The Most Profitable Online Business No One Talks About

We did $2.4 million our first calendar year. I have a client, Elvia, in Houston. She's doing about $4 or $5 million a year. It's an online course, so that takes care of itself.

You don't need financial reserves?

Nope. Just almost like a digital reseller. Yeah, right.

What's the sales pitch?

It's not that really much of a sales pitch. They're getting a free grant to come to our school. It's paying for the entire tuition. It hurts when you go to college, spend all that money. God forbid you do get the degree and then never use it. I didn't wanna tell anyone 'cause I just thought it was too good to be true. I mean, who's gonna believe me anyway? Like there's a grant that pays me to train people. And so I just stayed quiet for a while.

So over a million profit that first year? That was just online. What were you selling that course for?

$12,000 to $15,000.

Wow. Have you ever driven a forklift?

No.

But you have a forklift technician trade school? Yes. Tell me how that's possible.

There is no AI that does what we do. It is AI-proof.

This freaking guy right here owns a forklift repair trade school and has never even driven a forklift. Not just that, he found a government grant that will pay him $5,000 to $15,000 per student to join his trade school. So you or anyone in the world can use this grant to start a trade school in things like pool cleaning, HVAC, plumbing, forklift repair, dog grooming. You name it, 80 to 90% profit margins, very low startup cost, not a ton of work. And if you don't want to make the course yourself, just buy it from someone else. Let's go chat with Hector and find out exactly how we can copy him. Okay, so when you get an interested student on the phone, what's the sales pitch?

Uh, it's not that really much of a sales pitch. They're getting a free grant to come to our school, but they're also learning a, a trade that it's not that talked about. I mean, no one really talks about forklift technician, but more than anything, what's attractive, it's the grant is free. It's paying for the entire tuition.

Is that a harder sale? And if so, how does that conversation differ?

It could be. I don't think it's a harder sell. We still sell some to the general market because again, our technicians are coming out making $30 an hour. Yeah. They get to get in a van, they get to dispatch from home, They don't— they're not in the same spot. They're throwing different challenges every day, and the return on investment's just— they pay themselves back in a couple of months just because they earn so much.

Now, once you're running the school, how passive or active is it? Because you're not making the course.

Not much, man, because I mean, good thing about automations, you know, it's an online course, so that takes care of itself. Interact with them in the beginning and at the end. We help them either find a job or we keep them for ourselves as an employer. It's kind of nice. We get to pick from the cream of the crop, offer them a job, and the rest just get certified and find work elsewhere. It It doesn't take long. I think our average graduate interviews somewhere 2 or 3 times and they get a job offer.

Is there a benefit to doing it in person? Like, can you charge more if they're in person?

Not necessarily. I mean, in some cases you probably can. The only reason our model works so well is because you could scale it by going online only. There's no need for a classroom to be, you know, filled up because there's no classroom. So we get to service all of Texas and sell the courses by the masses.

Is there a situation where the state will only reimburse you for part of it, but then they have to come out of pocket for part of it?

No. As long as you keep it within that training cap, because there's a cap everywhere, there should be no reason you should charge them more. Whatever the state's willing to reimburse you, you're going to be really happy at, considering if you remember, you're buying these courses for a fraction of the price.

Do you have to do any work in helping them find jobs, like helping place them?

Not necessarily. Again, You know, most of these courses that we're offering are in demand. So if they go into Indeed and type in EV technician, forklift technician, there's going to be 25+ job openings. I mean, they could literally just do this and throw their resume out. They're going to get a call back pretty quick.

So I imagine you got to get incorporated to start this business, right?

Right.

How do you do that? How do people get incorporated?

I personally use Busy. It's pretty easy. I signed up. They didn't even charge anything. They just charged what the state charges. And it was really user-friendly. I got— that's where I keep all my schools and companies at, and it's just, it's on an app and they make it easy.

Yeah, man, I think the alternative to using Busy is going through like your state's filing website, which is built in like 1994 and is an absolute nightmare to use and doesn't cost any less than using Busy. Um, Busy supports this channel, I support them. I use them to file all my LLCs, registered agent services, EINs, I just can't say enough good things about Busy. I mean, every, every business owner needs an LLC. You got to protect yourself. If heaven forbid someone were to get hurt on a forklift, which I know would never happen here, you'd want to be not personally liable for that injury. You need an LLC. You need to be incorporated. So Hector uses Busy. I use Busy. Don't use the other guys. Don't use your state's website. It's free. You just pay your state's filing fees. They'll keep you up to date on all your compliance deadlines. All those forms that like you don't want to have to wrap your head around. You just want to spend time growing your business. So go to bizze.com, that's bizze.com, and your life will get much better. So if someone is starting a trade school from scratch, not adding it to a current business, what are startup costs like?

