The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Q&A: Street sweeping probs, realtor websites, quitting a job for a moving biz. Ep. #001 Small Business Ideas and Entrepreneurship

Episode Date: February 22, 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_guy- How to grow a SoCal street sweeping biz- What biz a sales guy should start in Houston- How to uniquely grow a biz making websites for realtors- How to fix occupancy issues in 2 Alabama RV parks- To quit and grow a moving biz even more, or keep the job and try something else?- What business in Norfolk, VA a guy should start with his 3 kids

Nothing. All right. Well, Brandon, let's hear from you. You are the first speaker in Kerner's Corner, and this will be one of one or one of many, and it all depends on you, Brandon. Sweet, no pressure. Well, I appreciate it. So I am six months into having bought a struggling street sweeping business with my buddy.

And we're in like Ventura, California. So I just kind of was made aware of. the issues of wildfires and how many communities don't do street sweeping. So nobody really advertises that. And I was wondering how I can, I guess my plan is to create awareness around the issue already there and then supply the means to fix it. So if you had any advice with that or what you do? Yeah. So in other words, you want to invent the disease and sell the cure because people don't know that this is a disease, right?

Yeah, exactly. So, all right, you bought the company six months ago. You said struggling. It's struggling now or it was struggling when you bought it? It was basically just an asset sale with maybe five or six customers. So it was struggling when we bought it. We just thought, you know, we could always sell the assets for what we bought it. more and why not why not try and turn it around okay um five or six customers who is your

customer is that the municipality it was um some h-o-as and then the city or the county contract that they had for the next like two years um so we've added we've probably doubled revenue but um we're still like in that growing phase but um yeah the plan is just to make more communities aware of this and then supply our street sweeping okay can you talk about like what your lifetime value is like what is like an average ticket price you paid by month or how does that work yeah so we do hourly work so it's one you're breaking up i believe you're breaking up there can you hear me i can now you broke up for a sec. Oh, sorry.

So, yeah, we do hourly 185 for just people who call in for the day. We just try and base it off that pricing. And then we have county contracts, HOAs at a certain price per month with like multiple sweeps. Okay. Is it like a weekly thing or a monthly thing? Everywhere is different. at most. Muriel, is that you?

Yep, that's me. Awesome. Welcome. Yeah, great. So can you guys hear me? Am I good to go? I can hear you perfectly. Okay, great.

Chris, yeah, first off, I want to thank you for doing this. This is awesome. I know you got like 100 businesses that you run, so I do appreciate it. So I've been following your stuff for a while now on Twitter and just reading your newsletter and everything like that. So the situation that I'm in currently is I don't have a business of my own. I currently do a sales job and I'm a contractor. So I don't get paid a salary or anything, anything like that.

But I do get paid a pretty healthy commission. I want to start a business, but I'm sort of like in this like paralysis by analysis thing where I just don't know where to, I don't know where to start. I don't know if I should buy, you know, buy a business and just like, you know, take an SBA loan out and just like start something that's already there. or if I should start something off the ground and just see how it goes. Like, I'm kind of in that place right now. So I have some hard and soft skills, but it's just like figuring out the next move to make and like where to focus because there's just so much opportunity out there. And it's hard to figure out like kind of where to point my energy, you know?

Yeah, yeah. So good news and bad news. Bad news is analysis by paralysis is like. you know, the biggest, the biggest deterrent to starting a business. So that sucks. The good news is what I've noticed is people that have that before they start a business, usually end up being above average business owners because you're in the details, you're in the analytics, you're obsessing over the metrics. And so I think your future is bright. Now, what type of money do you have to put into either buying or starting something right now? Like what, what amount of money do you

feel comfortable using to buy or start? I mean, I don't know. It's hard to say, really. I guess it would just depend on the opportunity itself. But I mean, I would be comfortable investing somewhere from like 10 to 50,000. Okay. And what ideas do you already have? Like, what do you find yourself thinking about? Well, you know, the thing is right now, like for the last four years, is I've been working remotely, right? And the thing is I like working remotely, but what I also like is like getting out there and connecting with people. So I think there's something there with customer service, with connecting with people and like selling in person. So it's just trying to figure out what that is. Now, business wise, I mean, I've tossed around the idea of like buying a service business like a potential cleaning business or, um,

you know, a tree trimming business or something like that. But I have no experience in that space. So it's like hard to, hard to say if that's the right direction to go in. Yeah. And where do you live right now? I'm actually a text in myself. You're in Dallas, I know, but I'm in Houston. Okay. And what type of sales do you do? And how many hours per week are you working realistically? I mean, I would say like it's, I probably work like 15 to 20 hours a week. and I do like advertising sales. So I do a lot of my selling through email and like Zoom calls. And so I primarily work with a lot of companies that are like in the financial space.

So, yeah. And you feel comfortable selling, even in person? Yeah, in person, in person and, you know, virtually as well, like on the phone or emails or Zoom calls, stuff like that. And how would you say you rank compared to your peers, your colleagues selling the same thing? Well, I would say I would say I'm up there. I mean, I have a natural ability to like communicate effectively, I feel like. So I think I'm in the upper tier compared to my peers.

Okay. And is there any like sector that you're already leaning towards like home services? I guess you said tree trimming or house cleaning. Is there anything else outside of home? services where you think you could really leverage your sales skills? I'm not sure. I mean, I tried getting a cleaning business off the ground like probably about six months ago, but what I found in Houston is the market's like super saturated.

