The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Quit Waiting. Start This Simple Business with $0 | Ep. #171

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

Check out my newsletter at TKOPOD.com and join my new community at TKOwners.com.I sat down with Brandon Doyle (x.com/_BrandonDoyle_) again, he was on back in episode #060, and we brainstormed creative ways to grow small service businesses. We bounced around a bunch of low-cost, scrappy business ideas. Some of them sound kinda out there at first, but they’ve got real-world results behind them and they’re super easy to test. If you’re trying to get more customers without spending a ton, this one’s worth a listen.Timestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 Introduction to Growth Hacks for Small Businesses01:00 Innovative Marketing Strategies: QR Codes and Yard Signs02:57 Leveraging Local Networks: Neighbor Blitz and Referral Incentives06:50 Creative Partnerships: Collaborating for Mutual Growth11:02 Utilizing AI for Business Growth: ChatGPT Insights13:54 AOL's Viral Marketing Strategy: Lessons for Today26:55 Conclusion and Future Insights

So Open AI told you first? Yeah, it told me first. Oh my gosh. And gave me the juice before their CEOs even announced it. Your competitors are not doing this yet. This is the easiest I can make it for someone that doesn't know AI well and doesn't want to hire an agency. You can entirely launch it off of this strategy.

Low list, zero dollars out of pocket. You're going to start taking customers on day two. 300 bucks customer starting now. All you have to do is ideas, ideas, ideas. my brain is hurting right now. Back in September, I had my friend Brandon on, and Brandon owns an eight-figure marketing agency. This was episode 60. It was a fan favorite, so I wanted to have them on again and talk business ideas, specifically small business growth hack ideas. I don't think we've ever fit this many growth or business ideas into a shorter episode. I had to split it into two

episodes or else your brain would have exploded. You'll hear part two of this episode a week from today. I don't even know where to begin. You're going to love it. So without further ado, please enjoy. Okay, so here's an idea. QR codes on yard signs. If you're a home services company, a lot of times you'll leave a yard sign afterwards, right? Or you'll ask the homeowner if you can, whether it's, you know, landscaping or window cleaning or whatever. So here's my idea. On the yard sign, have your little logo on the top, have a big old QR code and then a big bold letters have it say like scan for a prize. And have that be a little logo on the top. Have a big old QR code and then a big old QR code and then a big bold letters have it say like scan for a prize. And have that be a lead gen for you for your business where they just have to enter their name, you know, phone number, whatever, and have a prize. Give away Amazon gift card or you can aggregate, you know, a gift card to a restaurant plus something plus something else, all from local businesses. But I feel like especially if it's in a regular neighborhood where they'll get a lot of walkbyes from your other neighbors, it'll be something that people would actually look at and scan if it's right there.

instead of just a random thing that's, you know, Joe's landscaping call, you know, 916, blah, blah, blah for service. I love that idea. Would you put like the brand of the home service company on there as well? Or is it like a total, they don't know what they're about to get when they scan it? I think both because I think without the logo, it would be, it could almost be more intriguing. Like why does Marianne have this big old QR code in her front yard? I'm just going to scan it. It's what she's doing. But then, yeah, also have the version. that has your logo, but still scan for prize and then see what happens. Okay.

I like that a lot. I'm trying to think of other ways you could take it. It's kind of like you're merging online and offline. Like you're bringing a lead magnet. And for those listening to lead magnet would be like, let's say you have a landscaping business. You see online a lead magnet to get greener grass. A book, a free ebook on how to get greener grass.

And then you're in their marketing funnel. And maybe they'll hire you as your landscaper. you could totally do something like that. Like let's just say with landscaping. It's like Chris is landscaping, scan here for a free prize. And then it's like free appetizer from our local Applebee's or something. Or maybe it's just a drawing for a $100 Amazon gift card. And they scan, you get their email, and then you start marketing to them.

