Make $8K/day From These Side Hustles You’ve Never Heard Of
Sam Parr and Chris Koerner break down side hustles with real numbers: porch decorating does $1-2M with 20% costs, backyard sports courts are the next pool trend, and reselling government liquidated goods on Facebook Marketplace can be automated for markup. They also cover niche ideas like modular kids furniture and mobile fuel delivery.
Chapters
He's back. Part 2. We called him the Side Hustle King last time, which, by the way, pretty sick nickname we gave you.
Pretty good.
You're welcome.
I don't know anything about anything other than business ideas. So let's go.
Your first episode did almost a million downloads across all the platforms. And when you get a million downloads across all the platforms, that's the best way to get back invited for part 2. So we got to do part 2. I want to cue like the Chicago Bulls, '96 Bulls intro music for you because you came on, you had a legendary first performance. Do you feel the pressure of following up right now?
No pressure. You kidding me?
And the reason people love your business ideas is because you have that girl next door energy. You have that relatable, I could do that. That seems, that seems in my wheelhouse. Hey, I can get to $15,000 a month. I can get to $10,000 a month off that. That doesn't seem too hard. And I love that. Sam loves that. We all love that. So if you've been, if you're one of the listeners who, uh, is looking for that kind of relatable, um, achievable side hustle idea, not that these are all easy. I don't mean easy. I just mean like, it's not rocket science. Those are the types of ideas you got. Chris, welcome back to the pod.
Thank you for having me.
Man, so I wasn't on that. I was off that day and I get messages from people trying to use me as the middleman to get to you or Sean asking to do the driving range thing.
Yeah, the golf thing. Okay. The golf thing got out of hand. We'll talk about that later. All right.
It's a banger.
So, Chris, let's start. You brought some ideas. We're going to brainstorm. We're going to riff off these. We're going to react to these. So where do you want to start? Give me— let's start with the banger. Give me, give me one of the best businesses that you've seen. That you think, wow, somebody, anybody could do that. Somebody else could do that.
Yeah. You want to go porch pumpkins?
Okay, so explain the idea and then let's talk about it.
All right. So I'm on Instagram. I see this woman decorating porches with pumpkins. I thought, that's genius. That's brilliant. It's just all visual. It sells really well on short-form video. So I reached out to her. We spoke, learned about her business. She's doing 7 figures a year across 3 months. It could be seasonal. People want her to decorate her porch for Christmas. For Thanksgiving, flowers in the spring, uh, but she doesn't want to. She just wants to do pumpkins. Uh, and so over the last couple years, I've learned of other people doing, you know, quarterly flower delivery, like front porch flower decorations, Christmas decorations, Christmas lights. This could be a year-round business that starts with porch pumpkins.
Who, who is the lady? Can you say— let's give her a shout out.
Heather Torres. Heather Torres.
Sean, is this the same person that we've— we talked about?
We did talk about this once before. We But there's actually a little twist to it now. So originally, and we, we can pull up if you're on YouTube, you'll see the— see what this means. So what does porch pumpkin means? Basically, during fall Halloween season, people want their house to look festive. They hire this lady and she comes over with like, you know, like throw pillow overload of pumpkins and will just decorate the front of your house. Cool. You pay her. How much does it cost roughly for like a, a, a base package?
So $500 to $1,500 and she's there for like an hour.
You hired— you did this? You porch pumped yourself?
My wife saw it and she's like, I need that in my life.
And okay. And was it her who came or was it like a minion?
She hasn't come yet. They're my— our week is like 2 weeks from now and it won't be her. It'll be someone from her team.
Okay. Amazing. So someone from her team comes out, they put porch pumpkins and give me— give us a sense of how well she's doing. What do you know about the business? This one woman in Dallas who started this.
Yeah, she's doing between 1,300 and 2,000 orders per year. Average order size is $800 to $1,200. Call it $1,000.
Okay, so that's something like $1.5 million to $2 million in revenue. And what's her cost? So she's got an inventory of pumpkins.
Yeah, it, it's about a 20% COGS.
20% COGS, that's the labor and the, like, and the pumpkins, which she reuses, I'm sure. Uh, yeah, she takes, she takes it away after— what, how long does it last?
Well, she charges extra to take them away, so because people don't know what to do with them, so that's an upsell.
Okay, so, uh, okay, so you can pay to have them removed. Um, it's basically the Christmas lights business, but she's just done it not on Christmas lights. It's actually much easier. You don't have to, like, scale the roof and, you know, do all this dangerous stuff. Okay, amazing. And, um, so, you know, this woman might be clearing $1 million a year doing this. Do you know the origin story of this? Like, how did she start doing this? Did she stumble into it? Was she like a stay-at-home mom? What's her story?
Yeah, she's just a mom. She did it for herself. She posted it on Instagram and her friends freaked out. She wasn't trying to start a business, so she started doing it as a favor and then she monetized it.
Okay, amazing. And so you, uh, well, one thing that wasn't there last time we talked about this, Now, Sam, if you scroll down to the middle of the page, it's one-on-one business coaching for your pumpkin business. And she's got—
no way—
she's got the boss lady pose.
She owns the trademark.
45-degree angle with her arms crossed, which I think is also the pose I had for this podcast cover art. Yeah, she— they put her in the boss lady pose and she's selling one-on-one coaching now. So you get 2 sessions, an hour each, for $5,000. So you too can become a pumpkinpreneur.
There you go.
And she owns the trademark, so people can't start businesses with porches or pumpkins in the name without talking to her first.
Interesting.
No way. What, say her, uh, I, I'm looking at your Instagram. What's her Instagram again?
Yeah, it's, uh, it's just porchpumpkins, one word.
Oh my God.
43,000 followers now.
Is this now more successful? Look, so on her, like, linked, like, her link off thing, she's linking to your video that you did with her.
Oh, I didn't even know that. That's funny. Yeah.
Do you have any association with her other than you just think she's cool?
No, nothing. No, she's just awesome.
And so is this coaching thing doing better than her actual, uh, main thing?
I don't know. I haven't talked to her about it, but she also started a fajita business during the same season as Porch Pumpkins. She's got like 2 retail locations where she cooks fajitas to go only, and she's crushing it at that.
To go fajitas?
Fajitas. Yeah.
All right. Questionable decision on that one. Okay, so what would you do? Let's say you're, you live in Sam. What's like some middle of nowhere place? Like wherever you're from?
Kansas City, Missouri.
You're from Kansas. You're in Kansas City, Missouri, and you're a stay-at-home mom. You're entrepreneurial. You got that itch. What are you doing? How are you getting this business off the ground, Chris?
I'm going to go buy pumpkins for retail at the grocery store. I'm going to like basically, sorry Heather, but I'm going to copy Heather's design based on what I see on Instagram, the same colors in the same places, the same sizes. I'm going to film a time-lapse just using my iPhone and I'm going to post it to all the local mom groups, buy-sell groups, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere, and then just watch the comments come in and start doing it for people in the comments.
By the way, not to be dismissive, so really just me showing my own lack of skill. But you say design. Dog, it's a pile of pumpkins, dude. Is this a design?
Apparently there's something to it.
I hear there's something—
flower arrangement.
Like, where does the hay bale go? Where does the hay bale go?
If you gave Sean a pumpkin patch and an empty porch, it would look nothing.
Dude, I will do this as a challenge. Okay, I will blind torch pumpkin my own porch, and I'm gonna post it just to see how I do with my own.
There's some—
it's a pile of pumpkins.
No, there's, there's a little like—
You're drinking her Kool-Aid. She's got you all under her spell. All right. So, so, Chris, you're going to go buy retail. You're not worried about your margins, you know, on that front. You're going to make an Instagram account. You're going to name it something not Porch Pumpkins because she's got the trademark for that. So what do you— Patio Pumpkins? What are we talking?
Sure. Front door patio gourds.
Okay. And now, how do you go? How do you go get customers? 'Cause that's the hard part of any business.
Yeah. I mean, you post 5 to 10 organic videos, you see which one pops off the most, then you push paid ad spend behind it to people in your zip code.
Okay. So you're gonna post, uh, or organic content just as testing your creative, and then you're gonna run paid on this.
Yep.
