The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Q&A: B2B custom souvenirs, trash collection, acai bowl franchise, home services lead gen software! Ep. #004. Small Business Ideas and Entrepreneurship

Episode Date: March 9, 2024

Submit a question for the show:  http://form.typeform.com/to/Eb8KaY0pWatch the video version of this on YouTube instead: https://www.youtube.com/@thekoerneroffice?sub_confirmation=1Free weekly business ideas newsletter: https://newsletter.chrisjkoerner.com/Learn more about me: http://chrisjkoerner.comFollow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mhp_guy0:00 - Intro to all the segments03:47 - Growing a virtual receptionist for home service biz08:34 - Google street views biz18:38 - Roofs with tarps idea20:15 - Custom souvenirs biz. Build or buy?28:10 - Trash collection biz in Missouri.35:30 - Acai franchise? Yay or nay? If nay, which franchise is better?We'll do it again live on Twitter this Wednesday, March 13 at 2pm CST!

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Kerners Corner episode number zero zero four. The only show where business owners can call in for live improv business advice. Think of it like Dave Ramsey for entrepreneurs, but with more hair, much more charming. Also, Dave, I am just waiting for you to send me a cease and desist. Okay? I just am. All right, because I know it's happening. So please bring me that much needed attention for me and my tens of listeners and loyal watchers. So today we're going to cover five things. It's a little different. So we covered 12 different topics today, but I edited out seven because if you were listening live, you'll notice that we put polls in the Twitter comments to see which ones everyone liked the best. And so I took the highless voted segments, and frankly, I thought those

were the best myself as well. And we edited out the seven that were low ranked. And so you can still see those on my website on chrisjkirner.com. We're going to put those, but they're not going to make it to YouTube and they're not going to make it to podcast format because frankly, it's just not as engaging content. And you voted it low. So I'm guessing that the people who are listening via podcast or via YouTube feel the same way. So the five topics we are going to talk about in this order are first, a business owner that has a virtual receptionist business, and he wants to know how to acquire customers and how to hone in on a home service niche. The second one we're talking about is a guy that has a small SaaS business that uses Google Earth and Google imagery and Google

Street View and AI to find leads for home service professionals, such as if a tree is hanging low over a roof, he can identify that and send a homeowner a mailer or a roof with a tarp on it. He can send that lead to a roofing company and sell it to them. Super cool software. It only exists on an enterprise grade right now, at least his competitors are only enterprise scale. So I think this company has a bright future. And I told him that I would be one of his first customers and I would pay him a lot of money to bring me tree leads. That was the second caller. And then another caller came in and chimed in with an idea. So that's still the second idea. And then the third one is a guy that wants to buy a custom souvenir business

of all things. And he wants to start one. And I gave him some pretty pointed advice on whether he should buy or start one. And I think you guys will really like that one. The one after that is a guy in Missouri that wants to start his trash business. So I helped him walk through some customer acquisition ideas that might be a little unique. And then the last but not least is a guy up in New Jersey that wants to buy an Asaibol franchise and put it in a mall. And supposed to It's a great franchise that's doing really well, but I gave him some advice. And so it's going to be shorter today because we cut out seven to 12. But if you want to see the other seven, the other seven are a woodworker on YouTube,

a home appraisal guy, a board games company, a guy that wants to start a Nigerian restaurant SaaS product, a real estate agent website guy and a dance studio guy. So those will be on our website. But for now, enjoy episode four. And please, please, please, I'm begging you. I'm begging you. If you're on YouTube, leave a comment. Let me know what you think.

I don't know if this is good. I really don't. I don't know. Or if you're on Spotify or Apple, actually on Spotify, you can leave a comment on each episode to tell me what you think. So I would love a subscribe, but really,

I just want to know if this is any good or not. So thank you for listening and or watching and or calling in live. I appreciate you guys. And let's get to the show. Hey, my name is Corey. And so I recently started up a virtual reception. company. Like Ruby?