And so it's like this race to the bottom with pricing. And so like that was a big struggle where I would quote people a certain price and then they would just be like, okay, I can just get this random person to do it for like way less. And so, like, I tried getting something up off the ground myself, but it just didn't pan out. Yeah. So, all right, I'm just trying to ask a bunch of questions so I could, like, put my thoughts together. I feel like you already have the two hardest boxes checked, and that's, you have time, 10 to 15 hours a week, or 15 to 20, whatever you said. Thank you for being honest on that. Most people don't actually work a full 40, 40 hour work week. Two, you have cash. You have

cash, 10 to 50 grand, like, that's plenty to start a business. Three, you have one of the hardest skills out there to gain, and that's sales. Like, you've already done that. So I tell my kids, and I tell everyone, if you can sell, you can do anything. And you should do anything. You should start something. You should not work for someone because that's one of the hardest skills to learn. And people that are great at sales, they don't appreciate that because it's in their immediate at orbit. If I were you, I would ignore house cleaning because I've done that myself. I had a house cleaning business. It was called Halo Maids 2016. I hated my life. It was the worst. I tweeted about this a couple months ago, but I don't like the house cleaning business because

it's not a binary outcome model. Like it's, you show up late, you leave a hair. Like, I don't know if you saw that or not, but there are just so many ways. Yeah, I did see that one. Yeah. Yeah, there's so many ways you can mess up for like a $40 net profit. And it's super saturated. Like there's four, five, ten people I could name off the top of my head that are selling courses on house cleaning services. Yeah. So it's like so saturated. So I don't like it for all of those reasons.

I don't like that it's low ticket. I would think of it this way. You have this super rare skill and that's sales. You're not afraid to do it in person. you live in like one of the most thriving economies in the country, Houston, Texas. So I would stay exactly where you are geographically. I would stay exactly where you are with regards to your skills. And I would find that more of a high ticket home service like fencing, foundation repair, something,

something where you could find a subcontractor to sub it out to and just start pounding the pavement. Like throw up a card website, just do something by the end of today that, that, Has you Pock committed? Maybe it's a $10 domain name. Just something to move the ball forward. And honestly, if I were you, I would go buy a card website, like a paid card account, which is like $30 or $50 a year. Yeah.

Spend an hour or two making a website. And then you can copy and paste website. So I would copy that website five times. And I would pick five high ticket home services, maybe even roofing, and just literally make that same. website across five different home services and then just jump in Facebook groups and next door groups like tonight and just start asking around like what what are your pain points what types of services are you unable to find and like that will lead you and you don't even have to

pick one of the five until for a month two months three months right like start going down all the paths at once and just see where they lead you I don't like I don't I don't don't like the idea of buying a business for the shoes that you're in today because it's much more symmetric of an outcome. But if you can learn with your own money and your own skills and just kind of get your feet wet, risking almost nothing, then one, two, three years from now, you're going to feel a lot more comfortable and confident to buy a business should you want to. Or you might just say, why would I spend all this money for a business when I know how to do all this stuff by now. Yeah, that makes sense. And then the idea then is just, you know, you build it out,

kind of get validation through the Facebook groups and everything like that. And then, I mean, you're basically finding the job and then you basically contract that out to a vendor that you find, that you trust, that you've seen their work, and then you basically, I guess, split it up that way. Yeah, find the job first and then find the subcontractor. Okay, perfect. All right, Chris. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, for sure.

All right. We have Brandon back, so I'll add him back in. But if everyone, if you want to speak, if you would just comment on the on here, I can read through the comments and we can get the next people in after that. So thanks, Murrell. I'll add Brandon in and see if his connection's a bit better. Brandon, there you are. Hear me? Yeah.

How's it going? Sorry about that. I must have lost connection or something. But I was saying, yeah, so we have a street sweeping. Yeah. I just finished, go ahead. No, go ahead. Yeah, so I was saying we have a street sweeping business in California.

Basically, I'm taking it over. I just finished a baseball career and wanted to test this out. So, yeah, we have HOA's commercial, contractors, anyone building, and then a bunch of just commercial jobs, parking lot sweeping, et cetera. So it's either per sweep or per hour. And what is the average monthly ticket price? I would say anywhere from probably 2,000 to 3,000, depending on how big of a community it is or how long it takes. But basically a full day, it's about a $1,500 to $2,000 day if it's eight hours.

Okay. And you might do one or two days a month for that customer? Yeah, correct. Some want every week and some want twice monthly. It kind of depends for the county work, how much they have in their budget. it. But that's kind of where we're meeting inspectors who are recommending more. So kind of requesting more funds in order to do it more. And going back six months, if you could see the future, would you have still bought this business? Ooh, I don't know. That's hard to say. So I would say

it's growing. We haven't yet gotten to the point where we're seeing that because we're still investing into the business. But I think there's, I think it's a really good opportunity. Pretty much every local business around us that's a sweeping business has been bought out by venture capital. So that's our, that's our like main competition. But most of their clients come to us because they aren't getting service. So if you have five to six customers, what's your, what's your Tam like? How many potential customers could you get without buying more trucks are really having to invest a bunch into capital expenses? Let's see.

I think each truck can do, if it's running full-time, can do about $25,000 in revenue a month. And we have two trucks running one truck full-time, one truck that is probably 30 hours a week. And then we have two other trucks that we can fill. So four trucks total? Yes, correct. Ventura? Yeah, Ventura. So 100,000 people or so.

Do you go outside of Ventura at all? Yeah, we'll travel wherever. We're pretty much all of Ventura County, Los Angeles, parts of Santa Barbara, all those areas. So is it safe to say you've got four trucks and you could do about 25 grand hop line per truck? day if you're fully at capacity? Yeah, yeah. Possibly more if we did more night sweeps. Those just aren't as profitable.

Okay. What does the sales cycle look like? How long does it take to acquire an average customer? And have you acquired any since purchasing or you just keeping what you purchased? Yeah. So we had, those five or six were probably the customers that we bought the business with. We get, I would say. say five or six projects a month just from a contractor who has an inspector coming in and needs to sweep.

And then we've probably added five or six recurring sweeps to our schedule. But yeah, we just turned on ads probably two months ago and we have almost doubled in revenue each month. what type of ads? Mostly just Google Google ads. It just like we get calls, we get

links to our website for forms to contact most of those and then, but there I mean there's sometimes we'll get a contract for you know, $30,000 a month call in and it's just a matter of either lowest price that they're bidding out

or how long the project goes for. Okay. Are you listed on Google My Business? Yes, we are. Do you mind saying the name of your business? Yeah, it's cleanerstreets.com. I'm just looking you up on Google My Business right now. Do you have any idea of how much you're penetrating your total Google Ads budget for that area?

No, I don't. How much could you totally be spending in that geographical area on Google Maps? I would learn that first and foremost. If you're telling me if you doubled your business using Google Ads, I said Google Maps. I meant Google Maps. Like that feels like the answer to me, right? Like increase your ad spend? Yeah.