Yeah. 'Cause you're, you're basically selling a $500, $1,000 ticket item.
Yep.
So you have, you, you have a lot, you have a lot of room to work with to even acquire customers for, you know, $50, $50, $100.
Yeah. And then you can worry about wholesale pricing and going to a farm or whatever. Like, that's just unnecessary friction if you do that up front.
Okay. Sam, what you're—
but you said that she, you said that she was gonna do something that prevents this from being just a October thing. Is that the course?
No, she could. Other people are. She doesn't want to. She's got kids. She's like, this is her busy season and she doesn't want to work in on this business during the other seasons.
She got kids, she got fajitas, dude. She's got her hands full.
And how— what do you think her take-home is? What's your guess?
I would guess 40 to 50% net. That's a guess.
Do you think she's— she's working her ass off for 2 months out of the year and then she's like— she's like in deployment mode. Like she's like, I'm getting up at 5 a.m., getting home at 11 p.m. and just grinding her ass off for 2 months and makes $600,000.
Yeah.
Yeah, dude. So we have a lady that, you know, like if you took my family's like, you know, life expenses, it'd be like, oh, whatever, rent, Utilities, you know, insurance. And then not that far down the list, you'd be like, who is the balloon queen? And that would be this lady that my wife needs to hire for every kid's birthday, for every, you know, special occasion that we were throwing.
Dude, you're like her patron, you know? You're like the, you're like the King of Italy, and this is like, uh, you know, Michelangelo, and you're keeping her afloat because the world needs more balloon art.
She shows up and I'm just like, oh, $1,200, just you knocked on my door and $1,200 just left my bank account because this woman is going to make a beautiful balloon arch and a backdrop that we need, I guess, for every part. We need, we need for every party. Okay. And so I got 3 kids, but we're spending like $7,000 a year, $10,000 a year on balloon arches. She's, she's the, she's the porch pumpkins of my neighborhood basically. And one thing I've noticed with this is that you can kind of set a norm in any area. So like Christmas lights is one of these things where like there's almost like a visible peer pressure and a visible, invisible peer pressure, right? Like the more houses on our block that do something, we feel like we got to do something.
Yeah, I think I read about this in like a Peter Thiel tweet. It's called memetic desire. Yeah. To have balloon decorations.
Keeping up with the Joneses.
It's so memetic, bro. It's so memetic right now. And my life is so memetic. And so You've got kids' birthdays, you got graduations, all this stuff where people are doing stuff on their front lawn to kind of like, if it's your special day, you wake up and you go outside and it's like, oh, you guys did the thing for me. And so I think there's almost like a Torch Pumpkins, like, birthday SKU and a graduation SKU that she could create, which is basically just like, yo, we dress up your lawn so that, you know, you have this moment, your family did something for you, and everybody knows it's your special day today. And so I think you're right, Chris, that this is not that, that the sort of fall Halloween season is really like not where this thing is limited to. It might still be, you know, 40% of revenue, but it's not— doesn't need to be 100% of revenue.
But how cool is it that— so my, my mother-in-law is like the— she has a pillow company and she's killing it. She pays herself a lot of money. And I'm like, Smithy, you know, how much are you spending on ads? And she's like, well, I spend like $100 a month. And I'm like, what's that turn into? And she tells me, you know, $1,000 or something. And I'm like, okay, so why aren't you spending more? And she's like, well, because I work 3 days a week and I'm happy. And I'm like, but, but, but— and that's kind of what this lady is. She's the same thing where you kind of have your lane and you're happy. So it sounds like she's winning.
Yeah.
You know, I think about the—
the banker and the fisherman.
Yeah.
And I was like, yo, this banker's on to something. That was my takeaway from that story. Hey, real quick, if you like this episode with Chris and you want more, he's actually agreed to give away his entire database of 200 business ideas, just like the ones he's talking about on this podcast. And, um, he's giving it away for free. So if you just go to the QR code that's on the screen or the link in the description below, you can get his database of ideas. And these are like his blueprints for companies that he thinks can work. And this guy's done it before. He's built a bunch of businesses that are successful. So go ahead, take advantage of this resource. And now back to this episode. All right, Chris, give us another one. What's another idea you think of? Pool, small niche, cash flow type business.
Yeah. So I'm going to take what you just said about like mimetic desire, keeping up with the Joneses, and it goes perfectly into this next one. So we, we just got a sport court and I think sport courts are the next pools. Okay.
Explain what a sport court is.
Sport court is a multipurpose slab of concrete that you can put tiles down on, or you can paint lines on it and do pickleball, uh, volleyball, soccer, basketball. You can do multiple sports on the same thing.
Right. It's a thing you put like in your backyard, concrete, and then they have this like almost like, uh, what do you call that? Like kind of the, the mesh looking rubber thing on top.
They're just like tiles, sport court tiles.
Yeah. Like, so then you could play like any kind of sport, you know, on, on top of that. So you turn your backyard into some fun. Okay. Go on. Yeah.
Yeah. So like 3, 5 years ago during COVID everyone was getting pools out here. They were all getting pools and pools were like $75 grand. Now they're $150. But now it's all about sport courts. If you want to keep up with the Joneses, and I'm, I'm trying to keep up with the Joneses too. So we just got a sport court this year and I got a bunch of quotes and half of the companies wouldn't even call me back. The ones that did, they were just dudes like me. They look like me, wrapped truck. And I was like, I know you're not going to be putting this sport court in. You're just subbing it all out. You're just a dirty marketer like I am. And so they would quote me like, how did they respond to that? I wouldn't tell them to their faces.
I just—
I only go on podcasts and say that about them. So they would quote me. Now we're talking a 30 by 70 foot sport court, which is good enough for half-court basketball and pickleball. Okay, that's what I got. It's what I wanted. They were charging me $50,000 to $60,000. Okay, I can't do that. I can't do that. So I start getting quotes from subcontractors, going on Facebook Marketplace, looking for a concrete guy, a painter, fencing guy, 'cause you want to fence it in so the ball doesn't fly everywhere. And long story short, I got quotes to do all of it, and it's in my backyard right now, for about $30,000. Half, right? So then I start thinking, hmm, okay, there's a business here. I already have the subs. They're all affordable. So what I'm doing is took my tree trimming company and my operating partner and we're pivoting. We're going away from trees with a $1,000 average order value and we're going full-time sport court.
Oh my gosh. What's it called?
Well, there's no website for it. It's not like a—
You need a cute name though.
I do have a cute name. I got the domain name. There's just nothing on it. It's called Backyard Funhouse because we're selling the dream. We're, we're not selling sport courts. We're selling— you want the backyard that all your kids' friends want to come to. We're selling the dream. So you start with the sport court, get your foot in the door, then you go putting green, then you go pool, then you go fire pit, outdoor kitchen. And pretty soon they spent $200 grand.
What you're doing is you're taking the business model of pool installation, which is a popular business model, and you're basically saying, look, that's a pretty saturated market. Probably now, you know, any place that's kind of pool weather friendly, they're going to be multiple pool installers and, and builders in that area. But you're noticing this trend where some people are like, hey, instead of the pool, or in addition to the pool, we want our backyard to be fun in a different way. Maybe, maybe for us the right market is— the right thing is pickleball or basketball or whatever, soccer. And you're like, okay, whatever that pool market is, there's going to be this new market where there's not established players, and I can come in and basically do that in my town. And then, you know, anybody can do that really in their town. Is that the Is that the right way to summarize this idea?
If you look at Google Trends, if you look at the keyword tool, the search— searches are exploding for this and the supply is not keeping up with demand.
Yeah, I've, I've seen this a bunch because I was house hunting and, uh, saw a bunch of these and I had the same— it's funny, you were like, you're selling the dream, because I saw it and I was like, oh, so me and my wife are gonna— we're just gonna play pickleball. Have we ever played pickleball together? No, but obviously we'll start. Obviously that'll be the new us. And then my kids and their friends will come over and it'll be so cool. And it's like this, like almost like this— it became a wow factor for certain houses that we were looking at. They were trying to sell that as a bit of the, the, the, the X factor for that home. So I kind of believe this. We also, Sam, we have some friends, um, Siava and Xavier, who have a business called Enduring Ventures where they buy businesses. And one of the businesses they bought is a pool construction business. Sam, have you, have you looked into— have you heard them talk about how great of a business this was for them.