I'm sorry? Like Ruby? Yeah, exactly. And we're specifically going after the home service industry here. And I'm curious to get your opinion on maybe some different sales channels to explore, because I've been mostly focused on cold calling. However, some of the people that don't answer are going to be the ones that I probably want to target the most. So I would need to develop different sequences there in order to best target them and ensure that I can actually reach them.

But that's been going pretty well so far. 40% of owners have answered their business phone and most have expressed at least some kind of interest. but then again, 40% haven't answered their phone at all. So I'm just curious what you think about some different channels to explore. Because I do like that more personal touch that comes with a phone call as opposed to emailing or other avenues. Don't have the budget necessarily to spend on Google ads, like search query ads or that kind of deal.

Okay. I think I have everything I need. I'm going to go ahead and disconnect you, and I'm excited to answer. All right. Does he name Andy? Yeah. Andy has a virtual reception service, right?

Like Ruby. So Ruby started out as Ruby receptionist.com. Now they're just Ruby.com, I believe. And they're massive. They're massive companies. So in general, I like the idea of watching these companies. It usually takes about a decade that just start out obscure. You start hearing about them.

And then they're everywhere. I think of Upwork, right? Upwork, Ruby, whatever. And then you take what they do. do and then you unbundle it as then you offer that exact same thing for a sub segment of their customer base. So Andy said home service, I don't like that because that's, I'm not exaggerating. They're like 20 million home service businesses in the United States alone. 32, 33 million total businesses and 50 to 60-ish percent of them are home service business. So what is home

service? I would start with something like gutter cleaning, like not just niche, not like pools, not roofing, but really niche. And name your business, something broad, make your offer, something niche. And then I would start with outscraper.com, take a county or a city or a zip code, scrape all the gutter cleaning businesses or pressure washing, whatever it is. Yeah, I like pressure washing a lot, actually, because there's a lot of millennials and Gen Zers doing that, and they're probably more likely to buy something like this. And then I want you to send ringless voicemails to them. I use slybroadcast.com. This is not, I wish they were paying me. They're not paying me. I've just used them forever. There's a bunch. I like them the best. And then I would make

five different voicemails, either five different industries with the same text, the same script, or five different scripts within the same industry. And I would send ringless voicemails to like, let's just say a thousand people total. So 200 per. And I would honestly use humor with this and say, hey, you didn't answer your phone, like almost aggressive, because it's no different than a YouTube video or a tweet. The hook is everything, right? Hey, you didn't answer your phone. And I can help that. I can help you with that. Because we offer a receptionist service only for gutter cleaning, only for pressure washing, whatever it is. You've got to have personality.

You've got to use a dynamic voice. Don't be monotone. And also realize that a lot of these guys aren't going to listen to this. They're just going to read it on their voicemail transcription. And then just hit up those people. You can also do mass text. Now, it doesn't work for every industry. It doesn't work for every instance.

I would use Porterhouse. Porterhouse.app is great for this because it's fully compliant. You've got to have a MacBook. Also not sponsored. I don't have any sponsors. Come on. I only want Chipotle to be my sponsor and they won't answer my emails. And just get aggressive with ringless voicemails.

Don't do paid ads. Don't do emails. You could do cold calls work, but it's not nearly as efficient. It's more effective, less efficient. So for pennies, you could send ringless voicemails and hit them up with a really attractive offer. And I guarantee you you will find customers that way. Hey, Chris. Hey, Hugh.

Can everybody hear me all right? Perfect. Okay, great. I actually really appreciate the time. And I think everything you're doing so far, Chris, is awesome on X and on YouTube. Thank you. And my question is that I'm building, I messaged you recently and I said, I'm building a software like a SaaS.

And what it does is it's like an algorithm that goes through Google Maps or Apple's map satellite views and street views. And then I can actually detect objects, whatever objects that my user wants to detects on these maps. And I started doing mom tests and talking to doing customer development and talking to my arborist to landscape people. And then actually seeing what objects they want to detect on the map so they can generate leads from the satellite and street views. And then I'm just wondering, I already have one or two customers that's paying me monthly costs. And then I'm just wondering if you see any kind of ways I could scale that out and also any kind of

strategies I could use that I could really help approach like SMB owners and then like maybe alternative customer niche groups because I only see so far anything exterior for like roofing solar and then landscaping and arborists and then yeah I've just I know you you're pretty creative with all your your weekly reviews so I I would love to pick your brain. Okay, so do you have many competitors on this software? And what are they charging if so? There's some competitors.

