#90 Side Hustle King: 3 Easy Businesses Anyone Can Start

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Today's guest, Chris Kerner has made a career after finding these overlooked, hidden, super profitable small businesses that just about anybody can start.

You can't have no money and pride. That doesn't work. I added up how many times I got rejected. It's like 24,000 times. Find a business, find the things that they hate doing. Unbundle that.

What do you think are the three best, most underrated? Side hustles?

Okay.

Welcome back to the Big Deal podcast. I'm Cody Sanchez and I found out something fascinating the other day, which is that 87% of you guys, people who watch our episodes are not subscribed to this channel. So I have an ask for you all if you could subscribe to the channel. This is the way that we grow. We can have bigger guests, we can hire the right team members, and it's only really through you guys doing this one simple thing. So if you haven't already subscribed to the channel, can I ask you a favor this week? Can you hit that subscribe button? Thank you. Truly. We can't do this without you. You've built sleeper businesses basically as a career. It feels like, you know, crazy side hustles then grew them into actual companies. These are cash flow producing, non venture backed companies almost anybody could start if they were willing to take the risk and do hard thing of actually working them. Is there one that you're like currently obsessed with now or is there like a business that you're obsessed with at the moment?

Man, it's like asking which kid is my favorite. I, I just love business. So what? Okay, so I was in Cameron, Missouri last week, population 8,000 people. I pull into this hardware store and I see this cute couple, 30s kids out by the road selling pizzas, right? I have like an outdoor kitchen with an authentic pizza oven. I geek out over it. So I had to talk to these guys. They've got like a $700 pizza oven a $100 like a pop up canopy. And they're just slanging these authentic pizzas. And so I'm like, how much money are you making here? And $700 a day. Their kids make the pizzas, they wave signs. And I said, well what do you pay? They're in the parking lot of a hardware store. What do you pay to be here? Well, nothing. Like they just hope that we can bring them customers and they bring us customers. This is like middle of nowhere, middle America, right? Like, and they're making $700 a day, 80% margins, selling pizzas from an oven that they bought at Home Depot, right? Like, I just love stuff like that because who couldn't do that, like who, who couldn't do that business if they really had to make some money?

Isn't that wild? And if you just like for people who aren't, you know, who are public school math kids like me, I mean if you take, let's round it to a thousand times 30 days in a month, we're talking about some, that's a, that's a $30,000 a month business. If you have 80% margins, we're talking about you're taking home a top 1% level salary, you know, 200 plus thousand dollars.

But how many people in Cameron, Missouri are saying, oh, there's just no opportunities here?

I know. You know what else kills me? That I think you prove a lot and is like one of the missions of this company. It's like you're shirt, you can just do things and in fact I think you'll be shocked by how often people don't charge you. Like we did this whole experiment with vending machines where we put vending machines in a bunch of different locations and then we did videos about shared the numbers and everybody was like, you left out the rent. I'm like, I didn't pay rent.

Yeah.

You know, I know that you can theoretically and you might have to sometimes. Like I just didn't in this case. And so I love that story. You know, I was curious for you. Is there one business that you've seen like ever that you're just like, this business is such a sleeper and almost anybody could start it.

So a year ago I was, we own a tree trimming business, right. And tree trimming businesses are great. It's. I call it a binary outcome, right? The customer needs a tree gone, you show up, the tree's gone. Five star review, invoice paid. Right. Whereas other businesses, it's just like custom home building. It's not it's, there's so much that could go wrong. But stump grinding is kind of a pain in tree trimming because, you know, if you're a tree trimmer, you just, you've got a truck with a chainsaw, and if you got to grind the stump, it's like, I got to go to the rental place, put it on my trailer, gas it up, pay 300 bucks to rent it, charge 300 bucks to grind it. It's just a pain. So I was talking with my business partner about this, and we thought, I bet there's a world where you could be a business to business, stump grinding business. And that wasn't really a thing. Right. So we were just riffing on this on my podcast and as an experiment, because I'm curious and I have to get my questions answered right. So I scraped every tree trimming business in Houston, and I'm in Dallas, and so I wanted like a sister city that was comparable. And I hired a virtual assistant to call up every tree trimming business and say, hey, who grinds your stumps? Do you own a stump grinder? Do you rent them? Theoretically, if you could ever outsource that entirely to a stump grinding business that only served tree trimming businesses, would you do it? If so, what would you pay? And the results were incredible. Like, 20% of these tree trimmers would love to outsource it. And so we were just talking about this and people went out and started business to business, stump grinding businesses based on this theory and research. And this One guy made $300,000 his first year, and he, he rented the thing and he rented the trailer, and he, like, he didn't. He wasn't wealthy, but he's making like 60, 70% margins grinding stumps for these tree trimming businesses.

I love it. Well, you know, boring businesses are. That's, that's my love language. But what I think is interesting is two, it doesn't take that much to get the research right. You literally just cold called, or in this case, because you haven't assisted, had somebody else cold call a bunch of people and ask him three or four questions. And the other case of the pizza company, you just were willing to do the thing most people won't, which is how much revenue do you make a day? How often do people not give you the answer to that question? I'd be curious.

Rarely. Honestly.

Right.

You just have to ask.

I would say it's like 95% of the time they tell you. And why? Because they're proud of it. If you've ever ran a business and you know what it feels like to actually get somebody to pay you for your service, how hard it is.

Yeah.

You want to tell people. Yeah, you know, I was yesterday. I was, I am old now and so my back has been hurting just so on par. And so I go to this PT and he was telling me a story about his background and I'm like, that's incredible. And I started telling him the number, like percentage of numbers that actually. Percentage of businesses that actually hit 100,000, then a million, then 10 million a year. It's kind of rare actually. And so he was like, can I tell you my revenue number? And I was like, yeah, totally. What is it? It's like 310,000. And I'm like, that's amazing because you don't have any employees either. Right. So he's got an 80% margin business.

Amazing, right? Yeah.

Now with your tree trimming business, when did you start that?

Two years ago.

And how much cash did you have to start it with?

I had cash to start it with. But I like, I grew up poor, right. And so I always like to say constraints equal creativity. And I've never been VC funded. I've tried to raise money. It's a lot harder than people think. And so I've, I've been forced to be creative. Right. And that's never left me now to, to this day, like I can afford to do certain things, but I'm so cheap and, or willing to be creative that I don't have to. So with the tree trimming business, I had a truck. I found a young, hungry entrepreneur that had just graduated from college. And I knew how to start it because I had helped a friend do it as a favor a couple of years prior. And so we, we really, we didn't own a chainsaw. We still don't own a chainsaw. We just found subcontractors and subbed it all out to them. And so can you explain what that is?

Subcontractors if people don't know?

Yeah. So we just found tree trimming businesses that did the work themselves. And we just said, hey, we're going to quote 1600 for this. What would you quote? 800. Okay, cool. We're just going to mark up all of your quotes to us 100% and we'll take that margin, we'll bring you jobs, we'll keep you busy. Cool.

Yeah, that's wild. And now how big is that business? Do you share the revenue numbers?

Yeah, I mean, we're doing half a million A year.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

And this is you and a kid who was in college.

Yeah, he's the operating partner.

And how old is he now?

He's 23.

Wow.

Yeah. He had no experience in the industry.

Interesting. And do you think, like, what's the formula? So let's say somebody right now has no money or they've lost all their money and they want to go out and start a business. What is the formula that you need to be able to have a cash flowing business that you start?

Yeah, well, you, you can't have no money. And pride. That's, that doesn't work. Right. So you have to be able to work and you have to be humble enough to go like ask people for things or to go sell. If you have pride and you're broke at the same time, I don't know what to do for you. Right. So the formula is to be curious about the world and to answer those questions you have about these potential opportunities immediately. Right. You're familiar with habit stacking, Right. If we want to do 20 pushups every morning, we should probably do it right after we brush our teeth. Because pairing those two habits together makes us more likely to do it. So I'm only kind of connecting the dots. Looking back, I didn't do this intentionally, but as I look back on why I've started so many things, it's because I genuinely love commerce, business, entrepreneurship. And so I'll go to a restaurant and wonder, man, how much are these guys doing? And then I'll, I'll answer that question immediately. I pair the habit of getting the question with the habit of answering it. And then that kind of trains me to act, to have a bias for action. And then if you stack that up over years, you end yourself having started 75 businesses. And it can be a little stressful, but it's very fun.

That's okay. You could kill some babies. Right. Or sell them. That's my preferred method.