Yeah. I mean, the one in Arizona.
Yeah. They have a business in Arizona. I think it's called Dolphin Pool. So if you're in Arizona, go get a Dolphin Pool. And it's just been this steady compound. I think it's like a $20, $30 million a year pool business that just serves that one geography. And it's a very, you know, it's a profitable business. I think it's cash flowing. Let's call it— I mean, I don't know the specifics, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was $4 to $5 million a year of free cash flow generated from, from this pool business. And then obviously, you know, and they're able to just serve— and that's just one market, right? So like, I think this sport court alternative to pools, it's got, got some legs, dude.
I mean, I'm already generating leads for it. Like, this isn't just hypothetical.
Okay. Where, where are the leads coming from? Facebook?
Meta? Yeah.
I mean, where do all leads come from, Sam? It's all meta. It's all meta, right? That's where we all get our leads from.
I don't know, but where do leads come from? Facebook.
That's it. There's only one place. Short-form video, 15 seconds, selling the dream.
You're a sassy little bitch.
Oh, you're making me blush. You're making me blush.
Um, all right. What's another one?
Wait, Sam, I want your grades for these first two.
Okay.
Uh, I love the pumpkin lady.
Porcupines? On the Sam scale, what is it?
Yeah. So for a very particular type of demographic who wants that lifestyle, I honestly think that's a 9 out of 10.
Okay.
For Sports Court, I think that's a 3 out of 10. I don't want to work with subcontractors. Like, I don't want to deal with people who are hungover. Well, how's that been? Where— how's that been like working with—
I'll tell you, working with subs—
I used to do landscaping. I can tell you, I could— I know what they're like. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, there's going to be pill bottles all over the place.
You just got to work through some bad ones to find some good ones. Just like employees, right?
Uh, well, there's like different ratios of like how many you got to work through. Yeah. It's like, are we talking about like—
Sam's company is a bougie-ass company called Hampton. Okay. He doesn't, he doesn't know the first thing about this. He's got a different, different brand of pill bottle for them.
To quote Harrison Ford, Sam, that's what the money's for. Okay. That's, that's what $30,000 net profit per job is for, is for dealing with annoying subcontractors that show up with meth. In their system.
All right, so you got a 9, you got a 3. Hit us with your next one, Chris.
All right, so right next to my sport court, we put an in-ground trampoline. Okay. Why in-ground trampoline? Because our trampoline blows over into the neighbor's yard every 2 years like clockwork. And I've—
dude, you're a great dad. You, you got everything.
Uh, we're, we're working on it. We wanna be the backyard funhouse, you know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
So we put in this in-ground trampoline. Sam, I want you to guess what it costs to put this thing in.
3 grand.
10 grand.
Yikes. Okay.
10 grand.
Really?
Yeah. 40, 4,500 for the trampoline itself from a Shopify store that I found from Facebook ads. Right. Of course. And then 5 grand for the digging, for digging it out. And so this dude with an excavator that he didn't even own, he just rented it, shows up with another dude. They spend 4 hours digging it out, putting down some weed barrier. and they walk out of there with $5,000. So I reach out.
It's all his dads are keeping the economy afloat.
I'm telling you, telling you. So I start talking to him on the job site and I'm like, where are you getting all your jobs? And he's like, from this e-commerce brand. They, like, they, they can't sell trampolines unless they have someone to dig 'em out for 'em.
And he does.
What's it called? Uh, which the e-commerce, it's trampolines.com, believe it or not. So no affiliation.
I believe it.
But, uh, they, they can only sell trampolines that are in ground if they have someone to dig them out. And there's not like— the guys that own excavators are too busy digging pools. They have no interest in trampolines. So you don't need to go buy a $100,000 backhoe. You rent one when you get a job, you dig the sucker out and you get paid $5,000.
Sorry, I kind of zoned out because I thought this might be the same idea as Sport Corp, but actually sounds like this is what you're saying, that trampolines.com gets demand and they sell the trampoline, but they don't want to go do the backyard dig and you can get the leads from them. Is that the way you were saying this?
Yeah.
And how does the get the lease from— is it like you're saying, like, you got to know a guy who knows a guy and go get do some biz dev with them, or there's like a portal you sign up for, you say, I live in this area.
Yeah. And I reached out and they're like, yeah, we don't even have our paid ads turned on right now because we can't sell. Like, we don't have enough people digging these things out for us.
Dude, trampolines.com, by the way, is owned by someone who's part of the tribe, a Mormon, or he went to BYU. You guys do all the, all the best stuff.
What can I say?
So Brad Mills owns trampolines.com. That's a gr— that sounds like a pretty fun job.
I mean, you can't drink, you can't smoke, you install trampolines.
Yeah. So they have this map on the thing where they got certified installers and premier installers and all these different areas. And then you basically, if you're on trampolines.com, you get a, you get a quote, uh, from the installer and then they do all the work. Yeah.
Something like that. Yeah.
So you're saying become an installer.
Yeah. Or just like, Like we have an excavator guy for our tree trimming business and we talk to him about other jobs that he does and he gets paid $5,000 to dig out pools and it takes him a day, just him, you know, playing with controls.
If you—
this guy's listening and he's like, he's so offended. What the hell, Chris?
My 4-year-old son's dream job. I can't let him hear this podcast.
My, my overall point is like high ticket home service in general, in a strong economy, there is way more demand than supply. In any of these little backyard businesses.
Okay, I like this backyard business theme. You've given us a bunch of those. Let's do a non-backyard business. So you wrote something in our notes.
We're going to give it a 4. That one's a 4, man. I don't want to dig holes. I don't want to dig holes.
That's fine. I think you do want to dig holes. A hobby you would actually have.
Yeah, on my time.
Yeah, yeah. I don't want to get paid to do it. That ruins the fun. Sacred art.
Yeah. Don't meet your heroes. All right.
So you have this sentence on here that I don't understand, but I'm— it's provocative. It says, what starts in Dubai will make its way to America. What does that mean?
So I've been there twice and they just live 10 years in the future. They experiment with all this stuff. They're very entrepreneurial and a lot of the stuff they experiment with never takes off. But if you see it in Dubai for like 1 to 3 years, it's probably coming out west and we can get ahead of the trend.
What were examples of other things that like kind of Dubai was early into that then propagated? Do you know of any others?
Dubai chocolate, for one. You familiar with that?
No. What is Dubai chocolate?
Dude, it's all the rage right now and I've been getting it. I've fallen victim. I've eaten so much like Dubai chocolate pistachio right now.
Hold on, is there a cool thing I don't know about? What is this? What's different about Dubai chocolate?
Oh my gosh.
I have no idea, but it's just like a chocolate bar stuffed with like pistachios that looks cool on Instagram.
You know how like 3 years ago the theme was pineapple and like last year it was like, I think it was like pear. Like there's always like a theme in food and in like wrapping paper and like the 2 big categories, America's 2 largest exports. And right now for some reason it's pistachio flavored chocolate. And if you go to like a bougie yogurt or ice cream place, you get yogurt or ice cream with pistachios like crushed up and chocolate on it. And honestly, it's amazing. It's great. So I'm all— I'm on board the hype train.
Well, they got a whole mall kiosk selling just Dubai chocolate now. Like, it's a whole industry. Will it be around in 2 years?
I don't know.
I don't care. Right, right. But another thing, perfume vending machines started in Dubai and now they're everywhere.
Okay. And what's this one that you're referring to? This manicure thing?
Yeah, I mean, they're in airports in Dubai and like outside of nightclubs and you just stick your hand in there and it gives you a manicure.
So it's a little, it looks like a printer almost. So it's like you basically put your hand in the robot printer and you get a manicure. Uh, is it cheaper? Is it faster? What's the like kind of core edge that this has over, uh, you know, going to like a nail traditional nail salon?
Yeah, it's like a 1/3 the price and a lot faster.
All right, that's interesting.
By the way, speaking of, have you guys seen Rizbot?
What's that? Okay, chat you up. What's a Rizbot?