I'd say Google Maps themselves is actually the biggest ones. They actually have a solar. If you go to Google, if you Google Solar and Google Maps, they actually have this attachment where they could go and look at roofs and then map out the roofs to see like how much energy you could be saving if you put a solar panel on your roof. But my automation is actually just going and detecting, let's say, houses with pools or without poles or with solar panels or without, and then generating leads from those and automating mailers and advertising to those homeowners. Okay, so it's not through street view.

It's just through Google Earth. So you can catch stuff in the backyard too then? Oh, yeah, yeah. It actually does both. We use, like, an object detection algorithm, and then it does, you can run through streets and then you can all. also run through solar or set of light views. Okay. And you really don't have competitors doing this other than Google's in-house solution?

I think there's larger competitors I don't know about. Like enterprise grade type. Exactly. There's enterprise grade that's probably built into their estimation or like, I've seen ads for people doing like they'll do if you want to install solar panels or you want to install a new roof. they'll actually either send a drone or they'll use a really well-defined satellite view and I do the estimate before they come actually visit you.

But yeah, but like this Demp's because my arborist, he actually does a lot of free estimates. And he says a lot of the small medium businesses, they go and do a lot of free estimates. And then they only convert maybe 30. If they're good, they convert 30 to 40% of those estimates into, users. And then we just want to, I want to be able to have them even be better like developed, maybe send out as free estimates using like our out like our software. Okay. And what are you charging the couple guys that you have as customers today? I'm charging like pretty monthly flat free about $200 a month. And then if every,

and then I actually have them go through. I have a number that's assigned to each account. And then If the lead goes through, then I charge them per call. And I charge a pretty low rate. I know there's other lead generators that are charging like $50 to $80 a lead. But these new customers were just giving them introductory rates. So I'm charging them like $30, $20 to $30. Okay. And is your software so good where could it tell you like if a tree was dying or just that there's a tree?

Could it tell you there's a tree like hanging over a house or just that there's a tree? We can do that, but you just have to give us examples. Okay. To train your software, basically. And then we can actually do this thing called augmentation or simulation, and then we can simulate it to be like, I think the only downside here is a lot of the Google Maps and Bing Maps and Apple Maps. Their images might be like a year or two years older. That was my next question. Yeah, how real time is this imagery?

Yeah. So you can, it's usually like a year or two years out. But then you can, there's also other satellite imaging databases that like MaxR or Max, you could purchase them per sub, like subset like by state or by county. And then you pay extra. But it's like buying MLS listings, right? Like you would. Yep.

Yeah. Okay. All right. I think I have everything I need. I love this idea. We're going to go ahead and disconnect you now. But I've got some good ideas for you, okay? So I love this idea.

It makes sense to me that there's only enterprise-grade solutions for this, but this is going to be a thing. There's no doubt this is going to be a thing. And our caller seems to be on the forefront of this. But like anything that's going to be a thing, you've got to get the word out there. So there's the good and the bad. The good about selling something like this is that there are handfuls of industries willing to pay big bucks for this. solar roofing, all of the high ticket ones, okay? They would for sure pay for this.

But those guys are hit up all the time from every marketing software or an offer in the book. So it's hard to break through the noise. On the other side, there's five, six, 700 home service brands that could use this, that could need this and want this. But I would bet 90 plus percent of them don't like or don't normally buy software for marketers. Like they're blue collar guys and they just, they're stuck in their waves. So if I were you, I would start with one industry. And I'm going to say trees because that's what I know.

