The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - How This 23-Year-Old Profits by Renting Out 200 Used Washers and Dryers. Ep. #102
Episode Date: December 9, 2024In this episode, I sit down with Kyler, founder of Utah Appliance Rental (utahappliancerental.com), to talk about how he turned a $30k investment into a business that generates near-passive income req...uiring only 5-10 hours of work per week. We talk about how he started his appliance rental company, scaling, and leveraging Facebook Marketplace to validate ideas.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 The Birth of an Idea: Washer and Dryer Rentals02:56 Navigating Challenges: The Reality of Entrepreneurship06:11 Scaling the Business: From Rentals to Deliveries09:01 Understanding the Market: Customer Needs and Preferences11:47 Operational Insights: Tools and Strategies for Success15:07 Addressing Concerns: Insurance, Risks, and Customer Relations17:57 The Bigger Picture: Financial Education and Ethical Entrepreneurship20:47 Final Thoughts: Building a Sustainable Business Model
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I post on Facebook Marketplace all the time to try to validate ideas.
I posted a simple ad that said rent a washer and dryer month to month.
I went on a cruise for seven days and I came back and there was a lot of interest.
I went and bought $30,000 worth of washers and dryers.
I just want all the haters to listen up.
What about insurance?
What about this?
You got to have a contract?
Just freaking buy it.
Throw it on your porch and people will Venmo.
You're like, that's probably the reason that 90% of people would never start this.
Didn't know what I was doing.
Just figured out as I was going.
And that's what business is. You're just solving problems. Big deal.
My name's Kyler, Liston. I live in Orem, Utah. I'm 23. And one year ago, I started a
washer and dryer rental business. I don't do anything full time, but that is one of the
major sources of money in my life right now. Okay. What was the triggering event that made you say,
huh, there could be something here? I'm a big believer in taking opportunities and
creating your own luck. So I'd say it kind of started my grandparents on a lot of rentals,
did a lot of maintenance. They slowly said we're not doing any washers and dryers. So I knew
there was at least 30 apartments that didn't have washers and dryers. But I also started delivering
third party for some companies in Utah County, delivering appliances and kind of learned
how to install them, how to change the plugs, the common issues with them, and how to
to fix some of them. And then, I mean, I'm a pretty observant, whatever person. And I just started thinking
that there's probably a lot of people that there's a lot of apartments that don't offer washers and
dryers. But the main thing was, I mean, I, I, I've done this a thousand times, but I just posted on
Facebook Marketplace. I post on Facebook Marketplace all the time to try to validate ideas.
I posted a simple ad that said rent-a-washer and dryer month to month.
I went on a cruise for seven days and I came back and there was a lot of interest.
Okay.
I want to get hyper-specific.
Go back to your grandparents.
What was the conversation?
What happened?
When did you first learn that this might be an opportunity?
I don't know if the exact moment.
It was my very first business idea when I got home from my main.
was I started renting nine squares.
If you've seen the nine square in the air games that are like the PVC pipes.
I was like if I buy a if I buy a legit one which costs $800, could I rent this out?
So I posted it for a week, got a lot of hits and I bought it.
And everyone's like, you're never going to make your money back, which I made my money back times a lot.
There's a business there.
There's a bit.
There's a business.
First of all, I think most people outside of the church don't even know that exists.
I've only seen it in the context of church.
So big in Utah County.
Okay.
So it's a PVC contraption that's nine, it's three by three, nine squares.
And people stand in it and they're like hitting a ball over the PVC pipes, right?
Yep.
And there were people renting them out, but they were all homemade PVC ones.
And there's one company who makes legit like fittings that lock in and they don't unconnect.
And it is pricey.
Well, I bought that one.
which made me stand apart from everyone else.
And then, yeah, that was my first thing.
And then I always just liked, I was just always thinking like, what else could I rent out?
So I got some paddle boards from Al Sporting Goods, rented out lots of paddle boards.
And then I was always looking at websites of like, what could I rent out?
Because you have to be, you have to be different from everyone.
And at some point, whether I saw it somewhere, which I don't think I did,
but at some point I was like, oh, I wonder if I could rent a washer and dryer.
back to the nine square how much did you rent them for i i started renting them like between 30 it was like
thirty dollars on a weekday and 50 dollars for a weekend around around there okay and you got your
money back yeah i mean i don't know how i mean it would make several hundred dollars a month
it got to the point where it like paid itself completely times a couple times and then i was just
Like I don't really need to do this.
