The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Roasting and Grading 9 of Your Business Ideas! Ep. #032

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

I graded and evaluated 7 pre-submitted business ideas and 2 from live callers. Enjoy!Timestamps further down. Enjoy!---Ask me a question on or off the show here: http://form.typeform.com/to/Eb8KaY0pLearn more about me: http://chrisjkoerner.comLearn about my company: http://cofounders.comFollow me on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/mhp_guyFree weekly business ideas newsletter: https://newsletter.chrisjkoerner.com/---01:18 First Business Idea: Project Earth Nonprofit02:29 Second Business Idea: Marketing Agency for Psychiatrists03:23 Live Idea Pitch: Custom Potato Chips08:58 HVAC Bidding Platform14:16 Pre-Submitted Question: Web Development for SMBs15:18 Pre-Submitted Question: Hydrosol Business18:09 Pre-Submitted Question: Market Research PDFs19:18 Pre-Submitted Question: Spin the Wheel Business20:21 New York Street Business Idea21:40 Building a Million Dollar Business in a Year24:13 Leaf Blower Business Concept25:51 Starting a Home Service Business28:14 AI Tool for Auto Repair30:44 Craigslist Hacks and Travel Website Idea34:23 Content Creation and Marketing Business35:50 Pet Lover Business Idea

All right, welcome to the Kerner office. I want to do a little different episode today. I have had many of you submit your business ideas to me over the last month or two. I've got about 30 of them. I'm going to cover some of them. And I want to roast them. And when I say roast, I mean that pretty liberally because I'm not really a mean guy. And I like most business ideas because I think almost any idea could work.

I think the bigger question is should you launch something, not would it work or not? So roast might not be the most accurate word, but rather grade them. I'm going to grade them and I'm going to vote them a stud or a dud, your idea. And now I'm working with very limited info here because I have like between three words and three sentences from all of these. And so a lot of times you get the best feedback and info from ideas when you just ask them at 20 questions and I don't have that luxury right now. So I'm also going to be live streaming this to YouTube and maybe someone will hop in and ask

a question. Maybe it'll give you an idea to launch something of your own. Maybe you can copy one of these shamelessly. And there's nothing wrong with that. So let's just get into it. I have two types of ideas. I have college student submitted ideas. And then I have any type of person submitted ideas.

So I will clarify before the idea so you know what type of person it's from. All right. First idea is from a college student named Anthony. He says, I want to start a nonprofit called Project Earth. We would develop robots that clean our planet. probably will never get to see it happen because of the unbelievable amount of funding it will take, though.

Anthony, I love your idea. I love your optimism and your willingness to start a nonprofit. But I suggest that you start with something easier, even if it is a nonprofit, start with a nonprofit that encourages college students to clean up around campus, right? Start there. Get some traction and then branch out maybe to other campuses, maybe to non-college students. and start to make a name for yourself online on social media that this is your thing, that you're trying to clean up our planet. And then at that point, it will be significantly easier to raise funding if you want to

use robots to do it. And hey, maybe you can get a partnership with figure or with Tesla or with any of the three or four companies that are trying to build these robots right now. Maybe they can give you a couple for free because it's a nonprofit. So love the idea, but I don't think you should start. with robots. I think you should start very simply and go from that. Okay, next idea from another college student. I want to start a marketing agency for cash pay only psychiatrists. Okay, I love how niche this is already. So I'm already liking this idea. I have a direct in to a network of

psychiatrists who share a pain point of not being able to book appointments for a certain audience. Competitive advantage is being able to work directly with the top psychiatrist in my area, which allows me to get clients and spin off more services off the back of my client base. Okay. So you've got an in, which I love. It's very niche, which I love. And it seems that there is a demand for this, which I love. So I don't see a problem with this.

You don't have an in with one psychiatrist. You have an end with an in with a network of psychiatrists that seems to say that this is a common problem. So yes, I love this idea. This is a stud. And I think you should do it. So we've got a guy in the lobby. Let's let them in. Hey, what's going on?

Let's hear your idea. Thank you. Talking about potato chips. Okay. I'm not talking about AI chips for now. Yeah, gotcha. Okay. Yeah.