That's right.

God, I've started and bought so many businesses. It's all. It's why we stopped saying how many businesses we own. Because I'm like, If I say 30 today, I know that two of those businesses I'm probably going to sell. I might close another one. And it started to feel like not very authentic. And then also, it's not always a good thing to own 26 businesses. It's probably better to own one or three that are way bigger.

Yeah, I agree.

Than 26. So I was like, people think it's cool. I'm like, man, something's off, always going wrong. So it's not just start with one, you know, just one. So if in that instance, I'm, I'm sort of curious like you, you started this business with this guy. How did the guy, like, show that he was competent enough to be your operator? So if like somebody young is watching this and they're like, man, I want to go pitch Chris or Cody or whatever rich person I know on a business to start, what do I have to present in order for you to say, I'm going to give you 50 of this company?

Yeah. I kind of regret what I'm about to say, but it's, but it's the truth. So I've noticed a direct correlation, you probably have too, between the people that have just gone all out to get my attention and then their performance after I hire them or partner with them. Right. Whereas some reach out kind of half heartedly and it's like sometimes I've hired them in the past and it just, they kind of did a half hearted job. But the people that are like, just blowing me up everywhere, like, I will do this, I will do this. Like, I promise I'll be your hardest worker. I don't know anything. I'm humble, but I'm willing to do all the work. That was James. He had never had a home service business. He had like flipped iPhones on Facebook Marketplace, but he was just hungry. And so I like to look for humility, gratitude, someone who's like, I'm just so grateful for this opportunity. And some sort of an entrepreneurial gene. Right. Because I don't want to make them entrepreneurial. They have to have that. If they have those three things, then it's almost 100% certain they'll be successful. Yeah.

I always loved the Munger quote where he says, if you're going to have a mistress, pick an old one because she'd be grateful for it. And I think that it's true of business partners, too. He used to, you know, describe Buffett as the best thing that we have in our partnership is we're both grateful for it. I think that's true in marriage, it's true in business.

Absolutely.

And so if you could optimize for intelligence, history, sophistication, or hunger and gratitude, go left, not right. Love that. Okay, so let's say that there's somebody listening who has zero time on their hands. Maybe they actually have money, but they don't have time. What business would you tell them to do? Or what would you tell them to Start.

That's a good question. I would say that they should start liquidating things, buying things from, like, Costco, Overstock. There's a half a dozen websites out there that sell pallets of returns items, defective items, or items that might be perfect. You just don't know. Like, you could buy a pallet full of Blackstone grills for 100 bucks. Right. So someone like that, that has some money to buy stuff like that and doesn't have a lot of time, they can start by selling a few things on the side, learning how it all works, and then partnering with someone like James, my business partner in the tree business, to do it for him. But I think it's very important that you don't outsource things too quickly. You really got to get in the weeds so you can recognize the weeds before you get out of the weeds, Right?

Yeah. Yeah. I do think it's really hard to hire well until you've done well.

Yeah.

And so first do good, then hire good. I think that's a really good point. Yeah. You know, and you. You kind of have highlighted all these different businesses. I want to go over some of the best in the works. We actually took one of your ideas off of Twitter. We didn't give you enough credit for it, so we got an Internet duel, but. And we did it here in the office.

Yeah.

And we. Basically, the idea was, can you buy things on Facebook Marketplace and have AI do everything for you? And my Too long didn't read at the end was like, no, like, you got it. There's some human.

Still early.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But for people who are entrepreneurs and hungry, I think both. Both you and I, it was like, this is wild.

Yeah.

Like, once you start to play the game, you realize just that 20% off your stack is so valuable.

Yeah.

So if, like, right now, you had to look at all the side hustles, all the businesses that exist, what do you think are the three best, most underrated side hustles?

Okay. All right. So you say right now I'm going to take that literally. So we're in August, and I came across this woman last year who decorates porches with pumpkins. Have you seen that?

It's not because of you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The Dallas chick, Wasn't she Heather? We've since become friends, and she's making over a million dollars a year just buying wholesale pumpkins from someone that anyone could Google and find. A wholesale pumpkin supplier buys them by the truckload and decorates them on porches. And it's a beautiful business. Because it's so visual. If you put your iPhone on a tripod, put it on time lapse, post that to Instagram. The algorithm loves it. Right. So there's all your customers, and that's what she's done. And she does an amazing job, and she's an amazing hard worker. So I'm not downplaying, like, it's just a good idea. Anyone can do it. It's very profitable. She charges between six hundred and thirteen hundred dollars to decorate a porch with pumpkins. I'm a customer. My wife loves it. And I love this opportunity because you could start with almost nothing. An Instagram account, little money for pumpkins, and then you can make it not seasonal. She prefers for it to be seasonal. She wants to be with her family during Christmas. But there are people that do this for Christmas decorations. I talked to a guy in Pennsylvania that does it for flower, Front porch, flower decorations. He charges a few hundred dollars a quarter, and he'll swap out flowers every month.

I'd pay for that.

Yeah. And he's in Long Island. Like, this stuff would work anywhere. And it's very visual. It goes viral very naturally. That's one. Because it's high margin, it's unique, and you don't need a lot of money to do it.

You know what the other thing about that one is? When you don't have a lot of money, you don't realize how much money other people have and that they want. Like, think about r people. They want to spend their money.

Yep.

And so I remember when I was broke and poor, the idea of some mom putting 1300 bucks to put pumpkins on their front yard in Dallas would be crazy. And then you drive in Highland park and you're like, these bitches, they spend a lot more than 1300 bucks. Right?

Yeah.

Like, Dallas decorations are another. Another brand, but every state has city centers like that.

Yep.

So that's really smart. Okay, so first we're going front porch decoration.

All right, so I met this guy in Utah that this is a business you could literally start with no money. And I mean that genuinely. As long as you have a friend with a truck or a trailer and you have some humility, like we talked about, he goes on Facebook Marketplace, and he buys washers and dryers, or he'll get them for free, because people give them away all the time. They're moving. Their lease ends tomorrow. They gotta get it out. Right. And then he goes back to Facebook Marketplace and rents them out for one to $200 a month to people that live in apartments that have hookups that don't want to buy it because they're afraid it's going to break. He rents them out and he's making six figures a year working five hours a week. He has another company, he has an RV park. He's doing all kinds of stuff. This is just one of his businesses. But what's more approachable than that? Like, you're going to have to carry a washer upstairs. It's going to be hot, it's going to suck. You're going to have some that get stolen from you. But find me a business that doesn't have problems.

Yeah, right.

I'm still waiting for that one.

Find me a job that doesn't have. Yeah, low level. Okay, I like it. What do we think about the third one? I like also that there's one that, like, women are going to do. You're probably not decorating pumpkins on a porch. Your wife might, though.

Yeah.

And then your wife is probably not schlepping big machines. Yeah, but you might.

Yep.

Okay, what's our third?

All right, so H vac companies, they, you know, they have these service contracts, either commercial or residential, where they check in every six months, make sure everything is working. Part of that contract is they have to. To clean the coils on the outside of the units. That's just like a preventative maintenance. But that's a pain for them because you gotta have water, you gotta hook up water, you gotta have chemicals, and it just doesn't go into their normal workflow. So this guy that I met, he started. He owned a pressure washing company. He started doing that for H vac companies and saying, I'll just do all your coil cleaning. And then he got a grocery store customer just by walking into the grocery store. Can I talk to the manager who does your coil cleaning? These guys, but they forget sometimes they hate doing it. It's the worst part of their. But that's another good framework, right? Find a business that does something, find the things that they hate doing, and just kind of unbundle that, Right? So now this guy, his whole business is washing the coils outside of these grocery store H vac units. And he says that he never loses a customer. It pays him. I think it's like 5, 600,000 a year in this random rural area that you would never think this opportunity exists. And he's like, this is my secret weapon. Like, this is the. And he's owned a bunch of businesses. He's like, this is the best business I've ever Had.

That's so interesting. You know what else is true also? You like come. You go up the ladder of entrepreneurship. And so when somebody's like, that's a terrible business. Which I hear sometimes, I'm like, maybe for you, you know, if you're making a million bucks a year and you're a software engineer, probably not a great business for you. But like one of my favorite businesses back in the day was a podcast production studio. I bought part of it. It was great. It was a service business actually. The podcast production was all remote. So it was just like you ship in the, you know, video edits and they would edit for you, thumbnail title, etc. So I own part of that business and, and then I sold it back to the, the owner. At some point. People like, why if you're making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in a business, why. It was just too small at that stage. And so, but for Jonathan, the guy who took it over, he still runs that business. He loves that business.