So I kind of have stopped.
I mean,
I rented it a couple times this summer,
but like I literally,
I would leave it on my porch.
They'd come get it.
They'd Venmo me.
And I never did.
Like I never did anything.
No contracts.
No.
They never signed anything and it never got broken or stolen or anything.
Beauty of living in Utah.
I just want all the haters to listen up.
Not that there are any haters listening to this,
but like,
what about insurance?
What about this?
Who's you going to have a contract?
But just fucking buy it.
Throw it on your porch and people will Venmo.
You've had one set of washer and dryer stolen in a year.
That's probably the reason that 90% of people would never start this.
And it's a nothing burger.
Oh, exactly.
Yeah.
There's a lot of pessimistic people that are like, well, what?
I mean, so exactly one Thanksgiving ago, like we have our big family Thanksgiving.
And at that point, I had put out one set.
And I like, my family knows me as like,
entrepreneur kid or whatever. And I was like telling everyone like, I think this is going to be
awesome. And my parents do support me. But there was a lot of people that were like,
that sounds like a ball in chain. Like good luck. Like you're never going to be able to leave again.
What if this happens? What if this happens or whatever? Anytime I bring any idea to anyone,
it's a bunch of hate. I feel like it's like, well, what if this happens? Worst case scenario.
And I'm just like, hey, well, every business sucks. So like just figure it out. Yeah. Every time I
tweet about a business headie, I hear the same things. And it's like, yeah, that's an obstacle to
overcome. That's a problem to solve. And that's what business is. You're just solving problems.
Big deal. Okay. For sure. Yeah. Like, that's such a critical framework when starting a business.
Like, I really feel like you, you do yourself more harm than good when you solicit opinions from
anyone because everyone's biased. You tell your friend or your buddy and he's jealous. He's going to tell you
it's dumb because he's jealous and he doesn't want to succeed and or he wants to copy you. If you tell it to
your mom, she's going to tell you it's amazing because she loves you and you can do no wrong.
Like, how do you actually get real feedback?
There's only one way.
You post the Facebook marketplace.
Exactly.
What does the market tell you?
What does the free capitalistic market tell you that like the first step is almost always,
try to get a customer, go to Facebook marketplace, go validate it, put up a landing page,
wait for your first dollar.
And then everything else can follow.
Yes.
I agree.
100%.
I like to do things and then and then tell people about it.
And like, you don't have to tell me about what could go wrong because I already am doing it and it's not happening.
Yep.
That's why, like, of all these businesses I've built, I never, ever, ever talked about it on my Facebook page.
Like 10 years ago, I would post a Facebook about normal family stuff.
I would never talk about businesses.
And outwardly, my excuse was, well, I don't want to have to start a business that's reliant on my friends and family.
I want it to stand on its own.
But the real reason, honestly, the real reason is,
I was insecure about what people would think or say.
And I was insecure that the idea would fail.
And then I'd have to come crawling back to my Facebook friends as if I have, as if I owe them
anything.
It's like, hey, that thing I posted about it failed.
Like, first of all, no one ever, no one would ever remember that you started it in the
first place.
No one cares.
No one's thinking about you.
You just do your own thing, whether you post about it or not.
For sure.
And I guess my biggest thing is I've heard you say once that like people think you're a big
risk taker, but it's like a very calculated risk. And I think it was the same way for me.
I was doing the math and saying worst case scenario, I'll make my money back and I don't actually
see any risk. I did summer sales. I took my money and I went and bought $30,000 worth of washers and
dryers. I gave it to some guy and I was like, order me a bunch of sets. And I was like,
I didn't even have 30 customers or whatever. I was just like, based off the one week of demand I've
scene, there will be enough to get those all rented out. And these were brand new sets.
Who's a guy? What guy do you give 30 grand to? Who was this guy? You find them on Craigslist?
There's like three or four wholesale places in Utah. And I mean, I would always just say, hey, like I'm
a property manager. Like I'm looking for like 50 sets. What's the discount? And I found a guy that
had a, had a good price. And I mean, eventually he knows I'm not a property manager when I
walk another 20 years old. Yeah. And so I, so I bought those. And what I'm trying to say,
though, is that in my mind, it wasn't a risk. In my mind, it's always I was going to break even.
Mm-hmm. At least. Yeah, it's like the guys that take the huge risks, right? Like Elon Musk sells
Tesla, he gets 140 million bucks. He pushes it. He sells PayPal. It gets 140 million,
pushes all into Tesla. That's a massive risk. That makes the headlines. We all know about him.
