The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - How to Build No-Code SaaS Business in Days. Ep. #108

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

I sat down with Sam Thompson (https://x.com/ImSamThompson), a regular on the podcast, to riff on business ideas. We start with the prosumer software market, breaking down why targeting creators, real estate agents, and other prosumers offers huge opportunities. Then, we get into viral referral marketing, looking at the strategies behind companies like Robinhood and Dropbox, and brainstorm how to apply these methods outside of tech. Finally, we discuss box truck businesses, breaking down how to use mobile assets for high-margin ideas like podcast studios, golf simulators, and more.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 & Highlights01:09 Introduction to Prosumer Software04:02 The Power of Viral Coefficient05:02 Referral Marketing Success Stories07:51 Creative Referral Marketing Strategies13:19 Innovative Box Truck Business Ideas15:37 Mobile Business Models and Flexibility21:40 Fake Private Jet Studio25:50 The Food Truck Parking Dilemma27:55 Retrofitting Cars for Profit28:30 Exploring Turo Opportunities30:55 Camper Conversion Vans Business32:28 AI Personal Assistants and Agents34:23 Building and Monetizing Subreddits41:34 Market Positioning and Pricing Strategies

You build a mobile private jet studio. For everyone on Instagram that wants to flex, their pictures and videos in a private jet, it's completely fake. If people want to be vain, they want to pay me $80 an hour to take pictures inside of a fake private jet, I'm happy to oblige.

I'm obsessed with the idea of starting a business where math is on your side. Train your algorithm. We're thoughtlessly, like, letting the algorithms train us, but we've got to tell the algorithm what we want and it'll show us. If you're listening to this and you want to make more money,

please DM us. We have the idea. We just need people to execute on building the software for the use cases. So I have a literal headache right now. I just got done talking to my good friend Sam Thompson. He's a recurring guest. I've had him on six or eight times. Wow, you're going to love this.

I promise you're going to love it. It was 50-50 between internet businesses and home service businesses. It's going to be split into two episodes. The next one will be exactly a week from today. So come back and listen to that. This was really, really good. I'm not overhyping it. You're going to love it.

We did no prep. There was no Google Doc open in another tab. We just started riffing on ideas. and we came up with some really cool stuff. Let me know what you think. Please like and subscribe. Share with a friend. We'll see you next time.

So what kind of software is good to you right now? Pro Sumer software. Explain to like I know what it means, Sam. Like obviously, I'm a genius. Yeah, yeah. Other people might not. I like prosumer products in general, specifically software. Because you can, when I say prosumer, I mean real estate agents, content creators,

musicians, right? People that can be targeted via marketing and advertising as if they are a consumer, but they are making a purchase decision as a investment, right? As a, I'm trying to grow, right? If you can lead with the aversion of make more money as like your offer. But if you broaden that up to a pro sumer market, your TAM is huge, right? versus like, hey, we sell software to whatever B2B companies that are doing north of a million dollars. Like, you say that and your TAM shrinks.

Like, you're just so small. And it's really hard to find a decision maker. Right. You're just like you're playing in a different game versus in a pro sumer landscape. You can run Facebook ads for, you can run Facebook ads for anything ever. But like when you're talking about a sizable market, like that's where Facebook ads comes in. Right. Like there's, you know, whatever it is, three million real estate agents in the United States.

And it's like, we can go after those people with ads for something, whether that is, you know, software, info, anything that is designed to sell to that market. And like, you can find them via ads, but they make the decision around making more money or growing more leads or whatever that is. And then I just like software because recurring revenue, higher multiple. lower barrier. Yeah, it's like lower, lower barrier to entry now than there ever has been. I mean, like, you've thought like I've sold microsas companies that have built with no code. Like, it's not, I don't have to go, you know, hire five developers and spend 100 grand to do this anymore. And so like, we can go spin up the software in a day and a half, tested on the market, get validation and then go run ads at that. And like, trust that as long as we run it as that break even acquisition, you don't need venture funding. And then you have recurring rev that's software. And you can go get a four to six X. Break even on LTV on first month's revenue. Yeah.

I mean, if you want to create like an aggressive up into the right growth, you have to get break even on first month. Because break even on LTV doesn't do anything for you. That means you're just like spending all the time and energy for no profit whatsoever. Unless you have like an aggressive referral campaign or high upsells. Yeah, yeah. If you're going to segment out all of your users based on that and you can get a viral coefficient to two or three, then yeah, you could break even LTV on the top.

