3 Weekend Businesses No One Talks About

Can you make a hundred bucks to $100,000 in a weekend? These guys did it. We're gonna go talk to business owners live and figure out how to steal their homework so that you can do it too. But first, we're gonna start 100 bucks, and we're gonna do it with popsicles. What's up? How are you? Good to see you. I love this. Which means skinny water, by the way. What type of popsicles are we selling?

It's fresh fruit, sugar, and water. You have three simple ingredients.

Amazing. So these are all fruit fresh, they're handmade by you? Correct. How do we decide where to put this thing exactly?

In a spot like this. Right. Kendra Scott. She's extremely famous, popular. Everybody wants to come here. This is a hot spot.

These stores like people being in front because we're like, hey, get a popsicle, then buy some jewelry. Right. So who are we selling to?

Pretty much everybody, from children to adults.

For our local firemen, it's a surprise batch. That one. That one.

Bye, guys.

Thank you for your service. All you do, guys. I'm so psyched for this Pixicle. You don't even know. Delicious, awesome, refreshing.

Yes.

Let's talk startup costs. Popsicles. What are we selling them for? $4. How much do they cost us?

Between 60 and 70 cents.

That's some sick margin, baby. We got this thing, which we could rent for, like, how much a day?

It was smarter to purchase it for 1,700.

And then we got a couple signs, which is probably, like, all in the extra 100 bucks. Marketing, how do we position this business to sell more and get more clients? Social media. So you got a cute little Instagram. You're putting your items up there, and maybe you're pinging local events and vendors to say, hey, by the way, I could come to your place. I could sell some popsicles.

People love the videos of me making them. Like the how to videos.

Cool.

A little asmr.

Yeah, exactly.

Word of mouth.

Like, who you know makes a massive difference.

Do the thing that you do, and you document it online. You ping other people with your cool stuff that goes most viral. I like it. This gives me an idea. How do we 10x this bad boy? We're scaling, so we're located on site of this local restaurant. We called a bunch of restaurants and said, hey, what if we did a little event activation? We put the popsicles outside, we bring in customers to your location. What would you pay us? These guys said, 250 bucks. So I said, sold. Then they liked it. So much. They're like, also, we do this thing on the weekend. There are a thousand people there. Do you want to come to that one too? I think maybe we charge double. We've taken a business where you sell one popsicle at a time, and now we sell many. What's the most expensive event you've ever done thus far?

600. We're renting the cart for a wedding.

We should get her to double her prices. What do you think? I think the next corporate event, we should be charging more like 1200 bucks. Maybe even for some fancy quinceaneras or something. We up those prices, baby.

Agreed.

And if anybody wants to book, you guys know where to find us in Austin. You don't want.

No, I'm okay.

Okay, I'll sure.

Thank you.

I appreciate you.

You just paid me $500.

Yeah, girl. There you go. Holy.

That's crazy. That's awesome.

Now let's go check out someone who's doing $10,000 in one weekend. $10,000 in one weekend. This is a pop up picnic and proposals business. Posh picnics. This is amazing. So you did how many pop up picnics today?

Today we had four.

So how much money are we making today?

Around 6,000.

Yeah. Nice job. And last weekend?

Last weekend was 12,000. After paying everyone close to eight.

That's amazing. But it didn't start out that way. You had zero dollars when you started this?

Yes. Started with nothing.

And how much money did it take for your first pop up picnic?

So about 200, maybe $250 tops.

And that's like flowers, pillows, plates, and.

Most of it was thrifted, actually.

Okay, so how long did it take you to make your cash back?

After my first booking, I was basically there.

That's amazing. All right, so you get the first one. Then what do you do? You document the heck out of it. So you get to put it all over the Internet.

You got it.

And then where do you get clients now?

I started posting on different Facebook groups, mom groups. This was during COVID It was really the only way people could celebrate their special occasion.

And now you got a multi six figure a year business that you're rocking with. That's incredible. Okay, so today we are doing a proposal. That's what this is, right? We're at the top of a building, and you've kind of orchestrated all of this, right? You're like, this is my X package. And then what do you have? Do you have like three or four packages?

