The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - He Copied an Idea I Posted and Built a $2,600/Week Business⏐Ep. #267

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

beehiiv is the newsletter platform I’ve used for over a year and a half because their data shows you exactly what’s working. Get 30% off three months at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠���beehiiv.com/chris⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠━Check out my newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://TKOPOD.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and join my community at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://TKOwners.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠━I sat down with Tim to break down how he took a simple idea he saw online and turned it into a real-world business making thousands at fairs and events. We talked about how he started with a mobile RC construction trailer, charging by the minute, why lowering prices actually doubled demand, and how he broke even on roughly $10–11K in startup costs. Tim shared real numbers from events, including his best week doing around $2,600, and explained how county fairs, private parties, and corporate events became his main revenue drivers.His website is https://canudigitrc.com/ and you can reach him at [e-mail] also dug into how he built custom session-tracking software with AI, why that made the business easier to run and scalable, and how he’s now opening a physical retail location with plans for memberships, higher capacity, and eventually franchising. This episode is a great look at how low-barrier, offline businesses can still work incredibly well when you validate demand first and keep things simple.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---

I was able to do it with very little risk involved. The barriers to entry seemed really low. When I ran the numbers, it was kind of one of those moments where if I even got to 50% capacity, I was like, yeah, this is going to be a home run. I've always had that bug, but I've always been too shy to pull the trigger, honestly. And I think a lot of your content in the group helped my confidence in those areas. So about a year ago, I posted a short about a cafe in Dubai that also has a huge sandbox where they have remote controlled excavators, diggers, cranes, etc.

That short got about 20 million views across platforms. And would you believe it, this guy named Tim in Erlanger, Kentucky, of all places, said, that's my business. He'd had a W-2 job, his whole career, and he said, this is the business I'm going to start. So he spent a little bit of money, he bought a trailer, he bought some equipment, he bought some sand, and he posted up at fairs and festivals, and started making thousands of dollars, charging a dollar a minute to kids and grownups, almost all men, to play with these RC diggers, excavators. Now he's opening a full retail store doing the same thing and he is crushing it.

So, of course, I had to have Tim on the pod to tell us, how'd you do it, how are you making money, how can we copy you? Please enjoy. Tell me where you were at in your life when you first saw that video, like had you been exploring ideas, where you can tent in your job or your business? Where were you at? I've always had that bug, but I've always been, you know, too shy to pull the church. honestly and I think a lot of your content in the group helped my confidence in those areas, knowing that you had, you know, real experience to lean on. Plus, I just really appreciated your attitude towards things that not everything has to be a billion dollar idea that you can stack smaller businesses and still get to the same goal. So my whole life, I've been in technology,

I've been in IT and A-V-I-T in my whole life, but I've always been an entrepreneur. So I run remodeling businesses and IT businesses. but I just didn't care for, I wasn't into it. So, you know, it always trailed off. My regular income always took care of all the bills. So I wasn't an annual sort of rush. But I really fell in love with this idea. And we started taking it out to affairs and events and seeing kids' faces light up.

And more importantly, I think father's faces lighting up and parents playing at the same time with their kids. A lot of kids had never used stuff like this before. You know, they're used to their phones and tablets. So this year I was actually laid off from my job. I've since gotten another job, so it's all good. But for two months there, it was rough figuring out what I was going to do. And so I was just leaning into a lot of things, including this. Okay.

So when you say you were always able to pay your bills, you had like other kind of side hustles and construction businesses on the side, but really you've had a W-2 most of your life, right? Always, yeah. Okay. And so you did when you started this. You got laid off. And now you have another W-2, but you're still doing this on the side, right? 100%. Okay. What of all the, you know, I post at least three ideas every single day. Of all the ones I post, why did this one stand out to you? The barriers entry seemed really low. The risks seem really low. The more I started playing with what it was going to take to put this together.

You know, I was able to do it with very little risk involved. I basically paid off all of my investments to date except for, you know, recently because we're opening a store. But until we started the store, I was already broke even on, you know, we sold 1,700 sessions at $5 a session over the summer. And we booked seven private parties at $3.99 for two hours. Wow. Okay. So do you also have like the cool factor on this idea? Like you were just like, this looks awesome. Like I would like to play this.

