The Simplest $10K/Month Business Most People Miss ($0 to Start) - Ep. #327

We're on track to do $200,000. So we are at about $10,000. Okay.

$10,000 a month.

Revenue. We've seen up to $15,000.

And how much of that is profit?

85%.

Wow. That's incredible.

Yeah.

And how much money does it take to start this business?

$0 and very minimal time. Because once you set it up, it's just doing its thing. The boards are fantastic for a side hustle. How many people out here could have a different life if they made $3,000 every single month?

Are you paid per month or per year?

All upfront.

Okay.

Yeah.

How do you design the ads?

We'll either do Canva or ChatGPT.

Yeah. ChatGPT image too is amazing.

Oh my gosh, it's so good. I work way less than I would at a job.

Mm-hmm.

And I have so much more fun.

Yeah.

So I wouldn't trade it.

Yeah.

All of our services are lined up to move them to the next step so that they go, well, now I've got this problem. It's like, well, we can solve that too.

Yeah.

Oh man.

We're still early for just about everything. And if you try to convince yourself that we're not, then you're probably just thinking up excuses to not do the thing, to not start a business. What do you have to lose? Worst case, you don't sell any, you just put it at a different restaurant. Do you ever walk into a restaurant and see that sandwich board next to the host stand that says like when their happy hour is, what the discounts on appetizers are? My guest today, Rachel, found a way to monetize that. She gives restaurants that board for free, and then she sells ads on that board for $3,600 a year. Finding the restaurants to place it is not hard. Finding the small businesses to advertise on it is not hard. But the genius of what she's doing is the upsell. She upsells them to something much more profitable that has nothing to do with restaurants or local businesses whatsoever. This is a banger. Please enjoy. So by the end of this episode, will people have enough information to start this kind of business? That they run in their part-time that makes them thousands per month?

Yes, absolutely. One board placed and you can make $3,000 a month.

Okay, so we're not hiding anything. No gatekeeping.

No gatekeeping. I love to lay it all out online.

Okay, so you're both full-time employees a year and a half ago, right?

Yep.

Where was the first restaurant where you saw a chalkboard that gave you this idea?

It was in Montana.

Now, was this sign outside or inside?

It was inside.

Okay, so you walk in and like right near the host table they have a a sign, a chalkboard that's like, you know, 2 for 1 fajitas or whatever.

Yes.

And you saw that and you were in the mindset at this moment of like, what business should we start? Is that right? You already had—

So we already had our agency, correct. And then we were looking for ways to generate leads. For the agency. Correct. And so, you know, of course, like after watching your show, we're always looking at opportunity and we were looking at, 'cause they had one right by the host stand and people are looking at it trying to decide if they're gonna pick something off of the specials. And we're like, how do you put something on there where you can sell sell advertising space.

Yeah.

So we didn't replicate the chalkboard thing, we did dry erase. So that is like the liquid chalk markers.

Okay.

And, uh, it's— the ads are just printed directly on there. So after having that idea, we started exploring that, and then it sort of led into, hey, we can use this as that lead generation piece that we were looking for that is also going to make us money.

Yeah. So your foot in the door. Okay. Now that's it. That's so interesting. Like Because there's— there are places where ads are and then already, and then there are places where ads could be and then places where ads aren't.

Yeah.

So I've been to restaurants every now and then where there are ads like in the table. Have you ever seen that?

Oh yeah.

Like underneath plexiglass or something?

Yep.

I don't think I've ever seen ads on like a specials chalkboard.

Yeah.

What gave you that idea?

Like just between like table advertising or sometimes they have banners up with just business logos on it and they'll hang it like above the bar. And so we were like, well, How do we take all of that and put it where people are already looking? They already expect to look at those specials to see if there's something they want to order. So that's kind of how it came about. Like, and also like the TV billboard or the TV advertising, like, how do we do something like that but not so complicated where you have to go install TVs and use the software? So it was like a mixture of banners, TV advertising, and, you know, just putting that all together.

Okay. So to be clear, the specials board that you saw didn't already have ads on it. You saw everyone was looking at it and you're like, we could put ads there. Spoken like a true capitalist.

Yes, right.

Where else can I put ads?

Exactly.

Okay, so what did you do? What did you do first? What were your next steps after having that idea?

So it was basically just finding where we could make this happen. Like, where can we get this printed that makes sense? And we just went to a bunch of different printers around Missoula. We were in Missoula and we were just kind of like painting this picture and getting quotes. And that's how we came across that, the dry erase. And we're like, well, that works because You can just spray it off, wipe it off, use it again. So we just made like a Canva mockup of what we thought it could look like, put the ads at the bottom and, you know, just designed at the top. So we put the— typically we put them inside of restaurants.

And what is it made out of?

It's like an aluminum. So the front, it has a dry erase coating. So it's like aluminum sandwich board and it's like it's outdoor resistant as well.

Okay.

So if they want to put it outside, we've had breweries put it outside, like on their patio and stuff. So we wanted to make sure it was indoor and outdoor. And then the coating, like the dry erase coating, makes sure that the ads stay nicely on there.

Okay. Why didn't you go chalkboard? Did you start with dry erase?

Yes, we did. We just couldn't find anything like that. And all of the chalkboards alone were way more expensive than this.

Okay.

So like by a couple hundred dollars. So this is a lot more lightweight and you just put it on a stand and it makes a lot more sense.

So a company in Missoula made those?

Mm-hmm.

So you didn't have to get 'em shipped?

No.

And what do they cost?

It costs about $350.

Okay. And you have other sizes?

Yeah. Yeah. You can do any size you want.

And how much money does it take to start this business?

$0. I really, all you need is Canva to make the ads and you don't even have to sign up for that subscription until you've sold an advertiser spot. So you don't pay for the board, the stand, the markers until everything is sold. So realistically, $0. And then once you sell an ad, you can go sign up for Canva or ChatGPT to make their ad and get it approved.

Okay, so that was your first and last design. Like you, you landed on what you stuck with.

Pretty much. Yeah.

How many did you get printed first?

So you only ever print it when you sell all the ad spaces. So we started with one just to test it. And it went really well. We got the first one done in about 2 weeks.

Okay.

So we decided to keep doing it. We've done 1 to 2 every single month since.

Okay. So the printer doesn't need like a big order?

Nope.

He'll do 1?

1.

All right. So tell me how— tell me the process you went through to find your first customer.

Yeah. So you want to start by finding the host location so you can tell the advertisers where it's going to go.

So host location, because we're talking— this is like a marketplace.

Yeah.

You need to find 2 sets of customers. the local business and then all the other local businesses to put their ads on there. So a host location is the local business where this will stay?

Correct.

So you start with that?

Yep. So restaurants, coffee shops, gyms, anywhere where there's a lot of foot traffic and people stay for a while. So restaurants are like number one.