I started out with just one package. One proposal package. Then we went to three and now I have six different packages. This is package number one. It's the most popular proposal package.

Interesting. What do the prices range from?

From $350 to 1,850. Love that.

So you got a full range because you want to sell more expensive things to people who want to buy it.

Yes.

With this setup, you basically do everything and the dude just gets to look great.

Exactly. We make them look amazing.

And who's your perfect avatar?

It's going to be the man that has no clue how to propose. But he has the ring ready and that's all he has.

What would you do different today than when you first started in the business?

I would prioritize marketing and social media. Find someone who matches my energy that can take on that project. Then I like to do the more the creative stuff.

Yeah. And you really like to actually do the logistics and the hustle of putting this thing up. I do seeing it and all of that.

What I love is seeing the client come in and the expression on their face and their eyes light up. And usually with the proposals, there's tears coming down as well.

Oh, that's so good. Okay, and next, where do you want to take this business? How are you going to scale this bad boy?

I would love to create licensing. I have my trademark now and create posh picnics all over. What would you do to scale my business?

I think you should get to your first million before you license. And the reason why is you're just so much more valuable. Then you can say that I've got a business that is seven figures and I can teach other people how to do it. The second thing that I think you should do, you should try to get the before and afters. They're crying girl. That will go viral continuously. And so I would obsess on your one format. What is the one format of a video that I can do so well? I can get it to a million views because 1 million view video will be worth 20, 10,000 view videos. And then the third is tell me about your team, who you got on.

It Right now I have two assistants and both of their husbands help me as well. And then I have my children.

Okay, so what do you think you're probably missing? You're missing like social media, marketing and sales. Yes. Okay, so I think your next big hire one of those, you don't need another assistant. You need another pro. Because if you think amateurs are cheap, just wait until you hire a pro. You will realize how much more expensive it was to have an amateur to start with.

Oh, yeah. Okay.

We should probably go help these guys do some work or something, right? Look how helpful I am. Woo. Good luck. Congratulations. Is she going to say yes?

Yeah.

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Hey.

What's going on?

How are you, Matt? What's going on, Sam? What do you guys do here?

We help students move in and out of college.

And what's it called?

Storage Scholars.

So what are we doing right now? We're moving somebody in.

We're moving kids into college. You want to join?

Yeah, let's do this.

It's moving day, baby. It's moving day.

So you guys started this business when you were how old?

18.

And now how old are you guys?

26 and 27.

That's wild. You started this business with how much cash?

Actually $0.

Whoa. So you were in college when you started it?

Yeah, I was looking for a way to pay our way through school and needed a business.

The biggest thing is that we've been doing it for almost 10 years. So you learn a lot every year. You try not to repeat the same mistakes twice, and you just keep going and following the plan.

The best way to make quick money is to do it for a long time.

100%.

Let's have everyone actually pay a $50 deposit. That way that help fund the initial, like, cost. The boxes and storage units and the trucks.

I love a prepay. So you don't even have a service yet. And you guys are like, the thing is, I want to deposit and then I'll do it. So you guys made money before you spent any money?

Correct.

Wow, that's wild. So we started with $0. We take the $50 deposit. How much did it cost you to rent that first truck.

It's about 100 bucks.

You said it was a tractor trailer.

So when we bought boxes, they come on a tractor trailer. So something that's probably seven times the size of this.

And what did that cost you to rent?

Well, the cost of the box is around like $10,000 probably.

Okay, so $10,000, but this is only after you've gotten prepay. So you know how many boxes you need.

Yeah, we have all the money up front.

Right. Then you need a storage unit to put them all in.

So it's four months of storage for the summertime. That's what people are paying for. They're free, paying for that. First month's free. And then so it's about like 200 bucks for the month that you can fit maybe 20 people in a storage unit.

So that first year you're netting like.

$9,000, $18,000 in revenue, 64 customers.

Year one, $18,000 in revenue in year one. 64 customers. How much profit?

It's complicated. Startup costs, I would say, when you have like different partnerships and stuff like that. But yeah, we made a couple thousand dollars in year one. It was year two and three. We started to actually.