All right, so you've seen like Tesla's like humanoid robot. Sam, I think you invested in Figure. Um, you know, people like the next big thing is basically these artificial intelligence, super cutting edge robots. Well, somebody made Rizbot and it's going super viral on TikTok right now. So what this robot does, basically it like runs up to a human and the run is hilarious that the robot does. And then it'll like stop in front of a girl and then it'll put out its hand to like kiss their hand. And then it'll like, from its audio, from its speakers, it'll start playing romantic music. And this person in public, this woman is just like, uh-huh, what's happening right now?
What's, what's What's the outcome of this? The owner is like, sick.
I have no idea.
My robot just, uh—
I was gonna read you the views on their last 10 videos. 37 million, 15 million, 8 million, 19 million, 18 million.
My robot just seduced a lady.
It's just this funny, lovable robot that wears a little like cowboy hat and he runs around like trying to like spit game at people. It's amazing. It's just this amazing viral thing that's happening. I think that what's gonna happen here is that you're gonna have, like, before you have the humanoid robots that can, like, do warehouse work and, like, assemble cars on the assembly line, you're gonna have basically, like, pet robot. You're gonna have just, like, a goofy robot that's kind of fun and, like, a little party trick that you can make, like, that doesn't have— it has, like, you know, 1/100th of the functionality but can make, you know, $100 million, you know, off of an idea like that.
Dude, do you guys want to see a sick robot? I have nothing to do with this company. I just think it's cool. Go to maticrobots.com. So, and it's the new Roomba thing. I see. Okay. Yeah. So let me tell you the story. I met this guy and, uh, I just thought his robot looked awesome. So I started DMing him and I got one and it's basically like a $1,200 or $1,100 Roomba, but it vacuums and it mops your house. But there's a bunch of like really like nifty features on there. And this is only like cool if you're into gadgets, but it looks, you know how Roomba, like you'll hear it like bumping into shit because that's how it like tells if it's like it like uses cameras and it maps out your house. But it has all these tiny features. Like when I got it and I turned it on, the battery was fully charged and it said, hello, Parr family, I'm here to clean for you. Like it, like it like was like, like a British accent. Yeah, like these little tiny features. But the guy who started this company, he's been working on this for 8 years. And he raised a bunch of money and he's just like been in the lab now for 8 or 9 years. And after 8 or 9 years of tinkering, his goal was to build the perfect Roomba. And he has it, I think, after like 9 years of working on this and it's finally for sale. And I thought it was really cool.
Chris, what do you think?
I'm thinking of how I could monetize it.
Well, by selling a $1,200 vacuum. I think that's—
No, no, no.
I can monetize it.
Yeah. I would go to cleaning businesses and rent it out to 'em for $100 a month. And they show up to a house to clean it and they could just hit play, then they could do everything else, save an hour on every clean.
Dude, imagine if you hired a cleaner and they showed up and then they just put their Roomba down, pushed play and walked away. Heck yeah. Or they just sit on their phone for like 2 hours. It'd be amazing. What other ideas you got?
This is a Sam idea.
Is this the one that says dollhouses for men parentheses Sam will love this?
Yeah, that's the one.
What's this idea?
Should we watch it?
Yeah, let's watch. Let's watch the video.
Freaking guy right here, he's tapping into a billion-dollar market that nobody is serving right now. Ask yourself real quick, what's the male version of dollhouses? Day 3 of Genius Business Ideas. Follow for more. There isn't one, and that's the opportunity. Men are builders. We want to create with our hands, but nobody's selling us the materials to build miniature homes and structures like this. Look how many views this thing has. There's your demand. Grown men would pay serious money for high-quality miniature building kits, myself included. I'm calling this the Guy Dollhouse Market. Full business plan here.
Yeah, I'm sold. So it's basically— all right, so, uh, we're watching this video. It's basically— it's exactly how it sounds. You are literally building a home, like framing it with like the drywall and everything else. And this guy is crazy. He's using a proper nail gun and you're building a very real-life replica of a house. I'm in. This sounds awesome. I spend my time doing this with engines. Like when, when my wife's pregnant, we like, you know, you can't like do too much. You gotta like kind of sit around a lot. We got into Legos and now we like to build like replica V8 engines. It's a very nerdy thing, but it's kind of like what we like to do instead of watching TV. This seems so much better. I would love to build a house. Is this a company that's making this or is this a hobbyist? I don't think so.
This guy just did it.
Wow. Yeah, you're right. 'Cause this is basically like, You know, people who love to play, um, you know, Flight Simulator, and it's like, oh, you're playing a video game. They're like, this is not a video game. Like, I'm flying this plane right now for real. It's like, it is so realistic that it like moves into another category. And it seems like that's what this is, right? So like, instead of like Lego or like oversimplification, this is almost like just miniature complexity. So it's like, no, this is like as real as the real deal, but just on a small scale. We don't have to actually do all the like the true work. And so it's like this, like, escape. It's a, is this, is this a whole new category basically? Does this video have a lot of, when this guy posted this, does it have a lot of like organic traction? Like people are like, ooh, I want this.
Oh yeah. And that video that you just watched of mine got like 20 million views. Like there's demand for this.
Yeah, that's cool. So you would basically just create these as kits and then the sales process is just to do this over and over again. Like you just make content of you building more and more elaborate, you know, elaborate or funny or like, hey, I'm gonna like make the house from Full House. So it's like, that's the TikTok content.
It could be a subscription too.
Yeah, just buy the kit and, uh, and make the thing. Like be a, be a man, but kind of not for real.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Be a man, kind of.
It's called Be a Man, Kinda. Fuck off.
Yeah, this is pretty cool. There's a store near my house. It's called tinydollhouse.com, and you walk in and it is tiny dollhouses, but it is the most meticulously made dolls and dollhouses that I have ever seen. So for example, instead of a dollhouse, they'll have like a store, a replica store, and like the little bags of Lay's potato chips are like hand-painted or like, you know, like the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups that you can buy at the counter and like each human being or doll is like a perfect, like, reenactment of like whatever period it's supposed to be a replica of. And as everyone listening, it's one of those things where you're like, like, oh, it's so weird you're into that, whatever. Everyone who sees this is like, this is amazing. This is so cool. I get it. Now I'm not going to buy my daughter a $3,000 dollhouse.
But you'd buy one for yourself.
But I'd buy one for myself.
I earned the money. This is crazy. I mean, do the police just like, oh, there's a murder. Oh, let's just stop by the Tiny Dollhouse because those are the creeps who are definitely behind all these murders. Yeah.
Like if you walk in, you automatically join a watch list.
Yeah.
You should.
We're not saying you did it, but we're saying you thought about it.
Yeah. That's the point of a watch list, which is you haven't yet, but maybe you will. Uh, and, and you definitely sign one of those when you walk in.
Okay. I like this business. This one, Sam, you got to give it a strong score on the Sam scale.
So I think I would give it a 7 or 8. It's— this is hard. Have you guys ever put together a complicated LEGO set? It's amazing how they think of all this stuff. Doing the directions for something like this is so freaking hard. But I do think you could— you could charge $1,000+ for it. So yeah, it's pretty cool.
Yeah, I like— because, you know, the hardest part of any business is How are you going to get customers? I think that's— unless you're doing a hard tech startup where it's like, we're going to try to create a robot or a machine that does something that no machine has ever done before. Like, that's one class of business where the hard part is, can you make science fiction a reality? For most businesses, the hard part is, great, how am I going to get customers? And I think the, like, sort of amateur approach is always like, ooh, this product is cool. I think I would like to make and sell that product. And it's like, cool. You know that most of your life, 90% of your life is going to be spent just doing the marketing to try to get customers for the thing. And what I like about this is that you can work backwards from the content that would go viral. Like, this is content that would go viral repeatedly, and that will be your sales engine to sell your kits. Is this a huge business?
No.
But could you basically have, you know, 3 SKUs and charge, you know, $1,000 per each one of these kits and just get this like hobbyist market that people, other people have, you know, sort of ignored or overlooked. Yeah, I definitely think you could do that. I think, and you could do it with just viral content.
I mean, really any of these ideas you could film yourself doing and sell, right? Digging out in-ground pools, porch pumpkins.
What would you do for this gubdeals.com?
So there are these liquidation marketplaces where you can buy Costco returns and everything that the TSA confiscates. You can buy for like pennies on the dollar.