Explain to us what a viral coefficient is. When I think about viral coefficient, it's basically like I acquire one user, but acquiring one user equals X number of users based on average referral. And so like for a lot of companies, it's a super underrated way to make your marketing campaigns more profitable because if you can turn say you're acquiring customers for 10 bucks right but if you can turn one acquisition into 1.8 right you just improved all your metrics across the board and so i think in general like referral is one of the channels that i mean people just need to like focus on it more right like you already have especially when you're talking i get not wanting to do it as much when you're

smaller. But like when you have a thousand customers, if you can go get, you know, 20% of those to refer to friends, it's like, you know, you're bumping it by 40%. Like you're, you're starting to like feel that. Okay. So three examples that come to mind when you talk about a viral coefficient, viral referral marketing. PayPal, Robin Hood, Coinbase. And all of them, it was like 10 bucks. Robin Hood's was genius because Robin's, oh, Robin Hood's was so genius. They had one the most viral marketing campaigns of all time. They've had several. But like the second or third one was refer a friend, get a free stock. Right. Right. And it's like the stock was like $6.50, $6.50. But it's like, oh, what if it 10x? Right. What if a 10x? It's more, it's more valuable

than six. Realistically, most of the companies that were willing to let Robin would give away their free stocks were companies you really wouldn't want to invest in, but it didn't matter. No. People like the, they wanted to get into the game for free. and so they would do it. And then they go to the party and it's like, yeah, I'm investing in stocks now. That's like the flex. That's really what people are paying for. Dude, but PayPal did at first, I feel like.

Like sign up for PayPal and get $10. Sent every friend you get to sign up for PayPal and you get $10. Yeah. And then Coinbase did it. And it was always $10. Like they never have to spend more than $10. But what's the LTV lifetime value of a Coinbase or a Robinhood user? $500?

$5,000? Yeah, I mean, massive. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's again, like you said, I like the word asymmetric. Like, yeah, we'll pay X amount for this if it equals a 500 X. And especially with venture backed, like, they can support a much longer cash conversion cycle on that, which is why I lean to wanting break even acquisition. Like month one is like you yeah, you then alleviate the need for cash because your cash conversion cycle is 30 days or less. Most of the time. you would want it to be, you know, whatever your trial, if you're doing a trial, your trial length. And so like a seven day trial, let's say you're selling a $30 a month. And it's like, cool, you can get trial signups for five bucks. As long as one of six of those trials converts, you get that cash back in your account. Let's say it's a seven day trial, like within seven days. And so you can, you can acquire four users for the same $30 because you're just using that same dollar amount.

every single time. And so you can shorten the cash conversion cycle and accelerate your spend if you know that it's break even. Because like if I can get break even acquisition month one, I'm throwing the farm at that funnel. Right. Like I'm going to I'm going to get all my money back within seven days. So yeah, I'm going to go to spend $10,000 this week on ads, acquire that all of those users and still end the week with $10,000 in my account. And so if you just function the ad funnel like that and just pay attention to the cash conversion. It's, I mean, money. What are some creative ways? Let's brainstorm because I feel like in FinTech, this has been done, right? Like, give away $10 for referring every user. But I feel like people just aren't getting creative enough, myself included,

with taking what PayPal did and copying and pasting it with anything else. What are some creative ways that we could leverage a viral marketing, a referral marketing campaign that's not in FinTech? all referral comes down to is like incentive alignment on both the referer and the referee. And so like the ones that we've seen work the best, which like, you know, Robin Hood's a good example. Dropbox was like an OG of the dual sided incentive program, right? Like I forget exactly what it was, but they gave you like one gigabyte of free data. And if you, for every friend that you referred, you got one free and then your friend would get an extra one for free. And so like the dual-sided incentive seems to work pretty well.

I mean, even- And the marginal cost of an additional gigabyte to them is nothing. Nothing, right. The value to you might be $5 a month. Right. The cost to them might be $0.5 a month. Right. And so it's like, yeah, it's just figuring those pieces of it out.

I think the other, I mean, dual-sided is where we try to live, like, even like the link that I just gave you for creative OS. Like, we're saying, we're going to pay you and your audience will get 50% off your first month. right like dual sided versus one or the other and we've just seen that work a lot better especially especially when you're dealing with like bigger affiliates like they want to feel special they need something that's not just like hey sign up for this thing it's like hey no no sign up for this thing because you get this benefit you know in home service and and a couple what I would call more traditional offers I think

that it gets I don't know it's it's like you know a lot of home service companies like have started to introduce like a monthly maintenance plan or like insurance, but like, hey, if you pay 99 a month, you get, you know, priority scheduling or you get whatever that looks like. And I feel like that's one of those things that the marginal cost is, is low, right? But like, hey, we like, you sign your friend up, like you both get a free year of our pro whatever. And then as the business owner, you just have to be cognizant of like you said, to Dropbox's point. Like, what are the things that? that are high perceived value to the end user that you don't have that much cost associated with.

And so, like, I don't know. I think there's in home service specifically, I think that there's a world where you could do will offer you, you know, quarterly HVAC maintenance check-ins, right? which like yeah it takes your employees time but if you position those the right way like that's just a sales opportunity for your team of like yeah you're going to go out to every single past client's home every quarter every six months whatever it is and do an audit of their HVAC system and you'll find a few things that they probably should do and like but they get the perceived benefit of this free system check or whatever you want to call that. And so there's stuff like that that I think's interesting.