I think so. I missed the execution, to be honest with you a little bit on how we built the trailer. The wall of the trailer was a little hot. high. So the visual people had to come over to it to look in to see what was going on. And I made it lower. People just passing by would have seen more of what was going on because we had a lot of up and down traffic because if nobody was playing, people would just walk by. We haven't yet nailed how to get people to come over. And I think part of that was they couldn't see what was in the pit. It just looked like a trailer to them. And when you're at a fair or carnival, you kind of

blend in with all the other trailers and businesses. You know, it's, you know, it's, you know, orange and we've got a big orange tent and a lot of signage and stuff like that. But it's new. Nobody knows what it is. A lot of people thought we were selling machines. We kind of had to explain what was going on. Oh, there you go. So is this our trailer? Yeah. This is your trailer that you were just referring to? Yes, sir. Okay. So you're saying if the walls were a little lower, maybe closer to the level of the sand, then you would have gotten more like eyeball traffic. Correct. I think so. I think it would have helped people see what was going on. We built it this high because not knowing what you don't know, I kind of assumed it was going to need to be deeper because you're digging in it.

But the truth is you don't really need it to be more than like a foot deep of dirt. And then, you know, the kids really like the four by four stuff. So we're splitting the store up into two zones. There'll be construction and the crawler space by itself. They don't work well together. But it works in this form. So you can see this is a trailer, just a standard utility trailer on the back end. there's a gate. We have some signs hung on it. And then you can see we have a TV hung on it in

portrait mode. I built some software around it to help us track the sessions because when we started flushing out this idea, one of the first things that hit me was how do we manage it? How do you manage sessions of kids and adults running up and you're handing them a remote and you're, you know, you've got to track all this stuff. And we tossed around a lot of ideas and I finally built. I built all this that you see here in Replit. I built all the tools we use in Replit. I built it with the idea that if it works, it's going to be franchisable. So all the software can be, you know, reset for somebody new and set up for you specifically. We built the trailer. We started hitting all the events. We started tracking sessions. It worked great. When we started, we were selling sessions for

$5 for 10 minutes. Almost immediately, I realized the problem that the parents didn't want to stand around for 10 minutes. So it took a little convincing, but I convinced my wife that we needed to go to $5 for five minutes. She thought, we both thought it was too expensive, but it doubled our business. Did you, did any people get turned away from that? Like, did your conversion rate suffer at all? Yeah. Some people think it's too expensive, especially our party, right? Some people think $3.99 for two hours is too expensive, but we've had plenty of people pay. And honestly, as a father of an 11-year-old, I know what a birthday party costs. So, yeah, yeah, for 10 people, for $3.99, it doesn't, it's not a bad deal. We actually just did a retirement party two weeks

ago. That was a lot of fun. It was a bunch of middle-aged guys and they're dead. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So at 10 minutes, it was like the parents kind of got bored or restless and you just thought that was bad for business. And, you know, I mean, you can only handle half as many people that way. Right. You could do more sessions at five minutes. And in my area, the way we went after this summer, I was competing with really tough dynamics, at least I think, right? Because a lot of my business came from the county fairs and things like that. And the county fairs around here generally cost about 15 to 20 bucks to get in and then that includes all of your rides so i'm compete you know they literally just paid 15 or 20 bucks ahead to get in and the kids are

passing us screaming i don't want to play i want to play and you know a lot of the parents were dragging the kids by and then eventually they'd come back the other way you'd see him come back when the kids won you know even at that the people who were into it were into it you know we had several groups of people who, you know, because it's all local county fairs, they would be at all there and they'd come back. And, oh, I saw you at this county fair. I saw you that county fair. Even to this day, you know, talking to people out in the public now that we're opening the store, you get a lot of, oh, I saw you guys at this fair. I saw you go. So I think it worked well for our marketing perspective, and we're still going to do it. If you look, on our website, we still have a lot of those events