Well, Chris, you wrote good headlines. You should start with the headline. So the headline here you wrote was how to make $1,000 a day selling TSA liquidation items.
Yeah.
Okay. You have my attention. So tell me more.
Yeah. So, I mean, you go through the TSA and they take your pocket knife and then they give it to this website. It sounds like a nonprofit. It's not a nonprofit. It just has the word government. It's very much a dot com and they sell this crap and then you're in the liquidation game. You buy pallets worth of crap and then you split it up and sell it on Facebook Marketplace.
So if I go to govdeals.com, this is where you go buy the stuff, right? So what should I click? You go, you go by, by category here or—
I'll tell you what to do. Yeah. So the other website that does this is B-Stock, bstock.com. They have like a, a contract with Costco to sell all their returns. And this is not part of the government, by the way.
Who, who, who is like GovDeals? Who, who, who the heck's making this? How do they get the inventory?
Some freaking dude that has a friend at the government. I have no idea. But okay. The, the, the alpha here is setting filters for your local area and finding things that are too big, too expensive to ship, right? Like old police cars or something. Um, and just—
I've been on this website, by the way, to try and buy a school bus. No, a Humvee. I wanted to buy, like, you could buy like military equipment. Yeah, I've definitely been on this site.
Okay, so I'm looking near me. And let's see, I got a, I got a refrigera— a vaccine refrigerator, an electric scooter. What am I looking for? What's the, what are the needles in the haystack that I really want here, Chris?
Well, what you should do and can do is build an agent, right? Like just vibe code an agent that finds items for sale according to your filters, right? Like let's say under $3,000 within 100 miles of your zip code. And then it just posts them all for sale on Facebook Marketplace at a set markup, call it like 80%. And so you just list all these things on Facebook Marketplace and whatever just starts taking off, getting a ton of hits and inquiries, then you actually go spend the money to buy the thing.
Gotcha. Okay.
Okay.
So you're just going to relist all of these things and then, and then basically ship on demand, buy on, you know, you sort of dropship the government confiscated items. Yep.
Dude, this is fantastic. I'm looking at B-Stock. B-Stock.com has raised $80 million from a PE firm and they do something like $200 million a year in sales. I want to like— I'm going to shop on this. I love— I love like going on eBay and looking for stuff. This is really cool.
There's a 2020 McLaren for $150,000, Sam, right now.
On B-Stock or on GovDeals?
On GovDeals.
Dude, if it's on GovDeals, that means it was like repossessed or like used in a crime. Yeah, it's got a good story to it.
Yeah. Look, GTA 6 is not out yet. This is the closest thing you can get to it.
Have you guys heard of, uh, uh, 260samplesales.com?
No.
What is that? So 260samplesales.com. So basically, do you guys know how like TJ Maxx, um, dude, the like tagline says IYKYK, if you know, you know.
I don't know. In fact, I don't know. Should I just leave the site?
Is that the headline?
That's obnoxious.
So, so 260 sample sales. So in— I think it's in Miami, New York, and L.A. And so, you know how TJ Maxx, what they do is they convince like Nike or whatever to give them last year's stuff, the stuff that didn't, didn't, didn't sell. And they don't want to put in their store because they don't want to like look bad, whatever. These guys do this, but with typically nicer brands, not like significantly nicer, but nicer stuff. So like Todd Snyder, I've seen them do it with Buck Mason. I think, you know, brands where like something might cost $200 to $300 for a sweater. These guys do it all over New York City. And what they do is they rent out a vacant space and it's very bare bones. It's just racks of clothes, like portable racks of clothes. And you walk in and things are dirt cheap and it's amazing. And every time I see a 260 sale, they have these pop-ups. You sign up to get alerted and then they do a pop-up for a week at a time. The line is out the door. It's crazy. They are getting— they are doing so much volume. The demand is huge. I thought, Sean, you actually told me about 260 Sale.
So is it like significantly cheaper?
Basically significantly cheaper. Yeah. Like, like 10% of the price. So a $300 item will literally be $30.
And it looks like they're kind of doing a membership model, right? So like you pay— is it you pay to be a member and then because of that you're going to get to shop early?
I think you get early shopping access. But it is really cool. I've bought so much stuff from these places and it's, it's great. It's great. It's like one of these businesses where you had no— I had no idea that this existed, but it makes sense. Like, where do you—
What have you bought? Because every picture on this website is like a very extreme looking piece of fashion.
Just like nothing crazy. Like, like boxers, cargo shorts from Todd Snyder. Like, like, and I— and what happened was I fall victim. Oh, this said it's— it was $300, but right now it's $15. I have to get this. That's like how— that's like— that's like the energy.
And I'm leaving money on the table.
Yeah, yeah. But I love 260 Sale.
Let's do another one. What's a— what's another fun one you have?
How about this mobile fuel delivery? You see this one?
I've never seen this. No. Mobile fuel delivery. What is this?
So people are paying to not have to go to the gas station anymore. And the churn is next to zero. People get addicted to it. The guy just kind of— you have an app, you set up an appointment, he'll come top off your tank, you pay a markup on the gas, and then you pay a monthly subscription fee. His, uh, I think his lifetime value or his revenue per year per customer is $5,000 and his lifetime value is super high.
That's insane.
So this is a DoorDash for gas.
Pretty much. Yeah.
You know how people, when they get an electric car and they're like, oh, it's so great not to go to the gas station. I hate that. How else are you supposed to get like a Diet Pepsi to Slim Jim?
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I need to go to the gas station.
Same. I feel guilty when I pull up to the gas station in my Tesla, like everyone's judging me.
So how, by the way, one of the comments on this video is Dubai has this. Oh, so it might be another Dubai business. So, um, what, how much more expensive is the gas? Like, so if I, let's say it's $100 normally for me to fill up my tank, what would it be with something like this?
So he'll take the average price of all the gas stations within like a 5-mile radius of the customer's house and mark it up like 20%.
All right. Um, what, uh, what about this like novelty ice cream thing? Cause, uh, my kids go nuts for the ice cream truck whenever it comes around.
Yeah.
And I just can't believe he doesn't come around more often. Like it's like a once a month thing. I'm like, dog, We bought, we all buy every time you're here. Like, why are you just not here more often? Where do you go? I just come here every day. Like at the park, basically, as soon as the ice cream truck pulls up, every single kid goes and gets an ice cream. And the truck literally looks like it's nostalgic. Like the idea of ice cream truck is nostalgic, but also the truck actually looks like it's from 1988 also. And like the menu does too. And so I'm just looking at it thinking like, this is nostalgic, but actually it's just old, uh, which is not what you want. So Chris, what's your ice cream idea?
So this is like a $300 or $400 machine, and it's basically like a frozen cylinder that you pour flavored cream over, melted ice cream, and then it scrapes it off and you put it in a little container and it's, it's ice cream. It's viral-able, very visual ice cream that sells itself. You can do it on a busy street corner or farmers markets. You prove out the demand in like an affordable way, and then you scale from there.
It looks like a stack of like hay or something.
Yeah.
So on your, on your Instagram, I'm just reading the TikTok. It just says that you're doing, are you saying like a different idea every day? Because on here it says you're on day 57 and apparently someone makes fun of you because the top quote was, does the ice cream taste good? I don't know. And I don't care.
That's just a hack to get more people to follow me.
I mean, which is what?
Just say this is day 57 because then they follow like, oh, I want to see day 58, but There's no day.
So did you add—
That's the big secret. There's no day.
I've been doing this for like 2 years, dude. Come on.
Wait, really? So this isn't actually day 57. You just made it up.
Well, I mean, I post 3 ideas a day and my editor will add day whatever to any of them.
I don't—
we—
there's no rhyme or reason. It just helps.
It works.
Spaghetti. Come on.
What do you want?
It could be day 57.
It could be.
You've posted all these ideas and, um, you know, you, you find something that somebody's doing, you're like, oh, genius, this could be a thing. Boom. Genius. This could be a thing. What's kind of like if you step back and you have a takeaway from, from this whole thing, maybe the takeaway is about the types of ideas. Maybe the takeaway is what you've seen in the comments or people's reaction, or maybe it's the, maybe the takeaway is in, you know, the action you've seen some people take off these, like, What are the actual lessons you've had now after posting? I don't know how many, you know, hundreds, hundreds of these videos.