So are there any like bad locations, like where there aren't enough people or?

Yeah, so think low foot traffic places like a dentist office, maybe physical therapy, where there might only be 2 people in the waiting room and they're really not going to be— they're not going to have enough exposure for these advertisers. I would say that's kind of something you want to steer away from. Keep it on the high traffic side of things.

Okay.

So we've typically done restaurants for all of these. And so you can send an email, send a DM, you can stop by in person. We have done DMs and stopping by in person to find the host locations. Our very first one, We sent them a message on Instagram. It was like this brunch place in Missoula. We're like, yeah, it's good. What was it called? FSK.

FSK.

Fork, spoon, knife.

Like I'm picturing like a hipster place.

Kind of, yes.

Exposed ceilings.

Yeah, exposed ceilings, lofted sitting.

You got the Edison bulb.

Yes, exactly. If you pull it up on Google, that's exactly what you'll see. Really?

That's funny. Okay.

So we actually shot them a message on Instagram to their business page. And she was like, I'd love to see it. Can you stop by? So we did. We walk in with that, we show her and she's like, So this is completely free. There's no catch. We're like, yeah, it's completely free. You can use it. We're just gonna put ads on the bottom. You just keep it up for a year. And she's like, I love it. Let's do it. So we're like, okay.

Was that your first DM or?

No, it was probably like our 10th or 15th.

That's a lot more realistic.

Yeah.

No, no. But still, oh geez, you had to send 15 DMs.

Right. Wow. Yeah. Just copy paste. Copy paste.

And what was your DM?

It was just like, hey, we're putting up, we're looking for a local restaurant in Missoula to host one of these boards for free.

You came highly recommended.

Would you be interested in taking a look at this? And we always make sure to say that it's free to them. So we're not trying to ask them for any money. So really simple. And then we send a quick picture of it so that they can be like, they can understand what the heck we're talking about.

In that first DM before they reply, you send a picture?

Yep.

Okay. And did FSK already have a specialist board?

They did not.

Okay.

No. Well, they had like a mini chalkboard one about this high and they would put it up like by the—

Like Muffins 250.

Yeah.

Like they put on the counter or something?

Yep.

How long had they been open, give or take?

I think like 3 years.

Okay. So pretty well established.

Uh-huh.

Okay. So why do you think she said yes? It's free, but like, was she already kind of wanting a special board or?

So I think she said yes because she really likes to present their daily specials.

Uh-huh.

So they do like different pastries and things like that. So she, she likes to get creative and tell people what she's gonna have.

Okay.

And she, that's when she brought up her little mini chalkboards and she was like, yeah, these are terrible. Like they're so tiny. I want something bigger.

Yeah.

So she was really excited about it.

And this was the business owner you were talking about?

Yes.

Presumably the one who saw your DM.

Yep. Yep.

Okay. So you DM'd 10 to 15 restaurants, coffee shops, et cetera. She was the first to reply.

Yep.

And so how much did you go back and forth via DMs versus how quickly did you just go meet her in person?

It was, hey, I love this idea. Can you come in and show us? And we said, yeah, can we come on Wednesday?

Sure.

Oh, okay.

So you bring the board and she's just like, Yep. Looks cool. Where do I sign up?

Yep.

I mean, because what else is there to say?

Right. She's like, it's really free?

You're like, it's free? 6 pounds?

Yes.

2.7 millimeter thickness?

Yeah, exactly.

Okay. She wasn't turned off by the ads at all?

No.

Because me, like, if I have like a nice place or something, it's like, yeah, it looks tacky.

Yeah.

I'd rather pay $3.50 and get a blank one.

Right.

You know, do people ever say that?

No, no. We had one like golf course restaurant that was kind of upscale and he said, we stray away from having other advertisers in our location, but no one No one has ever disliked the look of it.

I'm surprised you don't get more of that.

Yeah.

Maybe it's Missoula, like, or maybe it's just like restaurants are so strapped.

Yeah. It's like we've done it in other locations too.

Okay.

So we haven't run into that. Okay.

So, so she said yes. And you had already sold those spots?

No. So we waited till we had the host location.

Okay.

So then we can tell them where it's going.

Okay.

So then when we contact the advertisers, we can say we've got a board going up inside of FSK.

Okay.

Are you interested in being on it? That way they know, they're like, oh, that's a popular brunch place. Yeah, I'd love to be in front of those customers.

Okay. Have you learned that that's like a big deal, like where their ad's going to be shown, or is it not that important?

It's not. It's honestly surprising because one time we got a referral for this hole-in-the-wall place. I think it was called like Peggy's or Polly's or something for some diner. And I was like, I've never heard of it. It's off the beaten path. And I was like, I don't know. But what we did was in that particular situation, We asked the owner for referrals because we thought, you know, nobody's going to know this place.

Peggy's, correct.

Okay. So we asked him, we walked through it with him, like, who do you know? Or like, who does your insurance? Who handles your insurance? Who's your attorney? Uh, last time your HVAC went out, who did you call? And just sort of walked them through the process. Because when you've initially asked them, they're like, no, I don't really know anybody.

Yeah.

And they're like, well, what about this What about this? What about this? And then you leave with a list of names. And then that kind of dawned on us because that made it so much easier to fill the board. So we're like, okay, great, we're going to do that from now on.

Yeah.

So we leverage the referrals from the owner so that we can fill the board a lot quicker.

That's smart. There's a lot of questions like that in business where you, if you ask someone something too broad, they don't know.

Yes.

What to say.

Exactly.

Like in the AI, you know, implementation agency. If you're like, what problems are you struggling with in your business right now? Like, I don't know. Right. Yeah, there are problems. But if you're like, do employees ever show up late?

Mm-hmm.

You know, or do you ever have sleepless nights about your business? Yes. When was the last time you had a sleepless night? Like, you gotta like really remove like the thought process from them because they're not going to be creative enough to answer it.

Exactly. And we usually kind of start off by saying, is there anyone you don't want on the board? And they're like, no. And then we just kind of make a joke. Oh, I don't know if you have an ex-spouse or A cousin that you hate that has a business and then they kind of just laugh.

Yeah.

And you go, well, is there anyone you do want on this board? Is there a realtor that comes and eats lunch here every single week that you want to make sure they get a fair shot at being on here? And then just start to walk them through that process.

It's funny with local business owners, oftentimes their billboard or their ad, they don't even really expect or hope it brings them business. It's just kind of a flex.

Exactly.

Like a realtor's face on a bench. It's like, yeah, right, my bench.