Yeah.

And he's really happy at the level. He actually doesn't want it to grow. He's like 500k a year business. Perfect. Like, I don't want anything else. And so I think people underestimate how there's like not everybody has a size 10 shoe. You're probably 12 and a half. What, you're tall. That's big. Yeah. It'd be kind of weird if you had a size six, you know? Yeah. I can't let the Internet know that if that was the case, it would roast you. Okay, let's talk about worse businesses. So if you like had no money again or were just starting out, but we're going to save people decades of mistakes and hours. What are the businesses that you would never touch with a ten foot pole?

I'm going to talk about binary outcomes again. Okay, so. Oh man. I had a third party logistics business once and basically E Commerce brands would come to us and we would store their products in a warehouse, pick, pack and ship them out for them. Right. We were doing 400,000amonth and not making any money. It was a miserable business because it did not have binary outcomes. So the business owner, our customer, was like so emotionally invested in his inventory. Hey, I did that big sale. Why haven't they shipped yet? Hey, these went to the wrong address. Hey, my inventory went stale because maybe it was food. Are you keeping track of these expiration dates? There were hundreds of things that could go wrong. And literally if you click the wrong thing, you could ship 3,000 packages to 3,000 wrong homes. Ask me how I learned that. Right. And those aren't our packages, which makes it even worse. Right. So we were making all this money, top line, no profit, losing money. Right. It was not a binary outcome. It's not a simple business. We were competing with like Amazon. Who's going to do that? So anything like I've started 75, 80 businesses. The common thread between all of them are just non binary outcomes. Too complex, not simple.

Yeah. Okay, so worst is 3 PL. What's your second and third?

Oh man. House cleaning.

Interesting.

Yeah. Why house cleaning? It was just a lot of ways to screw up.

It was, I guess, same thing.

Yeah, like there's a hair. You left a hair on the floor or you scuffed the baseboard. No, we didn't. That was there first like offer $150. You know, like there are businesses where that stuff is worth it. Right. Where like those headaches are worth it. But if it's low ticket and complex, stay, stay away. Yeah, right.

I agree with that. What's the third?

Custom home building.

Did you ever do that?

Yeah, well, my, I had a business partner that was a custom home builder and he branched off and we started, we started starting one together and that was like headache to the extreme. Right. On one hand you have a homeowner that's putting their life savings in something that they're going to live in forever. These were nice homes. And on our side we had permit issues, weather issues, subcontractor issues, insurance issues. So many things that could go wrong. And I've built a custom home for myself. I've been on both sides of it. Stay away, like high ticket. But even at like a million dollar home, it's, it's just not worth it.

What, what price point home do you think it starts becoming worth it?

Multiple millions.

Yeah. I think that's almost the secret in every business is that if you're not, it's not if you're not good, but like you have to have enough margin in the business to be able to deal with all of the headache from mistakes.

Yes.

And like more margin, more you can handle mistakes. Like you're like, all right, you pay me enough for that. Right?

Yeah.

And so I think I have a couple friends that are custom home builders, but they're at the 10 to $12 million mark. And in that, that amount you're making millions of dollars on every home. You're like, sure, Nancy, the dial's wrong. Ship it back to Italy, no problem. Right.

Your margin affords it Right.

But if you're doing it on a million dollar home, which to young Cody, I'd be like, that's, that's so much money. Not in home building it's not. So you actually can't get compensated enough for that. And that's the real magic of entrepreneurship is where you can kind of just look at a business and go, oh, that's not going to work that way.

Yep.

And the only way to do that is just to get in the game. Right?

Yeah. You got to. And stay in the game.

Yeah. And keep playing it. This episode is brought to you by Netflix from the creator of Homeland. Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys star in the new Netflix series the Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences. The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt, justice and doubt. You will not want to miss this. The Beast in Me is now playing only on Netflix. So you're about to make a trade based on a friend's text. But which u do you listen to? Is it we could buy a house.

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Get optioning those options. We could lose everything. Or let's do a little research, get your head in the trade and make the investment decision that's right for you. Learn more@finra.org TradeSmart the richest people in the world didn't just build, they bought. They didn't come from riches. They used other people's money and a ridiculous amount of sweat. People will tell you you can't yet. Didn't you know there isn't a multi billion dollar business out there that didn't do some type of acquisition. Amazon, 110 companies bought Facebook 96. The Sage of Omaha himself started buying a gumball route. They didn't listen to those who said they couldn't. They found aging owners, made connections, took risk, repeated. Today the hardest thing to do isn't buy a company. It's start and keep a profitable business. Around here we don't hope and pray for profits. We buy them real businesses. 56,000 of them. Real profits. Custom deal box so you can swipe left and right at your pleasure. Maps Find businesses close to you off market deals where no one else is even looking. This is how you become an owner. Let's talk about. I heard a ridiculous story of yours that you're like, which one?

It's probably true.

About Texas snacks and the BUC EE's. Heist.

Yeah. Oh, heist. That's a good word. I like that. So for Those that aren't Familiar with Buc EE's, it's a chain of gas stations. They do billions of dollars a year from 50 locations, right? It's just an amazing business, privately held. And it's a. It's an amazing brand. It's like a Disney, right? They have a great brand. And so I went there six years ago and I walked in and with my cousin who's also a business nerd, and we were like. He said, I think he's like, do you know Disney sells? Like, I'm making this up. I don't remember the number, but like 15 billion a year of shirts. I was like, I didn't know that. That's crazy. I wonder how much these guys sell online of their shirts. So we go to their website and I, I distinctly remember there's no shop button. It's like, where do you buy these shirts? And these gas stations are in these far flung rural areas. And so you, you can't get to it unless you're going down to the beach, right? And so that was just like a light bulb moment. And it was at this time that I was running that fulfillment business. And so we thought, wow, we need to get them as a customer. And instead of just like fulfilling their products, we're going to bring them online and fulfill their products. This could be a white whale for us, right? So I started reaching out to the executive team. No response. No response. So we're like, what if we just try to get their attention by launching the business for them and then just cold emailing reporters and saying Buc Ees won't answer us, so we're going to launch this business for them. Yeah. And his first question is like, chris, we're going to get sued. And I was like, that's going to be a good story though, right? If we get sued, then we can just say, okay, okay, leave me alone.

I'm done.

I'm done. But I was like, but what if we don't get sued? It could be a big business, it could be a big partnership. It could be tens of millions of dollars. Who knows? And so my business partner and I, we bought one of everything from the store near my house. Cost about $3,000. I hired a photographer for 200 bucks. We took pictures of everything in their store, put it on a website, cold emailed reporters and said, we want to get Bucky's attention, so we're selling everything that they own online for them. And they said, that's a great story. We had a dozen news outlets write about us. And we went Viral and did $200,000 of sales in our first month and we do millions of dollars a year now, five years later, you're still doing it today. Yeah. It's a great business.

I bet. So you're the one responsible for all the buc ee's merch I now see all over country.

That's right. We don't have like an official partnership with them, but we have an understanding and they support us. They help us buy it in bulk, but we just resell it. We go to one of their stores, we load up a box truck full of pallets, bring it back to our warehouse and sell it online, ship it all over the world.

So you're not even actually their like licensed provider.

Nope.

That's so Texas. I love that. They're like, yeah, fuck it, you're going to buy it at a full price. Go ahead, man. Oh my God, that's so good.

I like doing things where like, worst case is a good story.

Yeah.

Because most people don't have good stories. Right.

Such a good way to think about it.

Yeah.

Because that is the game of entrepreneurship.

Do it for the story. Someone put that on a T shirt. Do it for the story.

Yeah. I think the kids say do it for the plot. I think that's what the gen zers say today. That's what my non gen zers in this room say. But they. I think you're right. You know, a lot of times I'm sure you get asked this question too. Well, I want to create content and be on the Internet. So what do I talk about? Am I like, if you want to be interesting, you got to do interesting shit.

Yeah.

So before you get online and like try to talk about a bunch of stuff you haven't done, go do the thing. Because you're not suffering from stories.

Right.

Why? Because you're doing wild things all the time. Yeah. I'm trying, I'm really hard, trying really hard to get one of our portfolio companies Pinks and they're a window cleaning company. They have incredible brand and I'm trying to get them. I'm like, all the dudes are good looking, right. They're like good looking, young, wholesome guys. I'm like, we need a sudsy calendar.

