Is it possible to make $100,000+ in less than 3 months?

You can apparently run a business for two months out of the year and make hundreds of thousands or even millions. Let's break down what's happening, how do we do it and how they do it. Because I think there's a huge opportunity in the pop up seasonal businesses. Pop up shop. The future of retail is in pop up. I freaking love the pop up business model. When done right, I'm calling this find your pop up store. What do I mean by that? Us humans love it when nice things just pop up out of nowhere. A cute little lemonade stand on the corner. Temporary art that makes you stop in your tracks. A farmer's market on Main Street. We just love these little pop ups because they're experiential, they break routine, they're temporary. And because of that they set apart from the everyday, the mundane. But you also know me, I love them because apparently these are billion dollar industries leveraging these very same pop up blueprints. Americans expected to spend $10.6 billion. Spirit Halloween sets up more than 1400 pop up stores nationwide. Sometime around late August, Spirit Halloween moves into your old neighborhood. JCPenney's or Macy's for a hot minute. The store opened last Thursday in the old Pier 1 location. They slapped some banners on windows, put out an inflatable or two and fill the store with spooky decorations and costumes. You know it's cheap in discount when you walk in. But cheap in discount doesn't mean it's cheap in its profits. And I just thought this was so good I had to check this out for myself. Hey Andy, it's Cody Sanchez. How are you? So we wanted to find out how much it actually costs to build out a Spirit store. Turns out the average retail store costs something between 500k to millions. If you're gonna do a 10,000, 20, 20,000 square foot store. And it can take months, sometimes more than a year. But Spirit's got a little bit of an edge because it turns out their stores cost 15 to 30k to build out.

It's very purpose built. It's not, it's not some nice location, you know, like a Versace that's, you know, got brass hand railings that are all custom made. I mean this is all stuff they can get from like Grainger, you know, you can do an entire store and you know, a few days really.

Now recognize this. Halloween is coming. And there's no better way to show the power of a pop up business than to break down this business model. Love them, hate them. You can't argue with the numbers, it's legitimately frightening how efficient this business is. So what's the magic behind the mask? Like most businesses, Spirit's profits came from some pain in 83 in a strip mall, the business owner, Joe Marver basically saw the site of a nearby costume shop that had a ton of customers coming in. While he was barely getting by, Marver transformed his struggling apparel store into Spirit Halloween. The move ended up paying off, led to the expansion of Spirit having 60 locations over 16 years. And in 1999, they got bought, which led to this huge growth. Just this year, Halloween spending is projected to hit a record breaking 12.2 billion. And Spirit is supposed to be responsible for about 16% of that. That's $1.9 billion. Lots of pumpkins. Particularly when you learn how cost effective their business model is. To begin, they only pay for three months of rent. How? They made it a no brainer for landlords by adding kickout clauses. That basically allows the landlord to replace Spirit if they find a long lease tenant before spooky season. Spirit realized this rarely happened and also they want them to return. And so they were quickly able to scale to 1500 stores.

They're actually bringing benefit between sales tax revenue. They're bringing a rent to the landlord that's been sitting on an empty building for 10 other months out of the year.