planned because the store opens in February. How much does it cost to, like, be at the fair? It's interesting. It's quite dynamic, at least around here. We paid as little as $100 for a week, and we paid as much as $5.50, I think, was the most we paid for a week. And then there were some. We tried to get into a lot of, like, the bigger church carnivals around here. And man, you want to talk about them having a lockdown and being a hustle to get into them. There's one school event around here that, you know, it's a whole thing just to even try to be. considered to get into it. So the ones that have the crowds on lockdown charge a lot more. But most of the county ones, you know, they're pretty reasonable. So 100 to 500 for an entire week of being there for a lot of them. A lot of faces, a lot of tight talk. I mean, we've handed out probably 1,500, 2,000 stickers and magnets and all different kind of, you know, because we we played around all summer with different things to hand out to parents and kids. The kids love the stickers we made. We made a bunch of stickers with our logo and website. And then we made my wife

had a genius idea to make, we wanted to give like business card style things the handout, but we made them a magnet so you could just put them on your fridge. I'm sure people have done it before, but I just didn't think to do it. No, that's smart. So we hand those out. Those work well.

And, you know, we're just really excited to have the store opening up because I think having a store, one, that was, we got two main questions at all the events this year. Where's your store and do you sell these things? So the store is going to answer both those questions. Like sell the trailer, the whole kit?

No, the machines, the excavations. Oh, the RC stuff? Things like that, yeah. We gave a couple of way. Those were pretty popular. You know, we gave a couple away from marketing events and things like that. Okay. Is there a correlation between the cost to be at an event and the potential success of the event?

Sometimes, but not always, because a lot of these county fairs, like any outdoor event, they're so dependent on the weather during the summer, you know, around us, we can get some rain. So it does change the size of the crowd. They're very much dependent on the size of the crowd. So they're charging you based on the numbers of people they saw last year. Is basically how I understand it works. Okay. Now, what was the worst event you ever did?

How much, like revenue did you do and profit? Oh, the first one. The first fair we did. We did on purpose was a really small county fair. And, you know, I mean, we were, I think if we sold 10 sessions that whole week, it was a lot. And it was just a couple of kids. But even so, that was a huge learning experience. We met a ton of other vendors at that event that were, you know, in different aspects.

You know, we talked to everybody at every event because we've learned so much, so much so that we're opening a food truck this year to step on top of it. I'm going to get to that. I'm very curious about that. Yeah. So, so yeah, I just, I've learned a lot this year. And honestly, I'm just pushing hard. I'd like to get rid of the W2 as soon as I can because I learned a hard lesson. this year when a company I worked for for for 13 years just went, yeah, sorry.

You don't have any money anymore. It's a shit place to be. So your first event, you lost money and you maybe made 50 bucks in revenue, give or take. Yeah. I don't even count that because whatever I made that event, my daughter and her friend spent on food at the event. Not cheap. So it was all a loss.

What about what's an average event for you, revenue and profit? So our average events, once we got going, we were, and profits hard because it's my wife and I running it, so we're not really spending any money besides the cost of the event. And so most of our events, we paid for the event the first day because most days we would, on a bad day, we would do two or 300 bucks a day. On our best day, we did $800. That was a crazy day. And then on our busiest day, we did a private event for Choice Hotels at a Bengals,

gate. I've never been so good. There were so many kids and it was all free to them because it was an open event and they had nothing else to do. And that was the first event that we actually ran through all of our batteries just as our time was almost up. Wow. Perfect. If we had given them an extra hour, we'd have been in trouble. Yeah. So for that event, they just paid you to be there for free. And what did they pay you? They paid us to be there and then we offered it to the to the yes. And what did they pay you? That one was four nine. because it was such an open public event. And how long were you there for? Total about three hours was set up. Wow, that's awesome. And that one, that was just, we were at, there's a local pizza pub brewery kind of thing down the street from us,

and they had a fall event we were at for two days. And the guy who runs choice hotel marketing came with his kids, and they played. And he's like, hey, we have this big tailgate. You guys should, we'd love to have you. And I was like, sure, great, you know, that kind of stuff. You have those conversations all day. Two days later, he's like, hey, what are you doing this Sunday?

It went pretty fast on that one. But I suspect that one will be a repeating event because they had so many kids. It's a big family event. They have a big family tailgate for everybody. Yeah. Now, your best fare ever, what was your revenue that week? Probably $2,600 in that neighborhood. Five days?