But the average Joe's, like you and I, everyone listening, that are starting businesses,
most of us are much more calculated than people like to think.
We're just better at doing research.
And when I say doing research, we're posting stuff to Facebook.
Yeah, exactly.
And there was always the fear of like, what if someone steals it?
But then it's just, I just don't think you should live your life thinking of that because
like you could say that about a lot of businesses.
Why don't people just go around like stealing and killing people?
because people have morals and most people have morals.
Yeah.
So you bought 30 sets for $30,000?
It was a little bit more than 30 sets.
I would think so.
Do you remember how many it was?
So the very first one, like I got home from the cruise and I had like people that wanted
them installed.
I bought those ones from R.C. Willie, which is like a box store in Utah for everyone.
It's very pricey.
I knew that was not the route I wanted to go, but I had to, I wanted to like get those.
I think I did.
Yeah, you're validating the idea.
Yeah, I wanted to do three from R.C. Willie.
I did three from R.C. Willie.
Then I was trying to figure out how to get them cheaper.
How much were they?
The ones for R.C. Willie.
They were like, I want to say, like, $1,100.
Geez, were they used or new?
They were brand new.
And they come with a warranty.
Were these, like, high efficiency or like your ugly white ones?
No, these are like the, I mean, they're pretty nice.
I have a glass top.
They're LG machines.
I mean, they're basic.
But yeah, they look, they look really nice.
Real quick.
Is that like a freeze dryer over your shoulder?
Yeah.
I'm like, this is the most LDS household I've ever seen in my life.
Yeah, all of my family lives on one, pretty much one street.
And I'm at my grandparents and they're big, my grandma's a big freeze dryer.
I wish I had one of those.
That looks awesome.
It looks like a washer.
Oh, yeah.
All day, every day, she's, she's freeze drying fruit and food.
I believe the new ones were around $800.
So the way I did my math was,
okay,
so in my head,
my ideal client was someone moves into an apartment.
They sign a one year lease.
They don't have a washer and dryer.
And I wanted to make my price for renting for a year a little bit cheaper,
but the same cost as like buying one.
I want it to be a little bit cheaper so they could in their head be like,
I am saving money.
So that's how I came up.
with like the 60 to $85 because at the end of the 12 months they had paid off off the machine.
After I did install the 30 brand new ones, I was like, why don't I do used ones?
And the used ones, they are probably a lot better business model, in my opinion.
It doesn't seem like people demand them any less.
Like they're still in high demand.
No, yeah.
I think it's also all I did was like I changed what I was doing the new ones for up like $25.
And I just did the used ones for the same price.
And it was the same.
Okay.
They just want to, they, they, they just want to water and dryer that, that works and cleans
their clothes.
Yeah.
Period.
Okay.
Let me back up real quick.
You got 30 grand from summer sales.
What percentage of like your savings was that at the time?
I think I had like maybe 60 grand.
So it was like half, half of the savings, just all just, just giving up.
Yeah.
half of your life savings on some use washers and dryers based on data points from one Facebook
marketplace post. And I'm not making fun of you. I would do the same thing. And it worked. So
hindsight is 20. Well, the other thing is like the whole time it's like if this fails,
all I did is I lost a summer knocking doors. Like worst case in there. Well, worst case,
I lose three months of my entire life in the hot sun selling things. That's kind of bad.
But no, I mean, worst cases, you just, you sell those sets.
individually on Facebook marketplace and you probably make a profit.
Yeah.
You just sell them.
There's a lot of different ways I looked at it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So you started with the more expensive ones and you learned there's no point in this.
People just want reliable ones that work even if they're ugly.
$60 bucks a pop.
What did it look like to go from those first 30-ish units to the next batch?
What did scaling look like?
Like what different kind of tiers did you hit in your business along the way?
I completely like bootstrapped it or
whatever like my first one I heard and made a Google Doc made a contract and it was like pay me
through Venmo PayPal PayPal or Zelle or whatever and then they would circle which one they'd pay me
and I would text them like hey today's your time to pay or whatever and they would pay me and I was like
if I want to scale this I need to not text a whole bunch of people so then I got stripe so it's all
through subscriptions that collects their credit card.
I tried to start collecting two credit cards.
So if one fails, I can just charge the other card.
Well, it's funny because that's usually,
that's not something that most business owners have to even think about.
If this card fails, then we need a backup.
But in this demographic, that's fairly common, I imagine.
