The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Everyone’s Chasing AI. Start This Simple $250K/Year Business Instead ⏐ Ep. #193

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

Check out my newsletter at TKOPOD.com and join my new community at TKOwners.com I sat down and explored five underrated business models hiding in the hot tub industry. It's a surprisingly big and growing $5B market with way more recurring revenue potential than most people realize. I broke down real-world case studies, startup costs, and the exact go-to-market strategy I'd use to launch each idea. If you're looking for a low-capital, high-margin opportunity with real product-market fit, this episode is for you. https://bizee.com/Timestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 Introduction to the Hot Tub Business Opportunity02:44 Exploring Hot Tub Inspection Services05:58 The Market for Hot Tub Covers08:51 Hot Tub Moving and Relocation Services12:10 The Hot Tub Rental Business15:02 Airbnb Hot Tub Maintenance Services17:53 Conclusion and Future Opportunities in Hot Tub Services

Would you believe that a high school teacher turned a few grand into a business that generates over a quarter million dollars per year turning used hot tubs like these that other people were throwing away into treasure? And here's what's even crazier. He's not even in the top three of the most profitable hot tub niche businesses that I'm about to show you. And here's the thing. Nobody's talking about the businesses around the businesses. Because the hot tub industry is over $5 billion a year and growing like crazy. So come with me real quickly while I show you the top five. businesses I would love to start in the hot tub niche. I've got case studies, I've got

receipts, and all of these can be started with very little money. And then after I show you my five favorite ideas starting with number five, I'm going to show you how I would start all of these with every tool, growth hack, and strategy. So let's dive in. The funny thing about this business is that the opportunity is not in the hot tub industry itself. It's in what happens after someone buys a hot tub because that's where all of the approachable and affordable businesses are. Because who's going to start a hot tub manufacturing business? this. So let's get into number five, hot tub inspection services. See, a lot of times when someone buys a house with a hot tub, the inspector just skips it because it's not his specialty. You see,

home inspectors know a little about a lot. They're not going to be able to granularly diagnose something that's happening with a hot tub, especially if it's problematic. That's why there's a market for roofing inspectors, foundation, HVAC, electrical. Niche inspection services, when the cost of something going wrong with that thing in your house or investment property is very, very high. And the cost of inspecting it is relatively low. A lot of times on these home inspections, the inspector will literally write something like hot tub excluded from inspection. Like, what?

You're going to take that $3,000 to $10,000 asset and just exclude it? Well, of course he is because it's not a specialty, and that's not what he's getting paid to do. So I found this company online called Jersey Hot Tub Services. And they're a great case study on how to start a business like this because it's exactly what they do. They charge $200 for a standalone hot tub inspection, $40 to $75 for an add-on to a home inspection,

And if they're inspecting a hot tub alongside a pool, they'll charge $500, which isn't a lot less than what people might charge for an entire home inspection. So yeah, this could be a great add-on for someone already inspecting homes. It could be in a good addition to their revenue. But I think you should piggyback with home inspectors so they can sub this out to you. So they approach the homeowner or the real estate agent and say, hey, my normal fee for a home inspection is $800. I see you have a hot tub, but I don't cover hot tubs because it's not my specialty.

So for an extra $400, I can make sure that that hot tub is inspecting. And then they can take that 400, give 300 of it to you, and keep 100 of it as a referral fee. That way your incentives are aligned and you can ensure that they will send you the maximum amount of referrals. I found this Reddit post from a guy that reportedly bought a house and the inspector wrote on there, hot tub in general good working condition. He closes on the house, he goes to use the hot tub, boom, it's broken. $4,000 in repairs. It had a dead pump and a cracked shell and I'm sure that the homeowner would have gladly paid an extra $2 to $400 to get that thing actually inspected.

Here's what you're going to pay for materials to do stuff like this. You'll need a test kit for 250 bucks. You'll need a GFC I checker for 50 bucks. Some basic tools for about 200 bucks and all in you're in at about 500 bucks. Of course, there's going to be other unexpected expenses that come up, but this is a good starting point. I think a perfect way to launch this business would be to partner with real estate agents because they're touching multiple properties on a regular basis. When we first launched our tree trimming business, that is where we got all of our leads from,

real estate agents because people needed tree trimming services before or after they bought a house. I don't know why hot tubs are any different. I think the buyer in this case is more incentivized to get an inspection than the seller, but both parties should have need for your services, especially if the incentives are aligned like we talked about in this scenario with the general home inspector. All right, my fourth favorite business in this industry might surprise you. Hot tub covers. Okay, hear me out on this one. I found this story of this inspiring guy named Babu. He came to America with $10 in his pocket, and he started as just a pool tech in Florida, making $10 or $15 an hour.