I got some examples for you. First of all, I just heard about this handyman in the Northeast somewhere. And his specialty is like kind of like farm and ranch homes, nice homes, not like big mansions, not new homes, but older homes on acreage that are worth like $1.5 to $3 million. That they're kind of quirky. They might have a septic system. They got a lot of things that can break. And he was doing fine as a handyman.

but he implemented a monthly fee that was paid yearly, $1,200 a year. And it basically put you at the top of the line anytime you have any time. And these were specific, this is how niche it was, not just like farm and ranch style homes, 1.5 to 3 million on acreage, but those were all rentals as well. So there was a septic issue, a sprinkler issue, something that, you know, the furnace goes out, he will be there immediately. I love that. It's more of like an insurance policy.

Yeah, I was going to say, like if you're in an area, that has a sizable amount of like a rental market, that's a no brainer. Like go after every single property owner that has rentals. Or Airbnb. Right. Yeah. Like a broken septic is a headache whether you live in the house or not.

But like if you're a landlord and that happens, you're specifically annoyed. You know what I mean? Like you really want to get that fixed because like it's costing you money. It's just an issue. Right. Like the whole thing. I think there's a world.

because then you just go to all the rental management companies, right? Like you go to the guy that's like like an Airbnb management or whatever, but like there's these big, you know, rental spots that like manage all of these like owner rentals. And it's like you go to those guys where they have, you know, 15, 25 properties that they're managing on behalf of the owner. And it's like, yeah, $1,200 bucks a pop and like you'll get priority maintenance like same day guarantee, right? Like, you can, you can really craft an offer there. It's like, you get 100

properties under that and like, all right, cool. It's 120k a year. Like, just on that. I'm obsessed with the idea of starting a business where math is on your side, right? Like, did you see my video about the whole in one challenge? Yeah, dude. I was looking it up because I was like, dude, I don't know where I could get the living in L.A. land and like the ability to do that is is limited. I was like, dude, why don't I get a box truck

and put a simulator in there? That's exclusively for the challenge. Like, just for that challenge. One whole golf simulator in a box truck. You pay $10 for 10 balls. You know what I mean? Save.

I'm a big, that you want to, this is totally a tangent, bro. But like, box truck businesses. I'm trademarking it here live on. Let's see if that. domain's open.

But like, I love, I love where this is going. Box truck businesses, dude. Box truck businesses.com. Dude, why isn't there a golf simulator in the back of a box truck that's fully wrapped? It has to look legit or you're afraid you're get kidnapped. I'm saying. That rolls up to festivals.

I'm saying. 1999 or 9999, you hop in there for 30 minutes and just golf. Why is that a thing? Look, I am on the same page. I think, so there was this dude when I was living in Boston. my barber and I were talking about this guy this years ago. But he got a,

I don't know if it was a box truck, but maybe like a mobile home or whatever that is. And he retrofitted it out as a barbershop. And all he would do is Monday through Friday, he'd pick a different, massive corporate campus and go park it right outside.

And everyone would come down throughout the day and get their haircut in his truck in the parking lot of their office building. It's genius. Brilliant. Like absolutely brilliant. Because who doesn't have time to step away from their desk for a half hour.

For a half hour. And so he would be booked up solid every single day, five days a week, chilling. So genius. All and like no rent cost. Like sure, gas and insurance, but like you're paying for that stuff. You know what I mean? It was like. Yeah.

And so it's a box truck business. And like the food trucks are massive, right? Like they are everywhere. Like mobile restaurant. The math makes sense. Like cool. Like there are issues with it. But like cool.

And so I've just been thinking. about what else can I put in a box truck? And the other one that I thought about was a mobile podcast studio. Dude, you get a box truck. You put the camera set up, the whole thing in the back. And then you just let people book you two hours in DFW. You roll up. You've got a technician there.

You just say, hey, we're going to film the pod. You know what I mean? And it's like you can charge for pods. You can charge 200 an hour for you to be able to film, record and then don't even get me started on the upsells for digital services that you can put on the back end and like you know every single podcast guy that you have coming in film you say hey we'll edit all your ticcccc and your reels right like and it's all built on the back of what let's just say a 20 to 30 thousand dollar investment to retrofit a box truck that people can sit in in the back

and film a pod or like same with this dude with the barber shop like you're buying a couple barber's chairs and a meet like or dude you freaking you build out a mobile barbershop and then you rent it out to barbers bro that don't have 30 grand that's what i'm saying like i'm i'm i'm in this vein similar similar line to me going and getting this new office we exist in this super digital world and there's so much benefit that comes from the digital world what i'm interested in curious about paying attention to is how do you leverage a singular, like, high intentional, like, physical asset that then feeds digital, right? Where it's like the podcast thing. Like, if I, if I ran a podcast editing agency, the first thing that I would try to do is launch a dedicated