People are very creative in coming up with excuses and reasons why they won't do something, right? Very creative. Like, if you look at my comments, some of the most commented things are, yeah, what about insurance? What about liability? You buy insurance. That's what insurance is for. Oh, this is so good. Why don't you do it? Why don't you? I have like 13 businesses. I can't do all of them. I'm sorry for giving you an idea. People like, we will, if we were as creative at actually starting and executing on things as we are of coming up with excuses why it wouldn't work, like we'd all be millionaires by now.
Yeah. The comment section of Instagram and TikTok on any viral video is like where I would send my worst enemy. If I was like, you should learn the, adopt this mindset. This will serve you well. And I would just send my enemies there and one by one they would all become incapable people who focus on the absolute wrong things, right? On the viral videos, not on like, you know, niche small community videos or things with like a strong loyal audience or whatever. I'm talking about just stuff that just pops off. Okay. It's got 10 million views. This, the top, you know, it's like, oh, this person made it. And it's like, well, people who've made it are ruining America. It was like, what? Like what? That's your takeaway from this, like, success story is like, success is bad or, you know, whatever. Like, just the, the amount of, uh, oh, just like poor, poor quality thinking and attitudes in the, like, sections or in the comment sections is pretty, pretty wild on a big video.
Do you, do you guys read the comments?
I read the comments on our YouTube videos. I don't really read them to get like feedback though, if that makes sense. Like I read them and I reply to people because I'm like, oh, it's cool that you cared enough to write. So I'm going to like, I want to talk to you. That's cool. But I don't like look at it and think to myself, oh, I'm going to do that because that would defeat the purpose of what I'm trying to do. Uh, you know, the Rick Rubin quote, which is the, the, the greatest thing, the nicest thing you could do for your audience is ignore them completely. If you're a creator, you're an artist, you're trying to make something, like you should make the thing you want to make and then let the chips fall where they may. That has become like much more the philosophy I have. If you want feedback on like a specific thing, cool, you go ask certain people that you respect for that feedback. But like, you don't just, you don't just react to what's in the comments.
Yeah, it's, it's, I, I, I agree with your philosophy and also it's hard.
Hard, like psychologically to avoid it, you mean?
Well, you get a huge dopamine rush. So like if we do something that hits and you're like, I didn't even have fun doing that, but it hit, you still get a dopamine rush. And you can record something that people love and it falls flat and you're like, uh, that doesn't feel wonderful right now. Even though it felt great when I recorded it.
I like to say it like you can't go viral without half of everyone thinking you're an idiot.
Right.
It just comes with the territory or else it wouldn't go viral.
Doesn't that seem like a pretty, like, toxic game to play?
If you're reading the comments, yeah.
But not just toxic for your mentality, but like almost toxic in the sense of like, you know, like I'm a sports fan and I used to love growing up watching SportsCenter. And SportsCenter used to be a bunch of people who love sports showing you the highlights, the coolest shit that you missed, and making some jokes along the way. And then like if you fast forward to ESPN today, It's basically like debate shows where one guy is going to say the craziest shit ever and the other guy is going to fight him. And, you know, and they're like, cool, do you believe any of that shit you're saying?
They're like, yeah, yeah.
What does that have to do with— what does that have to do with this?
You know, the key differentiator is do you believe it? And everything I post, like, I— that's a— that's like a checkbox in my mind before I hit publish is do I actually believe what I'm saying? Sometimes I believe something that's controversial. And that people think is idiotic, and I post it and it usually does well. But I'm not in the game of publishing things that are just bombastic to get, to get views if I don't believe it.
Chris, have you done anything else cool in your businesses since the last time we talked? So you pivoted your tree trimming business. Last time we talked on here, you were like, all right, I got like a dozen businesses that are doing in total like, you know, $2 or $3 million a year in free cash flow. Has anything cool happened in your portfolio?
I'm almost ready to open my secret pickleball club that we talked about last time.
Okay. What's been— so that's been a little while. So you seem like you were going to, like, open that up quick. Have you run into, like, real-world bumps doing that?
Yeah, I have to expand my metal building, and it's really hard finding a company that wants to do that because it's a small job. There's companies that want to build metal buildings and barndominiums from the ground up, but That was the idea again.
Like, you had a space in here, you had like a shed or a big, big kind of barn in your backyard.
Yeah.
And you called it a Secret Pickleball Club.
Yep. Yep.
And you were like, I'm gonna have 100-something members or 200 members or something like that who pay me—
what was it, $100 a month?
Yep, $100 a month. And I'm gonna base— and all I got to do is like basically run this kind of like no-employee backyard pickleball club for people. Yep.
And it's almost open.
Well, Chris, I see one thing in your little, uh, I'm on your TikTok feed right here. You have, it's like kids' gym equipment. And I just bought a little bit of this for my home gym. Cause like my kids always come down and want to like be in the gym with me or like kind of bug me while I'm working out. Like they just think it's like playtime and I need like a thing to occupy them. And so I've bought some of this like Fisher-Price looking gym equipment and there's, there's a couple of problems with it. One is like kids get bored of it fairly fast. Two, it's really ugly. So like you have like, uh, red, yellow, green, blue suddenly like all over your gym, which like was, is not that color. So it kind of like trashes up your gym. And I actually like the thing that kids like is basically obstacle courses. And so I think the kids' gym equipment to make is basically like a easy to set up, like, little obstacle course, or like the equivalent of like a few very— like, it comes with like, like a McDonald's menu of like 12 different courses you could just set up, and that would occupy my kids for 30 minutes and it'd be really fun. I mean, I do this manually every day with my kids. I basically like create obstacle courses in my house and like— Chris, have you seen the Nugget?
No.
Sam, do you know about the Nugget?
Oh yeah, I'm a Nugget owner.
So yeah.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. These modular, yeah.
So the Nugget is this incredible business where they created kids furniture, but it's not, doesn't look like furniture, right? Because if you, if you thought of kids furniture from first principles, as Elon would say, then you would make this. You would make something with no hard edges, no corners that they can get cut on. It would basically look like a toy, which is what the Nugget is. It's like, you know, a couple of foam kind of base pieces and then a foam triangle, foam circle, whatever. And so you get these like shapes that you can just set up as a couch when you're not using it or when you want to just sit, or you can fold them up and create like basically a jungle gym. And moms go nuts for this thing. I don't know if you've seen like the Nugget owners, like Facebook groups. It's like 100,000 members of moms who just like love the Nugget and they want the new colors of the Nugget or they want like ideas and like, oh, if you buy two Nuggets, you can create this in your house. Kids love the Nugget. Parents love the Nugget. And. Um, it's basically this like modular piece of furniture. It's like a mix of furniture and a toy. And I think like, you know, there's, there should be more of that. This business has scaled. I think their plant is like, I think they like started in like North Carolina or something, but they do, you know, $50, $60, $70 million a year in revenue on, uh, on the Nugget. It's like a real like legit business. I actually, I think that estimate might be actually, actually dramatically low. It might be, it might actually be double that by now. I looked into it for the first time like a couple of years ago and, and was thinking about potentially competing with them.
I bought one after you told me about it. It seems it's amazing. And what do you think the revenue is now?
Let me see. They, they had posted— I remember it was like $75 million a while back, but I imagine it's over north of $100 million now, would be my guess. And profitable business that was bootstrapped. No investors as far as I, as far as I could find. And so they, um, but there was a, there was a bunch of opportunities. Like one, the nugget was quite expensive. And so making a lower cost nugget was like, you know, one option. Two, um, you could always like, basically like if you could do the nugget, but get into retail because they weren't in retail. And so like, I remember thinking like somebody should do the Costco, like Costco basically has like knockoff versions of everything. So if you see Peloton, you walk into Costco and there's something called like I don't even know what it's called. You know what it is?
Echelon.
Echelon. It like looks exactly the same. The name fucking rhymes. And it's like, this is Peloton. Cool. Like, there's Oura Ring, which is like the kind of like fancy fitness tracker. And they're like, boom, we have the like, whatever, the Zora Ring. It's like they'll have like the Costco brand partnered version of these. Costco doesn't make it. They just find a company who's like plays at the right price points for Costco.
