How to be an Entrepreneur: Advice & Mindset (See Business Opportunities) | My First Million Podcast

This was just like, to me, such a cool, clever idea. I couldn't find like their revenue. I didn't have a chance to check, but you can go on the site and it's like—

it's called again—

so I've been trying to find what are these deductions, how do they work, do I, do I qualify? Now, interesting market that I saw. So my, my father-in-law was like, yeah, you know, with solar— I was like, I don't own a building. He's like, yeah, if you own real estate, you know, you can depreciate the real estate, you can do solar. I was like, I don't own a building, so what do you want me to do here? He's like, well, you know, technically you could buy the solar for another building and lease it to them, and then you write off your whole— and your CapEx, whatever. And so what I found was there's this business— so if you ever notice, there's a long way of saying, have you ever noticed when you drive by schools that schools all have solar panels on top now?

Sometimes.

And, and so if you see in California especially, you go, every middle school, high school has just got solar panels all along the roof. And the way this works, I found out, was, um, companies like Chevron and Exxon or whoever, they want— so they want tax credits. And so what they do is they go to the school and say, hey, we will buy solar for your school. And they buy solar panels for the school, it becomes a tax write-off to them. The school leases it from Chevron, and so Chevron gets a monthly payment from the school, and the school gets lower utilities without ever taking a dollar out of its pocket. So I thought this was very interesting, and it sort of I don't know much about this yet. And so I may— I'm going to dig into this, but it seems like there's a, there's a business to be had for basically pairing up schools, churches, other types of entities that want solar. They want a lower utility bill. They don't have the money to invest to do this whole infrastructure thing. And businesses which are looking for tax write-offs and just make it where you push a button, the project happens, and you receive your paperwork that says, here's your deduction. And here's your income stream coming from the lease. So I think there's a business to be built basically pairing up the two sides of the marketplace, a physical building like a school or whatever that needs, that wants solar and doesn't want to pay any money, it doesn't want to do any work, and a company that's looking for tax write-offs that's willing to go give that school solar in exchange for the tax write-off.

Love it. I'm going to tell you something even very similar as well. And this is in the same vein of half, very half-baked, 10% baked, 1% baked. Most highway medians and government property or public property has grass. And the reason it has grass is grass is the cheapest way to cover land. But grass is actually incredibly expensive to upkeep. Like if you're in a median, you have to mow it. Like the way that the math works out, it's something like, I forget the exact, there's math behind this, but, and then plus having to mow it and water it and do all this stuff, it's incredibly expensive. And in LA, I have to remember the numbers, but in LA, I think that like 20 or 30% of all water went to watering lawns.

Right.

And so what they did was they tested this out and they gave, um, turf to the residents. They just gave it away. They go, here, we'll do it for you. And it reduced water usage significantly. And I started thinking about it. I'm like, that's kind of interesting. What if you just went to the government and you're like, I'm just— we're just gonna— let's, let's just turf all the, all the medians in America, right? I, I know, and I— because I heard that on NPR they did this whole, this whole, this whole thing. They're like about how bad grass is, and I was like, that's pretty amazing. I gotta look into this. And I have not looked into it, so this I sound like just a fucking idiot this whole episode, but no, no.

So let me give you one more. Okay, so here's— okay, here's the general theme of these really random-ass topics we're talking about, is when you look around the world— and this is what I'm now training my brain to do— uh, when you look around the world and you see some item or object or patch of grass, just think to yourself, how did this get here? And what you realize is there is a business underneath every single thing. Like, this is— we're going back to when we said You know, in offices you got that poster about like the kind of HR hazards or whatever, like the stupid labor law poster you have to put up in your office. It's a huge business.

That's a huge business.

I was blind to this, right? I just saw this poster. I didn't ask how it got there. I didn't ask why it had to be there, why every office has this. But whoever asked that question realized there's an opportunity here, and they started laminating these fucking posters and making $50 million a year giving you this annual poster that you have to update in your office. So that's the test for the listener is start to look at the world and say, how did this get here? Who wanted this here? What is the economics of this?

And oftentimes, that's a great point, Shaun. A lot of times when people, they don't think about that stuff. And if you dug deep, a lot of times you could realize that there was some bureaucratic decision that was a fucking horrible decision.

Right.

Yeah.

And there could be opportunity. It could be a totally broken system.

A ton of opportunity. So a lot of times there is like a scrappy entrepreneur who comes up with something cool like that sign business. Other times it's like, well, why did you guys decide to like make the screws 5 inches instead of 6 inches? It's like, because like the 6 on the keyboard was worn out.

Right, right. All right. So here, here's another example of these like hidden in plain sight businesses. All right. You go to an airport, you take a flight, you go to baggage claim, Okay, cool. 9 times out of 10, your bag's there. Now the other 10 times out of 100 or whatever, you know, your bag is lost and they recover it. But there still ends up being this 0.3% of luggage that's never claimed.

And 0.3, is that the number?