physical podcast studio in a major metro where there's a high population of entrepreneurs. and then I would use that to one, like it's almost like a loss leader, Costco chicken, right? Like people can come through, record their pod. You let them do it for 150 bucks an hour when the rest of the market is at 250. But you have all the additional services that are way higher margin on the back end. And so I feel the exact same way around this podcast studio, around the barbershop, around like, there are things that like a physical asset enables to move. in the digital world and like yeah i just think it's interesting like and they're not that expensive the more the world is online the more having a physical presence is a flex i know you're standing out and it doesn't have to be an expensive presence but dude my mind is just buzzing right now i'm like

i'm like i'm like so the other one that's an o g we used to do them we had one for like my boys like 12th birthday party the game trucks right like the game truck my son just went to one of those right where they roll up with the trailer. They've got four TVs and four Xboxes and any game you want to play. You know that every neighbor kid is begging his mom for. Everyone wants to run it. Like they just park these things at storage units. Like the unit that I had when I was living in Dallas that I kept all my stuff here in LA had six game trucks parked in the back. I think that that's a brilliant model. Like and I think the differentiator really in the while like the podcast one is like if you can extend revenue outside of the restraint of the physical thing. Because like physical. things have built-in restraints. You have one podcast studio. You can only have 10 hours of total booking so you're limited revenue-wise. If 10 people come and film a podcast at your studio every single week and you can convert two of those to $2,000 a month for podcast management, clip

editing, guest outreach, right? Like there's a slew of additional add-on digital services that you can do it. Record for free. Right. And then upsell 20% of them at $2,500 a month for podcast editing or agency services. And you can do all of that for less than 20, 30 grand to, like, build this asset, which then you can use in content. You can, you know what I mean? Like, there's just like an interesting, there's an interesting world there. And I think the box truck, I've just been calling them box truck businesses in my head. Like, I think, and it goes back to what we've talked about on a bunch of these episodes that we've done before. So like, there's a lot of businesses that, like, can very comfortably make you $200 to $300,000 a year.

that like don't require that much. Like is a box truck podcast studio going to be, you know, a five million dollar a year business? No. But if you're making $60,000 as a marketing manager at IBM, it's like, you can go make $180 a year like running this mobile podcast studio. To me,

that feels like a good move. All right, I got too many ideas. You got on me run. I'm going to run, okay? I'm here. All right. First of all, I've seen the mobile barbershop idea before.

And it's like, okay, that's cool. I might do a reel about it one day. And it's like, it's cool. What you said is a perfect example of taking a good idea and making it a great idea by adding distribution to it. Simply parking it outside of a big office complex, right? You wrap it because it's got to look professional. It's got to look nice. And then you can put one of those like those moving digital billboards on the side of it, you know?

And you could roll up outside of like an Oracle office and say like, hey, 20% off for all Oracle employees today only. Right. And it looks like that truck is there for Oracle. Like as far as they know, Oracle commissioned that truck to be there. One big QR code on the side that goes directly to the booking link and call it a day. Yeah. And guess what?

20% off of what? They don't know what your prices are. Yeah. Like 20% off of whatever you want. It's an impulse buy. And then they get their haircut with you. You get their name number and email. You say, hey,

tell everyone a month later. Exactly. And then every time you go to that office building, It's going to be easier and easier and easier. And either you have a line every time or you raise your prices. And then you layer in a dual side of incentive program and say, hey, if you refer a friend, they get a free beer and you get a free beer during your next haircut. At the register, hey, I'm going to take 10 bucks off right now, but I want you to text your office buddies and tell them that we're down here.

Right. And then show me your text. Right. Right then. Right then there's this company. Okay. So sprinter vans, as long as they're the same year, make and model, they're all the same, right? Of course they are.

There's this company that will make like a shell and they'll build whatever you want or need inside of that sprinter van shell. And then you can just put it up on a lift and you can put it in your sprinter van. So hear me out. You build like a mobile barbershop in a shell and you roll up, say Tuesdays and Thursdays. You cut hair. You come back to the shop, back to the garage, back to the storage unit. You take the shell out. And then I just had researched on this a few hours ago, so it's fresh.

You build a mobile private jet studio. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. For everyone on Instagram that wants to flex, there are pictures and videos in a private jet. It's completely fake. Would I do it? No, would you do it? No.

But what I profit from it? Absolutely. If people want to be vain, they want to pay me $80 an hour to take pictures inside a private, fake private jet. I'm happy to oblige. Yeah. Either it's two different businesses or it's. It's the same business.