Yeah.
More common than average.
Yeah, probably, yeah.
And I mean, the whole entire time, I was kind of scared of like,
it was kind of a very hard balance of like,
this is an experiment and do I keep scaling it and going bigger or do I find out if this works?
And so I think the first like four or five months I was still like really like how much bigger do I want
to go before I find out like if this is going to work like how long are these machines going to
last and how much of a headache is it.
And going into it the whole entire time, I was like if I can make 10 grand a month,
I don't care how much of a headache it is in my 23rd or 20.
23 year old mine, it was like, if I could make 10 grand a month, I don't care if I'm working all day on
this. And it has, I, I don't thankfully have to work all day. How much are you working on this business,
would you say? Not very much. Maybe five, on a busy week, maybe 10 hours a week. Two out of the six
days. I mean, I do work on Saturday sometimes. So maybe two out of the six days, I will go install one or go
pick one up or go clean one or go knock on someone's door or something. If you really wanted to to scale it,
You could spend all, you know, full time on it.
So what's interesting, I mean, I don't think it's any secret.
The guy was talking to you about he, so he has seven over 700 sets.
He has no employees.
Crazy.
Zero employees.
And according to him, it is not that big of a pain.
Time.
So I would go to some.
I started going to property management places and saying like, hey, we pass these out.
Or like, couldn't you put these in the welcoming envelopes to your new tenants or whatever?
And one or two of them were like, oh, we already used this guy.
That's how I found about this guy.
Because he doesn't have a huge presence online.
So I, I mean, I called him and just asked about his business.
And that was another validation of like, okay, this guy's been doing it for 10 years.
He has 700 sets.
After I heard about that, I was like, okay, this is kind of, I think this is going to, I think this can work.
A lot of my fear went away after I learned about a guy who was doing it and he was making
money. I did not know about this guy at all before I started it, though. And then it turns out
huge. Tell me about the time that you spent what was the delivering units for the warehouses.
Yeah. I want to hear how people could emulate that in their local market. Yeah. So there's,
you have your big box stores like Lozenholm Depot and then I would say in most cities, there's probably
a scratch indent place, at least in Orham where I live, there's probably three. You know,
or four pretty big ones within 15 or 20 minutes.
They buy scratch and dent from like Costco and all of these big places, but they don't want
anything.
They don't actually really know anything.
A lot of them don't have a ton of knowledge about washers and drivers.
They're just buying, buying them.
And they do not want to have anything to do with the install.
So what I did is I just went to those places, asked if I could put my phone number there.
Then when someone goes and buys a fridge, or they buy a fridge, they buy a
washer and dryer.
They don't have a truck or anything, but they would like to have a cheaper option than going
to Lowe's or whatever.
So they go to the scratch and dent.
Then they would call me and I would deliver them.
And it was honestly a very, in my mind, it was a very good side hustle.
Once again, didn't have insurance or anything, didn't know what I was doing, just figured out
as I was going.
No trailer, just a pickup truck.
I kind of lied to you when I told you you have a truck.
I mean, my grandpa has three trucks.
So I used his trucks a lot.
I did all of the installs in a Toyota Highlander that I put a hitch on.
So not even a truck, just a Highlander with a trailer.
Yep.
No truck.
Jeez.
And so you literally just went to a washer dryer store and said, let me do all your deliveries.
And like, okay.
They are actually pretty open because they want to give their customers as many options as possible.
So at one of them, I was like the first one to kind of do it.
they don't want you to be their sole guy really they want their customers to have as many options
so they they were all welcoming of like yeah you can put our phone number here and then as if you
if you actually pick up your phone and you put your prices there you'll get most of the work
because a lot of people won't pick up their phone and don't actually want to do it I mean they're
appliance repair places that are doing repairs all day and they don't actually want to deliver
them I mean here's what I'm thinking Plano Texas 250,000 people go to
outscraper, run it for furniture, appliance, anything that could have big items, run a scrape,
get all their phone numbers, call them up as if you're a consumer, say, hey, do you look for a couch,
do you deliver couches?
No, you got to arrange that yourself.
Okay.
And then just check a box on the spreadsheet for everyone that does not deliver.
And then you drive there to only those ones, show up in person with a flyer.
Hey, I do, this is all I do.
You can have a dozen stores referring business to you all day every day.
Oh yeah. And I guess my biggest thing is I think there's a lot of levels of entrepreneurship. And like,
there's probably a lot of people that are doing way cooler, way more glamorous things than me.