And that's what's great about these boards because, you know, anytime you're talking marketing or advertising, The first question is, what's my ROI? And you don't really get that with this because it is like a billboard, you know, like you can go and pay $5,000 a month for a billboard and they can say, I don't know what you're going to get. Yeah, I can guarantee, though, that this many eyeballs are going to see it. So then you just tell them, you know, if Peggy's gets 7,000 customers a month, you say, well, you're going to be in front of about 7,000 customers every single month.

Yeah.

And that's enough for them.

Hmm. Okay.

And then they do like to share pictures of it.

Yeah.

And like post it on their social.

Yeah.

Like, hey, go check me out at FSK.

Okay. So how many ad slots are on there again?

There's 6.

And that's standard across the board. You don't have any like full, like someone, if someone wants the whole board or half the board or third.

If somebody wanted to buy 2 spots, we would absolutely let them. Okay. So it's not set in stone. You could do more if you wanted to. I probably wouldn't go more than like 10. Mm-hmm. So that, cuz you'd have to shrink the ads down a little bit. But mm-hmm. You can do 2, you could do 5, you could do 6. 6 just looks clean to us, so that's what we've been proceeding with.

Does the $350 include like printing the ads?

Yes.

Okay.

Printing and everything, yeah.

And what are the ads made out of? Like what material is that?

It's honestly, I don't even know. It's just printed on there. Or in a magnet? And I'm pretty sure it's just like pressed onto the board and then it has a coating on top of it.

Okay. So you send to the printer The, the, like the designs.

Mm-hmm.

And he prints it as is.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Yep.

And now what is your pricing?

So for one, if we do one board and we're doing 6 spots, mm-hmm, it's $600 per spot. And that stays up for 1 year. If we're launching 2 boards in 2 different locations, so they get double exposure, then we charge $900.

Okay. So kind of a 50% discount then.

Yeah.

Give or take. Okay. So $3,600 per board per year.

Yes.

So $300 per month per board total. Wow. That's pretty good.

Yeah. So your profit sits around $3,200 if you do one board, $4,600 if you do 2.

Hold on. $3,200 one board because your, your cost is only the—

So it's about $400 because there's— we give them the stand to put it on and markers to write on it. So all in about $400 for the costs.

Okay. So, you know, we're talking like 85% profit margins. Less your time to like DM these people.

Right.

Okay. So the, do, do you have like a contract? Does the restaurant sign a lease? Do the business owners sign a lease or, you know, an agreement? Yeah.

So we have the restaurant sign an agreement just saying that they will keep the board up for 1 year in a visible location. And that if they sell the business, that transfers to the new owner.

Okay. And have you ever had any pushback? From that, or—

no. Okay.

Do you check in, like, make sure it's still visible, or— yeah, yeah, if you think, if you remember.

But yeah, we typically do. And we've never had this happen, but we've told, like, we've had the conversation. If the advertisers ask, like, hey, I was in the restaurant and I didn't see it up, then, like, we have that contract in place so that we can contact them and say, hey, you got to get that board back up.

Yeah.

But we have not run into that. And the first place that we did, the brunch place, She actually posts it on her Instagram story almost every day because she's—

Because the specials are on.

Exactly. So like they're getting all that exposure as well.

Man, because you, if you could like measure that, you could use like an AI agent or something to, you know, put all of your customers' Instagram pages and anytime they post a picture of that board, you know, it could log that to a spreadsheet because then you could honestly say, yeah, Peggy's Diner gets 7,000 customers a month, but Peggy posts this every day and those posts get 1,300 views on average.

Mm-hmm.

But you're really getting 87,000 views a month.

Right. Right.

Exactly. Not that you'd be able to 10x your prices. It doesn't scale like that. Right.

It's just information to help make the sale.

Right. It's either gonna increase your close rate or you could increase your prices. Mm-hmm. Right?

Yeah.

So it's just a whiteboard. Whiteboards have been around forever. Why are people paying you $3,000 for them?

Because it's put up for a year in front of thousands of customers inside of a local restaurant or just any busy local business. So if it's going inside of Bob's Pizza and Bob's Pizza gets 10,000 customers a month, that means that their business is displayed in front of those customers and all the specials of that restaurant are written on it. So people are already looking at it. They're already sitting there, they're looking at the board trying to decide, and then they might glance down and go, my roof is leaking. I'm gonna call Rick's Roofing.

Do you ask these business, these restaurant owners what their like monthly volume is? I, I would think a lot of restaurants like, They don't know how many people come through every month.

Yeah. So we will ask them and they're like, yeah, it's anywhere between 7,000 and 10,000 or it's, you know, 32,000. Like if they know their numbers, but a rough number is all we're really looking for.

And what's an average?

Between 7,000 and 10,000.

Okay.

That's typically what we see.

What about for coffee shops?

That's about the same.

Okay. Yeah. Okay.

In the busier locations.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because it's open less hours a day, but it's like a higher volume of people. Yeah. All right, so $7,000, $10,000. So I'm trying to get a feel for like what the CPM cost per mille would be.

Yeah.

So if it's $7,000, that's 7, and divided by, you know, 300 a month, is that right? So like $30 CPM. So like, that's pretty good. Like for a business owner, just if they were comparing it against a billboard or Facebook ads, that's a pretty good price, right?

Yeah.

Just harder to attribute new sales to it.

Right. Exactly.

What kind of stories have you heard from your advertisers that where they've gotten business from it?

Yeah. So one of the painters, he actually, he was on the first board that we did and then he was on a couple other ones too. But he hopped on it because he, that was his favorite brunch place. His office is kind of close to there. And he was telling us that it was the owner's son. He needed his house painted and he's always in the restaurant and he saw it. So he gave him a call and he was like, oh, that's Murray's painting. He's right down the road. And he saw it and he was like, I see him every day. I'm going to give him a call. So that was one of the stories. But I think what's great about these is that you can kind of explain this confidently to a business owner. Like, this is truly about branding. This is about just being everywhere at a low cost so that somebody might call you and they might not say, hey, I saw you on this board, but they're going to say, I just see you everywhere in town. So I figured you were the guy to call.

Yeah.

And when you explain it like that to them, that kind of disarms the ROI question and they just understand it. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.

Well, they say that only 50% of marketing works. You just don't know what 50%.

Exactly right. Yeah. You hear that all the time where they're like, I have all this marketing going on, I don't know what's working, so I'm not going to turn anything off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you ever thought of, you know, giving a board to a restaurant without any advertisers in place and just putting like 6 QR codes that say your ad here?

Oh yeah.

Link to you. That's a good idea because 10% of adults are business owners.

Mm-hmm.

So therefore, any given restaurant has 700 business owners coming through.

Yeah.

You know, and it's like, oh, hmm.

I like that. Yeah.

What do you have to lose? $400. But if worst case, you don't sell any, you just put it at a different restaurant. Like, you do month to month on that and say, once we fill it up, we'll sign a 12-year lease with you. So especially if it were like a higher volume place.