So you want to look at what it's going to cost to apply to the state. You want to have some capital funds as like an operating account, like how are you going to get through the first couple of months?

How much are you thinking?

Anywhere between $15,000 low end, $30,000 high end. Okay. Sometimes they want you to have like 2 or 3 months worth of reserves.

So the state wants to see that?

Okay. Yeah, they want to see that. And that's really it. This school that we added to my existing forklift business, it's an online school. They do all the curriculum online, which is 55 hours worth. They're only going to come here as an option if they want to put their hands on some actual forklifts. But it's optional for most places. People go to trade school and a lot of it's book and then it's hands-on. Right now, these employers don't have time to wait. They're like, dude, just get the certification. We're going to train you how to do the things hands-on anyway. They just want the piece of paper as fast as possible. Okay. Because I'm sure the business that you own, you want to train them how you do stuff your way, not how the school taught them. Same thing here. This is a business first where we have forklift technicians. They leave in these vans, they go fix forklifts all over the the Metroplex. And then for the school part, they're going to learn it all online. They'll graduate, they'll come here and they could do some ridesharing with the technicians. After about 4 weeks, we put them on their own. Okay.

So the physical location is, is key to them finishing the process in the case of this trade school.

If they wanted to. Yeah, because it's more hands-on. But like a lot of stuff like front desk, there's no need to ever have any hands-on. You're going to—

Well, your HVAC course, that was all done through like an Oculus, right?

Yep. Yeah, it's all virtual reality. Hopefully we're going to get this where it's virtual reality, but right now it's just a glorified ebook with some videos. Like anything else, when you finish taking a curriculum, you're going to go take a test on a computer. The computer's not going to know if you could fix something. They just want to know, did you learn enough curriculum to get certified in that field?

Okay, so these videos are a lot of work, and 62% of you are not subscribed to my channel, and many of you think that you are, but you're not. So do me a favor and just subscribe real quick and maybe share this with a friend that might want to start their own trade school. Have you ever driven a forklift?

No.

You've never even gotten in one of these?

Nope.

But you have a forklift technician trade school? Yes. Tell me how that's possible. Well, that's a fair question, right?

Yeah, no, it's fair. So like I said, I partnered up with the Rich. We invested in a forklift repair business, but I didn't want to fall under the same challenge that most people have, that where are you going to find technicians from? I know trade schools really well. I wanted to start a trade school in forklift technician. So the fact that I know how to find curriculum, build curriculum, partner up with the right operator is a good win. They're the experts. So they have to obviously become the instructor and teach it. And I'm just there for support. Like I'm there for streamlining automation, CRMs and stuff that I know how to do well. And I let them, do the operating and all this side. I wouldn't even want to be on there like you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So are you going to be white labeling this course or—

Correct. Okay. For now I'm going to white label it. Hopefully in the future we're going to design it to make it virtual reality. It's a 55-hour course and then with the hands-on it'll be an extra 10 hours. Okay.

And what will you charge for that?

Um, we're going to charge about $7,500 and the course is $500, so we're going to make a margin of $7,000.

Okay.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

55 hours. So 2-week course.

Yeah. So for your first trade school.

Yep.

How did that go?

We did really well. Granted, it was 2021, so a lot of luck there with COVID being involved. We did $2.4 million our first calendar year, but a lot of that came at expense. I got a building because I thought you needed a building. I hired all the staff because I thought you needed staff, and I bought the furniture and the books and the best of everything when Really, it was online. Yeah, the students never came. I had too much staff. So even though I made $2.4 million, I didn't really get to see a lot of that. I paid myself a generous salary. But after that, I found out, man, a lot of these students, they just want to do the courses on their own time. Yeah, they didn't want to go to community college where they have to go to Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or they can't leave their job. And the last thing they want to do is go to night school or weekend school. So the second year I only did $1.4 million, but with a two-man show. So it was just a lot more automations and profitable that way. And then we went strictly online and where we were able to scale is we were able to sell to anyone in Texas versus just the Dallas Metroplex.