Are they converting okay? Yeah. What is your daily budget? converting pretty good. So we're doing probably, I think it's like $2,500 a month for ad spend. Okay. But how many signed customers has that brought you? Probably nine or ten.

Some are one-day projects and then some are recurring. And then a lot are people calling in asking if their streets getting swept so that they can move their cars. Okay, okay. And what is your most profitable type of customer? Like if you could only lean into one type of customer, most recurring, most profitable, lowest headache, who would that be? Probably construction. The issue is those are shorter projects. Government, like the city and county ones are very good if they're prevailing wage. those you just have a lot more complaints and headaches and they're usually bigger bids that only you're breaking up you're breaking up there Brandon

the bids don't come up very often you said can you hear me uh yeah can you hear me sorry um yeah so the government projects are every couple of years every third year uh depending on the contract length so those are there's fewer and far between, but definitely like the commercial builds are the most profitable. All right. So let me just give you my breakdown.

There's an endless tradeoff between profitability and recurring revenue and or the sales cycle length and how long you keep a customer. So it sounds to me like you love your construction customers because they're more profitable. The sale cycle is probably shorter. but it's not as recurring, right? But it sounds like you still like those customers the most, the construction customers? Yeah, yeah, correct. So, all right, if I were you,

I would start with your Google My Business profile. You have one five-star review, which is great. I would try to get like 20 to 50. And that might seem insurmountable, having, you know, being in B2B. But even if you were to get end consumers to leave you five-star reviews, that would be amazing.

because Google doesn't know, people don't know, they don't care that it's not a municipality leaving you a five-star review. That will help you get more organic business. I would remove the LLC from your business name and Google My Business. I assume that's something that was that way when you bought the business. There's no need to put it in there. And then I would really dig deep on your Google Ads. Like if you have a profitable Google Ads campaign, your problem is already solved. You just need to optimize it and scale up your ad spend.

Like, it's actually shocking how many businesses don't, for lack of the better word, qualify to really scale on Google ads. So if you have that, that's the golden goose. So lean into that. Keep doing that. That's my first suggestion. Second suggestion is you're at an advantage because you're in a defined geographical area, which means if you're selling a high ticket recurring service as you are, then your potential. customers are all right there. There's only so many contractors or so many home builders or developers in Ventura County.

So I would start with something like Apollo and scrape everyone. You can use Outscraper as well if they're listed on Google Maps, which most of them will be, and just build your master database of customers and say, all right, there are 300 people here that could be using my service, and I only have three of them. And it's probably going to look something like that. And then just attack them every which way. If it's a higher ticket item and there's only so many customers out there as opposed to something like landscaping, then you can really get personalized in your outreach.

I mean, you could find these builders on Venmo and send them five bucks to get their attention. You could send them a custom loon video, spend five minutes, send them a loom video and talk about how sweeping their streets will you know, add value to their lives or to their projects. But at the end of the day, you want to test like five different things because that's going to truly tell you which channel you want to lean into. I would start with Google Ads. A lot of times the answer is right in front of us and we don't even recognize it. Maybe go to Upwork, find someone that's an expert and pay them one or 200 bucks for an audit.

I much prefer doing Google Ads audits than hiring an agency because a lot of times, you know, 80, 20, the 80% of the value they're going to add is going to be in that audit. And then at that point, you can just take it over from there. So you don't have to pay them $3,000 a month. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, no, that all makes a ton of sense. And I agree. I think we're at the point where we're, yeah, trying to grow with,

very little management in place. And so we're trying to put like those systems in in place so we can provide like good service. I love it. But yeah, the Google ads is is, yeah, about two months in. So we're going to continue hammering on that. Awesome. Well, I hope this helps.

And thank you for calling in, Brandon. Yeah, thank you. All right. Thanks, Brandon. I put out some requests for people to speak. I don't know if they've accepted or not. Oh, Joe has great. Joe, why don't you go next?

Hey, can you guys hear me okay? Yep, perfect. Perfect. Well, longtime reader, first time caller. Really enjoy the stuff you're doing. When I was in college, we were on the same call with, I think, Brian Sullendrop. And we were gathered. And I ended up starting a vending machine business while in college over in Provo at the Y.

Very cool. And so that was really cool. And then we graduated. We traveled abroad for a little bit. So I ended up giving the range over to my cousin who was in accounting, really wanted to do some stuff. So anyway, so we're not there anymore. We just moved to Austin. and I'm wanting to do more like an online business,

something I can kind of do more remote because I've got a lot of experience with, like, web development, things like that. I want to do more remote stuff. So that leads to the business proposal for the thing that I'm doing right now, which is setting up websites for small businesses. So to start off, I've kind of niched down to real estate agents. I got a list of a bunch of agents from Realture.com who don't have websites so I can cold email them with an offer to make a website for them for, I'm starting off with like 2 grand. But I don't know if it's just totally unfounded.

I don't have a ton of data that I'm going off of. And so I keep kind of getting this like, I don't know, like heavy doubts with it or I don't know if it'll be it'll be it'll. if I can validate kind of what I'm doing as I'm going through or if I'm wasting my time in certain areas. So I love kind of like an audit of just where I could be improving just the general business process and what I shouldn't be worrying about. Okay. So your general idea is to make custom websites for real estate agents that don't have a website, right? Yeah. Okay. And is this still in the ideation phase? you have a customer yet? Yeah, still in the ideation phase. I just sent out my first like cold email

yesterday with a quick little, you know, hey, we can make a, I can make a website for you and I attached a screenshot of what it would look like with like their face, their name and, and the area that they cover with their real estate to kind of see if that would work. So, so just very early stages. Have you thought of trying a different approach and going after real estate agents, that already have a website that might be unoptimized or just, for lack of a better word, crappy. And like pitching to them why their website needs to be improved or should be improved and what they could get from a more optimized website. Because I don't like the idea of finding realtors that don't have websites because, A,

there's a good chance they don't have a website because they are an inactive agent. and like you scrape their data and it's six months or six years old or somewhere in between. And so they don't want a website. They don't even want to do anything with real estate. I also don't like it because it could be the opposite end of the spectrum and you've got this small town agent that just crushes it. And I don't need a website. I do just. They're right.