Yeah. I think it would be good. I love it. And related to that, I thought of another idea and all the ideas I'm going to try to share today are like things that someone could do without hiring in a marketing agency or whatever. So this one I just called like neighbor blitz. So when you're, if you are the type of business that goes to people's homes, when you go, bring coupons and door hangers, door hangers so you can easily just like, you know, bring six

and just put it by the six closest neighbors. But coupons to give to your client, your customer that they can hand out to. of their neighbors that is customized to them. So, you know, they could give, if I just had landscaping done, they could give me five coupons to share with my friends that's like mentioned you got it from Brandon on Central Avenue and you get 10% off or 20% off your first service with this company because I would be much more likely to give someone a coupon than to just shout out to the masses, hey, go hire Joe's landscaping pretty pleased. They did a good job for me. It's like an incentive for a

referral, right? Yeah. Yeah. I haven't seen anyone do either of these, at least not where I live in Utah, which is why I was thinking they would probably stand out. Yeah, I mean, if someone was doing it, it would be in Utah, right? Yeah, that's true. So, so let's say you cut someone's lawn, you go up to the homeowner, you hand them a flyer, right? And what's on that flyer? It's the The coupon that it says, it would say my name, so ideally it would be a little bit customized. And so I could hand it out to my neighbors and they would get the 20% off if they just mentioned they got it for me. Okay, 20% off the service or something else. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. It's like, so it's kind of a similar vein. You're merging online and offline. You're bringing the affiliate marketing to home services. Yeah. Genius. Low list.

Zero dollars out of pocket. do you think this would be like a custom QR code like basically it's an affiliate link that's linked to that QR code? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, why not? Because if you do that, then you can track it by person. And if you do have a neighbor or two, you know, a customer or two that's really doing a great job, then you might want to hook them up and turn them into an actual, you know, lead source for you. This is something I think about all the time that like 98% of business owners are not near. nearly aggressive or assertive enough in asking for referrals, right? Right. It's usually like a, if they do anything, it's a throwaway comment as they walk away. If you need anyone else who needs a bounce house, let me know.

But why not like, hey, post a picture of this bounce house with all these kids playing right now in front of me, show it to me. And I'm going to give you $100. That's it. Yeah. $100. And you don't know what the conversion rate's going to be for the first five to 10 times, but after that you will be very confident to maybe say $200 or maybe only $20.

Yeah. You know, because the average mom is going to have 700 friends. Of those 700, 200 are going to live in that local area. Of those 200, maybe 5% of them, 10 people are going to get a bounce house rental, 500 bucks a pop. That's five grand. And you give them a $100 Amazon gift card for that. Like, why aren't people more intentional about that?

Maybe because there isn't a system like this that enables them to do that more easily, right? Yeah, I mean, riffing off of that, you could try to get a partnership. I mean, everybody likes restaurants, right? So here's how this works. I make you free videos. I actually know what I'm talking about. I have no greasy sales pitch at the end. And if you implement what I talk about, you'll make a lot more money and have a better life.

And all I ask for in return is that you hit the subscribe button and maybe even the notification bell just like that. Thank you. Try to get a partnership where you might buy gift cards to local restaurants at a discount yourself. So you could buy a $50 gift card from the restaurant on her for a third. then you give the $50 gift card out as the prize and you could ask the homeowner once you're done with the service whether it's pest control or window cleaning or whatever you can say hey are you a

part of any like neighborhood Facebook groups and they're like oh yeah I'm actually part of whatever you know Dallas moms unite and then they're like well our owner even better us this thing where if you just show me that you post on it then I can just give you this gift card right now do you want to do that and then just kind of act like like it's this weird thing like be willing to sit in the awkwardness for 20 seconds or whoever your employee is but a lot of people would be like oh yeah i mean i love you already so sure why not and then boom dude there's a lot of money to be made by being willing to sit in the awkwardness and serving a mission is a great way to practice this when i taught seminary early morning seminary i'd ask them a question and they would just give me these blank