And I'm sitting here looking at my front window and on my neighbor's property, there's a dead tree. There's four of them. And it looks like they're on my property, but they're not. And I have gotten door hangers from tree guys that pointed it out. I was at my brother's house in College Station. He had a huge dead oak tree and he got a door hanger from Monster Tree Care pointing it out. And they actually had a quote for the tree in there.

And so I've been thinking for the last year, like why isn't there an automated solution where we could click send mailer, click send mailer to all the houses with dead trees or with trees hanging over the roof, trees touching the roof? Because if the imagery is old and it was touching the roof a year ago or almost touching the roof, it's especially touching the roof now. and friction will cause that roof to break down and leak over time. So now you've got, honestly, you could sell that lead to roofers and to tree trimming companies. So I like the idea of charging, and this sounds egregious, charging someone like a dollar a month just to get their foot in the door, just to get past the friction of acquiring their credit card number because that is the hardest part. If you can get their credit card number and charge a dollar, you're 80% of the way there, which is why Sampar Trends charged a dollar for the free trial and then 300. entered a year because it converts really well. I've already given my credit card. So I would charge something stupid, especially if he's brand new and no one knows about him, a dollar a month just to say,

all right, this guy's pot committed, he's going to answer my call, I'm going to ask him a few questions, and then I'm going to get this software rolling. And then I would make integrations with one to three direct mail companies that have APIs, and there's a lot of them out there. He doesn't want to be in the direct mail business to where he, the owner or one of his employees on the back. back end can run the software for the business owner because this blue-collar business owner is not about to learn how to use the software. So it's going to be manual. He's going to lose money doing this. It's going to take a lot of time. Run the software on the back end. And let's say he puts in a zip code and it spits out 100 addresses with dead trees or with trees hanging over the house. And then he can

charge $5 per address, $10, whatever it is to send a mailer. And then at that point, he's done. He's done. He doesn't worry about conversion rate. it doesn't affect him he's already been paid. Now, granted, he's going to for sure go back and ask the business owner, what was your conversion rate? Hey, we sent 82 mailers last month. Did you get any jobs from it? Oh, what was a zip code?

This would. Oh, actually, yeah, my phone's been blowing up in that area. Okay, now I have a case study, right? Now he can put that front and center on his website, and he can specialize in a new lead source for tree businesses. And then, as that grows, he's not going to exhaust that for a while. There's 50,000 tree trimming companies out there. He doesn't want to name the business around trees, but he can specialize in trees or whatever

it is he picks. But I like to suggest three to five different industries attacking at the same time to see what the response rate is. But I feel like with how intense the software is, that would just be a lot, right? So I would start with trees or something. What up fencing, signage? Like he could upload a picture of like channel letter signs that have dead letters, dead lighting, and train the software on that and then send it to building on it.

There's a zillion opportunities here, but I would charge per address, I call that a lead, and then just see what the conversion rate is, and then you can increase your prices from there. So, good I got. All right, Christian, you're up. Hey, thank you, Heath. Chris, thank you so much for having me here completely fast. I actually wasn't going to attack, but not sure if David, the software engineer, it's still here. I was just going to say that I would like to be one of his customers.

I own a roofing company here in Miami. You guys didn't mention it, but it came. It's one of my ideas to have that software looking for roofs with tarps on them. Okay. So if he can have his software detecting a lot of roofs here in Miami, Broward County, Palm Beach County, I cover all the three counties down here. I would be completely happy to sign up if he can get the. API with a third company shipping out the mailers, whatever he's going to charge monthly

subscriptions. I really don't care. Sign me up. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. I appreciate that. Yeah, and I'm honestly kicking myself for not saying the same thing.

David, I will be a paying customer of yours as well, and I will pay a lot more than $1 a month. If you can tell me what trees are dead or what trees are close to, close to the power lines or close to the road. I will pay you for that. Absolutely. I love the TARP idea. We could have a four-hour call just talking about all the ways you could monetize that.

Anyway, love it. And I also love if anyone else has ideas like that, like ways you could add on to something that I said, please request to speak. I'd love to hear it. Hey, Chris. How you doing, man? Good. How are you?