What was your profit both those two years?

It's like 70% margins. So I, even though I showed a profit, I only paid myself a— sure, a modest salary. The rest went back into the business, but it was just almost too scary that I almost didn't spend it right away because I just didn't think it was a thing. I didn't say anything for a while either. I mean, I didn't want to tell anyone because I just thought it was too good to be true. I mean, who's going to believe me anyway? Like, there's a grant. Yeah, it pays me to train people and I just stay quiet for a while.

So over $1 million profit that first year?

Second year. Okay.

The second year. Yeah, that was just online. What were you selling that course for?

$12,000 to $15,000.

And what were you paying for it?

$1,500. Wow.

So almost 90% margins. How long did that last and why did it end?

So that lasted a while. It only ended because I exited and I sold, you know, my equity and then I went on my own.

Okay.

Other people started knocking on the door where, how did you scale a school so fast? A lot of things is I treated the school not like education. It was strictly business. Strictly like a sales process. I found out no one had sales scripts, no one had CRMs, no one had any kind of automations. You call up a school and it's like, oh yeah, Chris, we teach forklift once a month. Come on down here, it's $500. There's no follow-up, no, you know, drip campaigns, anything like that. So all I did is everything I've ever learned in leadership and business, applied it towards the trade schools, and the rest is history. I've since then, I've taught and taught a welding school, fixed all their scripting and sales process, a flight attendant school, a Marine school where they just teach the Coast Guards how to do the certain certification. So I went on my own doing that and now I've helped over 50 schools either fix them, start them all over the country. And here we are.

If someone wants to start this business, do they have to commit to one trade or can they do multiple courses, multiple trades in the same business?

I would tell them stick to one course at first or maybe two. If they are going to partner up with somebody, obviously stay in that lane. Like I partner up with a forklift repair business for the school. So we're staying in this lane, but they could do multiple. It just depends on what the requirements are for that state or that region. Yeah, but they could do multiple. I wouldn't go more than 3. You want to be the master of a couple versus just offering everything. Yeah, nothing's stopping them from doing multiple.

Okay, so if someone wanted to start this from day one, getting reimbursements from the state, they'd probably need some level of financial reserves to show the state, right?

Financial reserves. And again, most schools start off to sell.

Yeah.

You know, I have a client in Arizona. He sells IT courses, and for 2 years before he ever met me, he just sold to the general public, made $1 million a year, sells his courses from $8,000 to $12,000.

And in that case, if you start like that, you don't need financial reserves.

Nope.

Just almost like a digital reseller. Yeah, right. And he sold courses and did everything, obviously. Not by the book because he wasn't even licensed. And when he came to me and he's like, how are you getting these grants? I'm like, you have to be a licensed school. He became a licensed school. Then he went through the WIOA process and the ETPL, everything. Now he's added an additional $50,000 to $60,000 a month with just the grants to already his successful reselling business.

So if I'm tight on funds but patient, best way is just to start this business, find someone to white label it, start like start the application process so you can get it rolling because it might take a while. But just start selling these, like just start paid ads, like friends and family, like, do you know anyone? And then you can use the money from those sales to build the reserves to show the state that you're worthy of the grants, right?

Yeah. Again, depending on the state, you have to be careful. But there's some states that you don't have to be licensed just to sell to apartment complexes, to sell to employers. How many, I mean, how many companies can you call out there that the guys need to be certified? They just don't have the time to do it because they think they have to go to school. And I'm like, no, man, sell them the online course, partner up with them, and maybe give them a price break if they're buying them in bulk. But there's so many different ways to do it.

So if you're not licensed by the state yet and you, you've got to go find paying customers yourself, what is the best way of doing that?

And just get active with your local community, whether that's church, nonprofits. As an example, I have a client and he only sells his course to a nonprofit. He's in North Carolina. There's— believe it or not, nonprofit doesn't just mean nonprofit. They have their own pool of money aside from WIOA that they need to spend for their missions, whether it's getting people back on their feet. So there's just a million ways to, to make money with this. There's a whole slew of kids turning 18, and they're either going to be military, college, or nothing. And you could be that nothing option. I mean, if you set up next to some colleges and say, hey, John and Mary, before you send your kid off to college or have this gap year and drop $4,000 and get them certified in solar and EV and go fix some stuff. So there's just a lot of different ways that parents are willing to invest a little bit of money in like a trade versus, you know, $20,000 for their freshman year.