stairs and i would just be like i would just stare back and it would be like 90 seconds sometimes like a painful amount of time but i just wouldn't give there's i mean i wasn't making any money doing that but it's the same principle yeah you could even take it a step further and say let's say it's in a mom's group my wife's in a mom's group it's called moms that get around the worst name mom's group ever okay but it's like it's just chock full of referrals and hey i need my car fix any auto body guys like yeah and they like these these referrals are sacred even though the moms most of the moms don't know each other personally but they've all been in this group for years and so it's a very high trust society in there you could take a step further and say hey you get 50 buck amazon gift card

and i think it's important that you have a physical amazon gift card like in your truck right then right $50 Amazon gift card. And I'm going to text you a link. This is a custom link. And I'm going to give you an extra 20 bucks for everyone who signs up with your link. Tell them that you'll put the link in the top comment so Facebook doesn't de-boost the post. Yeah. That way, they're incentivized to not delete it after you leave and they get their money.

And they're incentivized to really ham it up because they could make five times as much money through the affiliate link. No one is doing that with bounce house rentals or pressure washing or landscaper or anything. Like no one. Yeah, and if you were to tell them, you know, once you have a one case study, you could say, yeah, last time we did this, Shelly posted, she's the neighborhood over, she posted and we ended up paying her $450. Exactly. We thought we were going to pay her, but I mean, we got some good customers from it. So we're all happy. And then the, you know, whoever is hearing this heard that Shelley made $450, they're going to want to do it. Yeah. Oh, man. That's so good. Let me bounce one back at you.

I keep thinking about this rock and a flyer idea. Over the summer I interviewed Daniel, he owns a pressure washing business. He owns like a bunch of home service businesses. And he said, the only thing you need to do when you launch a home service business is to find a targeted neighborhood, get a bunch of rocks, buy a bag of rocks or Home Depot for $10. Get a bunch of bags. And he named specifically, he's like they need to be like four by 10 inches open.

Nothing sealed, not a Ziploc. You need to get a flyer that's the same. the same shape as the bag. You put the flyer and the rock in the bag. You staple it and you drive around and you throw it on the driveway, throw it on the driver. And then he said, you don't ever pick up the phone the first day because almost 100% of those first day calls are people that are angry at you. But from the second day on, you pick up the call. And he swears.

And I don't remember what the exact percentage was. They go back and listen to it. It is going to be episode. I've never heard this strategy. This is awesome. This episode did really well. episode 123 and episode 127. He came on,

it was a two part episode. He swears that his response rate is like 10 or 20% with this method. And it's really high. And the cost on this is like 10 cents plus like 10 seconds of time because it's really quick. He's like, I set up in my basement.

I get my kids. We set up a six foot folding table. Rock, flyer bag, staple, done. Load up like a milk crate full of them. And he's like, it's very important.

You pick the right. neighborhood. He's like, if we're doing Christmas lights, we go to this neighborhood. If we're doing pressure washing, we go to that neighborhood. If you get the neighborhood right, you will have a double digit percent response, like not response like close rate. That's amazing. Because it's like, you just see a piece of trash with a rock in it sitting in your driveway. You're 100% going to read it. So I was just thinking like, how could you scale that? Like, could you offer that as a service for other home service businesses? Could you launch a higher ticket home service business only on that type of marketing. Yeah, I feel like you could. I mean, it's just so different than the packets of mailers

that I get like every three days of 40 mailers in them that I don't even send you through anymore because they're just endless. That's a genius idea. I feel like you could do it with the pitch, but you could also do it with like a giveaway. It could just be more like a PSA. Like, hey, we have a giveaway. Here's what it entails. It entails, you know, a free bid on this. this and this, which is yours and something completely non-related. It also is, you know, $100 to whatever Beto's Mexican food restaurant, $100 to the airborne trampoline park, and $50 in flowers. And it's like, gosh, I get all that stuff. I'll have to do is scan this code or call this number. Yeah. Or what if like you opened a restaurant and you just go to the neighborhood around your