So they are freshly made and given to you and they are flavored with whatever flavor you would like. So in the United States, we buy a lot of chips. I mean, we all buy a lot of chips, right? But those are made. long back, like outdated. I mean, at least a week, two or a month ago, or a couple of months ago, right? And we buy it to a store and buy it from them.

Either it's H.E.B. Whole Foods, whatever, in Texas. I'm in Texas too. Right? So I was thinking of, me and my wife was thinking of an idea where why don't we set up small shops where we make chips from scratch, right? So you as a consumer,

customer, come into the store, hey, I want this potato chips with buffalo ranch, right? Whatever flavor. So we make it in five 10 minutes and give it to you. So you enjoy hard served chips, right?

You go from there. So let me just make sure I have this straight. So you basically have the potatoes maybe sliced, prepped, maybe sitting in water, ready to fry. Someone walks up and says, hey, I want the ranch chips. You say, all right, give me five minutes. And it's kind of a fast, casual concept, solely focus on potato chips.

That's it, right? Yeah. Potato chips, and it could be any other, but you could start with potato chips, right? And maintain high quality in terms of ingredients having. So a lot of people go to fire guys because they use peanut oil along with peanut oil along with French fries to give them a better quality, right? So I just want to copy whatever is working. Wherever you go, when you buy chips, it has a lot of ingredients which are not needed in chips, right?

Would this be more of a place where you eat the chips on site or you bag them up and they take them with them? Bag them up and take them. Okay. Have you looked into like the popcorn shops that do this? I know there's one in McKinney called Mom and Poppkins. Have you looked into them at all? I would look into that because it's basically what they do, except they don't, they won't make it on the spot for you.

They just sell all kinds of different unique popcorn flavors like Buffalo Ranch and pizza. And it's actually really good pickle flavor. But it's also a candy store. So the popcorn is just one element of it. And I don't know what percentage of sales the popcorn represents, but it's it's primarily a sweet store in like a downtown walkable area that also sells popcorn. And that reminds me of this. What I like about the idea is that it's high margin. No one's really filling this need.

What I don't like about it is that it's new. And it's scary to me to invent a new food concept. So I think you should try it. You should test this idea. It would cost very, very little at a farmer's market. Just get a fryer and pay $100 and just see what people think. What is their feedback? Is it that much more remarkable to have a fresh chip from the friar that doesn't

It doesn't have preservatives and all that. Or is it just like, yeah, this is a really good chip, but I wouldn't come back. Because at the end of the day, you're going to need people to come back and to like get addicted to a very specific flavor that you offer. Because if you're just having to sell to new customers all the time with a new concept, it doesn't work. Right? Like Crumble was kind of a new concept. And it worked because people were coming back, you know, and margins were really high. And I feel like the margins would be really high for what you're doing too.

It just makes me nervous that it's a new. food concept. I just don't like being first. The way to try it out is farmers market. That's what I thought as well. I mean, we get a old huge fryer and try it in farmers market and see the feedback and what people say.

Yeah, yeah, I think so. Another thing that makes me nervous is do people, like, are they really passionate about chips? Because it feels to me like in the chips first French fry argument, French fries win. And you should, also look into, there's a concept out of Utah that does like French fry only, French fries only,

like loaded fries, fry nachos. And they might do soda like dirty sodas as well. I would look into that and kind of see what their business model is. You might be able to copy some aspects of what they're doing. But that also makes me nervous. Let's see. I think it's called Fizz N. Fries. F-R-Y-Z. There's one location in Logan where I actually grew up. Y, Z. I don't know if they have. Here's their website. It looks like they're franchising.

So, yeah, I would be wary of copying these guys because it looks like they've only had one location for years. Because they have been in Logan for years. And they have a franchise tab up. But it looks like it's just like collecting interest for people that might want to franchise. I don't think they're actually doing it. But I think just because of the fact that you have this idea and you like this idea, you've got to get it out of your head by testing it. You've got to cross that bridge to see if it's viable or not or else you're always just going to wonder. Yeah.