So you're making like 10 to 20% margin in the first year because you kind of don't know what you're doing. Yeah, that's fairly.

Or they call it like checkbook accounting or something like checking account accounting. It's growing, right?

Yeah, exactly. I'm like, is there more in my pocket or less? I love your branding. I love that you guys put your face on the box. Was that to kind of show that this is humans and like young people just like you?

I think it was also kind of a joke too. Like the lawyer on the park bench. Hey, no, like this is Sam or math. Your classmate from biology class is helping movements in the up.

Oh, I love that.

So basically you sign up on our website, we ship you all the boxes, tape, bubble wrap and labels, you pack up your stuff, you snap a couple photos of the ends you're looking to store, lock them in your room and go home.

Whoa, I just leave them in my room?

Yep. And then we partner with these different universities. That way we can come in the day after campus closes, move everything out in a 24 to 40 hour window, and also use a lot of the students on campus when they're done with their final exams to help do the actual moving.

That's six. You guys get access to a full, full row of basically storage or I guess Dorms grab all their stuff, put it in a big truck like this, and you're off.

That way, it's really, like, optimized as well. So we can go dorm by dorm, floor by floor, and just bang it all out.

Whoa. Okay, taking me back. Now we're in college dorms. And for you guys, you started out by just being in one of these and deciding you were going to knock on a bunch of your neighbors and ask if they wanted to move their stuff out, right?

Yeah. We ended up just printing out some flyers, went door to door and said, hey, where are you from? You know, did you take a flight here? Do you need a place to store your stuff over the summer? And if they said yes, give them a flyer and got them signed up. Hey, what's going on? Nice to see you. Welcome back.

Deliver all your stuff. Come on.

The first customer we went to, the kid negotiated. I was like, oh, it's going to be $380. She's like, what about, like, 325?

Wow.

Is this really the way this is going to go? I'm down. Like, I'm a hustler. Like, let's do it right? And then the next room, the girl was studying abroad, which meant it was double the size storage period. And her mom was there frantically packing her up. And I did the calculation. The kid had just negotiated a $350 bill, and the amount was going to be like, $1,500. And I was like, she's like, yeah, who'd I make the checkout to? And we were like, sam Chasen. And I got that. I was like, okay, we're good. Like, this is gonna be.

We went from 20 campuses to 200 in two years, and we finished last year at $7 million in revenue. And now the goal is we're gonna get much deeper on every campus and take the moving infrastructure we built to do more. So now we do B2B stuff, so the actual college hires us to do moving for them.

So how many doors do you think you've knocked?

In year one, we did every student on campus. That was about a thousand.

Whoa.

And then since then, maybe a thousand every year after that.

And do you guys continue to use that as your main strategy?

Not every student, like, has kind of, like, the guts to go do that every time. But we do do flyering. We do chalking. And then some of the Boulder interns that we have, they do do knocking as well.

That's cool. So chalking mean you write on the pavement, hey, do you need a mover?

It's going to even say summer storage.

.

Storage scholars.com. just really good gorilla marketing. Costs like five bucks.

Oh, I love that. And basically you. You've done this so many times now you have an SOP for just about everything. Like, here's how you door knock. Here's how you chalk. Yeah. 100% love that.

There's little, like, videos of us actually doing and that being, like, the training for them to watch. Can we put it right here?

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

Here. Got the vacuum.

I noticed you didn't clean out the vacuum before we gave it to you, but sure. You want to put this in your room? Just right here. Okay, cool.

All right, awesome. Thanks, man.

Yeah.

What is the business doing today?

This year, we're on track to do between 11 and $12 million top line.

Which means in a weekend. How much are you doing?

A little over $200,000.

Yeah, that's good math. It's seasonal, right? So it's fun. You make, like, basically $0 except for the prepay. Right. And then in the summertime, it's just like $100,000. $100,000. $100000.

So it's scary watching that app scrolling.

Through all the money Stripe email notifications. My favorite. Cool.

All right, we're all set. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Have a great semester.

You don't need to risk it all to start a business. You just need one small bet and the courage to try it. A sponge and a bucket of water like this. And you, too could start your business with one sale at a time. Your path to freedom.