restaurant and it's like free egg rolls, free appetizer, only to those homes right there that are going to be driving by your restaurant every day. Like, I would just love to A, B, test that against direct mail. Yeah. Because direct mail still works, even for restaurants. Yeah. I just love like, oh, this is my retirement. My retirement is finding really niche marketing methods like these and just testing it with the most off the wall things. Like, I get roofers knocking on my door every week. And the second I see their face. I hate them. I just, I just hate them. It's nothing personal. I, I knocked doors for two years. Yeah. I just don't, like usually just because they're interrupting me and I'm only answering the door because I think it's someone bringing my wife something. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't have a keyhole or

whatever. Yeah. People. But if I needed something done with my roof and I had one of these on my driveway, for me personally, it stands out because it's not intrusive. And it's just different. Like, No one thinks that ads work for them, but they work for all of us. Like, I was shopping for homeowners insurance and I got a piece of direct mail for homeowners insurance and I called them up. Yeah. I was thinking about getting like true green to come spray my lawn. I was just thinking about it and I got direct mail from true green and I called them up.

And it was just, it was right time. Yeah. And I think that's a lot of it. Yeah, for sure. Next one. Okay, this is this is the easiest I can make it for for someone that, doesn't know AI well and doesn't want to hire an agency. Here it is, though. Large language models like Chad GPT, more and more people are using them as Google, right? Your competitors are

not optimizing to be found in the search from chat GPT, guaranteed. Okay, because it's no new. So whoever is listening to this, your competitors are not doing this yet. So all you have to do is be first. and write out content to post on your website that is the type of content that ChatGPT likes and will surface for the answers. So I put in, I just put the landscaping website just as a test into ChatGPT. I said, I own blah blah blah.com landscaping. Can you write me quality in-depth blog posts for my website that will rank well in LLM searching at ChatGPT tailored to specific and relevant searches. That's all I did. So it's not like a fancy prompt. And then chat GPT's reply to me, looking on my screen right now, but it gave me a ton of topics, why it would

work in chat GPT's search engine, an extra angle on how to beat competing answers and my competitors, how to structure the content. And then it just says, do you want me to start writing this? And I said, yeah. And then it just started writing. all the answers, and then you just take that and just put it on your website, put it on your blog. Your blog is the only one in your competitive market who has the relevant content that these new language models are going to be using to find the answers from. You could also throw in your FAQs.

Like what are the most normal FAQs that you get as a business owner? What are the normal questions that you get? add those to the list, have chat GPT do it. You heard my prompt. It was not fancy at all. It'll just do it all for you. Copy, paste on your blog. Boom, you're done.

And you'll beat everyone in the gradual future. I love that. My only potential pushback is do we know or how do we know that chat GPT is actually telling us like a method that they actually use to find content on the internet? Is there any way of really knowing that? That's a fair question. I don't know that we know 100%,

but the answer that it gave me was really good, which is true, which is like the way that chat GPT services answers is very similar to the way that Google surfaces, the like people also asked questions, that type of more structured content is how, is kind of what these large language models look for. That'd be my answer to that,

but also a few weeks ago when it was, it became rumored that ChatGPT is working on an e-commerce integration. Ooh. So then I, myself, chatted to ChatGPT asking them if those rumors were true. And it replied saying, yes, they're working on a Shopify e-commerce checkout integration. And then like three days later, they announced it publicly. as did the CEO of Shopify. So opening, I told you first?

Yeah, it told me first. And I, oh my gosh. Yeah, and I tweeted about it. And it was my, you know, I don't ever go viral, but it was my most viral tweet of the year because it was just so funny that it answered my question and gave me the juice before their CEOs even announced it. That's amazing. And now you have me sent down a rabbit hole.

I'm currently looking at my Google Analytics and YouTube analytics to see how much traffic that Chat GPT is sending me. I want to share my screen real quick. That is my YouTube traffic from ChatGPT. It's not big numbers, but they're climbing. Yeah, they're climbing. And it's the only LLM sending me traffic. None of the other ones are.