Okay. So this is a technology idea where you, I've been following you for a long time from Twitter, newsletter and here, right? you work a lot on HVAC construction I mean those kind of sector too right so I was seeing a lot of people when it comes to plumbing or HVAC the prices are not fixed people can I mean every company has a different

pricing structure and people can give you any sort of price so I thought of building so I am a software engineering manager right and I have built products end to end. So I thought of building a bidding platform where as a customer, we put in my problem statement, when I say problem statement or my need, my requirement,

right? And they could just type in few things and AI would auto correct everything with a picture if needed. And it's a marketplace, a two-sided marketplace where a consumer puts in their need requirement and we have a bunch of HVAC companies sitting on the other side right which would take in the request and whoever there could be multiple people submitting the court and multiple people submitting the court and our platform will make it easy for the user showing the cheapest bid and going through their website scraping all the reviews and reviews and the information that

they have and providing necessary information for a customer to make an informed decision. Are this the right people to do it based on information that we see, based on information that we see online, right, and based on their bid, right, and based on their presence outside? So are you familiar with Thumbtack? Yeah, but they don't do real time, right? What do you mean real time? So these are all real time. You submit in your requirement and based on what the other person, I mean, the H.I.

company, what the H.Y. company feels about, they submit your quote real time. Well, ThumbTack is pretty real time because the contractors are so eager to get the work because they pay Thumbtack so much to be on there that I use Thumbtack as a consumer on a regular basis and I'll have quotes within a half hour. So it's pretty real time. I think this idea is pretty audacious. Sumtack had to raise nine figures to do this and they're doing it really well. I like the idea. I think it's good. But I think it'd be really hard to test like on a small scale.

And then once you do, once your test results look good, you have to compete against Thumbtack. And I don't like that about it. What I do like is, and this is where I thought you were going with this, is building a piece of software that you sell to HVAC companies. that enables them to kind of like offer a menu of services to customers. And so like, let's say I type in Plano, Texas, HVAC, and I get 10 results. And on nine of them I click, and it's like, call us for a quote, calls for a quote, calls for a quote. And on the other one that I click, it's just like, hey, answer two questions and we'll give you a quote right now. So I like the idea of selling, you know, $200 a month software to HVAC companies that enable them,

to easily give quotes to customers with like a big asterisk of, hey, when we get there, if we find out that it's not really as advertised, this quote is subject to change. But assuming that everything is accurate, yeah, it's going to be $250 to replace whatever you think needs replacing.

I like that idea because I don't think anyone's doing that. And it gives HVAC companies a leg up on their competitors or any, pick any home service, right? It gives them a leg up. But how would it be different than Thumbtack, as you said? Because this isn't a marketplace. You're just selling an app, a widget that home service businesses can build into their

existing platform. They don't have to build their company around it. It could just be like a suffix on their URL, right? Like it's a new quote form, basically, where instead of like submitting your name and number and address and then having someone call you, you submit your name and your number and what's going on and then it gives you a price right away. Because some customers are like, I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to wait for your got to show up two hours late.

I just, I just want a price. And if someone can give me a price, I'm probably not going to shop around and find something $50 cheaper. I'm probably just going to go with you. Yeah. Nobody has time nowadays. Exactly. I don't want to have five people coming to my house to give a price.

I'd rather pay a little more to just get a price and have someone come do it. So I do like that idea, starting with one industry, just going all in on that industry. and then branching out to other industries. All right. Thank you for coming in. He came from the YouTube Live link, which is awesome. There's a few more people watching on YouTube. Meanwhile, I'm going to read some more pre-submitted questions.

So this next one is from Luke. Luke says I do web development. I target small to medium businesses looking for a professional easy to manage website. I also can do custom JavaScript features. That's all he told me. I assume that your idea is build websites for small and medium sized businesses. I think it's a great business. I think it was a good business in 1998.

I think it's going to be a great business in 2038. It's kind of funny how no matter how many companies come out, Squarespace X, Weebly, Card, WordPress, Webflow. It doesn't matter. There will always be a market for an individual or a business owner to say, hey, just make this website for me. Always, right? It doesn't matter how many tools there are. There's a dozen different AI tools that can build a website from a prompt. People are still going to want people to do it for them.