You just get different conversions on this little shell and just pop it in and out of the same sprinter van. I guess the difference is you got to wrap a certain way. Yeah. That is the difference maker. So anyway, dude, like your private jet fake studio is a much bigger market than your podcast idea. Not that it's bigger or better or it's just different. It's a different price point, right?

Right. And it's an impulse buy. So if you're like a 32 year old millennial that wants to flex and you're walking by shopping and you see it, you might. never be the person to be so vain as to go search and to book and to pay and to drive and go to a studio. And by the way, there's only like two or three of these in the country. Right. Right. There's like New York and L.A. That's it. But if you walk by one and it's convenient and it's right there, it could be like a gag gift. Like you, you could post a picture of it just as a joke like knowing

that it's fake. You know what I'm saying? A hundred percent. Dude, 40 to $240 an hour is what they charge for these private jets. That's like that's like that's the. That's, piece that I'm saying and then you're you're taking all right if you're watching this clip right now you you are watching this on youtube and if you are a fan of podcasts please check on my podcast while you're at it because sometimes I have podcasts that aren't on YouTube and sometimes I have YouTube's that aren't on podcasts so check out the Kerner office on any podcast platform or you can go to tkopod.com also my newsletter will throw that in there there are no ads it's weekly it's different content than my podcast and YouTube newsletter dot chrisjkirner.com you'll see the link and we'll see you there

That's why I like the box truck is you're taking a overhead expense of rent out of your math. It's like it's like the benefit when you own your home outright, you don't have a mortgage anymore. It changes your entire cost of living equation. Right. And so I'm like, okay, cool. And to be blunt, you can also finance a truck, right?

So like you're saying you're paying $799 for whatever the truck is on finance versus $1,500 a month for a physical location, which then has limitations. It only has so many people within a mile radius versus it's the food truck model. Like food trucks go where the people are versus restaurants are stuck where they are. And I'm like barbershops, podcast studios, golf simulators, you know, game trucks, right? Like there's, I feel like there's the, there's a laundry list. The dog grooming is like probably one of the more popular examples of that, right? Like, yeah, dog grooming will come to you.

Guys, they're out here running. Or roll up to a dog park. Right. It's like in the parking lot. Yeah, you just can like pick up your office and take it to where your customers are. And to me, the benefit of that is just like insane. I used to have iPhone repair shops. And some days it was slow.

And it was just like, well, we're slow today. That sucks. I guess we're going to do. I bet our sales today will be 150 bucks. Oh well, maybe tomorrow we'll do 500. But with this, it's like, all right, let's roll out. We're going somewhere else. And then you layer in some fun stuff about geo fenced ads and like, you know, like,

you could go roll into the Oracle office building and like geo target specifically with Facebook ads with an ad that says attention Oracle employees. We're outside, right? Sure. Yeah, whatever they're on. If location, San Francisco, if job title is at Oracle. Right. We're here.

Like, come outside and get a haircut. Like six spots remaining. You know what I mean? I got two more ideas for you that are like in the same genre. We don't have to change the subject. Right. Okay. That's sick.

Number one, I'm talking to a guy last week. I got two ideas from this one guy. Lives here in DFW. Does really well for himself. He wanted to buy a food truck as a passion project. Not trying to make money, not a chef. And it did well. But he ran into a big problem.

No place to park this thing. There's no place to park it. Storage facilities don't want it. They don't have space for. They have to be like, at least in California, it has to be a commissary. Yeah. Like there's like there's a thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Like they don't all have to stay refrigerated 24-7, but his did. Right. They got to plug it in and you need three-phase power. And most like RV facilities or sorry, most self-storage facilities that offer parking on the sign don't have that. And so what he did and he was from Houston. In Houston, these commissary parking lots are all over. Correct.

Okay. For whatever reason, I don't know why Houston DFW similar sizes. They're all over. And in DFW, he lived in Frisco, which is like 40 minutes from downtown Dallas. And there's nothing in Plano, Frisco, McKinney, Allen. There's no parking lots up there. It's all suburbs. It's all, you know, crumbles and Chipotle's and Chick-fil-A's, right?

The three Cs. He was having to drive from his house in Frisco to downtown Dallas to this parking lot just to get his thing to go out to a catering order that was back in Frisco. Right. Super inefficient. Yeah. Inefficient. Guess what these commissary parking lots. charge per month per spot.

I'm talking literally like a gravel lot with barbed wire fencing and a plug. I don't know. Like a thousand, a thousand a month. 8.50 for a parking spot. Are you kidding me? Right. That's nuts. And you want more customers.

