experience for the user. They're saying, hey, I'm in Green Bay. I, I want a two story house. Okay, great. Now we'll filter in all the two story houses. I want all these different things. And you're filtering in, you're looking through pictures, you double tap everyone that you like. So now the AI is building what you tend to lean towards as far as style. Right. Then at the end of this user experience, it says, oh, these are your top three choices for types of homes you like. And then would you like to see the builders in your area that build these exact homes? Yes or no? And then they choose that. They, they say yes. And then all of a sudden it sells this lead to three builders in that area. And then you're picking your builder. You're choosing based on the product that they've put out. And you can go there to. It's just kind of like a database of the builders, their products, and then people are trying to match themselves with the builder. I think it could be cool because builders, you could also have websites that you build off of it for the builders because they're notoriously horrible for having any type of digital presence. Right, so what are your thoughts there?

So I'm thinking more of a low tech solution where, because what's great about builders is it's such a high ticket item that there's, there's a lot of money to be made. Right. And a lot, a lot of These builders pay 3 to 6% to a real estate agent. And I know builders hate real estate agents, right? Because it's like, well, that's why a.

Lot of them have it in house too, because they want to.

Right, Right. It's, it's such a low margin, high headache business. And then it's like some Yahoo comes around and just makes an introduction and makes 70 grand, whereas the builder does all this work. And so they're already used to paying that. And so what if you were. It was a very low tech solution. High touch, low tech, but high margin, high ticket of just. I would pick one market, I would name it something broad and generic because you're not going to stay one market. But let's say it's Green Bay and then you just, you scrape a database of all the builders, let's say there's 20 of them and you just learn everything you can have a VA go through. And like, how long have they been in business? Like every single shred of data you can get on all the builders in Green Bay. And then you start building out the SEO. Like you just want inbound SEO. Like you're like a lead gen factory and the landing page is very simple. You just want their email. And the pitch is like, hey, we're like a builder broker and you have no reason, this is speaking to the homeowners. You have no reason to not use us because you don't pay us. Like, there's only upside to using us. We are paid by the builder and they're used to paying a realtor 6%. They're going to pay us 1% or 2%. So like everyone's happy. Right? But you're not a realtor, you're, you're a brokerage. And so they put in their email. That's it. You, you got their email and then it sends them to a type form or something a lot more exhaustive where it captures every shred of data as they enter it. So if they never complete the form because it's a big form, then you still have some data on them. And it's just asking like, all right, what's your square footage? Like, what are you looking for? What type of build is like, colonial style or, you know, whatever. And you're getting all this data, and then you get just a killer, you know, person salesperson to get that homeowner on the phone and just like, start to build a relationship like a realtor would do. And then it's like, oh, okay.

Yeah.

I'm thinking this guy might be good. Oh, that. You know what? This builder, he just built a house right around the corner. There's gorgeous. Like. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then they just. They just start playing matchmaker. And then you get the builders to sign referral agreements and you just ignore the ones that are crappy. And, you know, of the 20 builders, you might only get three, four, or five that are willing to sign referral agreements. And then you just start sending in business and, you know, a year later you're. You. It's going to take a year to build the pipeline, but you make five figure checks from every build.

Yeah.

And then you expand and you build it from there. Copy and paste. Yeah.

Yeah, I already bet that's kind of. We have build greenbay.com or build GB, one of the two. I don't remember. That'd be a great place to start. Probably.

Perfect. Yeah. I like that idea.

Cool, man. Good stuff. This is fun.

Cool. Thank you. Thanks for coming and contributing.

Appreciate you, man. Thank you.

All right, Heath, Is that it? We're wrapping it up. That's it. Let's wrap it up. Okay. Well, thank you to everyone for joining Kerner's Corner Episode 3 of 10. We're going to do seven more of these and we'll see how it goes. But I'm having fun, so thank you for your help and we look forward to seeing you next week. Have a good weekend, everyone. All right, see you.