So if that's your idea, Luke, I think it's a good idea. So that's three college student ideas. Let's hop over to the non-colle student ideas. This is from Conti. He says, been mulling over starting a hydrosol biz, essential oils. Think rosemary oil, eucalyptus, etc. I found a vendor in China that makes distilling units for half. the price as USA made. Only problem is I don't have land to grow said plants but can outsource that

from around the city and I don't know if there is really a market to compete against the big players in the game that source globally with cheap labor. Auntie, I don't really like this idea. I'll tell you why. You're already thinking along the lines of I want to get something from China. Okay. If you've already flipped that switch in your brain, you're like halfway there. So now the question you need to ask yourself is, what is the most advantageous thing I can import from China to sell in the U.S. And in my opinion, and I've done this a lot. The higher ticket, the better. Period.

End of story. Find an item that is small and expensive. Okay. For instance, we sell Bitcoin miners. We import them from China. They're not really small. There's about as big as like a desktop tower and they weigh 33 pounds. But even so, we don't need to share.

ship them in a container, right? I say small because I want you to ship them via DHL air. That makes all the difference in the world. You can have it from Hong Kong or Shenzhen or Guangzhou to your door within three days. And the higher the ticket, the better because it means you can use paid ads to sell it. You don't have to sell as many. Of course, there's always a tradeoff. Higher ticket equals lower volume. But I like that tradeoff. I would much rather sell a $1,000 item to 10 people than a $100 item to 100 people any day of the week. So I don't like the essential oils idea. In a sense, it is high ticket based on the size, but you're already looking at China. I don't like the idea that you have to grow something. You need land. I don't know anything about that market. I will admit.

I know it is kind of slimy. There are some bad actors in the space, which I don't like that idea about it as well. I assume that something triggered you to give you this idea. I just, I don't like the idea of it being essential oils or something that you would have to grow. And I don't understand why you would have to grow something if you were going to import this from China. If you really want to do it, then import it from China to kind of test the model and see, because maybe you find that there's a ton of pent up demand for a very specific type of oil that's just going gangbusters. If so, great, import it from China to prove the model and then go down the road of actually growing it and processing it yourself to boost your margins, if the numbers make sense.

Let's go to our next pre-submitted questions. Right now, if you're just joining us, we are roasting business ideas, and I use that term loosely. I'm grading them. Is it a stud or a dead? John asks if he should sell $20 to $50 PDFs of nicely formatted market research for local service businesses. So I need a little more context.

What type of market research? Is it a restaurant? Is it a home service business? is it competitive research or is it consumer research? The fact that it's $20 to $50 I don't like, it's really, really hard to sell something at that price point and it's hard to sell things to local service businesses. They are hard to sell to notoriously. Most of them don't have employees.

That means when they get a call, they're expecting slash hoping it to be a customer. And if it's a salesperson, they tune out immediately. And they get calls from a lot of salespeople. Ask me how I know. All else equal, I'm only going on about 12 words. here, I don't like that idea. I think it needs to be $350 instead of $20 to $50. And it's going to be, I think it's going to be hard to find customers.

I think you need to go upmarket to more medium-sized businesses and sell a multi-thousand-dollar market research product to them, something that could make them more money somehow. Next question, Chad Kroger. All right, lease. He wants to lease a tiny 100-square-foot commercial space with street frontage in a dense city like New York. Customers pay $10 to spin a wheel, think wheel of fortune. There's two possible outcomes, a shot of whiskey and pickle juice or a collectible Chad Kroger

Stickle. Welcome to pickleback or nickelback. All right. Chad, okay, I hate the idea of renting a commercial space in New York for this because, man, you've got to sell a lot of $10 tickets to pay the rent on that. But I do like the idea of just being like a street vendor to test this concept because I think this spin the wheel concept just plays on our human emotion of wanting to win prizes, wanting to play the lottery, wanting to get rich quick. All right.