Go find the food trucks. Right. Like we know where food trucks are. Right. So we just go anytime there's a festival, you just go roll up, be like, where do you guys park this thing. The moment they like go roll their eyes, you're like, that's a customer. Thank you. There it is. There it is. Let me tell you about this spot. Yep. So that's one idea I got from this guy. Second idea. His business is retrofitting cars with like LED lighting underlighting. I know nothing about this industry because I've

never done it. He was telling me about this Tesla model S that he retrofitted. He, you know, they have glass roofs. He put like stars in the roof. Oh, like the like the rolls. voice type vibe. Yes. He put like LED lighting and in the doors and like under the seeds everywhere. Three grand, not nearly as expensive as what I thought. Right. Right. And I asked him, I was like, let me guess. The guy rents it out on Turo. He's like, absolutely he does. And I'm like, okay, this is interesting. So as we're talking, because I can't wait, I'm on Turo and I'm looking and I'm just looking at the pictures and I set a search six months out for a Tesla Model S. And then I set a search for this weekend. It's like six months.

out, you know, 79 results available this weekend, seven results available. Interesting. Let's do the same search with Toyota Camry. Six months from now, 80 results available. This weekend, 60 results available. Oh, okay. If I'm going to put something on tour, oh, it needs to be a Tesla Model S. Now, obviously, do more research, find more options. There's probably something even better than that. And then I start looking, okay, I looked at cyber trucks. And it's like you've got, you know, your plain-jane gray cyber trucks and then you've got one wrap like an American flag or wrap like a marble countertop or green camo and sure enough, Turo will show you how many days they're rented out. And you can do the math like, wow, this thing makes nine grand a month, $230 a day.

And it's like, huh, the ones that's wrapped in an American flag, that probably costs $3,500 bucks one time. I can charge $50 more a day at a 60% occupancy rate. huh that's 1200 more dollars a month that means i get my 3,500 extra back in three months i could have this thing on tour for 10 years huh right and it's just like i love the idea of a putting something interesting on tour right because you throw a camry on there it's just not going to work yeah okay so let's say i was looking at those i was looking at those the hummer the new hummers the a the evs similar oh i was because i yeah that's like that's on the top of my

list right now. I really like that car. So I was like, I wonder what they're like on Turro. And you're right. It's the same sort of math. And then you take it a step further. And you're like, all right, I'm going to get the most unique thing that's already hot on Turro. And then I'm going to make it the one layer up. Yeah. Yeah. Why not? Like, would you rather, if you want to go flex in a cyber truck, would you rather pay $180 a day for a normal one or $2.30 a day for like a cyber beast that's just pimped out? Like, it's an extra $100 for two days. Why wouldn't you? I love that. I love that.

I mean, the guys that are on Turro definitely, it was super popular a couple years ago. I had a buddy that had him and his dad bought a fleet of model S's in Boston. And they had, I don't know, they probably had six of them. The other business that they had, too, that was super dope, was they rented out camper conversion vans in California. And so they had like 40. Yeah, like 40 of not, I don't even know, dude. I think they were like Chrysler Town and countries, like that were just retrofitted, kind of like you were saying, where they just would like load in the bed, whatever their

core setup is. That's like classified as a class BRV. It is. Like a van that you can live in, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And they were just running it up on they did. I want to say it was Yosemite.

It was like their main. Okay. That they'd do is they'd let people come in. They'd park their car at their spot and take the van up and like camp out for the weekend. And they, I mean, I want to say they had 30 or 40 of those. It was a while ago, so I'm not going to check my math. Can I tell you what's brilliant about that business specifically? Yeah.

Is all the marketplaces you can list on. Right. Let me list them out. Verbo, Airbnb, RV share, outdoorsy, and hip camp. And then there's like two or three more. Right. It's just you can list them on all of them. And why wouldn't you?

Right. You might as well. Like if you have an Airbnb, it goes on Airbnb and V. verbo. Right. And it's stationary. You can't just pick it up and take it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you toss that thing on Turro. Like the whole, yeah, like there's just more. I don't know. Turro. Yeah. I love, I love mobile. Like I think that there's something special there. I want to go the opposite direction to what we were talking about before. Are you doing anything with agents or replet or anything like that? Because like, I wish I had more time to play with that.

Yeah. So I went down the rabbit hole a little bit two days ago, two nights ago. I was watching all the videos on, you know, how do we create AI personal assistance? How do we like all of it? Similar thought trained to you is like I'm struggling to find the time to get good enough at that. Yes. To like make it be meaningful. And so that whole, I don't know, I probably spent like two hours like trying to figure out. And very specific use case.

Like how do I improve my own personal efficiency was what I was trying to do. Like almost, almost how do I replicate an executive assistant for myself, right? like can I use AI to do that. And after spending about two hours on that, I just posted a job on online jobs. PH and was like, dude, we're just going to have to get a human in here to handle it.

You know, and like, it just is, do I think there's massive opportunity there? Yeah, for sure. I think like the application of that technology against specific use cases

and specific industries or markets is massive. Like in an interesting way, you know unlimited content is a version of that right like we use a lot of AI and they've built our own processes and and not agents necessarily but like it's a it's a very AI enabled offer and applying it to a specific use case which is SEO to create outsized returns it's basically there's arbitrage for our clients and so I'm I'm long on that model like am I proficient enough at it individually at this point to like go and spin up an offer around that no but like somebody should.