Maybe even at my age at 23, but there's also a lot of people that are getting that I know that are
getting paid like $14 an hour and hate their life. The appliance delivery, I was charging
between $100 and $200 and install and doing, I mean, there was a lot of days where I'd make $4 or $500.
dollars and I was working for myself and it was like in my opinion a lot better than a lot of other
people's reality some people maybe don't think that's glamorous or whatever but like in my mind it
was like I would rather go do one delivery for $200 and it takes me two hours than go work for someone
for $20 an hour all day so if there's I think that it's a good hustle for someone who is like
gets paid minimum wage and they hate their life and they want to do something and they
or have a dolly, then they can do this business and make, I think you could make several hundred
dollars a day. During the summer, we did a lot of fridges. And I just did my little brother, who's 15,
though, and we'd just go deliver fridges. And every fridge that was a French store was like over
$200. And they're already paying like $1,200 for the fridge. So it's nothing. I gave my brother like
$50. He was making for $75. He was making over $25 an hour as a 15 year old. He loved it.
Take him to Chick-fil-A every time is good.
All right.
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I don't even think this is like a good option for someone working your crappy job or
minimum wage.
Like, anything can scale.
Like, I will go to my grave saying that.
Anything can scale.
Some things are harder to scale.
But like the more we move towards AI, the more people, enterprising entrepreneurs like
us are going to be moving away from the sweaty startup that are outside.
That means that we're going to be able to charge more.
We're going to have fewer competitors.
It's just going to get better.
The pie is getting bigger for everyone as technology advances.
For sure.
Yeah.
That was the appliance delivery.
And that was a, that definitely helped me.
Before I did it, I mean, my appliance rental business, I had already installed at least 100
washers and dryers.
Okay.
And so with the appliance delivery business, you're charging to both deliver it and install
it?
Almost always, yes.
That was my upsells.
Some people did like garage drop off, but I'm like, if it's an old lady, you drop it off
at their garage, you almost did them nothing.
They still have no way to get in their house.
So I would put them in their house.
With the rental business,
Has there ever been a time when you felt unsafe in these areas?
Personally, me, no.
I mean.
Where was your mission again?
I was in Argentina and then COVID hit and then I was in California.
That stuff doesn't scare me at all.
I took my older brother to some of them and he was, he was sketched out.
But I'm like, this is, this is West Valley.
I did one install like two weeks ago in Rose Park, which I had always heard like Rose Park is so dangerous.
and it was like the nicest couple ever and they're like we want to run this for the rest of our lives
and that's like sounds good so do most people end up having them for longer than six or 12 months
I mean I've only done it for a year so I can't exactly say that but kind of back to like being
observant like I think most people have the mentality of I'm going to only rent here for one year
but I think a lot of people end up staying there for five years I don't know what the percentage is
but out of the 30 apartments my grandparents had there's probably
15 that have been there for 15 years. And yeah, there's some overturn for the other ones,
but there's a lot of them that just, they think they're going to rent there for a year and then
they raise their whole family and die in the apartment. And I think there are some people that
from day one say, I will be renting this until I die. And I'm like, okay. Cool with me.
Sounds good to me. Most people listening to this or many people listening to this,
they're thinking, oh man, that's, that's sad. That's what a waste of money because the all
alternative to that is they could own their own unit and they would just pay for it once.
But really, the alternative for them is the laundromat, which is expensive and onerous.
And you're carrying laundry all over the place.
And it's time consuming.
And most of the time, depending on how much laundry you have, it's more expensive than $60 a month.
So, yeah, I mean, that was the biggest response from your, from the Twitter was just like,
these people are idiots for, for renting.
And honestly, I think there's like five or six.
reasons why the business works or like reasons why people do it. A, it is cheaper than the
laundromat. I mean, multiple people have said I spent over $100 a month. And people in the Twitter
was like, well, that's if you have four kids. I'm like, yeah, I'm in Utah. Everyone has four,
like all of these people have four kids. It is cheaper than the laundry mat. Even this week, I've had
two people call and say, I just bought a washer and dryer off Facebook marketplace. It was $400.
it broke the next month and the guy blocked me.
They're like,
can you?
I mean,
a lot of people do that.
They'll sell a washer and dryer
and they don't want to be responsible for
whatever happens to it.
So those people are out $400 and they don't have a washer and dryer.
And I am just catering to the people who don't have any trucks.
They don't have any way to deliver it.