Yeah, absolutely.

I like that. Okay, so $3,600. Per year, per board. Most of that is profit. What are your numbers today after a year and a half?

So we've been doing this for 6 months. We installed this about 6 months ago. Why did I think a year and a half? Our agency is a year and a half old.

Okay.

Okay. All right.

6 months.

This came later. A lot of people start with the lead gen. We put it in after. But so we've done about $50,000 in revenue on just the boards.

In 6 months?

Correct.

So on track for over $100,000 your first year, because I assume you're growing.

Yes. And $45,000 of that is profit.

Holy cow. So it is about 90% margins and you don't yet know what your churn will be like. I have to think after a year it's like, why would we get rid of this?

Right?

We didn't even pay for it in the first place. Worst case, they want to put it in a closet and at that point just take it back.

Right.

Then your next customer is pure margin, pure profit.

Yeah. And a lot of the advertisers that like we had on the first few boards were on the next set of boards. So that churn rate like has been really low. Our advertisers from the first one want to move to the second one. So each time we launch a new board, we just reach out to who was on the last one.

Okay.

And then a lot of them will double up.

Okay. Are you paid per month or per year?

So all upfront.

Okay.

Yeah. So we just collect all upfront because $600 for the year is— I think that's like $1.50 a day.

Okay.

And that's a really easy ask. So we've talked about like if we ever receive any pushback or raise the prices, dividing up into 2 payments or monthly payments. But at that point, it's $50 a month and yeah, you'd rather just have the money up front. So, okay, we're profiting all that right up front.

Okay, so I'm getting confused. So how much was it per month per advertiser again?

It's $600 for the year.

$600 for the whole year?

Correct.

$3,600 for the year for the board?

Yes.

Okay. Yep. So $50 a month per business owner. So what is your— I guess you don't count monthly recurring revenue, right? Because you're charging just up front, right? Okay. $600 for the year. Okay. So, sorry. How many unique businesses are on your boards?

So, I think we are at like 63.

Okay.

If I want to—

Like a third of them have multiple boards.

Yes. Uh-huh.

Okay. So, 63 unique businesses. And then of those, how many have you upsold to?

About half.

Half? Okay. So, the whole world is screaming about AI right now. And you're arguing we need to be placing whiteboards In restaurants. What's the argument for that?

I think it's just kind of going back to the roots of simplicity instead of screaming AI, which we do on the backend, but offering them something so simple that they already understand and that has been around for years is such an easier sell. And I think a lot of businesses appreciate it. So it makes it easier for them to swallow things like AI automation, upgrading their website when you offer them something that they understand. And that they've probably already done something like it.

When does that conversation happen?

Pretty much immediately. So we, what we'll do is, cuz we do websites, reputation management, um, different, you know, AI services like AI receptionist, AI chat widget. And what we'll do, what we'll start with is as soon as we get them paid for the board, cuz we don't wanna like overwhelm them and just say, oh, and by the way, we also do AI and automation, all the things that they're afraid of.

Mm-hmm.

So We will, we'll get that all settled. We'll get the board placed.

You get paid.

Get paid. Yes. And then we run a report in GHL, that prospecting report.

Mm-hmm.

And it shows like where the gaps are, their citations, if they're responding to reviews.

And that's a few clicks.

A few clicks.

You just put their website in there and hit enter or? Mm-hmm. Yep.

Okay. Yeah. You just find like their business on the map.

Shows where all the gaps are, like what they're doing wrong basically.

Yes. It gives them like a percentage rating on all of the different categories and an overall rating. And then it'll even tell you like how likely GHL thinks they are to convert. Okay. So the ones that are like, you know, 20, 30%, we typically don't send unless we see a bigger opportunity with AI. So if they're not answering their phones, if we're trying to call them to get their ad approved and they don't answer their phones, that's when we see an opportunity for an AI receptionist or an AI chat widget. But typically we start with that GHL report. Okay. And 9 times out of 10, they have Some major issues that we can help them with that leads into reputation management.

Okay, so if you plug in Sally's Coffee Shop and Sally is just a killer at internet marketing and she has an AR reception, she has all this stuff, you're going to plug in report and it's going to say, yeah, she could be doing these three things better, but your chance of closing her is like 12% because she's pretty solid.

Yep.

But most of the time, 90% of the time, you plug in Sally's Coffee Shop and it's like. Sally doesn't know what she's doing.

Exactly.

Right. She needs all of these things. And so we think that if you present this in the right way, your chance of closing her would be 60%. Is that accurate?

Correct. And then we actually just go through that report with them.

Okay.

So that they can see the data. And a lot of times when we get to the citations and like the review responses, they immediately like, how do we fix that?

Yeah.

Because they're like, oh my gosh, I didn't know anything about that.

Okay. All right. So let's say, for instance, July 1st, you close a customer.

Mm-hmm.

You accept their money. They signed. They're gonna have their ad on a board for a year.

Mm-hmm.

July 1st. At what point do you say, hey, by the way, like the second?

Typically when we're wrapping up the board and we've got it placed. Okay. So when we, 'cause we'll send them a picture of it in the location. Okay. So I, if we have like those few that we know we're gonna target, we'll email them separately, say, hey, your board is up, it's live. You can stop by and see it. Here's a picture of it.

Mm-hmm.

Also, I noticed a few things. on your website or your Google Business Profile that we can actually help you with.

Yeah.

If you are interested, or we'll just kind of say, we, we noticed a few gaps of where you might be missing the boat. We can help you rank higher.

Yeah.

So, um, they already worked with us on something that they understand.

Mm-hmm.

And they got to know us. They like us. They see that we operate really well and really quickly. We respond, we're trustworthy, and then, then we can have that conversation.

Yeah.

Where we're pitching what everybody else is Pitching websites, AI automation.

There's no shortage of people doing that.

Exactly.

You're just saying that the difference between us is we just take a different—we take a back door. Everyone else is knocking on the front door, and they're like, "Look at the no soliciting sign." Right? You're like, "What about your side door?" Yes. Also, I'm coming through the side door, and I'm bringing in six cookies. Yes. Right? And I'm helping you find more money, aka more customers. Would you like even more of those customers?

Right? Like more cookies? Yes. You know? Yes, exactly. You've seen what we can do. You've seen that you like us. Do you want to know what else we could do to help?

Yeah, because that's— it's all about trust. And so I get a dozen cold emails a day for this, and I don't know this person. I already don't like this person. They're no different than any other cold email. Um, but if it was like my friend at church or my mom, it's like, I like you, I trust you, right? But they don't have to be your mom. It just needs to be someone that you already gave money to that didn't run away with it.

Exactly.

That gets you 80% of the way to being like an immediate family member when it comes to trust.

Right.

Not like knowing them necessarily, but just like trustworthy enough to give them money every month.