How common is it for a kid to go through the program, pass it, get certified, and then never follow through with actually getting a job?

It happens. I mean, not as often as you think. I mean, usually people that do this kind of commit to it, at least try it out at first. And they're not— they usually stick with it. I mean, people that get into the trades want to work with their hands and they end up liking it. It's a lot less hurting the pocketbook doing it this way because it's a lower price to entry. It hurts when you go to college, spend all that money, God forbid you do get the degree and then never use it.

What other success stories have you heard of people making a lot of money in this space?

I have a client, Elvia, in Houston. She does electrical and HVAC. She's doing about $4 or $5 million a year. She's the only female Latina trade school owner and she just conquered Houston. She has contracts with manufacturer, some companies where she trains their data entry technicians and she just does really well. I have a guy in Idaho that does extremely well. He literally only does courses for the people going into the data centers that they're building out there. So it's anything from building facility maintenance like it could be appliance repair, industrial cleaning kind of, kind of roles. And he does extremely well. He probably doing about $1 million a year. Wow.

Didn't you have like an LDS guy out in Utah like selling this?

Yeah. So he's only doing only prisons.

Oh yeah.

He's only selling it to the people in prison as they come out. As they come out because it's, it's online. They're taking the test on the computer. It's being proctored. So when they come out, they're coming out with certifications. He's doing pretty good. Not, not, not in the millions. I think he's doing about $30,000 a month.

Oh, that's it.

I mean, compared to others. But yeah, it's pretty cool. He's— because Utah takes 2 years to get fully licensed, he's just doing that partnership with the prison program right now.

Maybe a dumb question, but in addition to getting reimbursed by the state, will they refer people to you as well?

Sometimes. Depends, especially if you're the only option. So what happens a lot of times is, say I want to be dental assisting and there's only a community college to go to. And they're like, but I work even though I'm on food stamps, but I have 2 or 3 kids. I still qualify for food stamps. I can't go to, you know, your traditional school, but maybe online school I can because I could do it at night when the kids go to sleep. So instead of them saying, hey, don't go to Dallas Community College, go to Chris's trade school, he offers it online. So you'll get some referrals that way. Not common, but it happens.

Yeah. So as a business owner, why do you think it's important to add your own trade school?

Well, we really need a good pipeline. You can roll up to any dealership in this Metroplex and they're all going to have a "We're Hiring" sign out. You know, sometimes people get burnt out or they find out it's not what they want or they move off. You know, this is one occupation where you can learn this trade and you can move anywhere in the world and find someplace to work because Everywhere in the world has forklifts.

Yeah.

Every 18-wheeler you see on the road is loaded and unloaded with a forklift, or at least some kind of electrical equipment. You know, when you just think of that number, how many 18-wheelers you see on the road.

I mean, there's, there's, when you boil down a business, there's two parts to it, fulfilling the service and selling the service, right? In my experience, it's very frustrating to have plenty of customers, but no way to fulfill them. Because you don't have enough help, right? So usually it's harder to find the customers. In this case, it seems like it's harder to find the help. So if you can monetize the opportunity to find the help, you make more money in the business, and then you can make extra money in training these guys.

You know, maybe it'll take 100 years, maybe it'll eventually catch up, but there is no AI that does what we do. Yeah, you have to physically go out and diagnose and physically repair on site, usually.

Yeah.

At the customer's location, you know, whatever the ailment is to the forklift. So yeah, there's no smart technology that's going to do that over the phone for you. Right.

Well, even if, even if we had a robot that could physically do it, an AI is only as good as its training data.

Yes.

And you just showed me a forklift that was 40 years old. You can't tell me there's like a perfect little training manual with videos on how to fix it. Like it doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist.

So how are you gonna train the AI and then make a robot that specialized for that use case? Like our first robots are gonna do things like pack boxes 'cause that's things, that's something we need millions and millions and millions of, right? Yeah. But something this specialized, it'll be decades, 100 years before we get around to making the hardware and the software and the AI that can actually do it, right?

Exactly.

AI-proof.

Yeah, it is AI-proof.

Well, Hector, I think we've put enough in this video for people to start their own trade school. But if someone wants to learn more or they want help from you personally, where can they find you?

I think all the information will be located in the links below, and I'll let you take it from there.

All right, yeah, check out the link in the description to meet Hector, talk to Hector, and get all the help you may need. We'll see you next time on the Koerner Office.