And they just would,
they would rather have a working washer and dryer and pay a monthly fee
and know that it's always going to.
to work and if it breaks down that the maintenance is is free in an ideal world like they should all be
able to get a be able to have really good credit and be able to do a financing option and buy
their own and maybe have a similar thing but like that's not reality not everyone has yeah good
credit and they they can't do that and I mean what's funny to me after because I thought about it a lot is like
every business you're buying something for more than what it's worth so like I sold pest control
Why does anyone do pest control?
The chemicals cost $5.
Chemicals we used.
The average treatment with the truck and the employee and everything was $32.
And you would charge that person $150 or $180.
That's every business.
The chemicals for a pool cleaning cost $5, too, I bet.
And I guarantee you pay $100.
So like, yeah, I own a business.
You're going to pay me.
Honestly, it's for the convenience.
It's for the convenience of having a watch and free install and people that, yes, I believe there are people that that live month to month, but their other option is just spending more money at the laundromat.
So anyways, that's my that's my soapbox on like why it works.
Well, the fact of the matter is financial education is terrible in America.
And so because of that, we have a large percentage of Americans that make poor financial choices.
honestly by no fault of their own.
They grew up with parents that did the same thing.
They didn't learn any better in school.
And that's the hand that we're dealt, right?
And so you can do one of two things.
You can say, I'm not going to be an affordable housing.
I'm not going to touch that.
I don't want to be a slum lord.
Like, you could say that the reason is for ethical reasons or just for headache reasons.
Or you could say, hmm, the less good guys there are in this business, the higher
percentage of bad guys there are in this business, making bad decisions that are in their
best interest, the higher percentage of people that are taking.
advantage of people that live in poverty, right? Yeah. And so we can either just throw our hands up
and say, oh, it's a shame. No one knows any financial education. No one even knows what a credit
score is. They make dumb purchases. People are so dumb. People are so dumb. Why do they do that?
Well, they don't want to do that, right? Like they're born into that situation. They're kept in that
situation. And we can either turn our heads or we can donate to charities or we can start a
business in that space and commit to being a good guy, right?
Maybe it's an RV park.
Maybe it's your business.
And we can not be a piece of crap and take good care of people and treat them like
we would treat any other customer in any other industry.
I was going to pull up a picture on my phone because I think a lot of people think I'm renting
to like the hood, which I don't even know what the hood in Utah looks like, but I would
say almost 50% of them are one to two year old brand new town homes and either Vineyard, Eagle
mountain, Saratoga Springs.
Like, these are brand new people.
These are brand new homes.
I bet the people are paying over $2,000 a month in rent.
They don't want to deal with.
They don't want to think about it.
And I mean, even on Facebook marketplace, like, it was a little bit discouraging.
Like, I'd say for a while, once a week, I'd get someone cussing me out saying,
you're an idiot.
You're a retard.
Who's going to do this?
And I was like, all right.
Well, like, I'm already doing it.
And people are doing it.
My other thing was I only needed one percent of Utah County to,
to do it for it to work.
And yeah, I mean, there's, yeah, I only needed less than 1% really for it to make sense to me.
It's funny because Nick, my business partner, he, he always buys new vehicles, brand new off the lot.
And I've never done that.
Well, I did with my Tesla, but other than that, I would never do that.
It's the worst decision ever, right?
You want to buy a car that's like one to four years old, still under warranty, but it's already
depreciated.
And I've been telling him this.
And his excuse is, his reason is really good.
He's like, I grew up pork.
My dad was always tinkering with cars.
Our car was always breaking down.
It was unreliable, broken down on the side of the road, stressful, walking home.
And I don't want to ever deal with that.
I don't want to ever think about that.
So yeah, I'm paying a premium to buy a brand new car off the lot.
It's a poor financial decision.
I know it is.
But I don't want to have to deal with it.
I don't want to think about it.
So there's literally no difference between that decision and the decision that your customers are making.
This is going to sound maybe controversial of what I said before, but like, it is surprising how,
how do I word this without being offensive? People, okay, this is just an example. So dryers,
they have two different types of cords. There's a three-prong cord and a four-prong cord. I think
anything, any house built after 1996 has to have the new, the new cord, anything before that has the old cord.
if someone bought it's a very easy what i'm trying to say is if someone bought the wrong cord i would say
like maybe 60% of the population would have no idea how to unscrew the cord and put the new one on
like that's the kind of people i'm dealing with they have no idea how to like grab a channel lock
and put the hose on they don't know how to clamp anything like they don't own a drill
you don't own anything so those are the people that are just like yeah i i'm not a handy man
and I'm not going to install my washer and dryer.