Like I think you can kill.

You know what I should do? Do their photos without their permission and put it on.

You should.

I would just say Chris made me do it, but I laughed with them because, you know, we're moving into commercial so they do a lot more commercial work. Now, but they do some, they do a lot of residential and that usually goes through the, the lady of the house.

Yeah.

And there's this like idea of a cute pool boy that's already been created in the zeitgeist. Right. You don't exactly go, God, my window cleaner was a real looker yesterday. That's not like a thing. But with this company you kind of do. So we've played into it slightly with. And it's just, it's funny and it's cute. And most of these guys are like Christian married, super wholesome, but they do it for the plot. They like don't take themselves that serious.

Yeah.

And so the two founders, you know, you have like, I don't know, 170 locations or something now. And their one business does three mil a year, just like their Austin based business. But they're doing kick flips and you know, putting ridiculous thing in their Instagram because they don't have a lot of ego about it.

Yeah.

They're not too precious. And they do it for the plot, do it for the story. All right, somebody make a shirt for Chris.

Do it. Yeah, do it for the shirt.

Yeah, we'll wear it on the podcast. All right. Did you get into go Tell me.

No, I was with the pink skies. I have an idea. So I gotta get out.

Tell me.

Yeah, so you should make those calendars.

Yeah.

Cause that would be viralable, wouldn't it? Right. It would be so good. And then you should take your whole customer database and find commonalities by the zip code of like what type of. They probably already know this, but like our average customer has a $732,000 home. We charge 350 a quarter, that's 1,400 a year. And they stay for five years. Right. So $7,000 lifetime value. Right. Okay. What would we pay to acquire that customer? Let's say $500. What does it cost to print and ship a calendar? Let's say $20. Okay. Worst case, they should scrape all of the homes that fit that criteria, the demographic of the owner, the race, the gender, everything, and permissionlessly ship them that calendar for free. And they're going to hang it it and they're going to look at that pink's logo every time they see it.

And they're going to put it on Instagram and they're going to put on.

Instagram and that $20 could return 20,000. Right. Why wouldn't you do that?

100%? Well, that is the thing. You know, I think about it a lot here at this company. So I'm in finance, so, you know, I bought companies, I sold companies. I never really thought about marketing. In finance. You don't do ads.

Yeah.

You don't market.

You can't really.

You can't. There's all these regulations about them, and if you do, you have to keep them for seven years. It's kind of a crazy thing. And so now that we've come here, I've started to really apprec that most marketing is so boring.

Yeah.

So boring. And I get why. Because it's embarrassing when you put your face on YouTube and you're making a stupid face and you're like, actually slightly more sophisticated, fingers crossed. Than you are portrayed on the Internet. You can have ego about that or you can be like, do I want to look rich or do I want to be rich?

Yeah. Oh, that's good.

You got to make a choice, right?

Yeah. I mean, I'm like an extreme introvert. I don't like going away. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm posting these videos in the comfort of my own home, but going outside is, like, not for me. And so, like, the thought of short form videos was just, like, so foreign to me.

Interesting.

But there's a whole world on the other side of cringe. Cringing at yourself. Right. Because at the end of the day, like, no one even cares.

Nobody cares.

Like the guy at church or your neighbor who sees that video of you talking about, he doesn't care. He's not thinking about you. So just do it.

Yeah. One of my best mentors ever told me, there's somebody who is. Is dumber than you are, has worse products than you are, isn't as good as you are, and they're making more money than you do because they're willing to sell.

Yeah.

And I was like, all right, thanks, Bob. But he was right, you know?

Yeah.

Okay. I want to talk about. You just have so many stories. I want to run through a bunch of these companies and hopefully for, you know, if you're listening online, I think the thought is like, take these as these little moments of inspiration, just like you did. You're like, oof, what about this? So it might not be that somebody's going to go pitch Buc EE's and create a whole T shirt empire, but it might be, like, right off of it, like, slightly asymmetric, you know? So I want to talk about pet cremation, because that's the obvious next thing.

Uplifting topic. Yeah.

That's awful. My dog's here.

Hide the Dog so hot right now, by the way.

Is it really cremation?

So hot. I had to.

Is that a dad joke?

I have four kids. Four kids.

I love a dad joke. Okay, let's talk pet cremation. Okay, what happened?

I had a friend that worked in private equity, and he had seen the inside of some deals, some pet cremation deals that looked really, really good. 92% gross margins. We have more puppies in the United States than children today. As of two years ago, like, the line officially crossed. More puppies than kids. Right. So extract from that what you will. But there's an opportunity there. Everyone bought puppies during COVID Those puppies are five years old now, and unfortunately, they will die. And cremation is exploding in popularity. So I like to look for businesses that ride several tidal waves at once, several trends. Right? And so you've got the puppy boom. You got people buying puppies, you have people preferring cremation for whatever reason. And then you have my friend that had an inside look into the industry. And so that same friend, luckily, also had a friend that was a veterinarian that owned a very high volume clinic. Clinic. Like, he did as much business as six clinics, right. And he was able to say, hey, if we start a pet cremation business, would you work with us instead of who you're currently working with? Sure. So we just kind of had that relationship. And so we started looking at these burners, and they're like 1 to $300,000 each. And then we thought, oh, man, that's. I don't. I don't usually do that. I don't put hundreds of thousands into businesses. Right. I. I'm scrappy. And so we thought, okay, well, what if we could just play middleman and just have a refrigerated van where we just play puppy logistics, if you will. Okay, Pick up the puppies, puppy pickup, and then deliver them to the cremation facility that's already invested half a million dollars into equipment because they want to be in the cremation business, not the logistics business. And that's one thing that we learned. We interviewed a few of them and say, what's the pain point in your business? Something we've already talked about. And they said, you know, sales and logistics. What if we do both of those for you? My friend had another friend that had been acquiring veterinarian clinics. So he had contacts in the industry. So we said, all right, there's our sales. Here's our first customer. That's worth six customers. Put the pieces together. Let's spend 15 grand on a refrigerated van and we're in business. And so we capture a margin between the cremation facility and the veterinarian.

God, that's so smart. So it's almost like you see an opportunity in an industry and you go, okay, what's the most direct route? Okay, well, cremation. But then you say, my constraints are I want to spend less than $50,000. So if I can't get into that aspect for $50,000, where can I find just part of the business? So instead of taking everything from, I'm going to get the, the lead for the puppy to I'm going to deliver the puppy to, I'm going to cremate the copy to, I'm going to like have a certificate, I give the family or whatever. I'm just going to take this step. And because I only take this step, it doesn't cost me all of this to start it. That's really clever. It's like breaking down the business to the chunk you can afford.

Yeah. And the thing about that step, that's a headache to them is if it's all you do, it's not a headache because all your systems are built around that one thing. So it's a win win for both parties.

Yeah. And so you're basically doing the opposite of what most companies do, which is like they might do vertical or horizontal integration where they go buy, buy these things. You're saying, let me do the opposite. Let me remove a portion of somebody's business. I can build an entire stack on it and then if I want to add on and compete more, I can. Yeah, but in the beginning I get to just start.

Yeah. And now what we can do is we can go the vet route and go into clinics and sell them, or we can go to the cremation facilities and say, hey, I know what your margins are because I know the business. What if you give us 30% of that margin and we'll take care of all of your headaches? Right. So you can, you can streamline your operations, you can net out ahead even though your top line revenue comes down and it'll be a win win.

Yeah, I love that. Also, it's so much easier to start a business when you can sell to people who are already doing the thing that you want them to do. It's really hard to create an industry. So for instance, we try to talk people into this idea that we should not let these businesses die, that you should buy them and that you should do it creatively. You shouldn't always have to go to the bank and be a billionaire to do it. It's not easy. It's hard. There's lots of components of it. But it's total problem with that is you are not. You're like talking them into a change in lifestyle. It's actually not a very good business. It's like more something that I just think we should do. But if instead you're going to business owner, they already have the pain point. They already have the cash to solve it. All you're doing is removing work from them. Like, that's a really interesting model. I typically don't think about businesses that way, so I like that.

Cool.

The funny part though, about pet cremation, to your point, on like, people don't. People don't realize what people pay for. Like. Yeah, what does it cost to get a pet cremated?

Oh, 250 to $500.

God, my dad's gonna kill me for this story. But I like when my favorite dog died.

Yeah.