And that was Alexandria Fair. No, that one was five days through the weekend. And that one, I think that one was our biggest event. Mostly because the crowd was just perfect for us. It was in a really rural county, but this county drew an amazing crowd for the horse show. So you had a lot of people with disposable income who were there and kids who were bored. So at that show, we had a lot of parents who came up and were like, here's 20 bucks. He's going to be here for a minute.

You know, like that kind of thing. 20 minutes, actually. Yeah, yeah. So do you offer any discounts for more time? We messed around with it. I have a session in the app where we sell sessions because I just, it's on your phone. So someone comes up and I can just sell it to you right on my phone. I can do basically buy one, get, or buy two get one free.

And so sometimes I'll ring people up like that. Like we've had some real, really great patrons who have spent a lot of money session after session. And, you know, I'll see him come up again. And I'll just, you know, say give them a free session or, you know, whatever. Yeah. Just to kind of. But we don't actually publicize it yet. At the store, our pricing model is going to be completely different.

You know, it starts generally around the same. So we're going to do 15 minutes for 15 bucks. And then as you scale time, it gets significantly cheaper per minute. But we're also going to offer things like memberships and stuff like that so that someone who wants to come a lot. Now, on your trailer, how many customers can you accommodate at the same time? Ideally, around 10 is the max. So we have three excavators, two front loaders, I don't know what it's called, but a big power crane is what I call it. to have the crane, and then I have like seven different RC trucks, tracks as vehicles that we use.

At 10, it starts to get too crazy in there because most of that is the traffic, but they don't, you know, you can run those things right into the excavator and they don't even, they don't bugs. The excavators are full metal and pretty heavy. And so you and your wife's job while there is you're swapping out batteries, you're answering questions, you're accepting payments, you're telling people their times up. Is that about right? Yeah.

And flipping cars over a lot. Okay. So we have a little broomstick. And, you know, because it's, like I said, it's not an ideal setup for both to be in there. So the main issue with that is the cars flip over a lot. Because, one, they're geared like normal cars. So they're a little fast to be, you know, in there. So the kids love it.

They're just like, you know, and they're running them over the mountain and just flip them, flipping them off things. So we spend a lot of time just setting. them straight. But yeah, other than that, talking to people, answering questions, talking about birthday parties. A lot of people asked about parties. My wife, Jim, thinks this year our private party business is going to blow up because, you know, we were kind of into birthday party season already when we started it. Nobody knew about us. And it seems to be holding true because we've already booked a couple for this year. So. Yeah. So I'm starting to run paid ads directly to my newsletter because right now it's where I'm seeing the most potential. Because here's the thing, social platforms

let you own anything. The algorithm changes and your reach disappears. Email is the only channel where you actually own your audience. And Beehive is built for people who are ready to grow bigger than ever. It's got a built-in ad network. Sponsors come to you directly through the platform. You approve, you get paid. You pay no platform fees on paid subscriptions, whereas substack takes 10%. Beehive takes nothing. And now you can sell coaches and coaching directly to your list. You don't need to stitch five tools together. Beehive lets you do everything in one place and you pay zero commission forever. Name another newsletter platform that can do all that.

I've been on Beehive for over two years and it is without a doubt one of the biggest reasons my newsletter is growing like Wildfire. So go move your email list over to Beehive now and get 30% off your first three months at Behive.com slash Chris. That's B-E-H-I-I-V-com slash Chris. Now, how do you keep track of their time? Like through the app. If you saw on that picture, that TV that's on there.

So someone comes up and let's say Johnny wants to play, we get a name. And if they'll give it to us an email so that we track it, we keep their email for marketing. And then we put how long they're going to play five, 10, 15 minutes, however one they ask for. And then as soon as we sell it, it goes up on the monitor. And it gives them about a 30 second buffer to get the remote and get set up. And then it started the countdown timer that just says their name with their countdown. As it gets closer to the end of the time, it changes colors to warn them and it'll start to clash. When it's done, it stays up there for a minute and says your time's up.

And what that has done for us is eliminate the vast majority of us having to tell kids because their parents do. Their parents are like, hey, time's up or you got a minute left. They're just there on top of it so we don't have to be. Is this the app that you built with Replit? Yes, sir. So, I mean, you have no coding experience. and you built like the app that runs your entire business with just AI. Correct.