Yeah. And especially in marketing, like, oh yeah, there's— everybody's a marketer. Yeah. And everybody wants to take your money. So it's like, how do we just be a little bit different?

Yeah. Okay. So what I want to ask about your pricing for that, but before I do, do you have a list of your— of these 63 customers? I'm curious what industries Yeah.

So it's mostly painting, HVAC, law.

Okay.

Tax, insurance, realtors.

Okay. So these are very local businesses.

Yes.

Painting, HVAC, law, tax, insurance, realtors.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. Of those categories, what's the most common? Like, what's the easiest to close?

Honestly, the, like, tax and insurance side.

Okay.

Which I thought it would be more home services.

Uh-huh.

They still love it too. But there is something that tax people, insurance people, they just, I think they understand this type of advertising. Like, they're the ones likely to do the bus advertising, like realtors. Yeah. They're all over town like that. You know, yard signs, things like that. So I think that's why they're used to this. Yeah. Yeah. HVAC, painting, they are more focused on that.

Yeah.

That ROI. Yeah. And like, what do I get back immediately?

Well, there's a few things happening, like a realtor, a new Home sale to them is worth $15,000.

Right.

$500,000 home, $15,000. Right. A painter might be $3,000 and one time. Right. So it's like theoretically, the realtor could be 5 times easier to close for that fact alone. Right. In addition, painters, HVAC, a lot of those guys are just busy. They don't need to advertise because there's a 3 million shortage of blue-collar workers. We all know that, right? Exactly. Whereas realtors, there's 2 million realtors. That's insanely competitive. So you have those things working for you. The high ticket level of competition, how busy they already are. Most realtors are not busy, right? Because there's so many realtors. Exactly. Okay, so what, what do you charge on average for your digital services?

Yeah, so for the websites, that's anywhere between $1,000 and $6,000.

Up front?

Yeah, that's just the setup. Okay. So depending on what they need, and then it's anywhere from like $50 a month if they just need basic hosting to maybe $1,000 or more. If they want automations and AI plugged in.

Okay. For hosting, you said?

Mm-hmm.

Okay. What, for the customers that you're building websites for, how many of them already have a website?

I would say 50%.

Okay. I'm surprised there's not more.

Mm-hmm.

Because in my experience, it's like, it's easier to sell a website to someone that has a website.

Right.

Because they know that it's important. Theirs is outdated. It's old. A website's one thing as a business owner, you build, you forget about it.

Mm-hmm.

It might be broken. You don't know.

Yeah.

And you move on and you check a box and you feel good because you have a website.

Mm-hmm.

But then it's like years later, it's like, oh, this website sucks. Yeah. It looks bad and it's not converting. And that form has been broken for 9 months. Maybe, I don't know, maybe 9 years. Yeah.

That's our second best customer.

Yeah. Right. Okay. So $1,000 to $6,000. Mm-hmm. To, to give them a new website or their first website. Yeah. Now I've used GHL a lot. How much time do you spend building that website?

We actually don't build 'em in GHL. Oh, okay. So we'll do like the backend hosting in GHL if we need to. Okay. But we, uh, and by we, I mean my husband. I don't do this, but he codes them in Claude Code.

Okay.

Yeah. And they're, they load super quick. They're really nice and really easy to maintain. Yeah.

Still very approachable for, I mean, you can use natural language.

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

To, to build those. Yep. So 63 customers on the, the sandwich board side. How many of those have you closed for digital stuff?

So 20 to 30.

Okay.

We've got about 20 active right now, and then the other 10 we've done And it like just a one-time website, one-off, like a citation blast, certain things like that. Okay.

So of those 30, how much like lifetime revenue do you expect you'll get from them?

Typically about $7,500 per year.

Per year for each of them?

Mm-hmm.

Okay. So $200,000, is that right?

Yeah. Yeah. We're on track to do $200,000.

$7,500 times 30. $225,000 per year. Mm-hmm. But it's not all recurring.

Some of it's recurring, right? Yeah. Some of that is like the upfront setup fees. Some of that is ongoing. The AI services and automation, those are our higher ticket items. Brand reputation and just website hosting, that falls on the lower end.

Okay. So theoretically, if you said we're done with the sandwich boards, we're done with our Legion, we're going to turn it all off, we're busy, we're full, you would be making top line revenue like $325,000, $350,000 a year from here on out. And of course, over time you would lose them. You would turn both on both sides of the business. But after 6 months of work, you've built a business profiting 6 figures a year. Mm-hmm. Right?

Yeah.

Doing something that I've honestly never heard of.

Yeah.

And I hear of all the business ideas. Like I, I've heard of, you know, digital marketing. I've heard of, you know, putting ads in restaurants, not in this way, but putting those 2 together, I have not.

Yeah.

And I— that's what's so beautiful about ideas and about business is because if you take like 5 different ways of finding customers, 1,000 different industries, 10 different pricing models, 10 different distribution methods, and you multiply all those numbers, you end up with tens or hundreds of millions of variations of ideas. And you can't tell me that all of those are taken.

Right.

They're just not. We're talking, call it 50 million ways of pricing, modeling, pitching, getting your foot in the door, selling certain things to different industries, 50 million ways. And 98% of them are still wide open. Yeah. And if one of them is taken, there's probably 100 other people that could do the same thing and still be successful.

Right, exactly. The— as much as people say that the market is saturated, I think HVAC is saturated, plumbing is saturated, uh, cutting grass is saturated, marketing is saturated. Everything is saturated. Just figure out how to get yourself in front of your customers. Yeah. And if you have to be a little bit different or think outside the box to do it, yeah, like Absolutely, go for it. And that's what's going to set you apart.

So is your role in your marriage to like run the sandwich, the sandwich sign business, and then like kind of upsell them, and then you hand them off to your husband who's doing the digital stuff?

Yeah, pretty much. So I'm customer-facing, anything to do with sales and talking to people, that's me. And then I call him and I say, we've got this project to do.

Yeah, yeah. So do you take them all the way up until they're closed and then you hand them off?

Yeah.

Then you go to the next one.

Yep.

Okay. How much time are you spending upselling and closing people on the digital side versus trying to grow the physical side of the business?

So I would say the upsell, like, so selling the boards and upselling them, I probably spend about 10 hours a week. Okay. And then another 10 to 20 on like the other side of our business. Okay. So like making sure everything is in place and where it needs to be and targeting my next, my next group. Yeah.

What, now you told me what types of businesses are easiest to close on the sandwich board. What types of businesses are the easiest to upsell into?

Home services all day.

Mm-hmm. So it's the opposite. It's realtors. It is tax, insurance, lawyers. They're willing to pay $100 a month. Mm-hmm. But less willing to pay $5,000 for website or whatever. Correct. $1,500 monthly for services.