To me, it's common sense.
Yeah, I get it.
And I'm on that spectrum somewhat because I don't, I'm not super handy.
But at the end of the day, I learned like, it's a lot more convenient to be handy.
Like I have a couple of bikes, you know, a mountain bike and a road bike.
And they break down and I'm driving them back and forth to the bike shop.
And then I just learned how to do it.
And it just for a convenience sake, you know.
Oh, yeah.
I want to ask some nuts and bolts about the business.
But before I do, how would you address the common haters in the common.
that say like why this wouldn't work.
We talked about before the call.
Like what are the top four, top five reasons that people think this is dumb and what are your
rebuttals to those?
We kind of went over the first one.
The first rebuttal is just like, no one's going to do this.
And I mean, the rebuttal is they are.
It's the simple reasons that, yeah, I already explained that part.
Second rebuttal is probably like, okay, well, what if something happens?
For some reason, there's a misconception, misconception that insurance costs like tens of
thousands of dollars, which it doesn't.
Someone on your Twitter said like, this guy's for sure not legal.
He's not insured.
I wasn't insured for two months.
I got three quotes.
I have a $2 million policy.
One million is like if someone steps on a screw and wants to sue me.
And the other million dollars is if I flood a whole apartment complex and I'm responsible for it.
The whole policy for the whole year is like $600.
Yep.
So that's my rebuttal to like, well, what if you.
flood something. Okay, well, I have insurance. And also, you own apartments. If someone, like,
this happened to my dad's apartment last week, like, they didn't need, they installed the washer
driver themselves. They didn't hook up the hose or tighten it. It flooded the apartment.
And what I'm trying to say is like, I will take responsibility because I installed it, but like also
the tenant is responsible for, if something got flooded in your rental, you want to, it would most
likely you would look back at the at the renter and they wouldn't even be responsible you would just
do it okay so that's the second one is they think that i'm going to burn a house down or whatever
you just buy insurance that's my simple rebuttal it's not that not that expensive yeah third one is
someone's going to steal it we kind of went over it like yeah someone could steal it there's a ways around
it you could put air tags in them you could put tracking devices in them you could do more creative
things or you could just say they're not going to steal it. And if they do, it's the same exact
model. What I'm doing is the same exact model as single family homes on a different, on a really
small scale. If you have a hundred of them, that's great. 95 of them are going to be awesome.
Five of them are going to trash your apartment and you're going to lose a lot of money. But as long as
you have enough, if someone steals them, then you have enough that it doesn't matter.
you just added into your business math that one's going to get stolen or two is going to get stolen.
I don't know.
Fourth of rebuttal, let's see.
What else do people say?
I mean, a lot of people are saying like, oh, they worry about like the deliveries.
I sent you that video of the cart.
That was the best $800 I ever spent on Amazon.
So for the first six months, me and my brother would install him after school, after he was done
with school.
And anything over the second story, I couldn't do by myself.
And so I'd always ask him, like, are there stairs in your house?
If so, I have to do it at 5 o'clock.
There's something called a stair climber dolly and it just has rotating things.
It can lift 800 pounds.
You just push a button.
It lifts them all up.
And I use it for every single install.
I've done every install by myself since then for the last six months.
Beautiful.
Those are the main rebuttals.
I can't think of any others right now.
I mean, there's a lot of like, I guess some of the pains are you are dealing with some maybe lower class people.
Their credit cards do get declined.
some people do change their phone numbers and don't let me know there's a lot of ways you could
get around that but everyone I've dealt with you just text them and say hey your credit card was
declined like do you want to add another card or can you stop or are you like done renting or
what's the deal and everyone has responded and has been easy to easy to work with and then another
thing I'm going to mention is that I am not the slum I've never charged a late fee
on anyone they're supposed to pay at first it was like $10 if they had a late fee all I care about is if they
communicate with me I'll never charge a late fee some people are a month behind like I would rather than pay
it's easier for that for me to just wait and pay than it is for me to go get their washer and dryer
so as long as they are committed to keep paying I will never charge a late fee they're also supposed
to rent it for six months if they rent it for two months and say they're done they're supposed to pay
$50. I've never charged anyone that.
I've never charged a late fee in the
mobile home park business either. And I
don't tell them that up front. We put late fees
in the contract. If they ghost me,
I'm like all or nothing, right? If they
ghost me, they won't answer their phone. They're late.