He was obsessed with the dump truck. Like, you know how the trash truck. And so he died and his name was Elvis. He was this amazing little cocker spaniel. And so, you know, my dad told me and so I came by the next day. I'm like, well, where's Elvis buried? You know what happened? He's like, oh, no. I like took him to his favorite spot. And I'm like, what do you mean by that? Yeah, and he just put him in a bag and gave him to the dump truck. And I was like, I think that's illegal. I think that's. He was like, he would be thrilled. He'd be barking happily all the way to the dump.

His favorite place, like staring into the abyss.

Oh, I just was. I know such a. You know, we're Latino. They like, they don't understand things like cremating a dog for 500 bucks. That's like not part of the equation. Okay, let's talk about RV parks. So I think a lot of people are interested in this idea of. I call them like low people businesses. You know, vending machines, laundromats, car washes, RV parks. All of them have like a version of the business that could be low people. Then they have a very high people version of it. You own a bunch of RV parks and got into it. How did you get into that business? Break down the economics of it. What's most interesting about it?

Yeah, so. And I've done both ends of that. That small RV parks with no employees and Large RV parks with a lot of employees. So I was buying single family homes back in college and then I moved to Texas and I met some guys that were, they owned hundreds of single family homes, but they had just been introduced to mobile home and RV parks and they basically said, Chris, you've got to look at this. Instead of having 12 homes across a metroplex in two hours, you can have 12 homes all on the same two acres. And each one of them is more profitable than those. And it costs like a third as much as all of the single family homes. So you have the efficiencies of them being all right there. It's the lowest form of affordable housing. So it's recession resistant and they're easier to manage and you don't have to maintain the unit, the tenant owns the unit, so you just own the land. So I'm like, why do people even buy single family homes? Like, I don't understand. Is this like the world's best kept secret?

It.

And so we partnered up and we started buying these small RV and mobile home parks across Texas and Oklahoma. 10 to 70 pad sites, no amenities, mostly long term tenants where the tenants own either the RV or the mobile home and we just maintain the infrastructure. And we did that for two and a half, three years.

What would each one cost you to buy those?

Yeah. So between 100,000 and 1.5 million. Million. Wow.

And what kind of margins are you making on that? Like how much money are you getting in your pocket from that?

It's like 30 to 60% cash on cash returns.

Yeah. That's wild.

It's insane.

Does that still exist today or has a lot of that? It does.

No, it does.

Like, because a lot of people say those days are over. You can't find X business like that, Y business like that. Is that true? And if it's not true, then why can you still find those? Why, why are people not buying them up?

So the founder of 1-800-GOT Junk has a quote that I love and he says that as long as pianos weigh 800 pounds, we're going to be in business. Right. And so as long as RV parks are ugly and forgotten and hard and or at least they seem to be hard, there's going to be an opportunity there. I've been saying since 2018, since I've been in the business, like, oh, private equity, they're coming, they're coming and they're coming after the $10 million park. But private equity doesn't care about 100,000 or a million or 3 million dollar part. So there's opportunity there.

Yeah, it's the same with buying businesses. Yeah, they literally, if you want to sell your $3 million business that has 30% margins, it's hard. Yeah, it's super hard. And now we know we own like the biggest, depending on how you do it. Let's call it the second biggest, biggest behind business by sell marketplace for small businesses. And man, there are so many good deals on there that nobody's buying.

Yeah.

And we're getting like 10 to 12 new listings every single week. And we've around for a year. And some of these businesses, it's like a business that does $160,000 in revenue a year, let's call it $50,000 in profit, and they want to sell it for $50,000. So it's all around. What about. Actually, let's do this really quick so somebody's listening and they're like, I would love to own, like, I would love to just feel like an owner of a business and buy a mobile home park for 100 to $200,000 and like, like get there. What would be the couple things you would tell them? Don't buy mobile home parks unless you do this.

Oh, that's easy. Wastewater treatment plants. I don't know if most people never heard that phrase, but a lot of parks treat their own wastewater on site, and that is like major red flag. You could get shut down by the government. Like, stay far away. A lot of the best deals you'll see have those for that reason. So stay away from that. You, you want to think of a barbell. On one end of the barbell, you have no amenities. I did that seven years ago. It was great. That means you don't have to have a manager. You could manage, you know, one person remotely could manage a half a dozen parks as long as he's on site every quarter or so. And then on the other end of the barbell, you have amenity, rich pool, pickle ball, horseshoes, unit, water slides, everything. That's a great place to be. That's what I'm doing today. I'm a partner in a fundamental. And those are the parks. We buy hundreds of pad sites near national and state parks. It's harder, but bigger and, you know, you know, bigger numbers. Right. You don't want to be in the middle. If you buy a park with a pool and that's it, then your insurance is much higher. You need someone to be there, and they're only there for the pool. You don't want a kid to Drown. Right. So you don't want to be in the messy middle. Like either no amenities or all the amenities.

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Like tea time you. Mmm.

Or this tea time you. Or even this tea time you said you hear about Dave. Or even tea time Tea time, tea time you.

Mm.

So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry, rinse. It's time to be great. You once started a crypto project with John McAfee, who is easily, I think, the most eccentric, paranoid and wild entrepreneur maybe of all times. He founded, like, founded and sold McAfee antivirus software, investigated for murder in Belize, and later returned to the US where he ran for president not once, but twice. I think there's a whole Netflix documentary about him. Is that right?

That's correct, yes. Yeah. So it was like seven years ago or eight, I don't know. But crypto was going crazy and I was getting involved because I'm, you know, always distracted. And I had kind of found this math equation that helped me predict the price of cryptocurrencies. And it was very simple. Here's the whole secret, okay? I would. I found a way to measure how much hype cryptocurrency had, how many people were talking about on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and I put that into a number from 1 to 100. And then I used public websites to find out the market cap of the cryptocurrency, how much it was worth, and then I just divided the two numbers. So if there was a cryptocurrency that was very big, very popular, but people weren't really talking about it. My algorithm division told me it was going to go down in value at some point or if everyone was talking about something and. And it had a small market cap and it would go up in value. So I started investing my own money in this, and it was Working. And I felt like I had just discovered, like, Newtonian physics or something, right? I was like, this is huge. I'm gonna be so rich. This is amazing. But this was, like, years before I ever started publishing content. I had no following, no audience, no rich friends, nothing. And so I thought, who's the biggest name in crypto? Crypto. John McAfee. He had, like, a million Twitter followers at the time. And for better or worse, he was the biggest name in crypto. And so I thought if I could just skip the line, right? Constraints equal creativity. If I could just partner with him and get him to buy into this vision that this works, then I could do something with this equation. Build a community or sell access to it for a monthly fee or raise a fund and invest the funds money into it. I got to get his attention. Attention. Problem is, is that he founded a security company. He's very private. He lives on a compound with bodyguards. So I started guessing his email address because I couldn't even find his email, which is pretty easy to do. I couldn't find his. So I'm trying, like, jmacafee.com, john@mcafee. John. And it was just, bounce back, bounce back, bounce back. Finally, I had a notification. It was opened. I'm like, okay, I found it. He didn't respond, but I found it. So then I just start blowing him up. John, I'm really onto something here. Some guy in Texas. He doesn't know who I am. I'm nobod. I'm on some. I think. Finally he responds. And I still have these screenshots. So this was January 24, 2018. As long as it is a live demo, as I said before, I will not even look at history and will throw you out of house if you bring it up. Even if you have HD video showing God coming down from heaven and exclaiming that you are legit, I will still throw you out of the house. I want a live demo of your product that accurately projects the future. Otherwise, I will be seriously pissed off. Can you pull off a demo that predicts prices the following day, 48 hours from today and one week from today? If you can do that, then please come. If you cannot, even with the greatest excuse God could provide, then do not come. Put it in the history books.

Oh, my God. I want to use that. David, the amount of times I'm going to say to you now for things you want to pitch me, even with the grace of God.

That's right.

I will never dance on the Internet. Yeah, that is so good. Okay. What a great email save, too.