Yes. Yeah. And a lot of what we have to do or what we do has to do with those Google reviews. Okay. And I think contractors, And home services just really understand those Google reviews. They just don't have a system in place.

Okay.

To get them. So when we bring them that system, they see the value in it all day.

Okay. What, let's say there's 4 buckets of revenue on the digital side. Let's just say if I just made that number up, websites, 3 others, where do your customers fall?

Typically in brand reputation management and then like the websites.

If you were to put, assign a percentage to that bucket, How much of your revenue comes from brand reputation management?

60.

60. Okay, cool. And then what else?

Websites. So some of them are just website builds and then hosting. I would say that makes up another 30%. And then we've got 10% on the higher ticket services like the AI receptionists, automations plugged in. So appointment bookings, things like that. Those are the higher ticket services.

You know, it's interesting how still, how early we still are on the AI side.

Mm-hmm.

Like, I know that people are using voice agents and stuff, but like, if the, if the whole AI story is 100 years long, when it's all said and done, we're 3% of the way there.

I know.

Really? Like, it's crazy. 'Cause no one knew what ChatGPT was the first year.

Right.

So 2% of the way into it. That is interesting. 'Cause I think something like a, do you do any voice agents?

Yes. Mm-hmm.

Something like that in 5 years or 10 years is gonna be where websites are today.

Right.

But 20 years ago, selling websites was still really good.

Right.

Like I, I've said this a million times on the podcast, you've probably heard it. Mm-hmm. But like, we're always early for everything. Mm-hmm. Right? Like it's, unless we're talking like, you know, cassette tapes or like certain industries where it's already done and dead, it's like we're still early for just about everything. Right. And if you try to convince yourself that we're not, then you're probably just thinking up excuses to not do the thing, to not start a business.

Exactly. You hear that all the time. Like AI is saturated and it's like, Are you, are you serious?

Yeah.

You do think that's right? That's accurate. And I think that's why, I mean, I'm sure business owners feel like it's saturated too because they're always getting contacted about, hey, can I sell you this AI service? And I think a lot of them get scared when you say like, I do AI and they're like, they think it's gonna mess up their business. Yeah. So having that forefront item where you build that relationship and it makes sense to them, and then you kind of lead in, you don't just drop AI on them. Yeah. You just sort of work it in there. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And they're more open to it instead of just being like, AI, AI.

Right. I just, I, maybe I'm just like, I don't know, grumpy, but sometimes when people tell me something's saturated, I'm trying to think of an example. Like I was in Utah last month and Utah is the dessert capital of the world. Yeah. It just is. And we were in Lehi, Utah, which is probably the dessert capital of the dessert capital. Mm-hmm. And we wanted to get ice cream. So I open Google, I pull up ice cream, and there are 8 scoop shops within like a 3-mile radius. Yeah. Now, in Dallas, Texas, there's probably 2 or 3. Yeah. So on the surface, you'd look at that and say, it's so saturated, we're so oversaturated. Then it's like, compared to what?

Right.

How do you know that? Because you might go to all 8 of those and there's a line out the door, you know, and you add a 9th and there'd be a line out that door. Because it grows the market. Now there's even more options. Now there's more people wanting ice cream because it has this perception of saturation. Right. So I just, I push back that we're late on anything and that anything is oversaturated. Certainly things are like, there are markets where there's too many of an industry and none of them are doing very well except for a few. But—

Well, and I think it's saturated on the, on the outside. Yeah. But it's not saturated of the people who are actually doing things. Mm-hmm. So especially, and I speak to that from like a marketing standpoint. So all of the people doing any selling marketing services, AI, I think there are so many of them, but what percentage—

Who knows how well they're all doing?

Exactly. What percentage is going to stay consistent? Yeah. And actually do what they need to do every single day to get in front of their customers. That's the difference. And that's where people don't realize that there's a huge gap. Yeah. And there's a huge opportunity to step in and be one of those people that does something every single day. Yeah. That's where you're gonna win.

Oh, that's so good. Okay, so reputation and brand management, is that like responding to reviews?

Yeah.

Or soliciting reviews?

Correct. So it's an automated request system. So you hook it up to, typically we'll hook it up to their invoice system. So when they receive payment from a customer, the request goes out and then it's set on an automation to go out 3 times via email and 3 times via text. Yeah. Because they're more likely to respond to a text. Okay. So it's that part. And then also replying to those reviews so that, that Google will start to rank you higher.

Okay.

There's a few other things like posting those 5-star reviews to your social media, putting in a chat widget on the website, things like that. So that's kind of all built into that package.

And the big secret here is nobody needs to know how to do or build any of these things. We're just paying one piece of software, right? One flat monthly fee. If you have 4 customers, it costs $100, $300, $500 a month. If you have 4,000 customers, it It still costs $500 a month.

Right.

How much, how many, I'm not even gonna measure this in hours, but how many minutes does your husband spend setting up a new customer for something that you're already doing for another customer?

I mean, it's just kind of set up as a snapshot in—

Right.

GoHighLevel. So.

So if you have an HVAC business paying you how much per month for reputation management?

$399.

$400 a month for reputation management. And then another HVAC business says, I want that too. How many minutes do you spend setting him up?

It's about 10 minutes and then we do an onboarding call, 20 to 30 minutes.

10 minutes. So 30 minutes one time. Things will break over time. Mm-hmm. Of course. 30 minutes one time for $4,800 a year. Yeah. And for, we don't really know what the churn is yet cuz it's early, but presumably very low churn because they're getting more reviews, they're responding to the reviews. Right. Therefore their Google Business Profile ranking goes up, therefore they're getting more customers, therefore they're correlating that to you and your genius. And they're like, what else can I pay you for? Right. Can you help me with this? Can you do a, AI voice agent, yada, yada.

Yeah. And that's even like, so all of our services are lined up to move them to the next step. So the boards get them in so we can have the conversation about their website or reputation management. Then they start getting more customers. Then we say, how do we help you manage those customers? Let's put in an AI chatbot. Let's put in an AI receptionist. And so it all just kind of like leads them up the line to keep them so that they go, well, now I've got this problem. It's like, well, we can solve that too. Yeah.

Oh man, I just, um, my last interview in this seat was with a guy that does estate sales.

Oh yeah, I listened to that one.

Yeah, and so he has this ugly, unsexy, somewhat profitable, very tedious business, like a literal sweaty business that feeds him these $100,000 leads, right? An estate sale to house flipping pipeline. Yep. He's probably the one of the first people that's ever thought of that. I've never heard of anyone else doing I've never heard of anyone else doing this. There's so many ways to get your foot in the door. Okay, so I'm going to guess— guesstimate some numbers here. Call it 12 customers paying for reputation management, $400 a month each. So $4,800 a month, almost all profit for one of your services.