Pretty good. So I'm a self-funded searcher. I've been searching for a business to buy for 15 months at this point. So quite the journey. As I've looked at a lot of businesses, we've learned more and more. One model like sticks in my brain. And it's custom souvenirs. So there was one that I saw that was I fell in love with this business.

And so they did custom souvenirs for like gift shops, museums, tourist attractions. Everything's obviously custom made to order. They had, it was like a million dollars per. employee and revenue. Wow. So custom, so this is all B2B then, right? All B to B. Wholesale custom. So they're glorified distributor. Give me an example of an item that would be customized and how? Magnets, pins. Okay. Like Zion National Park. Exactly. Magnet. Exactly. You go through, you go to a park, you exit out the gift shop, all those little custom things, specifically magnets. So this business specifically, their top sellers were magnets and key chains. They'll also

do some pins, enamel pins. But I thought it was just so fascinating. The fact that they get these customers, they're extremely sticky, right? You do a good job. They're coming back to you for fresh designs. They're refreshing their stock every so often, right? But I couldn't. So my background is online marketing, digital marketing, web development, right?

So that's really, anything related to technology is my background, right? But I don't know how to tackle these guys. So they have just, the company I was looking at, for example, they were just in the market for so long, 30 years. And they had just established a snowball. They never did any marketing. All they did was they would go to two trade shows a year. So a slow buildup. So I guess my question to you would be is how would you think of this in trying to, from maybe a digital marketing standpoint or a guerrilla marketing, I don't know, some way to do it at scale and reach out to these.

gift shops, right, because there's thousands and thousands, right? Every single small town, every tourist destination, all these people are all buying the same types of things, right? Ideally custom to them. How would you approach it? I guess that's part. How would I approach basically building one of these businesses from scratch? Yeah, exactly. So let's say you had a designer, right? You know where you're going to get it in China or some other country, getting the stuff made. So I know all of that. It's more so the sales side. Customer acquisition. Yeah, customers at best way. So you mentioned like ringless voicemails. I was like,

interesting. But I don't know how you would even get those people. How do you find these? Because I know you're working with like buyers, right? Typically there's a specific job title. Maybe that's an opportunity. So I've never dealt with this like distributor buyer relationship, you know, B to be stuff.

It's normally I've been like direct to consumer and doing push or pull marketing. Right. So in this business, your end buyer isn't in the gift shop. it's like a buyer for a chain of gift shops. Is that what you're saying? Almost every gift shop has a buyer, right? So they're going to have a position, right?

So they'll have a merchandising department probably that's like probably two or three people. Maybe it's one person depending on how small it is. But a lot of the times it's going to be counties or it's going to be larger entities, right? These are pretty profitable. This is how they're making their money for the most part, right? these tourist attractions is through their merch or their gift shops and their souvenirs. So yeah, they typically have a couple people. They'll have the higher level person.

And then you'll have a as far as I understand it. Right. So just from what I've learned, there will be a buyer, like a specific person who does this and goes out and maybe solicits bids from people or ask for a RFP or something. Yeah. Now, so you tried to buy one of these and then you weren't able to. Have you looked for more to buy? Are you still willing to buy one?

I would love to buy one. So, yeah. I would love to buy one. So this one specifically, they took it off the market. So she just had made so much money that she actually ended up just selling it to her employees. So she actually was like, you know what? I'm going to get so she got so, it was going to get so killed on taxes with the sale that she was like, it's not even about money. She wanted to just take care of her employees.

And so they did like an ESOP. Excellent. Okay. All right. I think I've got everything. need. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you. All right. If I were James, I would take all of that energy and all of that effort figuring out how to acquire these retail gift shop customers and put that into figuring out how to acquire a company that sells to them. I think that in this and almost any

industry, the reasons that make it such a good business is because it is so hard to acquire customers. Furthermore, once that a customer is acquired, it is so hard to lose them. I've been in this world. I've sold B2B wholesale. I sold B2B wholesale iPhone parts. We sold $2,000 to $3,000 worth of parts per month per customer. Our reorder rate was like 94%. Okay.