Pretty soon he noticed that all of these hot tub covers sucked. They got waterlogged, they fell apart, they didn't fit right. So all the way back in 1991, he saved up $1,200 to buy a sewing machine. Now, hear me out, because I don't think you should buy a sewing machine to start this, but it's a good starting point. He was working from a garage with no AC, and he got his first order for $87.50, and he said it was the best moment of his life. And he was literally just hand-making better, stronger, higher-quality hot tub spa covers.

Today, that same company, Ocean Spa Covers, is a multi-million dollar business manufacturing thousands of these spa covers on a monthly basis with a two-to-three-week turnaround time. Then in 2009, he bought an industrial cutting machine, which brought his production time down from one hour to 10 minutes per cover. But with all the tools that exist today that didn't exist back in 1991, I think you could start this without needing a garage with no AC. and sewing machine skills and all that stuff. Here's exactly what I'd do.

I would use some AI design tools like Canva, V-O-3, SORA, rock, you name it, to generate some images of some polarizing spa covers, anything political, religious, anything that you wouldn't talk about at your Thanksgiving. And then I'd watch my free 50-minute video called Facebook Ads for Noobs, and I'd learn how to run some Facebook ads, just to run some tests. I want to get my LTV to KAC ratio, which stands for lifetime value to customer acquisition, cost ratio to about five to one, which means I want to be able to find customers for about a fifth of what I could sell those products for. If I need to give $100 to Mark Zuckerberg

to get me a conversion on my Shopify site, then that better be a $500 hot tub cover. See, these custom hot tub covers can retail from $300 to $1,000 plus. And the thing is about these covers, they need replacing every four to five years. So you have a built-in recurring revenue model. Yes, it is hard to stay top of mind over a five-year time span, but as long as you capture their email and or phone number is possible. So I would generate about 10 to 20 designs with Chatjupit. I would go to Shopify, get a free theme, $39 a month, this is not an ad, and build a website to put these 10 to 20 designs, and then I'd push Facebook ads towards all of it. And the ads that have the lowest cost per click, I would start putting more budget towards, or just let the Facebook algorithm do its trick. And then I would go to China, Alibaba or Alis Express, and I would start getting these main.

manufactured one by one where the manufacturer can ship it directly to the consumer. That way you don't have to come out of pocket beforehand. So you sell the thing for, let's say, $500. Let's say your cost is $250. You say three week turnaround time. You collect the money. You send it to China. They print the thing in a week or two. They ship it directly to your customer. You're in business. Well, there'll be headaches, problems, wrong sizes, misprints, defects, 100%. But at least you're not in the logistics and fulfillment business having to get a warehouse. to store all these things. The days of easy drop shipping are long gone, but you can still do a hybrid model where you do a lot of legwork yourself, but still outsource the logistics of this whole

process to the Chinese manufacturers, which are used to shipping directly to the States, Europe, Latin America, et cetera. I found another case study. This guy's name is David. He started a business called spa covers.com and 19 years old. And his whole competitive advantage was that his competitors were shipping in four weeks. He shipped in two weeks. That's it. They weren't better quality. They were just delivered faster to the customer. He started by strapping these covers to the roof of his Honda Accord. All right, for my third favorite business in this industry, hot tub, moving, and relocation. So, if you're listening to this, you can't see me, but if you're watching, you'll see that I'm walking around a cabin in northern Idaho. I'm at an Airbnb. And about two hours ago, I don't believe

in coincidences. I was sitting here thinking of what type of content could I make about hot tubs, because I have a hot tub here in this Airbnb. And I thought, oh, I need to make one about hot tub cleaning services or hot tub moving services. And I kid you not, I'm on my MacBook, planning out this video and a van pulls up. And these two teenage girls get out. And I'm like, what is going? Are these the cleaners?

I'm here for three more days. Someone got something wrong. And they go straight around the back, and they start cleaning the hot tub. And so I went out the back and I said, hey, what are you doing? Cleaning a hot tub. Oh, do you mind if I interview you about your business?