Yeah, yeah, and very minimal time because once you set it up, it's just doing its thing. You just have to make sure, check in, you know, once a month, make sure it's actually doing what it's supposed to be doing. And something might unlink, something might break. But other than that, it's fantastic.

What are the downsides of this business?

The downsides of the boards is that they're not recurring.

Both sides.

Yeah. Okay. So for the boards, they are not recurring. So you have to do a new board every single month. But when you really think about it, you need 12 restaurants or 12 coffee shops to put it in.

So, sorry, what do you mean every single month? Like, cuz it is, it's recurring up to a year, isn't it?

So we collect upfront. Right. So like we just collect all the money up front. So we make the $3,200 profit and then we go do another board and sell another set to grow the business.

Right. But that old board you just placed, that's good for a year, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. And at the end of the year, most will probably, most of your 6 advertisers probably stay. 1 or 2 may swap out and the printer would just print over those or?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You can do like vinyl stickers and put it on or just create a whole new board because the cost is so low.

So this type of business. I need to make an acronym for it. It'd be way too long, but it's like Y-O-A-G-A-Y-L-D. You're only as good as your last deal. Yeah, right. It is recurring. You haven't seen the recurring yet because we haven't had a year elapse yet, but you got to keep placing more boards, right? And in Missoula, Montana, there's only so many restaurants, but you're in Colorado now. There's a lot more there. Okay, so that's the downside of that. It's a little Unscalable. Is DM to in-person, is that the whole play? Or have you found that cold email, cold call works, or it just works so well that that's all you do now?

Yeah, so typically we'll DM to try and get like an in-person appointment to show them the board, and then we'll go in. And we've never had somebody just say yes over a DM. They want to see it, they want to know like what, what this weird free thing is we're trying to give them. So we'll DM, try to get an appointment, then we stop in and then do the whole contract, walk them through the referrals. And then the referrals, we typically leave with 12 to 20 names, and then we just go call them. We can usually close six out of those. Really?

Yeah. So your your whole that whole side of the business is kind of leaning on referrals at this point. Yeah. Not like because it would be a lot harder otherwise. Yeah. Go to the phone book and start calling HVAC companies. No, no, no, no. Right. No. Exactly. Okay. I would try the QR code idea. I do like that. You're right here. I was going to say something earlier. I'm all over the place. But when you said you always try to get them to the next thing, right? Like a website, then reputation management, then an AI voice agent or whatever. I— they call that micro-commitments, right? Yeah. And it's like you could also call it the buy a guy a drink first principle, right? Where it's like you don't offer someone the $5,000 thing right after you meet them, even if they trust you, like you, and know you. You offer them the free thing and then the $50 thing and then the $500 thing and then the $5,000 thing. And your net of net, your close rate will be a factor of 10 higher, right? Than if you— oh, nice to meet you. Okay, do you want a $5,000 website? No. You know, so that's a— that's an important principle. Um, all right, so the downsides— unscalable. What about the downsides of the digital business?

I would just say the hustle. We do a lot of cold email and testing and measuring what messaging is working. So it's just a hustle like everything else, but you just have to create your system and stay consistent. consistent with it. Because if you don't, that's when it's going to fall off and that's when it's going to come really bad because you don't have a business. Yeah. If you can't stick to the hustle, then you're not going to have a business. So just like everything else, it's just a hustle to get appointments booked and get leads in the door.

Okay. So if you've closed 20 to 30 on the digital side from the physical side, how many other digital customers do you have that you've closed from other avenues?

Yeah. So actually my husband's face, Facebook is like, it's monetized and I don't know all the right terms, but he is like blasted out to a lot of different people. So he'll post content about Google Business Profiles, citations, websites, and he actually has a lot of people coming to him. Okay. Now because he's just shown to so many people that he'll have people reaching out like, hey, I always see your, your posts on Facebook. You seem like the guy to go to. Mm-hmm. So that's another really good avenue for us.

Okay. So your husband is off camera. Yeah. We just talked to him.

He's super interesting even though he doesn't show his face a lot.

I'm sure. I'm sure. So that's very encouraging. He has 800 YouTube subscribers. Mm-hmm. 1,300 Facebook followers, and he's just posting videos about here's how to make your presence more visible in your HVAC business on Google or whatever. Yeah. Right. And even though those videos get hundreds to low thousands of views, they're very targeted views. Mm-hmm. And he's able to do the same thing that the sandwich boards do, which is build trust immediately. Yeah. And you just wait for the DMs to roll in. Mm-hmm. I'm assuming he's not like really going out there and chasing down all these commenters and likers. Yeah. You just wait for DMs. Yeah, pretty much. And then you, you follow that lead. Mm-hmm. So how many customers have you gotten from that and all other external sources?

I think we've gotten 6 here recently, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, 6 in the last 3 weeks.

And that's, I mean, that will, will be tens of thousands of revenue. Mm-hmm. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. It's so great when someone just sends him a Facebook message. Yeah. And then like, he doesn't like to respond. He, cuz he doesn't know what to say. And I'm like, so he hands his phone to me and I'm like, yeah, yeah.

That's it. Yin and yang. That's great. Great team. Okay, so across all of your customers, across both business lines, what is your like monthly revenue and profit today?

So we are at about $10,000. Okay, $10,000 a month. And sometimes that's up to— we've seen up to $15,000. Okay, it's between $10,000 and $15,000. And how much of that is profit?

85%. Wow, that's incredible. Yeah. And it's enjoyable? Yeah, it's so great.

Yeah, it really is. I especially getting to do this with my husband, like You can see we're already a really good team because I'm the talker, he's the doer. So we work really well together and I work way less than I would at a job and I have so much more fun. Yeah. So I wouldn't trade it.

Yeah. What, what is your response rate on your DMs, your cold DMs to local businesses?

For which? For the boards? The sandwich boards? Yeah. I would say probably around 10 to 20%. That's good.

I want people to understand, like, an Instagram DM from a local carries 100 times the weight.

Yes.

If I get it, like, I have my DMs, or I have too many DMs, I rarely look at them. But if I look in there and someone's like, hey, I live in insert city name that I live in, or insert city next door, I'll probably respond.

Yeah.

Just because it's like, oh, it's my guy.

Right.

You know?

Right.

But if it's like, hey, do you want to buy my agency services? It's like—

Yes. Yeah, exactly.

So, like, I think with the advent of AI, Local will be more critical, more important than. Yeah, because we feel connected with those people.

Yep. So if we send out ten local DMs, we typically get one to three responses. Wow. Okay.

And then of those, how many would you say you close?

I would say we close. Well, so when we reach out for the boards, we're only looking for one. Okay. Sometimes two. So out of those three, we can close the one or two that we need. Okay. Especially because it's you're giving them. Something free. Yeah. Sometimes they'll say no because they already have ten of these up in the restaurant. Okay. Or sometimes they're just like, "No, I don't. I don't know what this is.