They're not making any communication.
Then I have to evict them.
I have to. I'm not in the
late fee business. That's not how we make
money. We just charge rent.
That's the same
same model. As long as they communicate,
when they start ghosting me, then I'm like,
I'm going to come knock your door, but as long as you text me, then I don't care when,
when you pay as long as you pay.
Yeah, because ghosting almost always means they're not going to pay.
Yeah.
Lightning round, what are the tools you need to run this business?
As far as like hardware, I mean, you need probably like a hundred, maybe not even a hundred,
maybe like $75 worth of tools for blows, probably not even $75, maybe like $50.
$50, you need some basic tools, screwdriver.
drivers, channel lock, some type of moving cart, a way to transport, whether that's a truck or a trailer.
Most cars can actually pull a trailer.
They have a capacity of at least 1,000 pounds, which that's all the washroom dryer weighs.
The only way a couple hundred.
So you can put it hitch on most cars for $400 and buy a trailer for probably $1,000.
As far as other things, it mean, you need some type of contract.
You need some type of payment processor.
I would say some place to store at least two to three sets.
the storage facility is typically just the apartments you're renting in, but there is sometimes
some overturn of between four and five machines that they're done renting and you don't have
someone rented out. So you need some space. And that's really it. I mean, it's a pretty,
basic business. Is there anything you would have done differently if you could start this
over from scratch again? I would not have bought as many new ones probably. Well, yeah, I bought a lot of,
I bought a lot of new ones.
And I think there's pros and cons.
The new ones are going to last a lot longer without needing maintenance.
I used a lot of money when I could have probably scaled.
I probably could have scaled to the point I'm at with like half the money.
How often do you have to fix these things?
Or how often can you just walk someone through it over the phone?
The used ones do have more maintenance because you're buying.
So there's like a lot of weird stuff about washers and dryers.
they're actually made to break now.
I guess like they are not very, very good.
But the square ones that Whirlpool made, they owned all of them.
They owned like Maytag and everyone and they made the same washer and dryer.
They're all interchangeable parts.
Those ones are really easy to work on.
And what's really nice is there's two websites.
There's one called repair clinic and one called appliancerepair.com, I think.
You type in the serial, the model number.
It has every single model.
number that's ever been created and it has like 30 videos for each one of like okay if it's if
it's if it's not heating here's one of the nine problems it can be and then it has a part number
you copy and paste that part number into amazon and it's like a third of the price as the website
and you can fix you can fix everything i i probably get maybe maybe it would average out to one
call a week but i don't think it would even be that much well out of a hundred units
There's not that much that can go wrong.
Like a dryer, if you actually take it apart, it's literally just a motor that spins the barrel with a belt.
So as long as your motor is working and the motor turns on the heating element.
So there's only like two things that and the heating element's like $12 on Amazon.
Jeez.
So they're pretty.
There's not a lot of maintenance.
And back to the ball and chain thing.
I like I lived a completely normal life this year.
Like I went to Columbia in April.
I went to California for a week.
I went and picked pine nuts for three months.
All of all this business was doing this.
And if anyone wants to scale it,
like all you have to do is find on Facebook,
find someone who sells lots of washers and dryers.
They're most likely know how to fix them as well
and just contact them and say,
hey, like build a relationship with them and say,
hey, like I,
are you someone I can call to go fix these when I'm not there?
I have a really good relationship with someone in Utah that when I'm not there,
they'll and they'll fix machines, replace machines and do everything.
And they charge me maybe $75 to $100 per thing.
But I wouldn't do anything for less than $100.
So they shouldn't either.
Okay.
Kyler, this is great.
I think people are excited about this.
I just got an email an hour ago from a guy that was wanting to know when it would be released.
Where can people find you?
I'm going to make a landing page, but at the moment, I have a really, really get a website that is.
It's okay.
It's called Utah Appliance Rental.
And my, I mean, my cell phone number is the cell phone number that's on the business.
And also there's a form that you can fill out.
It'll think you're renting a washer and dryer, but there's also an ad comments.
So you can add whatever, whatever you want there.
Utah Appliancesrental.com.
Beautiful website, beautiful business.
Half of it doesn't work.
but the other half does it.
It's good enough where people can fill out a form
and they actually do fill out the form
and I've gotten quite a few leads from it.
Okay.
All right.
Well, thanks, man.
Awesome.
Thank you, Chris.
All right, what did you think?
Please share it with a friend
and we'll see you next time on the Kerner office.