Think about it. Have you been to malls lately? Vacancies are everywhere. And so landlords are saying things like some money is better than no money and otherwise my store sits vacant. Obviously it's not going to be as good as a permanent lease for them. But relatively little downside, lots of traffic. The key here for them is they're flexible and they're cheap. It's what's called specific standardization. They don't try to fill up the whole retail space. They make a closed box within the larger building that they're renting. Basically requires less decoration. But it also means Spirit Halloween can run a 15,000 square foot store in Cali and a 60,000 square foot store in Colorado. But keep both of them to the standard 10K model. Brilliant. Second cool part is reoccurring inventory. The business model allows them to have an inventory efficiency system that like Macy's would die for you. Don't sell the witch costumes this year. Not a problem. Just save the rest for next year since it'll still be in style. Last flexible workforce. The company expects to hire about 25,000 seasonal employees this year, but roughly 1 in 10 or 2500 will stay on for the year. Also From a marketing standpoint, if one of two things happens to your business, you've got a winner. Your name becomes a verb. Google Uber Spirit Halloween. Your brand becomes a meme in a good way. Like they also have Right about now you're going to see Spirit Halloween memes plaster all over social media. One version pokes fun at Spirit for taking advantage of literally any closure, and another is these sort of satirical Spirit Halloween costume kits. Kind of sexy. It might be hard to believe if you're over the age of 35, but memes can do numbers for businesses. Who would have guessed that in 2023 memes could be a multi billion dollar marketing tactic? But here we are. Except just making memes isn't really a great strategy for every business. With the online landscape constantly changing, I don't want to have to guess what's going to work for my business's marketing. I certainly don't want to google around through half baked marketing advice online. And I know you don't want to spend time googling deciphering validating information either. I'd rather someone smarter than me just told me what I should be doing. So here's a way for us to steal the smartest marketers hours fast. We are partnering with HubSpot to give you all the secrets of marketing in 2023. This isn't some random write up from a marketing guru somewhere on Instagram. HubSpot got together with a bunch of accredited marketing agencies to carefully prep this data backed report. They surveyed 1200 expert marketers, identified 70 stats and trends for the next year. All that information just waiting for you in this free PDF. I said give us the free stuff. If eyes is what you want, this is the hack you need. Download HubSpot's State of Marketing PDF from the link in the description today. You're welcome. When people create a product, usually what they do is they spend most of their time trying to get that product into consumers hands, their clients, ads, social media, discounts. Everything they're doing is trying to drive more sales from their clients to their product. The benefit of having a seasonal pop up business is you're not trying to drive, you're trying to draft flipping the model. You're going to have a bunch of clients with a need and this need is seasonal and it's extreme like Halloween. You are not creating demand. Demand is already generated and instead of spending all of your time trying to get clients, you're going to have the clients automatically draft to you through your product. Most people reverse the model. You are gonna Draft instead of drive. That's the idea behind the pop ups. I don't expect anyone here to start another spirit Halloween, including myself. Although apparently you can buy into other franchises like this one and they're pretty cheap. Should we buy one? So how instead would I do a pop up business? Breaking it down and niching down. Halloween makes billions. Party City burns money. You need something specific and timely, not evergreen 2 MVP. You don't want fancy. Think about my motto. If it's free, it's for me. This entire retail store is made up of free materials. Wood pallets, PVC pipes and hangers. All for less than $2,000. They set up this bad boy three season or event paste. Pick a triggering event that does all the marketing for you. Audience and attention. Drafting is what you're after. You're not building demand, you're just capturing it. Ever been to Austin on a weekend for a bachelorette party? Silk pop up crowns to those bitches. Lastly, I think be seen, be good, be gone. Timeliness, relevance, scarcity. Come get your witch masks while they're still hot. Then they disappear. The fact that you will not last long is the excitement you're gonna build into the next year. This one's actually really cool. It's called a pop in, not a pop up. You go to a local store, grab a vacant corner or coffee shop, church it up with painted pumpkins or pumpkins pasted with pansies. That's a mouthful, but look at these beautiful things and sell overpriced custom decorations to the whole food market mom crowd, AKA me, minus the children. Next go. Vacant landlords need full shops to sell other people leases. You call the landlord, see if you can get a free spot for traffic and ads. Or you can go to this site for a location of free listings. So if we like these ideas, then think about all the opportunities we could apply to our model for pop ups that isn't just costumes. This one's one of my favorites. Pop up ski discount shops. I've seen this firsthand from a guy who runs Ski Pro. Brilliant. It's a pop up seasonal ski store that does $12.3 million a year. He basically gets all the inventory from ski shops at the end of season when they have massive discounts because everybody's done for the year. They rent out a huge warehouse location or a tent in a parking lot. And they have a mad dash sale. Fascinating. All right, back to the pumpkins. You could have a pumpkin patch. You could do carving, weighing, photos. It doesn't stop with just selling them. Fireworks. I know a guy who makes a couple million a year from firework pop ups that are open about three months a year. Then you've got the old tried but trues pop up restaurants. An empty spot today is a culinary and Instagram hotspot tomorrow, at least for five seconds. These kids in fact turned an inside joke into the most exclusive table in New York City which is brilliant. This one's wild Van Gogh. These guys created a chain of immersive Van Gogh exhibits and sold millions of tickets the past few years, translating to 250 million in revenue. It's wild or fitness boot camps. Say there's an empty warehouse. Maybe you turn it into a trendy gym in disguise. In fact, my friend Brittany created Grit by Brit in Dallas and turned it into seven figures after Covid. I love this model. Top shelf boutique. A truck plus trendy clothes going mobile around the city of San Francisco creating what is essentially the first ever fashion truck. This one I might try. Look at this solve created an intern office. Pop up. They're a creative agency that needed interns. So basically they created this little mini office where students and young professionals could come in and win an on the spot interview for a position. They completed a little five minute challenge and the winner snagged a new internship. It's an example that you don't have to sell physical products to turn a successful pop up shop. Here's the truth. You don't have to commit to the thing you're doing now for it to be the thing you will do forever. Perhaps a pop up. A pop in, a pop up shop. Shop could be the thing that you try to get your foot on the gas pedal of acceleration of taking action. You might actually be surprised what happens. Oh also, don't forget to subscribe. We're going to give away this little signed spider to one of you who comments what you're going to dress up for as Halloween. Also comment your Instagram handle otherwise we can't find you. We will DM you a spider and a little surprise, huh?