And they're like, well, it's my dad's business. They probably thought I was a serial killer or something. But they were super cool. And they said, yeah, ask away. So I started picking their brain about their business and they do two major revenue lines. Hot tub cleaning primarily for Airbnbs that are managed by large property managers and then hot tub moving where their customers are spa companies, hot tub companies, retailers that need these things moved. They need old ones moved out of their customers homes

and they need the new ones moved like lifted up onto the bed of a flat bed and into the backyard. They don't want to be in the delivery of the logistics business so they hire this guy's company to move them. I just love it because it's two completely separate revenue lines in the same niche industry. So that's my number three here, hot tub moving services. This one's kind of interesting because most people have no idea that if you move a hot tub wrong, it can cause thousands of dollars worth of damage. And regular movers refuse to touch these things. And for good reason, like, look at this, look at this thing. Look at this freaking thing right here. How would I ever move that? Without a crane or a forklift or a flatbed. But before you get turned off by how expensive that equipment is that I just referenced,

There's always a cheaper way, a more creative way of testing the viability of this concept before going all in on heavy equipment. Once again, I found a case study. This guy's name's Charles. He's in Quebec. And he started as a regular household mover. And then he noticed something interesting. He noticed that some of his competitors, a lot of times when he started the process of

helping someone move and they had a hot tub and he couldn't do it, he would call one of his competitors, but they were niche competitors. They only did hot tubs and say, hey, I got this hot tub that needed moved. He's charging, say, $750 for a move. and the hot tub guys would charge $750 or $900 to move just the hot tub. So he started scratching his head thinking, what am I doing? Where did I go wrong? It's one of those moments where it's like, I'm in the wrong business.

And that got him down this rabbit hole of hot tub moving businesses. So he gently, slowly pivoted. And that's the thing about pivoting. A lot of times we think of pivoting a business as a hard pivot. It's like, okay, I'm going all in. I'm burning the boats. I'm calling all of my customers in the moving business and saying, I don't do moving anymore.

I only do hot tub moving. that's not what a pivot usually looks like. A pivot is usually gradual and slow, and it's like how you start talking to your customers in a different way. So let's say you get an inbound call and they're like, hey, how much is your move, yada, yada, yada. They're asking all the same questions. And then you ask, do you have a hot tub?

Whereas before you never would have asked that. I do actually. Who's going to move it? Oh, I'm talking to this one guy. They quoted 500. We can do it. We can do it for 450. That's what a pivot in business usually looks like.

It's more related to how you're talking. to your customers or your employees, you're just kind of putting out feelers. At least that's the smart way of doing a pivot, in my opinion. So that's what he did. But he also started buying these or getting paid to take them. Because if you go look at Facebook Marketplace right now, you'll see people giving away their hot tubs because it's a liability. A lot of times they're broken.

They're selling the home. The new buyer says, hey, yeah, I'll buy that home, but I don't want the hot tub. Get rid of it. So they're paying hundreds of dollars to get rid of a hot tub that might need a new $100 pump or $200 cover. That's what this guy started learning. That's why I always preach, chase all those shiny objects, chase the rabbits. You'll never know what you might come up with.

Today, that guy's business is a full-fledged operation. It's called CK. Spas. He's got great initials. And it's a retail operation, but it started as a moving operation, which is an interesting pivot. So he went from house mover to hot tub mover to hot tub flipper on Facebook Marketplace to full-fledged hot tub retail operation. According to his story, the average hot tub move is $600. dollars. The average time it takes to complete this move is two to three hours. So five moves

per day would be $2,500 per day. Most of your costs are overhead that stays fixed no matter how much you scale. And the net profit to the owner, depending on how much help they're getting, averages between 35 and 45%. And like the founder of 1-800 Gotjunk said, as long as pianos weigh 800 plus pounds, we will always have a business. So I would say, as long as these things weigh thousands of pounds, when full of water, there will always be business opportunities in niche. I found another company in Houston, big beard movers. They charged 500 bucks to move hot tubs with an additional per mile rate if it's over 75 miles away. I found another company called Utah tub and spa movers that run three crews and book six to eight moves every day at

350 to 650 each. Their 2024 revenue was over four million dollars from moving freaking hot tubs. And how many people you think are thinking about competing against these guys on any given day? versus the average landscaping a roofing company. And tell this video slash podcast, no one. Now, the costs are a little higher for this business. You're going to need what's called a spa dolly. Those cost $3 to $5,000, but you can get them financed. Insurance will be about $3,000 a year.

Strapes and equipment will be an extra $1,000 or so. All in, this is going to be about $10,000 to start this business. But like all the other businesses I talk about, you can validate this business before buying all this stuff. You can post Facebook Marketplace ads for your moving services. ads, Facebook ads, posting in Facebook groups organically. But next, let's talk about number two, my second favorite business in this niche, which is the hot tub rental business. So listen to this teacher. This guy's name is Steve

Nadramia. He lives in Long Island, and he's a high school teacher. He used to make 10 grand every summer working as a lifeguard, but he wanted to replace that with something better. So what was his solution? To buy three used hot tubs for $6,500. He rents them out. For a weekend rental, he charges between $200 and $400, depending on the model. Weekly is $269 and monthly, is $499. So yes, after just a couple months, depending on the season, his costs on these used hot tubs is fully paid off. Here's where it gets crazy. He now has over 25 used hot tubs that he rents out. Even at 50% capacity, he makes 12 to 15 grand a month in revenue. After delivery and chemicals, he's netting $7,000 to $9,000 per month while still teaching full time. He didn't even quit his gig.