I'm confused." So the secret sauce to that business all comes down to asking them for referrals. Oh, absolutely. If that weren't a thing, I imagine this would be ten times harder.

Yeah. So our first board, we actually didn't ask for those referrals. Yeah. And so we just hit the cold emails. Hit the cold DMs and we did fill it in about 2 weeks. Okay. So it went by pretty quickly.

There's a hustle for $3,200.

Yeah. Uh-huh. So, but then once we started leveraging those referrals and kind of cracked that code, yeah, we're like, wow, that's like a whole nother world. And then you can have the board done in a couple of days. Yeah.

Okay. What, uh, how do you design the ads? Do you ask for them to submit something or?

Yeah, so they can, but we include it. So we'll either do Canva or ChatGPT.

Yeah. ChatGPT Image 2 is amazing. Oh my gosh.

It's so good compared to what it used to be.

Like the letters aren't weird.

Yes. Like Claude is really bad right now.

It is. It is great for everything else.

It's amazing for everything else. Anything I should have asked?

Anything interesting about the business that we might have missed? Yeah.

So I do just want to say like lean on those referrals. So the boards are fantastic for a side hustle. So I mean like how many people out here could have a different life if they made $3,000 every single month.

Yeah.

So as a side hustle, it serves perfectly good and it's fantastic. It can also be like, I encourage you to think beyond, like what's next? Like look at what we've done with our business using the board of what's next, because that question is gonna come when you're working with these businesses and you're providing them an advertising service like these boards. They're going to say eventually, what else do you do? What else can you help me with? Hey, I'm not getting that many calls. Can you help me with this?

Yeah.

That question is going to come. So I encourage you, like, these side hustles can always turn into something bigger. It can turn into a really big business if you have that answer ready of what else you want to offer.

Yeah.

And your side hustle could become bigger than you ever thought it could be.

Yeah.

So like, if you're going to pursue these boards, lean on those referrals and your life is going to be so much easier. And also think about what else you can offer, what else can come Yeah.

I just have this, envision this future where after this goes live, there's like sandwich boards with ads in every restaurant.

Yeah, probably.

It's like the new thing.

Yeah. We're gonna be seeing ads for it.

Really good point. It's very low tech. Like you can do ChatGPT.

Yeah. Yep.

No cost to start either.

Right. $0 to start.

Yeah. Yep. You use Stripe for payment processing?

Stripe. Yeah.

What other tools do you use? So Stripe for payment processing. Yeah. GHL for CRM and all that.

Yep. Canva, which is kind of like phasing out a little bit. Mm-hmm. We just do that if something needs edited that we just made in AI. We use ChatGPT and Claude.

Instagram.

Yeah. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube.

Do you DM on any other platforms like TikTok or Facebook or just Facebook?

Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Facebook, you have to be careful because like it'll shut you down pretty quickly. Yeah. Typically 5 or 10 messages. If you send them pretty close, you'll get the little red couldn't send. They block you. Yeah. Instagram is like the Wild West. They don't care. Yeah. So you can just send as many as you want. So.

I'm curious about something. Hey Siri, ask ChatGPT how many restaurants and cafes, coffee shops there are per capita, per person in the United States. Okay, so there is one restaurant or, or a cafe for about every 200 people.

Okay.

So if you have a town of 2,000, then there's 10. Town of 20,000, then there's 100. So no matter where you live, there's like hundreds, especially if you go out, branch out a little bit, right? Hundreds or probably thousands of potential customers. And it could also be an auto shop, you know, oil change, or it doesn't have to be a restaurant, right? Um, any type of a business could have specials, but it's just the more eyeballs, the Yep. But I mean, an oil change shop could get even more eyeballs.

Yeah. And then, so like what we've talked about, if we were going to get kind of niche like that, so let's say we put it in an auto shop, then whoever you put on the board, like you want to target it towards that customer. What else do they need? They're already there for their auto repair or whatever it is. And then you can easily convince other businesses. So we're actually working on one in Knoxville right now and it's Tied in with the Humane Society, so we're launching two boards, and from that money we're actually donating to the Humane Society. So the target that we're doing is vets, pet groomers, you know things like that, pet supply stores, because one is going up inside of the Humane Society. So it's going to be in front of customers that they have a dog or they're adopting a dog, and then that way like know your customer. Yeah, basically.

So you've successfully So you've actually found customers for this in both Missoula, Montana, and Knoxville, Tennessee? Yep. That's great. That was like, people came like, oh, well, this is a Montana thing.

Yeah, no, it's definitely not a Montana thing. Montana is tough when it comes to business.

What do you know what your close rate is once you're there on site with the board, like to the restaurant? It's probably close to 100%.

Yeah. If we have a, if we have a set appointment, it's 100%. Okay. Yeah. If they asked us to come in and see it, 100%. We've done like cold walk-ins. And that has been pretty rocky for us because they're like, one time we walked in and the owner was cooking breakfast and the hostess was like, yeah, I forget his name, Ricky or something. Yeah, go talk to Ricky. He's in the back. And we're like, he's in the back. And he's literally flipping like sausage patties. And we're like, well, this is gonna be a no. So yeah, walking in cold is a little bit tough. Yeah. But if we have an appointment, they asked us there. Yeah. Yeah.

I would think you could close this remotely. Like, especially if your in-person was instead of FaceTime. Hey, can I FaceTime you this afternoon? Yeah. And it's like, here's the board, here's the thickness. It's like, you like hit it against the ground. Like, it would not be 100% close rate. But if it were 50%, now you've got 900,000 to sell to instead of 1,000. Exactly. Yeah. But you haven't even needed to try that because you haven't exhausted your local market. Right. Well, this has been amazing, Rachel. Where can we find you? Both the sandwich business Sandwich board business and the digital business.

Yeah. So if you go to Community Cash Playbook on YouTube, communityboardplaybook.com, and then our agency is bigskyautomationservices.com.

Big Sky like Montana?

Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Chris. Chris, I wanted to thank you for having me on and for all of the ideas and the content that you put out. My husband and I just love watching you and we've learned so much from you. So like what you're doing here is incredible. for like everybody who's got this entrepreneur mind and your videos are so, so fascinating. So thank you. We appreciate it.

I appreciate that. Seriously. Thank you. You're welcome. Hey guys, if you're still listening to this, it's probably because you haven't had a chance to take your AirPods out. You're still mowing the lawn. You're still driving, what have you. If you're still here with me, I would really, really love and appreciate a 5-star review on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. It would mean a lot if you want to go the extra mile. Share this episode with a friend that might have an interest in starting a business. It would mean a ton. Hope you have the best day of your life today.