You know, like they could do much better if they had a website, but it's not your job to convince them of that because you probably won't. right right and so i'm thinking if you if you use built with to let's say let's say you use built with to scrape all of the websites that have a certain wordpress plugin right like maybe you know idx is um the the coding platform yeah idx is is like the API for for real estate right where it's like you link your MLS to your website. So you go to Staceyrealtor.com and you can, you know, you can view houses, not just her listings, but like it's just like an API that pulls from the local MLS like Zill.

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. So I imagine, I assume that WordPress has a plugin for IDX. So therefore they have to. There's a million WordPress plugins. If you find that plugin that supports IDX and then use built with, to export the 100,000 plus websites that use that plugin,

then you can infer that those WordPress websites are realtor websites because they're using the IDX plugin. So now you know that all of these people have WordPress websites that are real estate websites that are probably, they probably look really bad and or they probably don't convert well. And or they're probably outdated. And so then you could use those people and go find like, What was their website called like Grasshopper or carrot or something?

Like there's a half a dozen SaaS platforms out there that will basically make real estate websites that look really, really good. And you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You can still charge $2,000. I know people that use card templates and charge $2,000. And it takes them 30 minutes to set up a site, right? Like you don't have to make this custom. you could just piggyback off of some overfunded Silicon Valley real estate website startup. I love that.

And just, yeah, exactly. And just say, hey, and you don't even need to have a customer first. You could just point to other real estate websites that are using that same platform and say, hey, Stacey, I see you're on WordPress. Good for you for having a website because it's surprising how many realtors don't. So you're going to kind of compliment them. but like did you know that a website that has xy and z features results in 36% more leads to real estate agents and it doesn't cost any more than WordPress. So it's like they want to know immediately how can a better website actually lead to more money in their pocket, right?

Because you don't want to sell them, oh, your website's ugly, I'll make it look better. This will lead to more money in your pocket. And you pointing to other websites who are using that same platform, the implication is that these are case studies, these are your old customers, but no, you're just showing them examples, right? I love that. Yeah. You can pull stats off of the platform's website, like the 36% or whatever it is, because I'm sure they have those stats and just piggyback on those stats. You can build your own website with that platform, even though you're not a realtor. and then you can go after people that are already sold on having a website.

They know it's important. A website is one of those things where it's been outdated forever. You know it's outdated and you know you need to fix it. You know, you should fix it, but you're not going to until you get a cold email. You know, like something has to be the impetus for you to do that. And so you could be that cold email. You can still charge what you want. It doesn't have to be custom.

You can copy and paste all these websites. literally like you do on call on card and then swap out the city and the name sweet okay i love this this is a fantastic i feel like this is uh kind of that last key in place to really make this work i love this good yeah i think uh i think it's a work and honestly you can you can text them as well um there's the good and bad about selling to realtors i've done it my wife is one uh the good is that you can get their info super easily the bad is that because of that, everyone is pitching to them nonstop. But there is more good than that because of all the people you're going to cold call,

they are the most likely to answer their phone. It could be a listing. Right. So that's what I would do. Okay. Thank you. I feel like I've got some good direction here. Absolutely.

Good luck. All right. Thanks, Joe. Chris, we have Matthew Stewart next. He's a mobile home park owner. He's looking for some advice there. Matthew, you're up. Hey, Chris, thanks for having me on. And Heath, thanks for allowing me to join here.

We purchased about six parks over the last two years in North Alabama and Tennessee, three MH and three RV. And I had a couple of specific operational questions and marketing questions around the RV parks in particular. One being, you know, we struggle a lot in the winter months being in North Alabama, it's not as ideal as South Alabama for winter RVing. And we see our income kind of fluctuate pretty drastically. You know, in the summer we're getting $25,000 or more month. And then in the winter, it's down to $15,000, which really eats into a lot of our fixed costs. Obviously, it causes a lot of stress.

And I'm trying to figure out ways to kind of even out our revenue and market to people that would be interested in winter our RVing. Our target market is typically contractors that are coming to the area. You know, obviously Huntsville is growing like crazy. And we're over in muscle shoals, but we do get a lot of that bleed over. And then also retired folks. We have a lot of retired folks that end up spending three to five years sometimes at our RV parks. So I was just kind of wanted to pick your brain on what you've seen success in the past of your parks or if you have any ideas for how we might be able to target those people. Okay.

So is your revenue fluctuating? So you said you had MH and RV parks. Is it fluctuating from the RVs then? Because it's month to month? Correct. Yeah. Our MH is doing great. Okay.

And are these parks marketed as like an amenity rich short-term park or more as like a long-term, low-amending park? They're more of a longer term. You know, we've got laundry. bath house, dog park, you know, kind of the basics, but we don't have any like pools or pickleball courts or anything like that. And do you have, how big are the parks on a padside basis? They're both about 50 pads. We just added a couple tiny homes, and those, we've seen a lot of success with those just running out fully furnished utilities included months a month. So I'm considering that might be a good strategy.

You know, obviously it's capital intensive, but I have a hunch that those will be a lot easier to fill in the winter. It's a little bit easier to live in a tiny home than it is in RV in the winter. It's true. So muscle shoals and where's the other one? They're both right there in Muscle Shoals. And then we have another one out in Hot Springs, Arkansas. But I'm kind of more focused on the Muscle Shoals ones right now because those are where we've been struggling. Okay.

So they're each about 50 pads, both in Muscle Shoals. Are they both all RV or a mix of RV and MH? They're all RV. Okay. So your revenue is dropping almost in half just because people are going back for their south for the winter. Yeah, a lot of the contracts end around December. And so we see a huge drop off in December and it doesn't really pick up until March or April. So, you know, there's like three months or sometimes four months that, you know, they're pretty stressful.

Have you thought about marketing your vacancies on a yearly basis? to account for that. I know up north, it's pretty common. Instead of $600 a month, they'll charge $8,000 for a year knowing that for four months at a time, those pads are going to sit empty. Yeah, I mean, I really like that idea. I thought about kind of offering some deals like, you know,

sign up for a six-month kind of lease and you get the seventh month free or something like that. All the promotional stuff we've done, referrals and stuff, it doesn't seem to have moved the needle at all. But I could explore that yearly option for sure. Have you ever talked to the customers that have left for the winter and specifically ask them, like, why are you leaving? Did you know you were leaving when you got here?