Yeah. And what's interesting is my average view duration is three minutes, 54 seconds on that, and it's three minutes overall. So 30% higher quality viewer, which is interesting. Interesting. Interesting. And I think that's going to be the case in general is for the decent while, your traffic totals aren't going to be huge from ChatGBT, but the quality of people and conversions are going to be a lot higher because typically it's going to be a much more specific question that it's answering and then sending your way. I just can't believe that like Chad ChbT

told you stuff that it wasn't public yet. Like did some engineers grew up there or what? Like, Yeah, I don't know. Maybe people were like guessing about it and it used that, you know? Maybe. I asked it only a few minutes after someone had tweeted a screenshot of the source code on Twitter. It's not like it was, it didn't have anything really to pull from yet. So video is cool, but you know what's better? Longform audio via podcast and my newsletter, TKOPod.com.

Go there to subscribe for free to my newsletter. One email a week, very tactical. And then go to my audio podcast, three episodes a week, stuff like this. You're going to love it. All free. No sleazy sales bitch, tkopod.com. I think that's a really interesting kind of a subtle marketing or sales tool. We can learn from chat.

GBT. You said, and I noticed this every time I use it. But I don't think it used to do this. Chat GPD ends its responses with like a request to prompt it again. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. It's like, what did you say just a couple of minutes ago?

that it asked you at the end? After it gave me the whole outline, it asked me, do you want me, aka chat, to start writing all the content that it gave me the outline for? Oh, right. Said yes. Right. From a surface level, it's like,

well, that's stupid. Like, they're burning so many millions of dollars on this processing, all this compute power, right? Like, why would they be begging us to use it more? It's like, well, they want us to be addicted to it. They want us, like, and but there's a lesson. Amazon started. One was undercutting everyone because they just wanted to hook you.

Yep. I once heard from like, I don't remember, but in the sales world, you never want to get off like a sales call or maybe you're just an account manager. You never want to get off that call without having another call in the books already. And I don't care what it is that you're selling. Maybe you're in sales, high ticket, B2B, SaaS, doesn't matter. Yeah, bam fam. That was the saying I learned. Book a meeting from a meeting.

Yes, from a meeting. that's what it is. Book a meeting for my meeting. And that's the same principle that chat GPDs use. And it's the same thing that Facebook does. Facebook Messenger does inside Facebook marketplace. It removes the friction. It's like you just click a button. Are you interested? And then you can click a button. Yes. Like where is it? And that's become like a meme. I've seen so many reels of people like reenacting Facebook marketplace in real life. Have you seen those? Uh-huh. Where it's like there's just like a guy pulling up in a truck and he's like, hey, is that dresser still for sale. And they're like, yeah, it is. And then he just drives away. Yeah,

yeah. And it's like, that's so common because they've removed all the friction. So it's so easy for a potential buyer on Facebook marketplace to just bounce. And we're all guilty of it. That's just the tradeoff. That's what was making me think when you talked about the yard signs with a QR code. You could put nothing on there just a QR code. And it's like, oh, I'm going to scan because I'm curious. But there's a tradeoff. You'll get more scans, you know, lower intent. Whereas if you say, scan this to get a free 20% off coupon at Applebee's. Fewer people will scan it. Many people don't like Applebee's,

but the ones that do will be much higher quality, higher intent. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Oh, man, we're covering a lot of ground here. All right. Here's another one I heard the other day in the TK owners community, actually,

was somebody was saying how, why don't more companies partner with each other where they don't overlap at all? Why don't more roofers partner with painters? Yes. And just co-market all the time or something that maybe is seasonal. You know, why don't more Christmas-like companies partner with whatever landscaping companies? Because your customer is used to somebody coming to their house to perform a service.

So just work together. So find other companies in your... local geographic area that also are, you know, well-rated and, you know, meet with the owner in maybe similar size as you and just figure out, you know, you have 400 customers, they have 370 customers, you guys don't compete at all. Figure out how to work together and help each other win. I think that's also one, maybe because it takes a little more effort at the beginning, but it's just time, a few hours, figure out how do you do it logistically? It could be as simple as just sending out text and emails, promoting the other person's service, but definitely a very low lift

with a very high potential ROI. A thousand percent. I'm so on board of that. I'm finding examples of this right now. So one company that was so good at this, and it's kind of similar, kind of different, AOL, right? We all remember AOL's viral marketing strategy. I did a deep, I spent like three hours one day learning about how they sent their free

internet CDs around the world. and it's just the best thing in the whole world in my life that I love the most of it. It was this woman, I forget her name, but AOL had just burst out onto the scene. They were one of a thousand new internet service providers. They were generic. And she's like, let's send out some CDs. And they were like, what, huh? You're like, yeah, let's just, you know, some free 100 hours of internet.