Think about why this works. People will pay $2 to $400 for a bouncy house for one day. Why not pay $2 to $400 for a hot tub for the whole weekend, especially if you're able to split that cost between four to eight different adults. Maybe you rented an awesome Airbnb that for whatever reason doesn't have a hot tub. That's not a bad price. It's a good value proposition. So let's compare this to say buying a rental property that might net you 9 to 11% per year. Even one single tub at 50% capacity would net you over $10,000 a year, which is well over 50% return on investment every single year. Stephen's wife run the whole operation. She handles scheduling. He handles the deliveries. It's not sexy, but the numbers are insane. And guess who dominates the search

results for Long Island Hot Tub rentals? Steve, he was first mover. What's stopping you from being the first mover in your local market? Speaking of, time for number one, my favorite business idea in the random hot tub niche is a Airbnb hot tub cleaning slash maintenance service. This is my friend Austin. He's on Twitter. He has a land clearing business in Colorado. And one day he thought, this business is pretty seasonal. How can I stay busy during the winter months? And so, he started a hot tub maintenance business, only marketing to Airbnb property owners. So Austin said he only spent 750 bucks to build his website, and this was three years ago. You could spend almost nothing to build that same website today with AI. And then he only spent

a couple hundred bucks for his LLC and his first month's monthly recurring revenue, over $2,000. So yes, more than all of his startup costs were recouped in the first. first few months. In addition to his recurring maintenance revenue, some of his service calls are over $900. Not recurring, but still, one-time $900 service call with no paid ads, just inherent demand in his local market, is nothing to scoff at. He spent about $1,000 in chemicals to get started, and he was in business. And then I found this guy on Reddit who lived in a different mountain town. He paid $30 for a logo, $250 for a generic like service contract. And he was in a business, which today, chat GPT could do for free.

And he spent, I think it was $220 on hoses and chemicals. His first month, he posted in a local Facebook group, landed three clients and cleared over $3,000 in net profit from, yes, one Facebook post in a local group. And these aren't like pie in the sky, hypothetical scenarios, maybe try this and you get that. And these are real case studies. And I'm always talking about posting in local Facebook groups. It's the lowest of low-hanging fruit.

And the same guy on Reddit, by month seven, he was getting multiple quotes every day. And he knew that in his local market within a 25 mile radius, he had over 1,700 different hot tubs that he could service. That was his tam, his total addressable market. And here's how he did his pricing. $45 to $65 for a weekly chemical balance, $199 for a drain and fill, monthly maintenance plans for $100 every month. So if you crunch the numbers on that, at 40 hot tubs per week, he's grossing 7 to 8. $8,000 per month. And then this guy in Chicago named Davis, he built a hot tub maintenance service company only for Airbnb's. He's three years in and he has over 100 units under management

and over a million dollars of annualized revenue. The 17 employees all done in three years. And his like secret sauce is a couple automations. Zapier plus Slack, $30 a month in software, nothing too special or proprietary. He guarantees Airbnb level cleanly. and he buys his chemicals in bulk. And I just love this business. This is why it's by number one because of the recurring revenue aspect and the alignment of incentives. You see, Airbnbs like this one I'm staying today, I'm in Island Park, Idaho, are able to charge between $40 and $100 more per night if they have a hot tub. What's more? Even if they're not able to charge more per night, they have to have a hot tub in markets like these because all of their competing Airbnbs

have hot tubs. So at 20 nights rented per month, that's an extra one to $2,000 per month in booking income because of that hot tub. So yes, it's worth paying a little money every month to get that thing cleaned out and maintained on a regular basis because normal Airbnb cleaners have no idea how to do it. It's not in their wheelhouse. They can't wrap their heads around it. It's a separate business entirely. And then this other business, spa service company in Vermont, they do 30 to 40 hot tubs a day. Four days a week, they charge $45 to $65 per week in the summer. And 65 to 70, five per week in the winter. So if you do the math, that's $9,000 to $10,000 per week in revenue,