Is there something we could have done better? Or you just are just kind of assuming it's getting cold, so they're leaving? So yes, I've talked to a few of them. A lot of them that I've talked to, their job is ending and they're moving on to somewhere else. And a lot of them have said, you know, we'll probably come back in the next couple of years because their work will send them back. But I think that we could definitely do a better job of kind of having an exit survey, whether it's a phone call or an email that we send to them, allow them to give us some feedback as to why they might be leaving. I don't think they're going to other parks in the area. I think they're really just headed out of town.

And I've had a couple people ask, you know, could I explicitly store my camper here for the winter so I don't have to move it? And, you know, what they'd be looking to pay for that. You know, at first I was against it because I thought I could fill those sites, you know, but, you know, we're dropping from like 85% occupancy to like 50 pretty quickly. So, you know, we definitely could have some sort of. storage component and you know obviously there's no utility costs involved with that in the winter months do you have space to do that if they were not on the pad sites like not really i mean we've

there's a little bit at one of our parks um but we we've tried to maximize the amount of pads that we can we can put on these parks um all of our open spaces um either on gas lines or um tends to flood a little bit. Okay. What would you say the percentage mixes between people that leave that are like retirees, more full-time of a tenant versus blue-collar workers that are there for a job? You know, we've managed to keep most of, most or all of our retired folks. They kind of like enjoy the community.

We do community events and stuff and they kind of have like a little, little click. They tend to stay together. It's pretty much mostly the, the contract workers. And I know there's still work going on in the area. We're just not getting any of that. Yeah. All right.

So the surefire, true way to really fix an occupancy issue is to buy a unit. And it might be a tiny home. It might be an RV. We used to do this. We bought a park in a city with literally like 800 people in it. And not like outside of a big city. it was out there.

It was all by itself. Kiowa, Oklahoma, to be exact. And the only way to fix occupancy at that park, and I've never seen this not work, was to buy an $8,000 to $15,000 trailer, 25 to 35 feet, usually 5 to 10 years old. So not a motorhome, just to pull behind, either gooseneck or otherwise,

and then do a lease to own. And really targeted. it toward the people that are going to live there for six months to six years at a time. It takes some capital, obviously. There's not really a way around that. You don't really make money on the financing. I'm sure you can. We never tried to. We would just basically say, you know, your lot rent is 250 and your payment is 250. So it's 500 a month. And then obviously, if you have to eat the electric, then it would be closer to 600. Otherwise, it would be direct build. I've never seen that not work. Like if you were to go to Facebook marketplace and post an ad,

I would first go to Facebook Marketplace and see what trailers in your area are costing. You could probably find one for 10 grand. And then kind of back of the envelope, what that would look like. And then just take some pictures from Google images, post an ad on Facebook Marketplace and Muscle Shoals and see how many inquiries you get. And those are your future tenants. Is that Is that a tenable idea? 100%. I've been exploring that pretty heavily. It's good to hear it from you who's got a lot of experience here.

I've got a number of investors. And I need to kind of convince them that this is the right move. So it's definitely good to hear from somebody with experience that this is the way to go. And I've found a number of campers and park model trailers and also just tiny homes. I think I could probably keep our purchase costs from around $15,000 to $20,000 and have like units. And, you know, the rent's what we're getting on those. Like, we're running a tiny home for $1,100 a month right now. So it took one bed, one bath, 400 square foot tiny home.

So I'm convinced that that's the way to go. It's definitely good to hear you say that. And then another quick question on the MH stuff. You know, obviously owning, we might. mostly own most of our homes. And I want to transition them to tenant owned. And I'm considering like giving away a lot of the homes and selling them for for dirt cheap just to kind of turn like turn the park into a tenant owned home park. You know, our basis in the parks is such that it would allow us to be operating a tenant owned home park at an eight cap, even if we just gave away all the

homes. And right now they're running at about a 10 cap or 11 cap. And so, and I just hate having to deal with HVAC and flooring issues and just running, operating, you know, all the, I think we have 77 mobile homes now. And it's just a pain and it's expensive to hire people. And so I wanted to know, have you ever done that before? Have you seen success and kind of what are the biggest risks you've seen with that? Absolutely. I mean, that was our playbook was we would convert all the park-owned homes to tenant-owned homes. and we would usually just do it for free.

And a lot of times, in fact, most of the time, their payment wouldn't even change. So if it were 700 a month, then it's like, hey, FYI, your lot rent is $350. Your payment is now $350. We're going to deed you over the home. If you want to move, then you have 90 days, whatever you need. And we were very clear, like, this means that the home is now yours, but it's now your responsibility as well. Right. And I would say 20% of the people would just say, eh, okay, I'm out, you know, too hard. But 80% would say, okay, you know, they don't skip a

beat. They're not pissed. They get it. And you have to do it right. Like there are some states where you have to be like a mortgage broker to do that. Texas and Oklahoma was very forgiving. I don't know what Alabama's laws are. But yeah, I would definitely suggest doing that. Would you suggest even trying to get like three to five grand out of these homes or just is it cleaner? It depends on the condition. Yeah, I would unless they're just completely trashed. But yeah, I think three to five. They're in good shape.

I mean, they would sell on Facebook Marketplace for 20 to 25, I'm sure. Oh, then absolutely. I wouldn't give those away if I were you. Okay. And so the reason I want to get some money is to kind of build in sort of like a maintenance fund for our tenants to say, look, you know, obviously taking over the home means that, you know, if the HVAC goes out, it's your issue, like we're willing to help you in the first year. That's a good idea. That's a really good idea. Yeah.

I'd never thought of that. That's a great idea. I like that a lot. Yeah, and just kind of keeping that away for a year. And then after a year, we can cash it out or pay down debt with it, whatever. But, okay. Yeah, or maybe you could even like you could give them an option to pay an extra 50 a month for that like fund. And it's it's kind of like insurance.

It's like if you're paying into that and your AC goes out tomorrow, you know, we will proportionally use funds to help fix that. Yeah. But if you're not paying into that, then you're on your own. Okay. That's a great idea. Yeah. I hadn't thought of that. I like that.