I love the visual aspect of it, especially if it were like super lit up and bright and colorful and big, like outrageously big. I tweeted about this when I went to New York with my family a year ago. I'll try to put it in the show notes where we were. in New York just outside of Times Square, and there were these immigrants with a platform that had like a rotating arm that you put your phone in. And it plays that song on repeat, welcome to New York. You're right. And you pay 20 bucks and you stand on this platform and it just spins around you and takes a video and pictures, yada, yada, yada. And I did a tweet about it and got over a million views because these guys are just cleaning up. This platform costs two grand on Amazon. I don't think they have to pay

rent to be there on the street? I think they just have to get a license. They probably have to pay like a one-time fee. I'm totally guessing. It could be wrong. But I don't think these guys are paying like a thousand bucks a month just to stand on the street because it wasn't like a food truck or a cart or anything. They're just on the street. I like the idea of you doing that exact same thing with this idea just to see how it goes. Prove the concept. I love the idea of testing concepts in high foot traffic areas like this because you can get feedback face-to-face super valuable, super relevant feedback immediately from people that usually have money. They're in New York and they're either traveling there, which means they have money or they live there, which means at least they

have enough money to live there because it's very expensive. So thank you, Mr. Kroger, for that idea. I've got another question here on YouTube. Quinster 48. Is it possible to build a $1 million revenue business in a year? Absolutely, it's possible. It happens all the time. It happens every day. The quickest I built a $1 million revenue business was a matter of two weeks. And that's not an exaggeration. I'm not, this isn't one of those Instagram videos where I'm like flexing in front of someone else's Lamborghini.

I actually did. I sold Bitcoin miners. They were $20,000 Bitcoin miners. And it was right place, right time. I found product market fit. I found a good supplier. It was the culmination of seven different businesses that I had started in the past, which that is an argument for starting a bunch of businesses and not just doing one thing.

is you're able to cross-reference all these learnings. And so when you think about it, a million dollars in revenue is $50,000 miners. 50 miners. That's it. I sold 50 products over the course of a couple weeks. Our second month, we did $4.3 million in the month of November 2021. In one month, our second month, we launched October 1st. And that was like 12% profit.

No funding. All bootstrap. So we're not just talking top line. This was profitable. It's great business and I still own that business. So yes, it's very, very possible. But you have to pick a business with higher ticket size, right? I'm going to say that until the day I die.

Maybe it's a pool company. You sell $100,000 pools. You just need 10. Okay? Can you do that? Maybe it's a, let's say, a driveway replacement company. And your average ticket size is $10,000. You need to sell 100 driveways.

Okay. So you find the older neighborhoods that have cracked up driveways. and you start knocking on doors, or you pay people to knock on doors and give them a thousand dollar commission. There's a zillion ways to make a million dollar revenue business in a year. The hard part is actually finding a way to make a profit out of that. Because when you see people online talking about how much they made, quote, that's like the worst business word in the English language.

Oh, I made $4 million last year. They almost always mean top line. You could have lost a million out of that four. So the hard part is getting it to be profitable. because there are many a Silicon Valley companies that raised many millions of dollars that took a decade or more to be profitable or raised nine figures and never became profitable and went out of business. So optimize for profit and not revenue.

All right, YouTube's picking up. Come on. We got any more questions from YouTube? I would much prefer live questions than pre-submitted ones. But let's go to the next one. This is from Bayou. Bayou wants to buy two leaf blowers and a ladder. Hire two people.

pick a neighborhood and go door to door offering to clean the pine straw off of their roof right then plus $25 to bag and leave on their curb okay do I like this idea no I love this idea it's a perfect idea right place right time you want to find neighborhoods that have the types of trees that are putting pine straw or leaves on the roof you're right there most people don't want to get on the roof I actually just cleaned my gutters myself I'd been in my house for eight years I'd never done it I'd never had it done. And if someone would have just showed up at my door, I for sure would have paid him a couple hundred bucks to do it.

I don't like the idea of you paying people to do it for you right off the bat. I want you to do it yourself right off the bat. So you can know all the little nuances. What does Betty say when you tell her the price, right? What is your objection? Like what are your counters to all of the objections? I want you to do it yourself, sell 100 doors, make a little manual, and then start hiring people to do it or else you're never going to know what the most optimal way is to sell

those services if someone that doesn't really care about your business starts it from day one. So you want to test this. You got to test it yourself. I do the same thing to this day and I always will. And that testing phase is the funnest part. Okay. Someone on YouTube asked, how true do you find the saying build the plane when you are flying?