To be fair, I have some coding experience. I used to be a control system programmer. So with that came a lot of testing code experience. And I honestly think if you have QA coding experience, that kind of stuff, if you can talk to the computer the way you would someone is coding, it does a much better job. So I've had really good success with Replit. It's also, it blows my mind to someone who's been in technology my whole life in just the eight months or so, how much better refa has gotten every time I use it.

Yeah. Let me go back to this. So what percentage of your customers are, you know, under 18 and what percentage of our 30 to 70-year-old dudes? It's a good mix of 50-50. I was actually really blown away. You know, it's funny at Boone County and a lot of the county fairs, you know, they have the dirt tracks for different things. So they have guys there running these kind of machines. And so many of them at the end of their shift that the, you know, 9 o'clock at night when the fair is almost over would end up over at our booth paying us to run the machines with the remote controls.

I'm like, you guys have been running these things all day. And they just love it. Because the control, that was one of the things I learned that was really neat about them. The controls are the same as a caterpillar excavator or a caterpillar front loader. So someone who runs these machines can come in, pick up the remote, and literally use it like an expert because it's exactly the same. And it also leans into training, you know, kids on how to use these things. So you're selling just as many of these packages to people like me as opposed to kids. That's crazy.

I don't know if there's a good, yeah. So if you open right under the Thanksgiving turkey picture, there's some picture of some kids standing there. This was actually one of the problems. So I had to find a platform for the kids to stand on so they can see in the trailer. But you can see this is where the kids play for the most part. This whole other side here, where there isn't a platform, that's all adults. If you look at through my pictures, they'll almost always see adults standing in that area playing. It's just always.

So you can see them kind of in the background, see where they're just standing there. Yeah. Getting ready to play or playing. And you can see the sessions in the back there. So you can see there are four sessions. Oh, on the screen right here. Yeah. So you can see there are four sessions.

about the end and two sessions that are still active. Oh, that is so cool. That app would cost so much to have developed. I say it all the time to people. I would not have been able to run. Because managing the sessions is so important to what's going on here. The fact that we can do it so smoothly makes all the difference in the world. This would be a nightmare to manage if I didn't have that.

And we talked through all the ideas. We were going to use stopwatches and all we were going to mount the remotes to the trailer so they couldn't, like, we had all sorts of ideas, but this software solved at all. And I think it makes it more franchisable and marketable because it makes the business that much easier to run. What were your opening costs for the trailer version of this? Your startup cost. Right around 10, 11 grand. It's not bad at all. Including the trailer. Yeah, most of that was the trailer. The trailer cost six grand of that, was six grand of that. And that was mostly because my, I was, I had to get, like, I think it might be my ADHD.

or my, you know, my, whatever you want to call it. But if I give myself an excuse, I'll find it. You know what I mean? So, like, we start, when we were committed to doing this, we started booking events before I had the trailer, before I knew what it was all going to, how it was going to work. We were committed to events. So I had a timeline that I had to stick to,

and I couldn't get a used trailer. Everyone I found that had one was just being a pain to work with. So I bought one new and it ran me about $6,000. I'm glad I did because it's just been one less thing. to worry about. I had six grand in the trailer. I started with six machines, two excavators, two front loaders and two dump trucks. The dump trucks were a real disappointment. Luckily, they were only like 250, so 500 for the two of them because both of them did not work in the sands in the pit the way we had a design. So I ended up using one as a giveaway, and then we

have one saved for the store. And so the excavators aren't about 500 apiece, and the front loaders they're about four, and then the dump trucks are about three. And then I spent another maybe two grand on four-wheel drive vehicles and other marketing, stuff like that to get ready. But to your point, I didn't spend anything on the website. Well, I mean, I spent replete, so maybe 200 bucks on the website, on all the back-end stuff. What will your startup cost be for the store? 18.

I took on some of the renovations because I can do them myself. self to save cost. And in turn, I got 50% reduction on the first four months of rent. And my rent's real cheap. One of the reasons we went in on this place is because, again, hedging my bets. If I don't make a dime, I can afford it with my W-2. If it turns into a clubhouse, it turns into a clubhouse. Yeah. But I don't think it will. We have a lot of excitement, a lot of buzz. The city has reached out to us directly just because of our social media stuff to say, hey, how can we help you, which is really cool. How much research have you done on the competing stores?