Okay. Well, this has been helpful. I don't pick up too much more of your time, but I really appreciate you having me on and give me this advice. Absolutely, Matthew. Thank you. All right. Cool. Thanks, Matthew. All right, Chris, we got David next. He wants to start a business that he can get his kids involved with. David, you're up. Hey, Chris. I appreciate all your insight. So I'm actually looking for a business for myself and my kids. So I heard you mention kids. I heard you mention that your wife's a realtor. So we have that kind of in common. So just to give you a little bit of an idea, I think the first speaker, had a little similarity with myself as well. So I'm in sales, I'm in mortgage sales,

and we have a portfolio of long-term and short-term rental properties that we currently own. It's fun. However, I think property values have really, like, shot up, and we've just got, like, some investment capital that I'd like to start looking into to explore, like, different new business venture. So like I said, we're in a smaller town, Norfolk, Virginia. It's not as big as Houston or any of the other places that I've kind of heard so far. And just trying to get your insight on like different businesses that we can get into that would like require minimal direct involvement and allow for like operational management through like hired help. So when you talk about the short term role in business, is that what you do professional?

or you own that real estate personally? So I own the real estate personally. Okay. And then you have a job in the mortgage industry? Yes. Okay. And you, because of the fact that home values have gone up so much, you're not really looking to scale that business right now.

You'd rather try something else as well? Well, so I'm very disciplined with what I buy. And that, I mean, I guess that could be a good and a bad thing, right? So I think everything that I've bought so far has been really good values. And I've doubled, triple, quadrupled and sometimes even like 10, 15 time like my initial capital investment. However, everything that I'm offering on right now, I'm getting outbid on. So everyone's fighting for that same type of property that I'm looking for now. So I'm just looking to get into other like other businesses.

is like, you know, I'm heavily involved in a lot of like digital marketing groups. So like, you know, I believe in like the one minute videos, to Google my business and all that other stuff. So just trying to get some business ideas that could maybe take advantage of some of the skills that I currently already have and the knowledge that are currently already have. And just, you know, get virtual assistance to run local service ads or Google ads to scale and build or buy into a franchise. I'm really not sure, man.

I'm just grasping for straws at this point. So if you have this idea to start a business with your family, I assume that you already have a couple ideas that are top of mind. You're kind of throwing around home services. What ideas have you guys talked or thought about already? So you really caught my attention on one tweet that, I mean, I still can't get out of my head. And that's where the whole 13-year-old son comes into play too, right?

So that was the bounce house business. So I've basically gone back and read a bunch of your tweets and I was like, oh, I didn't even know this guy has a newsletter. So I think I don't know what kind of businesses we can get into. I mean, I've considered buying land and putting warehouse space there because, you know, we're part of a soccer academy. And, you know, I've had people reach out to me saying they want to build like batting cages and all this other stuff. I have contractors constantly reaching out to me every single day saying, hey, they need storage, so they want to buy a house with a bunch of land so they can build all this storage space. So I'm just trying to figure out how I can, like, you know, solve a need. But solve a need in a smaller town because I don't have any intention of leaving this town for the next 15 years.

So I just need to put my money to work and scale into profitable business. that don't require a lot of involvement from me. Yep. Okay. So I'm getting some ideas. So you're in Norfolk. I've got the map pulled up here. What, I don't know if you want to like blast out like where you live exactly, but I kind of want to get an idea of how rural or urban that you are. Norfolk. Norfolk is, I mean, I live in a town that has a very similar population as Norfolk. Okay. Okay. Is land prohibitively expensive there? I don't think so.

I mean, I've got a lot of resources to get land to. I mean, there's auction land. I mean, I think zoning and, you know, the use of the land and clearing of the land may be my only challenges. But depending on what your business idea is, I'm sure I can find land. Okay. So I'm biased, obviously, but that just, you know, everyone's biased. So I'm going to give you ideas that I've had because these are the ideas that I'm working with every day. And I see the promise there.

There's all kinds of things that I work with that I don't tweet about because it doesn't look promising. I would never start it, right? But the 2,100 square foot metal building in my, it's not technically my backyard. The property behind me is amazing. I had no idea how much demand there is for a for metal like ugly simple kit metal buildings that you can order on the internet and have someone come install that are between 1,500 and 5,000 square feet. There like there is no shortage of ways that you can use these things. So if I were you, I would go find, call it. one to five acres. You don't need a lot of space of raw land. Make sure it's zoned right.

Make sure that you can put a metal building on it before you buy it, obviously. And I would literally buy one of those metal buildings, like I tweeted about for that sports complex idea. You want to get it extra well insulated. You want to put HVAC in there. You want to put plumbing in there, get a bathroom in there. And then you have a foundation that you can do any number of things. So put it near the edge of your property to where if you were to add more metal buildings, there'd be plenty of space to. At that point, you can do this. So you can subdivide it and rent out part of it to pay the note on all of it. You can rent out the entire thing. You can go buy five bounce houses and store them there. Before you even talked about anything, I was going

to suggest that if you're going to start a business with your kids, that you should start some sort of a rental business. I mean, there's a lot of water in Norfolk. I know a guy that does kayak rentals that just crushes it. He just absolutely crushes it. You could store those there. You could store bounce houses there. You could just rent it out. You could start a home services businesses there. You could have a classic car parking there. But if you have HVAC and a bathroom and the zoning and the cheap metal building, I say cheap, it's cheap relative to you know, building any other type of building.

There's a zillion things you can do with it. And that buys you a good year before you really have to decide. Okay. What do you think of that? I mean, I think it's a great idea. So I think it was your tweet. You had an indoor soccer.

You had an indoor soccer field, right? Okay. So how much are those buildings typically? And what it costs to put up? So I bought the land. as it was. I bought the building in the land. It was already there.

But I believe it was like, I mean, this was 2016, 2017 when they put it up. I think it was like 60 grand back then. It's probably two or three times that by now. But it's, I mean, it's extremely affordable. I don't know what prices are lately. Okay. Okay. No, this is good.