And so I've been on both sides of this because I've also owned a chain of iPhone repair stores buying this stuff. Okay. I'm over here thinking, all right, how would I? Okay. Ringless voicemails. All right. How would I find a good?

And then he tells me there's two or three. and then sometimes it's a buyer, sometimes they're in store. This sounds like a nightmare. It sounds like buying or selling to school districts or to healthcare companies. It's just I don't like it. That's why waste management is such a great monopolized business is because you've got to get these contracts and it's tricky to get these contracts. But then once you get it, if you don't screw up, if you literally just shut up and take

the trash away, you'll keep it for years or decades, right? That's why these are blowing up. That's why these are being rolled up. So if I were James, and he called himself a searcher, a self-funded searcher, so he's not against buying a business, clearly, I would make a database of every single company that sells gifts to gift shops, custom gifts. There's probably less than 100 of them. And where is he going to find them? Honestly, I would hire five different VAs and just say, I don't know how you're going to get it. I have no advice.

Just go get it. And then take those five different lists, put them together, remove the duplicates. There's your database. You can use outscraper. You can use LinkedIn. You could use Apollo, but it sounds hairy, sounds messy. I would get that database, and then I would just start BRT, building a relationship of trust with the owners, putting his name out there, sending him a gift basket, sending him a letter,

shooting him a text, shooting him an email, give him a call. Hey, this is who I am. This is my story. I've had a 9 to 5 job. I hate it. I want to be a business owner like you. I love your business. No one's passionate about.

about custom souvenirs to gift shops, but me. You are, I am. You've never met someone not in the industry that was as passionate about this industry as I am. They will take to him like flies to honey, right? They will be so flattered that someone cares about their little industry that they will want to sell to him eventually. And it's the law of large numbers.

If there's 86 businesses out there that he could potentially buy and none of them want to sell right now, In a month, one of them's going to want to sell. In six months, probably eight of them are going to want to sell. So he's just got to play the long game. He's already playing it. He's been at it for 14 months. Just forget starting one from scratch.

That sounds like a nightmare. I'd rather do anything else on this planet and starting that type of business from scratch. But I as well would for sure buy that type of business. Hey, man. Hey, how are you? Yeah. Pretty good, pretty good.

So my name is Ed. I don't have a... So I'm running a business right now, but the idea that I want to swing by you is not really something that I currently do. I'm just very interested in seeing how you would deconstruct this. Is that cool? Yeah. So I've been fascinated for a very long time about the waste management business. It's one of the more traditional recurring blue-collar businesses out there, but it's very monopolized, right?

It's very controlled among very few big national companies. I had recently seen a post, I don't know if it crossed your radar from Spencer Scott. He started a waste collection business in a town in Texas, not sure where it is. So his house is like seven minutes away from mine. Oh, nice. Neighborhood like every week. Yeah. So that post a few months ago got my wheel spinning because I always been interested in that.

And I think how he targeted, how he got into it was through like HOA targeting. Now, I don't know how much it varies from state to state. I don't know, like, I'm in Missouri, for example, and lots of the businesses here in Missouri, like the trash businesses, like you have to bid out a contract through the local city municipality. Now, I was like, okay, how would I, so I want to share how I would bootstrap it if I were doing it here, and I'm interested to see how you would do it as well.

So you're going to be competing against big players, obviously. But if you go around like next door, Facebook groups, you're going to see a lot of discontent with people that had like with their own like waste business. And I see it a lot in smaller towns, right? You got to drive out 30, 30, 40 minutes out of city centers to really get the nitty gritty in my opinion. But I would probably target HOA's probably be the easiest. I would probably, if I would do this, I would probably go with. any communities that give me density. So I think that's how Spencer did it, but you may have more info than I do.

But I'm just curious, like, how would you go about something like this in the modern age, knowing all the different tools that we have in our disposal to do something like this? Would you also consider, in addition to HOAs, just to get your name out there, maybe targeting trash valet as a way to get in to market to multifamily developments? I don't know if trash valet is a thing in Texas, but here in Missouri and St. Louis, a lot of the landlords, big property management companies use it as an amenity for tenants.