I assume there aren't any in your area, so you're not competing with them directly, but other people that have done this in the Middle East or in the U.S., do you know what the ceiling is as far as like a per store per year profit? No, I've run the numbers on my store, and I know what other people doing similar things. So the main company's kind of doing this. There's a cafe in the UK who I think has a nice setup. There's a place in Taiwan. There's a place called Diggers Cafe that just opened in Canada that's doing some really nice marketing.

They even have a jingle, like an old school radio jingle that goes along with it. So they've got a really nice setup, but they've spent some money, whatever they do, whoever they've got some investors or they took out some money too because they built a really nice store. I think our store is going to be really nice. It's just a little bit smaller and we're not really doing the cafe because we didn't want to get into, you know, all the food service. So we're going to have coffee and stuff that we can sell. It's not refrigerated. It's a baked goods, things like that. What do you expect to do like both first year and like as a ceiling? Like what is your max capacity as far as annual profit is concerned with one location? I should have a number. It's like a shark tank moment where I don't have my numbers. I ran models based on the total number of. sessions, I can run at any given period of time based on the amount of hours I'm open at any

given time. Right. So I think it was at like 12% capacity. I break even on all of my costs involved in running the store. And then anything above that is obviously profit. And what is your rent on this place per month? A thousand bucks. Oh, that's nothing.

I know. And it's in a great area. My neighbor is the mayor. is the mayor who owns a really sort of not high end but you know like one of those brunch places that all everybody likes to go to so every day all morning that place is packed is this in erlinger erlanger how do you pronounce it erlanger yeah erlanger there are only 20,000 people there that's a small erlanger's like a little strip in between everything else it's boon county and kenton county so we're you know we're suburbs of cincinnati basically

there's no shortage of people that's for sure but erlangeur Langer is a smaller town, which is one of the things I like because the city is really into us being there. They have a grant. They're out of money for 25, but their fiscal year restarts in July. And so in July, I'm going to get back 50% of whatever I spend on my buildout, which is really nice. So that was a big part of it. What do you plan to do with the trailer? Are you repurposing any of the stuff you have? Or do you want to leave that as like a standalone business? So you can still do events and not have to borrow from the trailer, like equipment.

We're still keeping the trailer. The plan is to still do all the public events for now just to keep costs down, using all the same machines to get the store open. But then very quickly, I'm going to have to buy some more to run both because we'll have an event pretty soon after the store opens. Okay. So that's the plan. What is like the grand ambition? Do you want more locations? Do you want to franchise this?

I want to franchise it. So that's the plan. If I can prove that it works, I think I've built. everything else out to be highly franchisable. I've worked through all the problems, so to speak. I have, you know, I think the branding is pretty strong on it. Like you said, the software and the being able to manage your business right off the bat without any investment is a big part of it. So yeah, I think the key for me is proving that it works. I think it works in a mobile model. It's just for me, it's a slog. It's a lot, you know, dragging that thing around, setting it up,

go into a fair in five days a week at night. So if it's all you're doing, sure, but it's not all, you know. What a good way to prove the demand first. Yeah. With $6,000 or $10,000. How many days per week are you going to be open? So the plan right now is seven because we don't know. We're very fortunate in that way.

Both my wife and I, when I'm not traveling, we're both working home people. So, you know, we'll take my daughter to school and then just go to the office, so to speak, and have the store open until we kind of figure out what it looks like. And then very quickly, we want to hire somebody to get in a lot of the hours or we'll drown in it. And how many hours per day? Plan is to be open from 10 to 8 right now. Okay. So 10 hours?

So 70 hours a week. And then how many, I know this, all of this is subject to change, right? How many customers would be able to serve it once? If it's 10 on the trailer, what do you expect in the store? I have a max of probably 17. active sessions at one time. Okay. Because we'll have two different zones.

So you'll have most of that activity will be split up between both. So the plan is to have four excavators, two dump trucks, another crane, and two front loaders in the construction site. And then another fleet of six or seven, four by four vehicles for the mountain. Let's say, you know, optimistically, you're just slammed. You're busy. What will your manpower look like that day? How many people would you have on the clock?