I mean, this is definitely right up my alley. I think if I have enough land, I can maybe do some outdoor contractor. parking as well. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So of the kid-friendly businesses, I mean, do you think that the bounce house in a small town like this would possibly work or laser tag or those little orby guns or what are you thinking would be a good business for like a 13-year-old, like highly motivated kid to start? I think a good business, like a good rental business for. four kids is one with a broad enough name and a broad enough offering that you could really hone in on any one of them. So you might cringe at this, but there's a lot of money in like petting,

like petting zoo, like mobile petting zoo businesses. I don't know if you want to raise animals. No, no, not at all. I mean, you could do, you could do the bounce house idea. At the same time as the laser tag idea as a kayak rental, like just a rental. All in one. All in one with the sole idea that we're not going to do all in one forever. We're going to see where the demand is, right? But how much does it cost to buy all this stuff? It's all fairly cheap.

Yeah. So, I mean, I did start a mobile, like, festival business. And that worked out really well. but now I've got a trailer full of restaurant supplies that I can't sell. Yeah. That's just the downside of it. I think that if you're starting the type of business that we're talking about, they're cheaper assets than restaurant supplies.

I mean, you can even rent out wedding wreaths. That's a good size business. Or just wedding chairs. If I were more prepared, I'd list off a dozen things that you could rent out. but there's all kinds of things out that people only need for a weekend. So how do you manage to be in so many businesses without having to put yourself into all of this? Do you have a bunch of partnerships? Because, I mean, ultimately, I would like to get out of what I'm doing.

I don't like it. I mean, I like it. I really do like it, but it ties me to Virginia, right? My goal is to be able to, you know, be able to travel everywhere, be able to work remotely and just manage businesses without having to be ready for that, you know, that Christmas Eve phone call that they're asking about, hey, I want to, I want to buy this house and I need a mortgage that closes in 14 days. Yeah.

So for something like that, I mean, I'm not sure that this type of business will eventually get me out of this without tying me to this area. Well, first of all, any business is sellable, right? Like, you could sell it if you needed to. You could shut it down if you needed to. It doesn't sound like you're trying to start a billion-dollar idea. I wouldn't get hung up on that. I would just try to start something that whets your appetite,

helps you taste entrepreneurship a little more than you already have, get your kids involved. And then whatever skills you acquire along the way, even if you end up just moving to your dream location, shutting it down, you'll be able to pick it back up when you get your new place. Okay. All right. Well, I appreciate it, Chris.

And thanks for all the knowledge that you put out there. Yeah. Thanks, David. All right. Thanks, David. Go ahead, Chris. Yeah, we got one more here. Last one up is Tommy.

Tommy, go for it. And if anyone didn't get a chance to go, we'll do this again next week. and we'll put you at the top of the list next week. Yeah. Hey, Chris, thanks for doing this. A longtime follower. I'm mostly a Twitter lurker in the real estate and, you know, small business space of Twitter.

But come from a family that's owned an auto garage for since 1964 in Alexandria, Virginia. You know, grew up working on cars with my dad and my uncles and my grandpa. And I went off to play college sports, got a corporate job. And so I've been in federal sales for five, In almost five years now, four and a half years. I did a small stint coaching college ball after college. But two years ago, just by completely accidentally, started a moving business. So I was just driving down the highway one day, driving out to my mom's about two hours away.

And I just, every 30 seconds, I saw a U-Haul truck. So I went out and I bought a five-by-eight trailer that I figured I'd use it for hauling my motorcycle around, you know, and then, you know, people to use. well, you know, playing flag football the next weekend, guy says, I got to go pick up a U-Haul, you know, I'm getting my floors redone. And so I said, I'll just use my trailer instead. So he puts his couch and his coffee table on there while he's getting his house remodeled, right? You know, he gave me $60 for that.

And then he told a buddy about it. Next week, trailers run it out for $100 and so on and so forth, right? So we took that, and this is just nights and weekends. Got on next door and on Facebook Marketplace, just messaging, you know, the properties for rent properties for sale you know somebody posts on next door that they need help donating furniture and all that stuff so um had a buddy who was a strength trainer uh got laid off during covid because all the gyms closed and was at night school so he and i just started picking up furniture for people on nights and weekends now we own again two hours later we've done about

275k in revenue we've got two trucks um i'm still working full time in in my software sales job and kind of running the business per se while he's running the field so he's driving drives the truck to every job, manages the crews, does all the materials, all that stuff. So essentially what I'm looking for, and David, by the way, have a lot of interest in the Norfolk, Virginia Beach Hampton area. We just did a trip down there. So David, if you're still on, shoot me a DM, let's connect. I also think of that David can do a trailer rental business and put him in his metal building. Not that you want to compare there. But literally the day before I rented out to my buddy,

I went and got some spray paint and some stencils from Lowe's and, you know, did Tommy's trailers, LLC and my personal phone number on it, you know? And so yeah, just I think just again, every other kid I went to high school with, half of them is a, you know, a realtor or, you know, working in the mortgage space. And obviously where I live is very high growth area right outside Washington, D.C. So I think my family's name kind of carries a lot of weight, given that our auto garage specializes in German imports. So we have a lot of high ticket clientele. But I think what my question is, is, you know, we're not making enough to, I am, I am the, the bottleneck here, right? I'm doing all the sales. I'm doing all the estimating, you know, my partner is great at the physical

work and manage the field work, but not the, you know, answer the phone call and customer service and giving out estimates in front of customers type of guy, right? So either, you know, we've got offers to buy our name from some of the other local in-town moving companies. to kind of, you know, sell the name and then kind of come on board as a contract salesman. But I really see this as an opportunity to be an add-on business for our family's auto garage and then kind of spin up other home service businesses out of it, almost forming like a holding company to where we have. We've got the auto garage. We've got the moving and storage business, you know, maybe throw in landscaping or home painting or, you know, things like that as I kind

of continue to grow this, you know, year over year. So that's just kind of where I'm coming from. really curious your thoughts on kind of growing a service business and kind of removing myself as as the bottleneck or the face of the business so that it really has an opportunity to flourish. If you were to only keep doing what you're doing, how much room is there left to grow in your area? A ton. I mean, D.C. is just an absolute monster of growth right now. I'm sitting outside of a senior living facility that's getting built on top of an old McDonald's right now. My buddy's the broker-reelter that's helping lease all these units right now. So we get calls like this every single day to where we're trying to, you know,

we're getting a lot of office move type type deals coming in now too. So again, I'm the bottleneck because I'm not ready to quit my full-time job just to, you know, replace that salary and go on on this is not, we're not there yet. You know, I have full faith that if I did quit my day job, I could replace my salary in a couple months. But, you know, it's a chicken or the egg situation, right? Married three kids. You don't want to lose that stability.

right off the bat. How many trucks do you have? We own two trucks. I'm trying to sell the first smaller truck so we can go ahead and buy a second bigger truck. And we are local only. I don't do any interstate. Again, we know, Hampton Roads area

down in Norfolk area, you know, the other day, but that was kind of a family friend helping job. And I don't prefer to go long distance if we don't have to. And do you do any paid ads? What type of marketing are you doing today? So 90% of what we're doing is referral based. You know, me and my business partner both went to high school here. We just know everybody.