Okay, cool. They sent it out. And it crushed expectations. Like absolutely just crushed like delivering free internet in the mail to the internet curious that just got a computer in the home for the first time. Yeah. Right place, right time. Product market fit.

Okay. And then they were like, they were putting over $100 million a year into this one marketing campaign, which is just such a brilliant testament to like, yeah, test everything except drugs, but find the one channel and just beat it to death. until it has a negative ROI. So then AOL got even more creative. And they're like, you know what? We don't compete with Blockbuster.

Let's stick ourselves on every single Blockbuster video. Done. You know what? Why don't we put ourselves under the seat of, under every seat at the Super Bowl? Done. Let's put a CD in every new modem and printer that's sold. Done. Software boxes.

Serial boxes. Popcorn boxes. Free CD racks. Check out lines at the grocery stores. N caps. like millions and millions and millions and then they kept going off on the hours 100 hours 500 hours thousand hours free because all of their testing showed that it just worked it converted amazingly yeah i'm happy deja vu now remembering 1895 when i was 11 years old man and just seeing those

CDs everywhere at the grocery store and stuff they at one point 50% of all CDs produced in the world were these aOL free internet CDs and they spent over $300 million on this campaign. A couple more facts. They acquired one new user for every three CDs sent. 33% close rate on like a SaaS product, right? They went from like 10,000 users to 35 million users over the course of like three to four years with this one channel.

Yeah, that's amazing. They were spending a dollar per CD, including shipping and everything. So spending $3 to acquire a customer that would pay $50 a month for. years. Yeah, I'm trying to find, okay, so they still, every now and then I hear about what their revenue is from that initial cohort of customers. And in a quick Google search, they, in 2021, they were still making $180 million in annual revenue from the AOL Advantage program, which is basically internet security like protection stuff. So they're still doing nine figures a year in revenue from that business life.

Oh my gosh. Another company that does this really well today is crumble. Like there's a crumble cereal. They have like crumble scented like lotions out there. They partner with influencers like Kylie Jenner for like special crumble cookies. Like I just I love finding companies bigger small that are just brilliant marketers and just saying, okay, I'm going to copy that. Like how can I copy that?

Yeah. I saw a big private equity. firm just acquired a big stake in crumble actually like a week or two. I saw that. Yeah. Back to your original idea. I didn't mean to get us off track, but like I don't see a reason why a plumbing company isn't partnering with an HVAC company or a roofing company like you said with a painting

company. I mean, maybe they're so busy. They don't need to, but it's a no-brainer. Yeah. I mean, if this is growth hacks for small businesses, then theoretically, whoever's listening wants to grow. So try it. Yeah.

Yeah. Or like even if you don't have a business. Like this is a piggyback, right? Like, you could, you launch a painting company and you, I would find a home service business that has like a very high volume of customers. So I wouldn't go to a roofing company, right? But like a landscaping company, someone that's serving 50 customers a day and say, hey, would you mind dropping our name to the homeowner?

And I'll give you $300 for every customer we get. Yeah. You know? Oh, that is a good. That's a really good idea, actually. If somebody wants to launch a business, launch a, you can entirely launch a, you can entirely launch it off of this strategy. You can get your website, buy your website first, throw it up super quick, get a phone number,

make sure that you or someone you know is going to be ready to handle the, you know, calls and the customers, and then do exactly what you just said and just go to a landscaper, a painter, whatever else, if you're doing window cleaning and say, yeah, 300 bucks customer starting now. And you're going to start taking customers on day two. All right, what did you think? Come back in one week from today for Part 2 with Brandon because that one's even better. Thanks for listening here on The Kerner Office.