Well, here's some interesting frameworks. So I'm in your, I'm in your camp. I've not built an agent yet, but I've done enough research to like kind of put a couple frameworks together on things that people could build with agents. Right.

That are like, it's not just like theory. It's very possible for someone to throw this together. Yeah. Number one. Did I tell you about the thing I did with creating my own subreddit? I don't think so. I don't think I did.

So I already talked about it on previous episodes. I won't go too deep into it. But, you know, I was posting to Reddit. And then as soon as you, put a link, the moderators like Ban You on most of subreddit's right. It's very hard. So I thought, I want my own subreddit. I want to be the moderator. Okay. Yeah. So I created a subreddit called Biz Ideas. And then I went to Zapier and I built a zap that plugs into Open AI. And it, so, okay,

first, let me back up. Any social media platform is strict about their API. What can read, what can write. It makes sense, right? They don't want a bunch of bots in the replies on Reddit, spamming comments, especially with AI. So there is a Reddit ZAP, which is very powerful, but it will not write comments to replies for that reason. Right. But here's a framework. Use agents to circumvent like API limitations.

Right. So what I did on Zapier, which got me 90% of the way there, was anytime, and this was fully possible with Zapier, anytime you see a new post in any subreddit worldwide that has the word idea in the title. Not business idea, but idea. And there's one like every 30 seconds. I want you to filter out any that are media only because I can't watch a video. I don't know what they're talking about. But if there's text there, I want you to read the text and then write a comment, not post a comment because it won't let me, but write a comment in my Google sheet that is prefaced with any good idea could be a business idea. Here's how I'd monetize this. And then I told it to put

in spelling mistakes. I told it to leave it. You know, no caps on any of them. So it looks more natural. And then at the very end of it, there's a line break and it says, TBAH, this is probably a better fit for R slash biz ideas, which is a hyperlink to my subreddit. And I'm just planting seeds all over the internet as I sleep. Yeah, it's fine. And it's worked. It's worked. But I can't post the comment. I got to do that manually. Okay. Now, it will post the link to the post. And so I literally I can go into chat, GPT, or I can go into my Google sheet. It automatically adds the row. Click the link, click the cell with a comment, copy, open the link, paste.

You can do it in two seconds, but you got to do it. Why not build an agent that can get you the last 10%? Why not? That's possible with agents. I was like, why not? That's it. Yeah. I haven't spent enough time to be like, hey, this is what's good.

That would work, but it sounds like a no-brainer. Like, it sounds like a perfect use case for it. Why aren't people creating or building their own subreddits and even using Reddit ads to drive people to it and then owning that audience more? I think that that's its own like thread that we could dive into. Like that's smart. Right. It's similar to owning Facebook pages or third party niche publications like we do with with blogs and stuff or Instagram accounts that are theme or niche oriented that push to a specific offer. And so yeah, I think that that's its own model.

I think the other half of it is like that is an opportunity for somebody to go and build the Reddit bot offer and sell it to you. Right. Like when I hear that, I think. Right. Oh, genius. There it is. Right.

Yeah. Build a Reddit agent and resell that for a monthly fee. Yeah. And that's that to me is where when I was diving into more of the agent stuff, you know, and there's there's guys that do it right. Like I think there's a bunch that do like AI calls. all, like they'll pick up or do the first outbound, almost like a setter, right, replacing the setter that are AI that sell to real estate agents or stuff like that.

And I think there's a bunch of use cases like that. What is interesting to me and I think a macro trend or a macro belief that I have is that the people that are capable of building those things are not always the ones that are capable of selling or like understanding the actual application of it. think about like when I got on Twitter, I don't know, three, four, five years ago, you know, the indie hacker crowd, right? People that were, you know, I was in the vein of the guys that were discovering no code or like microsas or like any of those. And what I realized was like, these guys were really good at building functional software that like could do things. But none of them understood how to create anything unique that like actually solved a product pain point.

or the ones that do get VC funded and become, you know, Dropbox. Yeah. And so it's like, yeah, literally. What about everyone else? And so it's like, and the challenge with those and I've tried is like a lot of those guys, you know, they're entrepreneurial in their brain, right? And so they want to like own their own thing. And it's like, dude, the world, the world just doesn't need another, another job board that makes $2,400 a month, dude. It's like you can use your talent.

another resume improver yeah like you know what i mean it's like it feels like everybody goes and builds the same product over and over and over and over again and i think it's just their approach and it's like versus you know i would hope that like somebody that understands how to code and write and use replet or right listens to this and goes oh shoot there's like there's an actual tangible business application here that i can go and pursue and i'm like yeah that that side of it is like if you're listening to this and you're a developer and you want to make more money please DM us because we have the ideas we just need people to execute on building the software for the use cases let me give my mr. beast thumbnail right it's interesting i've been i've been sending DMs and stuff to people on on Twitter another vein for us to dive down is i i really have this interesting thought around you know some of the some of the i iOS applications. We've ran marketing for iOS applications and cost per download is low and I think high referral

is there. Like there's stuff. There's mechanisms in the iOS world that I like. I've been hitting up these guys that are all like, I don't know, the indie hackers that build iOS apps on on these things. And it's like either they're working in nine to five and have side projects and don't want to take on third party consulting or like development gigs or they want to be partners in this stuff.