I spend a little bit on Google and I spend money on Nextdoor. That's been great for us because that's where we got started. So we kind of have our niche of being the local guys on Nextdoor, the go-to guys. And then other than that, we've got our logo and everything up on one truck. And on off days, we drive that thing around town and park it in high traffic areas like near the Target. are down on King Street where all the businesses are and where all the tourists are coming through and things like that. Do you have any data that shows that that's working,

parking your truck in those areas? Yeah, yeah, we just got a call this morning, actually, from a lady who saw our truck parked near my buddy's house in downtown Alexandria, asking if we can come give her a quote from March 18th. If you were to pair this with your family's auto business, how do you think you could leverage that? Like, what is the upsell?

What is the crossover there? Yeah, so I think it's just brand name, like name recognition, right? You know, our business has been here for 60 years. We're a stalwart, right? I mean, we are the go-to guys for your German, you know, import vehicles. It's a very, very high-end, high-ticket auto garage that has a really, really strong reputation in a fairly wealthy area. So a lot of these customers are,

you're breaking up, Tommy. I can't hear you. Yeah, Tommy dropped for me. I don't know. Tommy, you there? Maybe they have a family member, you know, moving or something like that. But I haven't used it as leverage. Okay.

Does the auto business keep a good record of your past customers? Because they're a good CRM there? Not for my moving business. No, it's completely separate. No, I know. I know. but oh yeah absolutely yeah everything they've they've got it all automated a whole automated CRM system there and i assume your family would be okay like leveraging that relationship yeah absolutely like

i've i've gone so far as to like i said i've got my uncle you know has flyers out you know on the on the front counter for us and and we bring our truck there to do all of our maintenance anyway so again it's a high traffic area where we kind of use it as a billboard you know once it Okay. So is it true that the busy season is just coming up? It's like going to hear in a month or two? Yeah, absolutely. So December and January, we're awful. February has been great. March is going to start looking really good. April through August is absolutely crazy. Okay. All right. Well, all right, I've got my prescription. I'm going to suggest something that I don't normally do because it gives me anxiety. But tell me, I think you need to quit your job, man. Like, you have. everything right now. You've got it all lined up. You're about to get a bigger truck. You've got a whole CRM with probably tens of thousands, not definitely thousands of customers at your family

business that they would be willing to lend you. It's everyone that has a car has a need for moving. So although it's not like landscaping and trees, there is crossover there. Right. And if if you or someone in your family were to start hitting the phones on the car side of the business to say, hey, you know, whatever your last name is. What's your last name? Kesterman. You know the Kesterman. You know the Kesterman family, how we do business.

We do the same thing on our moving side of our business. We've been open for a couple years. We're looking to really scale and expand. Do you have any moving needs or do you know of anyone that does? Right. Like that is super low-hanging fruit. Furthermore, you're dabbling in Google Ads. You could scale that.

Also, I had a call just yesterday with a billboard salesman for clear channel. And I specifically asked him, this is just coincidental. I said, which of your clients can actually say, your billboards brought me more business? Because billboards, you know, it's kind of like brand awareness. It's really hard to track it. And he said, moving companies. It's like when they put a billboard in the woodlands or in Sugarland or College Station, they start getting calls from those areas. And they're able to track it. Like, you could throw up a couple billboards and blow up your business. Like, I hate suggesting that people quit their jobs because people always come to me looking for me to convince them to do that, forgetting the fact that I've never had to do that.

I've always been a business owner. And the thought of having a six-figure job, having three kids of support, and then quitting it stresses me out. So I don't want other people to do that. But in your case, like, you're going to figure it out. You're going to find more business than you ever thought was possible. And so we could talk about, you know, landscaping and other home services, but this could be a $10 million business just moving locally. I would just keep leaning into that. Wrap your trucks, get a third truck, take a little risk, leverage up your Google ads spend. I have your website pulled up. Optimize your website. It's a website. My sister threw that together first last evening. No, it's fine. It's better than nothing. It's better than nothing. And

I would just go deeper on that. Yeah. Yeah, that's a conversation we've had. I'm like, I got a couple of contracts. I'm trying to sell. I think like August 30th is my hard cutoff date for the sales job, right? You don't want to leave that commission on the table before you go all in. Okay.

Yeah. That's kind of what we're looking at right now. Yeah, but you got this, man. I mean, you're going to be shocked. Like, you're going to be mad that you didn't quit once you see the progress that you make after you quit. Yeah. Yeah, I've been on the fence about it for about a year. Now we're just, we're at the point where we're growing so fast that I'm, I'm, I'm the guy that's in the way because I'm trying to do two things at once. So it's either hire a sales guy or make this, make this my all-in thing, you know? Well, and that was going to be my first suggestion before I heard how promising this was. And that was just record all of your sales calls.

Like record everything you're doing. Like as harsh as it sounds, you're replaceable, right? Nick Saban's replaceable. You're replaceable. You can hire someone, you know? Even if you absolutely refuse to quit your job, you could find someone to do as good of a job as you, especially if you were able to keep your finger over them and keep good close tabs on them and not just let them run wild.

Yeah. Cool. Well, Chris, that's all I had. I just wanted to just kind of get your thoughts on what avenue to take. So appreciate it. Yeah, good. Absolutely. Good luck. Well, thank you, everyone. I had fun. I hope you learned something. And I think we'll try this again next week. So we'd love to chat with you then.