But I wonder if that's the way to get in. Because if you talk to a lot of these landlords, a lot of these property managers, they usually don't like the waste management vendor. You go to these dumpsters. They're always full. They're always, stuff are filling out. Usually they miss their trash day.

They're moving things all the, time. So I'm, I don't know, so I'm just curious. I want to get your input. How would you approach it? Because I, I'm interested to see what kind of angle you have that I haven't really thought about. How much money are you willing to commit to this idea? So I would probably 100K if I were to give a number. And on a scale of 1 to 10, how serious are you about it? About 8. Okay. And are you, what are you doing right now? Like a full-time job or a business? So right now, I have a business that I'm committed to 100%. So I run a recruiting business.

So that's what I see myself doing for the most part for the rest of the year. But this is something that I'm looking to explore a little bit down the line. I wouldn't say it's an immediate thing. And do you live nearby like many rural areas that might be up for bidding on something like this here in the near future? Yeah. And also I live nearby lots of like little like HOA like spots as well in addition to just small, rural municipality towns. It's like exurb areas, really, that are pretty much growing in the St. Louis area.

Yeah. Okay. All right. I think I've got what I need. I'm going to give you my prescription. So what was your name again? What was his name? Ed.

All right. So I love that you said you have 100K to put into this. And I love that you're an 8 out of 10 because I was prepared to say, don't do this idea. Because most ideas, especially in this internet age, you can test relatively cheap. cheaply and quickly. This one, you can't. So I've been following Spencer's story. I've talked to Spencer. He's a great guy. And I would bet that if Spencer were here, he would admit that he would not have done this business had he not just struck lightning in a bottle. And I know the neighborhood he lives in. And he just hit it just right where all the stars aligned that he was able to put that

up for bid. And he posted in the Facebook group and it took off. And he happens to be a brilliant marketer. Like he owns us a marketing software company. Like he's super, super good at marketing. And so if he doesn't have trash issues in his neighborhood, like four different things don't happen. He doesn't start this business. Okay. And he started it and I've been watching his videos and it's awesome to be determined how well, how well he does, how big he gets or what have you. That said, I do like this business, but it's not something you can just test. So if I were Ed, I would get on next door, get on these Facebook groups, identify three to five communities, hopefully somewhat close to each other, that are in need of something like this or will be up for bid for something like this.

And then build your website and put up one to two different billboards in that area, specifically billboards. If someone sees a billboard, they're not thinking, oh, yeah, this guy's just probably testing out this trash business. Oh, wow, this guy's a billboard. He's legit. It's like Michael Scott when he says that his friend owns a quiz nose on the turnpike. He must be a billionaire.

That's just what people think. Billboards are like $3, $700, $700 a month. A lot of times it's month to month. A lot of times that includes the vinyl. It's not as expensive as you think. And so I would put up a website and one to two billboards in that area before he even buys a truck, before he even shops for trucks, and then just start planting seeds. Maybe a direct mail campaign, maybe cold calling to H.

HOA presidents or HOA management companies and putting feelers out there and then actually bidding for a job. And then when you bid for a job, you just put your start date out a couple months, win a job, buy a truck, figure it out. Like if he is that committed, eight out of ten, a hundred grand, a truck is going to be a fraction of that. You only need one. You only need to pick up one or two days a week.

He could do that himself, especially if he's a business owner. I think it's a great idea because it seems like these stars are aligning and he has communities in that area where he could pitch something like. this too. And I like that this is a monopolized industry. It's monopolized for a reason, because this is a freaking great business. People are rolling it up for a reason. And so if, call it 80% of the waste management companies out there are owned by a massive corporation, great. The other 20% are up for grabs. So yeah, that's what I would do. I like the idea. Sweet. Hi, Chris. Firstly, thank you for putting together these spaces. I think it's a big help for

our community on Twitter. Absolutely. My question is regarding franchises. I didn't hear you speak too much about franchises. More particularly, what's popular in the northeast around the tri-state area is something called pliables. It's like a fruit bowl restaurant that has like an asai base or pataya base. And it's actually growing really quickly.