That's exactly like, that's pretty much what my company also do with the Skim. We just aren't going to raise any VC and I could sell for less and make more money.
I mean, it's the same thing.
That's what Echelon did. I mean, that's the difference. What's the difference? How are you guys different? Well, we didn't raise VC, therefore we can make less profit and get more cash.
Are you different? The spelling?
Can't you read?
I bet I can tell you where The Nugget found all their customers from. Facebook ads.
Yeah, yeah.
It's all Facebook ads. That's it. Everywhere you look is just Facebook ads.
And they did have to be clear, like insane word of mouth. Like, um, you know, like people really love this product and will show, you know, like when we do play dates, like inevitably the parents are like, oh, what is that? Hey, right? Like we, we tell people it has some virality to it as well. It's a great product. Uh, and they did a great job, but you know, there's, I think there's more opportunities like that in the kind of kids space where you make something that's like functional that kids find fun, but like doesn't clutter up and make your house look ugly at the same time.
Yeah. I wonder if you could do like the, the Casper mattress version of this and build a Nugget competitor that like you can like shrink down to make shipping costs cheaper.
I think that's how it comes, isn't it?
Yeah, it does come like that. It comes, uh, like rolled in a thing and then you like let it expand for 2 days when it gets to your house.
Hmm.
Chris, what's your favorite business of all the businesses that you own? I'm curious.
Oh man. Of the ones I currently own?
Yeah.
Yes.
Oh, man.
Like, what's the best business? When you— the one— the one you're like, oh, this is—
RV parks. I like my RV parks.
Say more. Say more words.
I just— I don't understand why people invest in single-family or multifamily, right? With a mobile home or an RV park, you don't maintain the units. You just maintain the infrastructure under the ground. It's a hedge against the economy. When the economy's good, the millennials and the boomers are traveling. You got short-term stays. When the economy Economy tanks, you got people living in your RV parks full-time. So you hedge it both ways.
What's your RV park called?
Well, I have ownership in 9 of them.
Streamside. What's like one of them?
Moose Creek near Glacier National Park.
Why don't you just buy more of these then?
Well, I am.
Okay, so I'm looking at this Moose Creek. What is Streamside?
That's our holding company that owns all of them. We have 29.
Uh, and then I'm looking at— there's a very nice website. So when I think RV park, I thought like trailer park, but this looks like fancy thing. What? Yeah, am I dumb or there's just like—
no, I've done both. You— yeah, this is more like KOA. This is for short-term stays. They're near national or state parks. People stay 1 to 3 nights at a time. Trailer parks, people live there full-time. Month to month or year to year.
So you went near a national park, you buy a piece of land, you get it zoned and permitted, I assume. And then basically people bring their RVs there. So you're not building mobile homes. They bring their, their RV there and they get to park it and they pay you a fee to park there. That's what this is.
Yeah, we don't really build. We'll expand, but we're usually buying existing parks and adding value.
Okay, great. So that— but that's what this is. And then how do I— if I just want to come short-term stay, you have stuff sitting there that I could just go use, or I have to bring, I have to bring my—
You bring your RV. Yeah.
Okay. So there's no—
It basically just has like a way to, a way to easily change the water. It has electric hookups and it might have a pool or like some type of like lounge that you can have.
Can you walk through the business of one of these? So you said you buy them, you don't build them. So you, you bought, I don't know whether it's this one or another one. So like how much do you buy this for?
This one we bought for $8 million. And it was doing $700,000 a year. So like a 9% cap rate, give or take.
So you go, you put down $2 million, $3 million. What'd you put down?
We put down 20%. So $1.6 million. We raised 40% from investors and we financed through a bank the remainder.
Okay.
So you—
okay, so you put down $1.6 and then 40% of the $8 million you also put down as equity. So you had like less debt than, than typical. So you have 40% debt on this thing. You buy it. It was making what you said, $700,000 of profit at the time. And then you said we add value. So like, what was the play to add the value to this one?
So this one was open 5 months a year, whereas it could have been open 6 months a year. So it opened on May 15th, closed on like October 15th. We opened from May 1st to October 31st. Right. So we added a month of occupancy.
Sounds pretty simple, right?
Genius. That's part of it. And by the way, you talk to the owners and you're like, hey guys, how come you don't do that? And they were just like, ah, we just— that's how we do things.
Or what? No good reason.
We're happy.
We don't—
yeah, we're good.
It makes good money. And then we bought an acre next door or 2 acres next door and we expanded into it. So the rents were under market. We raised rents, we added more pad sites, we expanded the season, and now it's doing like $1.2 million a year.
Of net profit. And it would be maybe still a 9 cap rate or, you know, or was that like a sign of the times?
We bought it under market. It was probably worth an 8 cap when we bought it. So it's like a 7.5 cap. It's, it's like a, it's an 8-figure park now.
Yeah.
So that's like a $15 million thing now. So if you went and you sold it today, if it's stabilized and it's working well because you did raise the rents, you add more pads, you extend the seasonality by 15% or, you know, the open window. And whatever else you said you did. And so now let's say it's a $15 million thing. You go sell this, you will end up turning, you know, 1.6 of equity into something like, you know, 3.2 or maybe more because you have carry on the investor thing, something like that.
Well, more because we're packaging it with 28 other parks. So we have $150 million worth of parks under management and then we have a portfolio worth $111 million under contract right now. So by the end of the year, we'll have $260 million worth of parks under management. That way our cap rate comes way down and we could sell the whole thing for a 6 cap to private equity.
And how do we—
me and my partners, I'm a co-GP in this fund.
So you have 2 or 3?
3 partners.
Do you operate in this or you're just like a—
You don't want me operating, Sean. Come on.
What value do you provide?
What do you do?
I help with marketing and with fundraising.
I'm an idea guy with a great personality. Somebody, something everybody wants on board. That's usually my pitch. Strategy.
Quote strategy, right?
Okay. So RV parks is your best business?
Yeah, but I've been doing this for 7, 7 years, so I've been doing it with this company for 2, but I was doing it with a couple other partners 7 years ago.
Did you ever have a job or you're always doing your own thing?
Always doing my own thing.
Which of the 8 things has been the biggest financial success for you?
This will probably end up that when we exit, which will probably be within a couple of years, but I had— I've had two different e-commerce brands that were 8-figure businesses. One I exited and one I did not.
Which one did you exit?
We sold wholesale iPhone parts for 7 years to iPhone repair stores.
Okay. And so if you were— if I cleaned your slate, if I took away all your businesses, gave you all your free time back, right? You know everything you know today about the world, but I give you all your time back. What would you go really hard at? If you— if I was like, hey, do something like you're going to go do something now, you're starting from scratch. One thing, you know, everything you need to know, but you got to do one thing.
Yeah.
What— where does your brain go? Not like what would you do specifically, maybe because maybe you don't know that, but like what immediately comes to mind when I ask that question?
I would want to ride a tidal wave and I would want to ride what I know. And I know small business, right? Medium, large, know nothing about it. I know small business inside and out. And so the tidal wave is AI, and I would want to implement AI in small businesses for free to get my foot in the door, earn their trust, show myself as an expert, and then start charging. And I would just have a simple AI automation slash implementation agency for small to medium-sized businesses.
What do you think is an example? Like, what would be like a hero example of like small business? Here's a— here's an example of a small business, and here's an example of how AI would help that small business, like clear, no-brainer.
Yeah.
Boom. You know, like that's the one I would kind of try to rinse and repeat.
Yep. The simplest thing is setting up an AI voice answering agent 24/7 for small business owners that don't pick up the phone after hours because they're with their family. Right. It's just an AI robot and you can plug into other, you know, software services that already offer this. You don't have to have any technical knowledge. You charge a flat monthly fee. and if there's an emergency, then it would patch the call through to the business owner. Like if it's a plumbing emergency, otherwise it would just, it's just like a smarter voicemail system. I would start there.