And I was like, john, just give me an hour of your time in person. And he said, okay, I live in Lexington, Tennessee. Be at my house on, I think it was February 28th at 1:23pm and if you're there, I'll give you an hour. And he said, I'll give you my address the morning of. Whoa. I'm like, okay. So I fly to Tennessee, I get a rental car. Emailing, email him that morning and say, I'm coming, John. What's your address? No response. I'm just going to Lexington. I don't know where he lives, right? There's like 40,000 people there. John, I'm coming to Lexington finally. Like 1 o' clock or like 12 o'. Clock. He emails me his address. So I pull up to this house. It's like this old southern style neighborhood. And there's one like Spanish style home with like a Hummer and like a Nissan Versa. And it's just like, if anyone lives here, it's John McAfee, right? All these crappy cars. And I knock on the door and you know that scene in Home Alone when, like, they're about to leave to Paris and it's just bustling activity and everyone's running. It looked like that there was an Australian film crew in there, Multiple bodyguards with guns on their person. And then John and his wife Janice, and he's like, who are you? I'm like, john, like, you just gave me your address. He's like, I don't know who you are. I'm like, chris, I have that. He's like, oh, Janice, sorry. This guy thinks he. He can predict crypto. I don't believe him. Like, this is. We're off to a great start. This is awesome. I'm glad I flew to Tennessee for this. So he's like, come in. We're going to the liquor store. I'm like, okay. And I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint. I've never tasted alcohol. He's like the opposite of me, like, in every way except entrepreneurship, right? So as I come in, sit down. So I sit down at this breakfast nook and everyone leaves as soon as I get there. And I'm like, what? Okay, that's. This is weird. And I'm looking at this table and there's like hard drives and laptops, and I'm like, okay, this is like the most secure person in the world. There's probably a hundred million dollars worth of bitcoin on that hard drive, and he doesn't know who I am. He's just. What?

What?

What is happening? Long story short, I. I end up hearing someone there. One of his bodyguards was there. He's like, oh, nice to meet you. He's very nice. He's like, tell me why you're here. And I spend, like, 30 minutes explaining how this works. And he's like, I don't get it. I don't get it. And I'm just like, great. This is just a total failure. And so then everyone comes back. John sits down. He's like, all right, Chris, you got an hour. So I open up my MacBook, I start talking, and he's like, do you mind if this film crew films this? I'm like, okay, sure. So they start filming, and I'm like, halfway into my second sentence, and he's like, this is brilliant. Of course. Of course it works. Why wouldn't it work? It's just all hype. You're just dividing the hype by the market cap. What do you want from me? And I'm like, wow, this guy gets it. And so I'm like, let me give you a quarter of whatever it is that we build, and you tweet about me twice per week. I'll tell you what to tweet. We'll build some. And we shook on it. And I spent the day there eating Mexican food and hanging out with them. And then we started a business together.

And what ended up happening with the business?

Oh, man, we. This was 2018, right at the start of crypto crashing from 20,000 to 3,000.

Yeah.

And. But we started a cryptocurrency that we gave out for free, and it reached a $30 million market cap, and we built a community with 70,000 people in it. We planned conferences, and we became friends over the course of two years until it all just kind of fizzled out and died.

Wow. So basically, crypto crashed, and that just killed the whole business.

Yeah. We were just swimming upstream for two. We launched, like, the worst possible time. Wow. I still have his voicemails saved on my phone.

That's wild.

Yeah. I can't delete them. I just can't. Chris.

John McAfee. I'd like to chat for a little.

While, but it goes on and on. It's like two minutes. It's this idea to, like, start a business giving away free crypto to, like, strippers and my. And mime. And he's just rambling, and it's like. It's funny, but it's Like I leave rambling voicemails like that. Not while on coke. But it's like we have the same entrepreneurial brain. His is like plus coke, you know, and strippers. It's strippers and no morals.

Wow, that is wild.

It's a good story.

What a story though. Okay, I think one of the. There's kind of two other things I want to go with with. One is you've obviously met a ton of everyday business owners who have gone from nothing to couple hundred thousand million, $2 million businesses. Everybody talks about the world's greatest founders. But what have you noticed just in your millionaire founders that you've met? What is different about them than everybody else?

Yeah, they have an insane bias for action. They just move fast and not like to have first movers advantage just because that's just how they operate. They're impatient, right? Which could be seen as a flaw. It might be a flaw in their personal life, I don't know. But they're just insanely curious and impatient and they pair those two things together and sometimes it gets messy and things fail and things explode and bankruptcy like, but over the long run, they just win. If they don't quit, they stay in the game.

They just to want when until you actually get in front of people who are moving like, like billionaires. Like most of the billionaires I've met, I'm just like, oh my God, you. Once you've made a decision, it's just tidal waves of movement. But I've struggled to try to get like a formula for how to explain if you are fast or not. Like if somebody said, all right, let's Chris, create for me the algorithm of am I fast or am I not in my life? What would be the inputs? How could one tell if you really want to were a person who biased for action?

That's a good question. I've noticed like the best employees I've had work fast. And that's not something you talk about with employees. You talk about productivity, but they just like, if I give two employees the same spreadsheet task, one of them is done 10 minutes, one does the same thing in three hours. Right? And so I wish I had a formula of like how to train that. Maybe it can't be trained, but like, you know what? Maybe the commonality is you truly love what you do. Like I love what I do so much. I'm sitting at the MacBook typing away and I gotta go to the bathroom. I'll run to the bathroom. There's no deadline. No one's around, no one cares. Right. It's just an email I'm writing or something and I'll run back just because I genuinely love it and I want to be doing more of that. Going pee is not fun. Right. I want to be doing that thing. And so that kind of forces me to be fast. If I'm researching a business or launching a business business, if I do it faster, then I can do more of it in a compressed time period. So maybe you could make an analogy to like a hobby or something that you love. Like if you're, if you love going to the beach, you might speed on the way to the beach. You might spend more time there. You might be really creative or efficient at finding your way to the beach because you love it so much. So just take that same principle and apply it to whatever it is you're doing.

Yeah. Do you have a way to screen employees for their speed?

The only way I found is just 30 day trials for everyone. And just saying on day one, statistically speaking, this isn't gonna work out. Nothing against you. You seem awesome or else we wouldn't even be doing this. I'm just looking at numbers, you know, 30% or 30% chance this works out. So on day 30, let's put it on the calendar right now. We're gonna have a talk. No hard feelings. It just probably won't work out. And if it's the right person. Person, that conversation will put a chip on their shoulder. Right. Because that chip can be very heavy. And some people get that. Some people just don't have that gene. It offends them and it drives them. Like it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and they don't work out. Some people are like, oh, okay, we'll see. I'll be in that 30%. And that's the guy or girl that I want.

Yeah. It's a good. Did somebody ever do that to you?

Oh, I like everything I've done is because I of some stupid comment that someone made. Or like, it's chips on my shoulder. Like it's everything I'm sure you could.

I'm the same way. Everybody says, like, don't build angry. I'm like, wrong. There's no greater fuel than being a little pissed off.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

You know, it's. I mean, I mean, and if you're religious, talk about like righteous fury. Like, that is a real thing.

Yeah.

And you know, you don't build the irrational thing. That is a big business because you're like, like, I kind of don't care. I Just feel nothing. And I'm just. And I like, stumbled my way into this business. I just don't believe that. I think you have to build it through, like a force of will that is unreasonable. And that often comes from being really pissed that something doesn't already exist.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, I'm not the right person to talk to about like work life balance or, you know, being really reasonable on everything. I'm like, no, no, we. We got one life. And at the end of the day.

Yep.

I want to be able to say we made it.

And if you enjoy it, then. Right.

Yeah.

Like, as much as I love my mom. I love you, mom. But I didn't become successful because she believed in me so much. Right. I'm glad that she did. I believe in my kids. I became successful because some stupid guy in college is like, you're not going to do it. You're not going to make it. And that guy probably doesn't remember that I exist. You know, it's so silly.

Yeah.

But if you're able to harness it, then it's not silly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to keep. I have like a little screen. I bet I still have the screenshot from when I was in finance. I was a partner to finance finance company. And we had grown really fast. My division and one of the other division heads basically didn't like that. I was starting to bring a lot of the stuff online. It was pre contrarian thinking, but I still thought that in the future investing, a lot of it was going to be done through a version of online marketing. I was like, I think steak dinners as the only way of business is that's not this generation.

Yeah.

And they disagreed. And so I remember he sent me an email. I think he was a little liquored up. It was like late at night. And the email said, said, I hope you gained more followers today because you've dumbed down our business.

Oh, wow.

And I remember being like, you probably.

Remember exactly where you were when you read that email.

Yeah, I remember where I was. I remember how I felt. And I remember being like, thanks, man. I needed that. You know, it's like, be really careful. I think also with like the fuel you put into other people.

Yeah.