in Vermont of all places. So here's how I would start these businesses. You already know what I'm going to say. Start with the cheap, the low-hanging fruit for Cheapos like me, like local Facebook groups. Remember, every town, every city, every neighborhood has multiple Facebook groups. You will never run out of them. And yes, a lot of the Facebook groups are garbage, maybe even 80 plus percent. You've got to sift through all those. It's worth your time. A lot of them are overrun with spam. You will find comments that are just ads. There's no likes. There's no comments. There's no administration, no moderating. Ignore those. Find the 10 to 20% that are gold. Spend all your time in there and ignore everything else. Pick one of these five niches that I just

talked about or pick all five of them at once and just start posting. Putting out feelers, talk to people. Post, post polls, post Instagram polls. What is their demand for? Maybe there's no demand for covers and a ton of demand for moving or vice versa. Maybe there's a lot of demand for repairs, which you weren't even posting about, but you learn about that through your posting. Ask Airbnb owners, what are you missing in your systems and processes? What is breaking? Is a hot tub cleaning? Your cover, repairs, maintenance, moving, balancing the pH levels.

Do you even have hot tubs? Maybe they don't. Maybe you're in a colder climate. You assume they have hot tubs and you learn they don't. And there's not an opportunity there. That's okay. At least you know before launching anything. Be honest with everyone.

Be up front. Say, listen, I'm just feeling this out at this stage. I can't promise you I'm going to be the cheapest or the highest quality. but I can promise you I will always answer my phone. I will be fast. I will be honest and I will stand behind all of my work. If you're willing to learn with me, then I promise I will be the best vendor in your Rolodex.

And yes, you have to get a solid Google Business profile set up. Do that yesterday. Lots of pictures, videos, five-star reviews, put your hours, link your website, do your first jobs for free if that's what it takes to get your testimonials. Clean website. Use something like Bolt, Replic, cursor, lovable, windsurf to build one of these websites with just a few prompts. Don't overthink the website. One page is plenty. Contact us. Phone number, form, email, services, pricing. Don't incorporate first. Find your customers first.

Once you find customers and you're sure this is going to be a thing. Use something like busy to incorporate. I like busy because going directly through the state's websites is a terrible experience, horrible user interface. You will pay a premium to busy for them to do it for you, but you get a better experience in the process. And yes, you can get a discount. if you use my referral link in the show notes. Try offering 50% off for your first jobs for a photo testimonial or Amazon gift cards for referrals. But just think about it this way.

One home, one Airbnb customer, one short-term rental customer could be worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars over the course of months and years. So treat them well. Spend up to find them. Don't over buy your materials or your chemicals. Underbuy.

You're going to get excited. You're going to get caught up. You're going to get shop happy. Don't. Start lean. start small, track every single expense in Google Sheets. Don't worry about getting a business bank account until you're up and rolling. Use your personal account, but separate the expenses in a Google sheet.

Only upgrade to QuickBooks are zero once you're rolling. Pay up for insurance. It's going to cost two to three grand a year. I did a little digging and it's not that hard to find a company that will offer insurance in any of these five niches. Use Facebook ads to directly market to people that are vacationing or to people that are about to visit an area. Yes, you can do that with Facebook.

That would be a perfect strategy for the business. this hot tub rental business. Now I have another idea. Go up to an Airbnb owner and say, hey, I see you don't have a hot tub. A lot of your competitors do. Why is that? Get their answer. Yadda, yeah, yada, yeah. Then say, listen, how about for the month of December, you advertise your property as having a hot tub? See if bookings pick up from last year. Or see if booking stay the same with a higher price from last year. Ask the people to book. Is it because of the hot tub? Did the hot tub play a role? If so, then you know it's going to be worth renting this hot tub from me or buying a hot tub from me or buying a hot tub from any company and using me to maintain or service it.

That way the data can do the speaking and the selling for you and you don't have to try to convince them. That way they can see if having a hot tub in their Airbnb actually nets them more money before they have to spend money. Speaking more broadly, remember this about AI. I love AI. 30, 40, 50% of my content is about AI in some way because I'm following it and I'm building with it. But the more that we see the rise of businesses built and grown with AI, the more that we're going to see a high demand to start non-AI businesses, sweaty startups, startups that don't rely on AI. AI is not going to lift that hot tub off the deck. It's never going to do that. At least not for a while. The more you see these hustling, enterprising, entrepreneurs chasing AI ideas, the more demand they

will be to start, these non-AI ideas. And if the level of demand for hot tub services stay steady or rises and the level of supply of people offering these services stay steady or drops, then the prices you can charge will go up and up and up and up, and the chance you will have of succeeding at one of these businesses will go up and up and up. So let me know in the comments which one of these five businesses you prefer or like or plan to start, and maybe I'll do a much deeper follow-up on one of the five, whichever one gets the most comments. Thanks for hanging out with me on the Kerner Office. Please be sure to subscribe, share with a friend. We'll see you next time.