And I'm like, dude, like, I'll literally send you $10,000 right now. If you can just build me this thing. And they're like, me, I don't know. And I'm like, dude, like, let's go. It's an interesting one where I think there's, there's a couple guys that I know that are on Twitter that have kind of built a business around that, which is, we'll build your MVP in 30 days or less for five to 10 grand. And I think that that's an interesting one. I think there's like, there's more surrounding that I think is interesting for these developers. like, but I think a lot of them want to own their own at and that's fun.

But like you can make, I mean, I got boys that do dev shops, you know, that clear $3 million a year. It's interesting because like the world, I don't know if the world needs another like resume builder, chat GPT rapper, but the world could could take on one more. Like the market is plenty big enough for a hundred more, you know, chat GPT wrappers that just help you build or optimize your resume, but the distribution isn't there. The distribution is the hard part. The distribution and the product positioning. I talk about it a lot. I used to tweet it constantly and it was like people always talk about like product market fit as the thing. And I'm like,

I don't think it's product market fit necessarily. I think it's it's like market positioning fit, right? Like positioning the offer well in the market. like that piece, like that sums it up. It's like you can use the same tool. It's just like how do you position it for a specific market that you have a distribution advantage in? Because if you can crack that side of it, you can sell anything. Or pricing.

So like not just the right price, but the right way to frame the price. So there is this outdoor shop, a retail chain in the UK. I don't remember what they're called. Outdoor something. But think Costco, but different. they have an interesting model where you need, you walk in and you see two prices for everything. And this is an exact example that I saw. There was a tent for 250 pounds if you're a non-member or 70 pounds if you're a member.

Huge price difference. It makes no sense to not become a member. Now, what does it cost to be a member? Well, it costs 150, 200 bucks a year. At this place, $5 a year, a year. And so it's like the way to look at that on the, the surface is like, oh, it's genius because they get recurring revenue and they can still make a profit at $70.

Cool. But go a little deeper. Why else is it genius? It's because it's kind of like the planet fitness model. Like now that you're a member, you're anchored to that price. Now you're like, well, geez, now I got to buy everything here because I'm a member, right? I got to buy this tent because look at the price difference. I'm a member.

I got to move all my shopping. It's forget planet fitness. It's closer to like a gas station rewards. card. Right. You know, it's like, I'm going to go to race track. I'm going to go there. I'm going to get my 10 cents. You know what I mean? Yeah. So instead of getting your 10 cents that was so good on a cheaper discount. Yeah. I mean, it's a no-brainer. It's like, I think that there's, it goes, it honestly plays more into the retention side of the business, right? Like, when you are, it's similar with clothing. Like, I've signed up for those with brands that I love. And it's like, yeah, dude, I'm not going to go buy a shirt elsewhere. Because like, like, I get my 20% off.

I already have enough affinity towards the specific brand to have become a member in the first place. Right. Like, oh, like racetrack. Like there's a racetrack and there's an ARCO. I don't know if there's ARCO in Texas. I don't remember. But, you know, they're both on my way to work. But I've been going to the racetrack and now I am a member there.

So now I just go there. Right. It's a retention play. Even if ARCO is six cents cheaper, you're like, well, I'm a member. I'll get my 10 cents off or I'll get my rewards program or whatever that is. And so I think that that's super smart. There's a there's an econ brand called Public Goods that does something similar. Like when you said Costco, I was like, oh, public goods where it's all like very clean, minimalistic branded.

Like I'm going to call it essentials like soaps and, you know, they have seasonings, like kind of just like household normal goods. And I think you pay like 99 bucks a year to do it there. And a lot of like Airbnbs and stuff are members there. And they just get all of the that stuff. But like that similar model of like now if I'm going to go buy soap, well, I'm already paying $99 a year over here. I might as well just get it from them because I'll save my 17%. There's more opportunity for stuff like that in the market in general.

Kind of in line with even what we were saying with a home service maintenance plan. It's like, I'm, oh, I pay $99 bucks a year for, you know, plumbing company A's maintenance plan. Like I'm just going to call them when I have an issue. I'm not going to go look on Google. and say, hey, plumbing shop near me, right? No, you're already in. Like, you just guarantee, not guarantee, but like, you incentivize retention and loyalty.