We've had a lot of people say that. I've had a couple friends do it. I know Alex Lieberman's doing it, Sean. I don't know if, do you know Grant Wilkinson? Maybe Grant's one of my good buddies. He started this thing. I'm looking at the website now. So originally this guy, he was like, hey, I want to work on something. Do you have any like ideas I could work on? And I told him like 3 things and all 3 failed miserably. And he's a, he's a, he's an engineer and he was like, I'm just gonna do this agency thing. It's called Rosedale, rosedale.ai. And like, he's just doing agency work that automates a variety of tasks using AI. And like, customers are just begging for him to do shit for 'em. And there's like dozens and dozens and dozens of these services. And I'm seeing this firsthand, what's going on with Grant's business. And people are just begging, like they need, it's simple.
These, you think these businesses are doing well, Sam? Like they're going gangbusters, like these AI kind of implementer for businesses?
Depends what you define as gangbusters, but can you make— can the owner make 7 figures a year? $1 million a year? For sure. Can you get to $2 to $3, $4 million a year in revenue? For sure. Is it a lot of work? Yeah, it's a service. But if you're like, your goal is to like make money and work 40 hours a week and have a business. Yeah, I think it's like there's massive demand for it. Now, how does that scale beyond to be as big as, you know, maybe $100, $200, $300 million a year? I'm not sure. But like some people will figure it out. And agencies, that is a scale. People always say agencies aren't scalable. No, it's definitely scalable. You're just gonna have to have 1,000 employees. Uh, like it's, it'll work. It's just gonna be really hard, but that's, that's not bad at all.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's scalable. You like pain.
Yeah.
It's definitely scalable.
What is your pain tolerance is the question, not is this scalable.
But yeah, I mean, you don't have a bunch of friends that are doing this right now?
I've met a few people, but my, Uh, my understanding was that like, you know, for a lot of these businesses, they don't really know how AI can help them. So you basically have to kind of go bespoke and figure out like, oh, what's your problem set? And like, how do we use AI to do this? And like, the AI part is almost like the easy part. And then it's like, how do you get like the adoption and the buy-in and the like, you know, all of that stuff. And so I think there is like definitely desire and demand to, like, I think everyone generally feels like, oh, I should probably be using AI to like do stuff better. But when the business owner themselves is clueless about like where the AI could plug in, you need something like what Chris is talking about, which is like, hey, here's a generic problem that I can see from the outside that's, that you see as a no-brainer for you. And if, if I could find that match, I could do that specific implementation. I think beyond that's a little bit harder. The more interesting plays to me have always been you understand where like AI is changing the game and then you basically go buy a business at a fair price today. And then you're like, cool, my value add is that I'm going to use AI to like drop 10, 10 points of margin to the bottom line. You know, I could take this from a 10% EBITDA business to a 20% EBITDA business just by doing this, right? Like just by doing this one thing, you know, like I can get rid of all these people who I have doing stuff because I can automate all of that at a, you know, higher accuracy, higher speed using AI. So I think like the play is you go figure out how to talk, how to— what's the right type of business for that? Is it a bookkeeping business? Is it something else? And you basically go and you say, all right, I could buy this business for $25 million. It's an established business with a book of, book of clients already. And I know that I have this lever of AI that the like 55, 65-year-old business owner wasn't going to do. And I bought it at a fair price, but I can make this thing more valuable and I can capture $10, $20 million in 2 years of work. you know, without the, without the hustle of scaling an agency. So I like that play of, I like that play, that version of this play much better personally.
Do you know anyone who's going after that now?
There's a lot of people that I think there's like full funds that like private equity funds that are doing this, that where they're like, cool, we're going to do private equity. But typically the private equity play was like, you know, maybe we offshore things or maybe we just cut headcount or we centralize certain things. And now they're like, the play is AI. We're going to go in and we're going to add AI in these 3 ways. You know, kind of what Chris said, like AI on the, like, sales automation side, AI on operations automation, and AI to just like, you know, maybe reduce headcount across the board on product or whatever, you know, maybe it's engineering or something like that. And, um, so there, you know, there's a lot of people trying to do that. I don't know how well it's going because they're not like, you know, talking a lot on Twitter about like how great it's going, you know. We'll see.
Chris, what do you want to be? Where do you want to be in 10 years?
I just want to keep starting businesses, man. I just chase product-market fit. That's what I do. But why? Because I just— I'm chasing dopamine. Like, I—
That's the flavor of dopamine you like?
Yeah, I just— my focus, my version of focus is focusing on my superpower, not on one business. And my superpower is seeing and executing on opportunities really, really fast.
Well, don't you get worn out having to, like, manage or work with people who run your shit and not as good as you want them to?
Yeah.
I mean, I've had like 15 different business partners. And so nowadays I'm much more likely to find a business partner that takes the vast majority of the business so I can have like more slices of small pieces of pie. So there's low expectations from me and I just go into a partnership eyes wide open saying, hey, I'm going to be super distracted. FYI, if you think I'm going to put in 10 hours a week, it's probably going to be 2. So adjust your expectations and equity accordingly. And it took me 15 years to learn that, but that's just how I prefer to do things.
Where do you think 10 years from now, what's going to make it a huge win for you?
Mm. It's probably going to be a SaaS business that I launch and promote with my audience. With that has a big exit. That's where I see this heading.
What kind of SaaS?
Well, I'm, I'm building like a QuickBooks competitor right now. And I say when I say I, I mean my brother-in-law who's like a 10x developer, like an AI-enabled QuickBooks competitor. So maybe that'll be it, but maybe that won't even be a thing in 6 months.
I don't know.
Yeah, that's pretty cool. I think that's good. Like product, product audience fit for you.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a super competitive space, unfortunately.
I know.
So that's interesting.
No, but listen, I, you know, I've got almost 4 million followers that like me, you know, and most people hate QuickBooks, they hate Xero. And if it's AI enabled and it's cheaper and I use it and I talk about it, I'm not trying to beat QuickBooks or beat Xero. I'm just trying to build a cool business that cash flows, you know?
What are you going to call it?
LazyBooks. Bookkeeping for people who hate bookkeeping.
LazyBooks? That's pretty cool.
I like that you start with names. You seem like a guy who starts with a name. Totally. You get the name early. Yeah.
Yeah. I start with the domain name and the marketing.
Why is that? Makes it real for you? It kind of like forces clarity of thought around the product? Like, why do you think that's important?
It's more that I start with a marketing channel. Right, in mind. And then I build an idea around that. And oftentimes the name and the brand goes hand in hand with the marketing channel, right? I don't like building ideas and see if people will want it. You know, I want to see if they will want it and then build the idea.
What was name number 2 and 3?
There was, there was none.
I mean, LazyBooks.
I tried ThinBooks. I couldn't find that domain. LazyBooks was one where I was actually able to convince the seller to to sell it to me. But I was really just thinking of like a slimmed-down QuickBooks competitor that had, you know, the 20% of features you only really need that never breaks, you know, that never disconnects from your bank account. That was the thought process there.
You and Dharmesh, man, you're all about the domain names. Did you guys, did you see Sean? He gave the country of Antigua, I think it was. Did you see what happened?
No, what did he do?
It was a very small article at TechCrunch, on techcrunch.com.
I saw that.
It said Dharmesh Shah, founder of HubSpot. I don't remember exactly, but I think it said he gave them antigua.ai and paid them $800,000 to make that their official domain name. I don't understand why he paid them to make that official, their official domain name, but they— antigua.ai is now the country's official domain name.
Well, .ai is actually— it stands for.antigua. Like most of their revenue is coming from. Yeah, all of those registrations.
Yeah. And so, but I don't know why Dharmesh is just like slowly making, making inroads with a variety of countries starting with domain names. And before we know it, the next 20 years, he's going to have an army. This like isn't out of— this isn't out of the realm if you know Dharmesh. Chris, hopefully you had a great time. We liked having you on.
This was a blast. Thanks, man.
Thanks for coming, man.
Thanks for having me.
You're an interesting guy with interesting ideas and we appreciate you big time. You go ahead, promote it. tkopod.com.
It's the Kerner Office Podcast. I didn't want to talk about it, but here, I didn't even know I had this on, but here we are. tkopod.com.
Chris, what's your shirt? What does your shirt say?
It says, look at this freaking thing right here. Ah, that's my health journey. Short-form videos.
Yeah, um, you're committed to the bit, and I appreciate that.
I respect your commitment to the bit.
Thank you.
That's it. That's the pod. Thank you, Chris.