You know, because you might not realize you're, you know, enemies can be powerful too.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I've learned that lesson also. Let's talk about that for a second. Like, you've done 75 businesses. You have to have gotten lied to, cheated, defrauded. Like, what's the worst thing that's ever happened to you in entrepreneurship, man, I.

We could have four hours of conversation, like, I call it, like, surface area for fraud, surface area for scams, trials, business partnership fallouts. I've had, like 15 business partners. I. I could tell so many stories, but the worst one ever was I was building a business with a couple partners, and we had a $50 million opportunity on the table. We had a term sheet, and it was significantly better than we thought we would get. And this was life changing money for all of us. And the two partners that I had kind of like, like, ganged up, so to speak, had a meeting without me. And they said, you know what? Like, there's really not enough equity to go around. I know our operating agreement kind of, you know, we could just rip up that operating agreement, start a new company, get those same investors in our new company with just us. They're not going to care. They barely know Chris. Right. Sucks. But, like, honestly, this just makes the most sense. Sense. So they had that conversation. And then I was in my head, I was about to sign, like, the best deal in my life. I was way up here, right? And then I get a text. It's like, hey, meet me at Starbucks. And I just, like, I just saw the text and nothing. I had no red flags. Like, there were no signs that this was about to happen, right? But I saw that text and I was like, I don't feel good about this. Why don't I feel good about this? Just something told me and, like, that feeling just came up and I'm like, okay. So I get in the truck and I drive across the street to Starbucks. I'm like, why aren't we meeting at the office? This was right across the street. Okay? So I get to Starbucks and I thought I was meeting with one of them, and the one I was closer with, I was meeting with both of them. And you could just see the looks on their faces. And it was a longer conversation, but basically it was like, this sucks. This is wrong. We know this is wrong. We know this will ruin our friendship, but you're out. Like, you're out. This is done. We're doing this without you. We don't need you. And so I was just like, chip on shoulder, right? I was like, okay, well, that came later in the moment. I was just, like, seeing red.

Yeah.

And just like driving home like this, and it was just. It was one of the worst things that's ever happened to me, honestly.

Yeah.

But at the end of the day, like, you know, lawyers got involved that deal blew up up, and my life has never been better ever since.

Yeah, it's such a lesson. I mean, one of the things that I feel like a lot of people are scared of doing entrepreneurship because they know the big bad, scary thing will happen. Like, if you're in the game long enough, you're going to get hit. It's just the name of the game. But the crazy part is it doesn't kill you.

Yeah.

Like, it's not going to kill you. Like, entrepreneurship by itself, unless you fall off a roof, it's not going to kill you. It's going to suck. You're going to have mental scars, all the ptsd. But, you know, I'm always surprised in about the people who defraud you and the people who scam you. Like, I. We had this guy who, like Chris and I, my husband Chris were like, really close to, like, met his kid and like, been in his house and, and like, knew the guy and. And I thought we were buddies, but I was on the Internet a little bit by then. This is like kind of at the beginning of me being on the Internet, and. And the guy was formerly in secret agency world. And so I knew, like, obviously those people understand manipulation. Like, they know how to come after you, but I just never would imagine being targeted. You know, that was like a. A foreign thing to me.

Yeah.

But what happens in entrepreneurship is you do get targeted, actually, all the time. Sometimes like big manipulation, sometimes little. And the. The one that stuck with me the most was not the most money. It was only a couple hundred thousand dollars that he defrauded us from, but it was that somebody could come after you with that intent. Somebody could steal from you so intensely. And the whole time you think you're friends.

Yeah.

And I think with business, what it really starts to teach you is that partnerships should be, like, few and far between or really set with a lot of expectations. And you've got to expect that you're going to have a breakup.

Yeah.

And. And then it'll be okay. And for people like that, it always comes back around.

Yeah.

Like, I think it's very rare for somebody to have a ton of business success over decades and decades and continuously partners and people not know. Right. So one of the good parts is when you're. When you partner with people who are kind of successful, you're like, okay, I know what I'm going to get into. One of the lessons that I've learned is like, be very careful with the unknown commodity. You know, like, if. If you don't Know them if they haven't ever had any success. But they're the same age as you got to kind of be careful. It's better to be the young up and comer, probably, or it's better to go with the established one. But I do think entrepreneurship can break your heart, because that was one of the few ones, right? I was like, oh, you know, you're just a commodity, not something else. But I think thank you for sharing. Cause nobody really wants to share those stories. And everybody makes themselves out to be like, ah, it's only been great. Everything's only good.

It's tough.

And that's not the case. Let's talk about, like, let's give people some tactics really quickly. So we've already talked about some ways to find businesses, but if you were gonna, like, have somebody leave here, you've given them three businesses you, like, you've given them three businesses you don'. If they right now are listening and they want to go find their next business to start, where would you look? What do you do?

Where do you start? So I think that you. You have to put yourself in one of two buckets. Am I someone that already knows I love entrepreneurship? I've made my first dollar for myself. I've tasted it, I love it. Or am I someone that loves the idea of entrepreneurship? I like how it sounds. I don't want to work. Who wants to work for someone? Right? Some of those people end up trying it and they don't like it. Right? So step one is figure out what bucket you're in, right? And then answer that question for yourself. Like, go gather things around your house that are just sitting around. Sell them on Facebook Marketplace. See how it feels is the hassle of going back and forth with someone or meeting someone to sell a $50 dresser, is it not worth it for you, or does it seem not worth it until you make that $50 and you're like, oh, that feels good. I did that myself. Right? So start there. I would say, yeah.

Now, what about for the person that, like, is already in a job, so, like, they're already working. They're. They kind of maybe like what they do, but they're not, like, young and hungry necessarily. They're, like, in their career. Is there somewhere you tell people to start where they. It's slightly more advanced. Like, is there a 202 level to start, or does everybody have to start at 101? Facebook Marketplace. Marketplace, yeah.

You familiar with the ikigai principle?

Yeah.

Yeah. So for those that aren't, it's just a Venn diagram. What do you love? What are you good at? What does the world need? And what could you charge for? Okay, start there. So if you, if you work in dentistry, right, you know dentistry better than most people, you know, so maybe you should start thinking of ideas that are tangential to that. Maybe you have a vendor that seems to be crushing it and you could copy what they're doing. Maybe you could start a, maybe you manage your, your dentist Facebook ads account and you could start an ad agency for dentists, right? So start what you enjoy and what you know and what is in kind of your zone of genius and go from there. Where I see people going wrong is like, they're a lawyer and then they go try to start a pressure washing business and they're like, I don't even like this at my house. What am I doing? You know? And that could turn them off from entrepreneurship just because they chose the wrong thing. They might actually, actually love the feeling of entrepreneurship. Right. So definitely start what with what you know, and then test it. Like Jeff Bezos talks about the regret minimization framework, right? People don't regret things that they do typically. Right? Like we regret things that we didn't do, like the jump that we didn't take. And so that's one thing that I have. I have like, call it like underlying fomo. If I have a business idea that just ruminating, I've got to get it out. And if it fails, great, because now I know, because I don't want there to have been an idea from three years ago that could have been a billion dollar idea. So you're just. Every year that you get older, right, the chance of you leaving those golden handcuffs just goes down and down and down. And the worst feeling is just being 40, 50, 60, 80 years old and looking back, like, I should have done that. That, like that job kind of sucked the whole time. Why didn't I at least try? Like, people don't have to quit under. Almost like there's very few exceptions where you have to quit your job to start a business.

Yeah. So yeah, you know, the, the part that's really interesting on that too is like, I think most people really overestimate what happens. I'm sorry, People really underestimate what happens after you start. Like, the hard thing is the start. Yeah, the really hard thing, because most people just will never kickstart their way, like again. To go to my dad, he was in real estate forever and never bought a proper. I mean, I'm talking like 30 or 40 years, because he's super risk averse. And so he's like, no, I'm a deal maker. I like to get the deals. I'm like, yeah, what if you're sick? You have to have something else that can pay you. And so it's like just kind of get started and then you can see what happens. What about. I like this framework of, like, minimizing regret. Do you also, like. Do you have. You have 452 businesses? Like, you've done like 75 businesses today. Do you think you have ADD, ADHD or something? Do you have a hard time sticking with one thing for an extended period.