I think you need two if you're full busy because there's really not much to do. You need someone landing the counter and then without having, so in this setup in the store, all the four by four stuff is going to be the person using it standing right next to it. So they're going to be able to turn the machine over. So all that's gone. In the construction fit, there's none of that. So it's very hands off except for every hour of use. You have to change the battery.

Most of these machines, you'll get about an hour, not on the clock, on use. So depending on how much you're, if you're using them full time, you're switching out batteries every hour. So that's about it. There's so far, I mean, I don't know what I don't know yet, but from what's going on at the events, that's the best I can tell you is I think two would be more than enough to handle, you know, because it's a thousand square foot store, so it's not huge. So there's not a lot of space to cover. You just need someone to handle the sessions and hand out the remotes.

Because the idea is, you know, you're on the clock. You can use any of the machine. Same with the trailer. When you're on the clock, I can use any of the machines for as long as I want. I can trade you their remote at a point in time. Okay. So let's just say now humor me for a minute because I know this isn't realistic, but I'm trying to get an idea of like what the absolute best case scenario is, right?

What is sold out 24-7 look like? So you're up in- Yeah, I'm really mad, but I don't have those numbers. No, it's all right. Let's tell me how BS these numbers are. not. So you're open 70 hours a week, 10 hours a day, seven days a week. And of course, you might change that as your demand, you know, comes and goes, whatever. 70 hours a week. 17 at a time is a dollar per minute. So that's max potential if you are fully sold out of

$17 per minute. So that is a 600 minutes per day, right? 600 minutes times 10 hours, 60 minutes of 10 hours, 600 minutes per day times $17 per minute. you're looking at $10,000 for a day. Do I have that right, 10 hours, six? Yeah. So let's just say from the second you open to the second you close, you are at full max capacity, which probably, well, hopefully will happen one day,

but probably won't for a while, right? That could be a $10,000 day. And you're overhead on that for like your insurance, your AC, your employees is like 100. No, sorry, the employees would be like, let's call it $50 an hour, including payroll taxes times 10 hours. It's $500 a day.

day. The rent is like $100 a day. So let's just say, you know, very conservatively, you're overhead of $1,000 a day. Really more like $600 or $700 a day. So theoretically, obviously, the busy you are, the more profitably you are because it's economies of scale. I mean, this could be $9,000 a day, $8,000 a day in gross profit if you were like fully max capacity, which, you know what I'm saying. So let's just say you're 20%, you're 20% quote unquote occupied, take out your cost. That could be $300,000. a year of profit. When I ran the numbers, it was kind of one of those moments where if I even got to 50% capacity, I was like, yeah, this is going to be a home run. So you, because even at 50%,

the numbers were like, Jesus. Because you get to multiply, you know, you're stacking that effect because you can run so many machines. Again, because I took this path, you know, I got to meet the community. I mean, I had a meeting yesterday with a guy who I met through the community and we found him in that in person. He runs an organization for, you know, I got to meet the community. veterans that helps them, you know, kind of get back and reacclimated through RC because a lot of these guys get outdoors and stuff like that. So we're going to work together on some partnerships. There's a huge community of the guys who use these RC vehicles of our age, right? One of the cool places I didn't mention is for one of the cool things about the spot I got is

there's this probably half an acre to three quarter of an acre piece of property behind it that's unused. And so this summer, I'm going to turn it into an outdoor force that will have an outdoor And a fast lap course because it'll just be extra revenue. That's awesome. Because we're going to let people bring their own machines too. So we'll have pricing for rentals and then pricing for just to use our set-ups. From the time it took you to get your first job to pay off your startup cost to get to break even. How long was that?

Most of the summer, eight months, six, seven, eight months. It was, you know, it was kind of, I should say summer, most of the year, right? because fall was a huge time for us. We did a lot of fall events, and those were pretty popular, which was surprising to me because I didn't think with the weather people would stand around, but they still did. That's amazing. I've been surprised every turn.

So, you know. All while you were working a full-time job. I mean, mostly. Yeah, mostly. That's incredible.