0.3. So it goes to 99.7% of luggage, I believe, gets claimed. And so 0.3% of luggage is just unclaimed baggage. So I saw this business called Unclaimed Baggage. What they have done is they went and they partnered with every airline and they said, hey, we will take the unclaimed baggage because they have some protocol. Like, I don't know what it is, like after 21 days if no one claims it, now we're just stuck with this shit. And somebody was like, hey, that's not shit, that's a suitcase and that's some stuff inside. And so they were like, have you seen the 60 Minutes episode on this?

It's— it was like a series. Are they based in Alabama? Birmingham, Alabama, I believe.

They're based somewhere random. It's the— yeah, they have a physical store in— where is he at? Alabama. Scottsboro, Alabama.

Yeah, I know this company well. I love it.

So you can go to their website, unclaimedbaggage.com. It's the— their thing says the nation's only retailer of lost luggage. That caught my eye. Anytime you say only, that means I locked up an exclusive on this shit. I'm so happy that I can be the only player, which means I'm gonna extract a lot of value here. So what they do is they donate a bunch of stuff that they get in the bags to charities. Cool. There's a feel-good component to this. Um, they take orphaned bags and they recycle them, they sell them, or they donate them. And those three combined, um, are a business. And so this was just like, to me, such a cool, clever idea. I couldn't find like their revenue, I didn't have a chance to check, but you can go on the site and it's like—

it's called again, Unclaimed Bag.

It's like, you'll buy this. There's a Rolling Stones collector's limited edition leather motorcycle jacket for $500. Up on, up for auction on this thing.

What's it called? Unclaimed Baggage?

unclaimedbaggage.com.

Well, we could find this out. I, I remember 60 Minutes did a big like exposé on the, um, a while ago, and it was like, oh, they, they have like tens of thousands of square footage, right?

Yeah, they have a huge, huge facility there. The other one that's like this, which I think is more popular, people know about this more, is the group that takes the— okay, you go to a hotel, you use, you know, 2 squirts of shampoo out of the mini bottle, and now there's still 3 squirts left, and then you check out, and they can't— they don't want to give that empty, half-empty bottle to the next guest, so they ditch it. And so some guy was like, whoa, that's a lot of waste of plastic and shampoo. And so someone started going into hotels and partnering and said, I will take all your used shampoo bottles, conditioner bottles, body wash, whatever, And so they built a huge business just recycling this stuff.

I love that.

They take it, they reuse the goods, they donate certain things to charity, and it's such a good business. It's like doing good while doing well, and I think those are great.

I love that. Here's why. I just Googled— so Doyle Owens is the founder of, um, Unclaimed Baggage. He's, he's dead now. He died recently. And if you Google him, he's just like an old Southern, right, white-looking dude. I mean, just a normal-ass looking dude.

And, um, the guy who watches Billy Madison 3 times a day.

Yeah. Well, the reason why I like him is because, or I like this is because I think that people tend to overcomplicate things. And like, I'm very passionate about the mission of reducing waste. Right. Um, just like, just don't like the idea of don't consume what you don't have to consume and just don't be wasteful. Uh, I was raised Catholic and like this idea of like gluttony and like waste, it just has, It's in my blood. I hate it. This fucking guy, this is like the definition of just like turning shit into gold. Of just like, right, he's just like, it's a super simple, it's not fancy. It's in Alabama, which, you know, I'm from the South, so, but no disrespect to the South, but like people look down on that shit because they think they're in Silicon Valley, that they're special. And he just, that this guy reduced waste significantly and got very wealthy in the process.

Right, love it.

And created— he probably created maybe thousands of jobs for like low-income people. This guy's the best. I love this.

If you have— if you know about a business like this, I'll call these hidden in plain sight, uh, you know, super simple ideas, just things that when you look around the world, most people just take them for granted. And then somebody out there is like, no, wait, how did this get here? Who picks this up when it's done? What's the business of that? Uh, tweet those at me. I want to know what other businesses are like this out there.

Did you coin—

did you make collecting them—

do you make that term up?

Uh, no, I think they use that term for like serial killers that are just in society. So like, uh, that's where I've heard it. It's like for criminals in some way, but I don't know. Yeah, it's a phrase, dude.

Doyle Owens is this guy's name who started Unclaimed Baggage. I love this guy, Doyle.

I hope you listen to this.

He's dead.

Sorry I said you— oh no, oh no, he's dead.

I'm looking at his obituary. He's dead. Damn, this guy's fucking awesome. Don't— no one go into this market. I want this family to be— I love this family.

3 seconds of silence for Doyle.

Fucking— there's a big New York Times— this is— I gotta cover this on The Hustle. This is a super interesting story.

An example of this that you guys covered on The Hustle is the mannequin lady in Oakland, uh, who takes, you know, I guess either used or damaged mannequins out of stores. Because again, what are you gonna do with this hunk of plastic? Like, who needs this mannequin? And And she's just got a warehouse of mannequins and then ships them out and makes a killing. So that's another example of these, like, these are parts of the world that you didn't realize are businesses.