Of time, diagnosed adhd? Definitely have that. And it used to stress me out. I used to say, chris, shiny objects, stop. No, no, no, this is working. I even. I went and got my MBA just to like, fight that. Right. And I used to think focus is like focusing on one business. And maybe for some people, that is, to me, the. The focus that's important is focusing on your superpower. Okay. And where I went wrong was trying to do payroll and trying to do a little bit of marketing and hiring and operations. I'm terr at operations. Right. I forget payroll sometimes. That's really bad. That's really bad when you miss payroll. All right, Let me tell you. But I'm really good at marketing and ideation and executing on ideas. On ideas fast. So now I just focus on that. And if that's across 10 different businesses or one, it makes no difference because I'm going to win either way.

I love that because these, these days, people all tell you, well, hey, you should just do this one thing, you know, if instead you focused on one business, how much richer would you be? It's like, I don't know, maybe. But maybe I'd have less fun.

Yeah.

And so do we always have to optimize for return, or could we optimize for a little fun plus return? So I think for anybody out there who's, you know, got a little add, gets distracted kind of easy, that doesn't mean that you can't be an entrepreneur. It might just mean your path looks different. Yeah, thanks for letting me ask. That's probably inappropriate. What other medical diagnosis do you have that you'd like to discuss today? Anything else?

Well, you.

I mean, you said two things that I think a lot of people feel like you can't have as an entrepreneur. You're like, I'm an introvert. I actually don't like doing this. And second, you're like, I'm adhd, I get distracted. And yet you can still be a CEO, still be a content creator, and still be pretty wildly successful. Is there any. Why could a person listening right now not do this? What's the anti entrepreneur? You will never make it if you have these characteristics.

Ego, pride. You don't want to look stupid in front of your friends that aren't even thinking about you. Like, it could just be like, you really just don't want it that bad. You just like the idea of entrepreneurship. But you try, like getting your hands dirty a little bit and it's like, I just want a paycheck. And that's awesome. I would love to report to someone a lot of times. Me too. I would love to just say, tell me what to do. Right? So. So I think if you are humble and you do really want it, I can't think of really any excuses why you can't do it. Because even working hard, you don't have to have a work ethic. If you genuinely enjoy it, it doesn't feel like work. Some people say people are inherently lazy. I think people need to work. I think we get fulfillment from work. Most people just haven't found the work that they love yet. So it means you have to keep trying things until you do do. Right? Like after starting 75 businesses, I know exactly what I like and what I don't like. But had I just stayed in one the whole time, I might not know. So I just like, I just follow the energy. If I'm doing a task that gives me energy, I just do more of that. And I think it's really hard to go wrong if you do that. You're familiar with product market fit, right? It's just like the concept that your product or service there is a big market for it and. And you know it's there because you're just like staying up all night fulfilling orders. Like, there's so much demand for this. Some people think you have to have that. You don't usually have it. I've experienced like two or three times. But when I have a product or service or business that has product market fit, I'm not out there getting distracted. I don't have time. There's a selection bias, right? So if I'm distracted by another shiny object, that's a signal to me that there's something worth getting distracted over. Because this thing is expensive as far as opportunity cost is concerned. Concerned. So if my energy is directed over here, then I should pay attention to that, right?

Yeah, it's a. It's a really good point. It's a very fair point too. I also think, like most people, it's like, do you only want to do what you want to do or do you want to do what's required? If you only want to do what you want to do at all times.

Yeah.

Then you won't make it.

Yeah.

Now you can only do what you want to do, broad picture. But like day to day, you're going to have to do some.

Yeah.

And if you're willing to do that, I really think you can be an entrepreneur. It's just like it is that mixture of like, can I become obsessed with a thing? Then can I do some stuff I don't want to do? Can I do it past a point that is reasonable for most other people and can I continue to move forward?

Yeah.

In your religion, do you have to do like door knocking and selling?

We did during our mission for two years. Yeah.

So you kind of learned hard, difficult salesy things. How old were you then?

19. In Hungary, Eastern Europe.

Jesus.

Yeah.

Do you speak Hungarian?

A little bit. I still got some left.

Wow. What do you got?

Yona podkivanok.

That sounded great.

Thank you.

What'd you say?

I just put a little deeper voice on and no one can tell the difference. I just said, how are you? Hello. How are you?

Wild. And so do you think a lot of your entrepreneurial chops come from doing hard things like that really young?

Oh, 100%. I was like in high school, you know, I. I had a single mom, she was a weight a waitress. And I had bad grades. I was not motivated, I was not driven, I was not valedictorian, 3.0 GPA, stupid stuff on the weekends. But after knocking doors in Eastern Europe in a foreign language for two years, and I added up how many times I got rejected loosely because we would knock on doors all day, every day. And so if you add that up, like x doors per day, it's like 24000 times rejected to my face. Okay. This isn't like a mean email. Like I don't to want want what you're selling me when you do that for two years and you come home. I came. I just remember sitting in my room after coming home thinking, like, I can freaking do anything. Like, and I will. Like, this is America. I can do whatever I want. Because I met a lot of really smart, kind, talented people over there that had no opportunity. They could not get ahead if they wanted to. And I was like, I can do whatever I want here compared to Hungary. And so I've just been trying to do that ever since. Sense.

Do you convert anybody with 24,000 no's.

11.

Whoa.

Yeah. So how's that?

Which also seems like a lot. Like, if you believe you're saving souls, 11 is a lot. That's more than me, but that's a tough ratio.

That's tough.

So do you think, like, will you make your kids do the same thing or ask your kids if they want to do this?

We encourage them to, but it's. I can't really force them to do anything, you know, especially once they're 18.

You just model it.

Yeah. Yeah. But the thing is about those 11 people is I learned after a while, like, it was all for me. Like, it sounds selfish, but I served that mission. I thought I was serving others, and that became a byproduct of what I was doing. Really, I was served the most in serving them.

Yeah, I get that.

Does that make sense?

Oh, 100%. It's my favorite reason for why we host workshops here. Like, it doesn't make a lot of sense to do, like, with the scale that we have, have to bring 100 people in here, teach them about business. But we've been doing it for the past five years. Like, why would you do such a thing? Because it's actually really selfish.

Yeah.

Like, when you meet the people at the end and in the beginning, I remember one of the guys. I won't say his name, but he, like, have you ever looked at an entrepreneur? You can tell they're going through it. Like when you were with a CEO buddy, and they're having a tough time in the business, I think it's often physical. Like, you can literally see it on their face.

Yeah.

And so he had sort of the. These, like. I guess it's. It's shingles. Like a. Like, hives sort of. And I was like, what's going on with you, man? And it was because he had a. What is that called? Where you go and check a comp. Check a house to see what it's worth.

Oh, appraiser.

Yeah.

Jeez.

Okay. So he was a home appraiser. And by the end of two days, we kind of figured out that he was really selling to the low end of the market. He was taking everybody. So he was making. It was. Year three appeal problem. No. No profit. Too many clients. Lots could go wrong, and they really didn't value his service very much. So it was always a price negotiation. Right. But by the end, I'm like, are you good at this? He's like, yeah, we're very good at it. I'm like, why don't you just put, like, luxury home appraisal, just like, optimize for SEO on that. You're a luxury appraisal company now. Did it? He's like, oh, my God, I doubled my business, plus I have half the number of clients. And he started looking healthy now. That is awesome for him. I'm stoked about that. But, like, I was so excited. I'm like, look at the help that I could give this dude doing it. And I think people don't realize that entrepreneurship can really be that.

Oh, it's so.

I think it's a real service, what you do, because now you're talking to how many people are following you on the Internet now with all the. All the sauce you're given.

I mean, I don't even track it, but like 3.62 million, something like that? No. So I don't track it.

And where do you like people to follow the most? I like your Instagram.

Yeah.

And your Twitter. I try to stay off X as much as possible, actually, because it can be accessible. But you have great X and Instagram. Do you want to tell them where to find you?

Yeah, my podcast. Really? The Kerner office. Spelled like my last name.

Yeah. Spell it, because they're never going to get that.

K O E R N E R. There you go. Tkopod.com I actually thought it was corner.

Up until this very moment. Well, I don't know really. So it's the Kerner office, because it looks like corner.

I'll accept both of them.

Okay, cool. Well, thank you for being on here. Thank you for all the. The secrets that you share about entrepreneurs. And I think this episode is going to be really useful for multiple people out there who are stuck in their own way and they might just break through. So if you do give them a follow all across the interwebs. And if you actually, if you guys start a business or if you grow one because of this, tell us. We will get you something special in the comments. Come back. We will patrol this for the next couple months, and if something cool happens, we'll make sure we get give away some merch to you. Maybe we'll even get an original BUC EE's something that Chris did simultaneously. Thanks for being here.

Thank you.