I saw an article in Entrepreneurama. magazine from last month. And they were expressing how it's a very good opportunity, how they only have 220 stores right now, and how they're doing much better than Jamba Juice and all the others. The average revenue per store is $1.1 million. There's no cooking involved. Obviously, there's a franchise fee and you've got to build out a store space and you've got to pay 7% of the revenue new also a royalty, maybe another 1% or 2% for marketing and other things. But in general, a franchise like this, what are your thoughts? Okay. All right. I think I've got what I need. Wait, I have one more thing to add. There is a new mall here in New Jersey. It's called

American Dream. It might have almost 200,000 daily visitors. They do not have a pliable yet. I looked up and I found the PDF online about the franchise and they limit two-mile radius from another branch that you can't open one, but the closest one is more than two miles away. I think that's a good opportunity. This mall is new. It has a lot of traffic already. It's new. It's modern. I've been there many times.

I see the potential. I know that you mentioned in one of your tweets about a mechanical business. bull. I don't know if that's as popular in the northeast as it is down in Texas, but they do have those little, these animal rides that you can ride around. And I think that's making a killing. That's another thing to talk about. But this mall, I think, would be a good opportunity to pair with a franchise like Pliables. What do you think? Okay. All right. Thank you. So my prescription for Clifton is, okay, I love franchises. I don't like this idea. I don't, I think assayibles have peaked.

They might be doing great as a franchise. And a lot of times, they've got 220 locations. A lot of times that's because something like assaiboles have peaked on a macro sense, but they haven't peaked yet on a per market sense. I know there was one in Tuscaloosa, Alabama that opened and they were just crushing it and line out the door and they're gone, right? Same thing. Right around the corner, there was a cupcake shop that opened, line out the door.

They were doing 10 grand a day in cup. cupcakes that arrived frozen from the corporate headquarters, they're gone now. I just don't like these niche food concepts because I look at everything with upside versus downside. I feel like you have much more downside on a niche food concept. The upside is 1.1 million a year top line. You're probably going to net, call it 15% of that, 150 grand a year after investing 150, 350, 500 in buildout that you're never going to recoup in equipment, 7% top line to the franchisor.

What I would do, if you haven't already done this, go to the Minnesota website, go to the FDD, the database directory. If they have a location in Minnesota, it has to be listed there. Look at how many stores they've closed, not just opened. Also, take anything entrepreneur.com says with a grain of salt

because they get the most of their revenue from franchisors who pay them. Big fees to pitch their franchise. So yeah, Entrepreneur.com thinks every franchise is awesome because they're all paying them. So if you're willing to do a franchise, like if you've wrapped your mind around that, like the couple of callers ago, he's willing to buy a business, then just transfer that willingness, that energy to a better franchise with less downside and more upside. I was talking to a guy that owns a franchise the other day that like they save businesses money.

I forget the name of it. If you DM me, I'll send you a link. and it's like very little startup cost you don't need a physical location the churn is next to zero he'll go into a small business and he'll cut their credit card processing he'll cut their shipping rates and there's like a third one their vendors or something and then he'll take 50% of the savings forever so this guy learned how to do this and then he's franchising this into multiple territories and they're crushing it they're also making seven figures a year on average but with much higher margins, no build-out. I just think there's literally hundreds of other franchise opportunities

that have higher upside and lower downside. I wouldn't do an Osai Bowl. If you're going to go to a mall, then buy a freaking mechanical bowl and put it in the mall and tell me how it goes because I'm going to, I'm not going to be able to scratch that it until someone does it or I do it myself. I love it. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on Kerner's Corner Episode 4. We will upload this to YouTube and the podcast, all the podcast channels here in the next couple days, please leave some feedback. I'd rather have feedback than subscribing or sharing because this might suck. So if it sucks, tell me it sucks and how I can fix it. But thank you for joining.

I appreciate all you guys. And we'll see you next week. I'm not sure which day yet. See you later. Thanks.