That's a thousand percent true. There's no lie in that statement. That's what I do today. It's what I did when I was 12 years old. Here's another question, Anthony. If you started from zero with extremely limited resources, what type of business would you start? Not afraid to cold call. I would love some sort of lead gen aspect.

I would start a home service business. It's the fastest way to put cash, money, profit in your pocket, period. And it's the fastest way to learn people skills. And it's the fastest way to learn sales skills. And it's a no-brainer because you're selling services that people are already in need of. You're not trying to convince them to buy a widget impulsively. This is something that they're either going to pay someone to do in the near future or that they're going to have to go out and do in the 100 degree heat themselves.

So here's a second option for you. Why do I keep looking over there? The camera's right there. I would flip stuff on Facebook marketplace or Craigslist. There are entire businesses of people that just flip furniture. Buy couch for 100. Put in storage unit. sell for 500. I knew a guy that owned a box truck and he started by renting a U-Haul.

So he didn't even start with that. And all he did was flip washers and dryers. That's it. Do you think that guy is ever going to go broke? Never. He set up alerts on Craigslist. Anytime a washer was listed and he didn't even have automations. His alert was his only automation. He would reach out to them manually and just offer, offer, offer, offer, offer. He would just make a ton of offers. and there's like eight to 12 things that go wrong in a washer or dryer. That's the 80, 20 of it, right? Of course, there are hundreds of things that can go wrong. But the 80, 20 of it, there's like 10 things that can go wrong in a washer or dryer.

He learned how to fix those 10 things himself on YouTube. He didn't outsource it. He had a storage unit like a 10 by 20 or something. He would have his tools in his storage unit, climate controlled. He would go out and buy washers and dryers for 50 to 200 bucks. Sometimes he'd get them for free because the people just need them gone. Right. They're like, hey, it's broken.

I need it, you know, I just need it gone. And he knew, man, it's probably a $50 part. He would take them all back. And he would have a bunch of tools on a shelf. And he would just fix them up, take really nice pictures of them and sell them. And he just put a hundred bucks in his pocket every time. 100, 200, 250, 50, sometimes. Sometimes he'd lose money. He made a six-figure income, just washers and dryers. Nothing else. That is a good first business to start if you were to ever go to zero. All right, let's go back to another pre-submitted question. This is from Brady. Brady says, I'd love to create an AI tool that works as a repair coach for automobiles.

Could work for a bunch of different things, but this is probably the one with the biggest Tam. Tam equals total addressable market. Eventually, it would likely be video enabled, but it would be a tool that can help you diagnose problems and coach you through a repairing a vehicle. I know one of the challenges in these industries is that people. People sometimes need experience working on a specific type of equipment, but a tool like this would enable them to do more without having specific experience or training would probably require

lots of funding to start, but I'd love to see this. I'd actually like to do it with medical repair. Okay. I like this idea. I don't think you need a bunch of funding to start. You could use a bunch of funding to grow it, but here's what I would do if I were you to you find product market fit on this idea. I would find a very highly engaged Facebook group for something like 1983 Ford Broncos. Literally something that specific. A Facebook group with 10 to 50,000

people in it. You'd be surprised. They're out there. And these people are in there all day talking about this Bronco that they're fixing up, yada, yada, yada. I would build a tool specifically for them. take that manual, the Bronco manual, and make an LLM out of it using AI, Claude, Open AI, what have you. And make like a chat bot. Just make a chat bot for free. Make it for free. And then while you're building this, start getting active in the group.

So you can get like a top contributor badge in the Facebook group. That will push your visibility more when you actually go to launch something. And launch a very specific tool to a very specific audience and then for free and just use it to get feedback. Man, I really wish there were pictures. I wish I could upload pictures. It's just text only. Like it would really be helpful if you had a or it's like, hey, it's glitching out when every time I ask it about the tires because there's nothing in the manual about the tires, something. You're going to get all kinds of feedback. Use that to keep building it out and then build it out for another model and then start

charging for it. I guarantee you if you do something like that and start building up traction, start building up a passionate fan base, you could raise money for it. 100%,000%. We're going to see all kinds of AI tools like this. And we already are. We're niche products and services. This is a good idea.

This is a stud. Another question from YouTube. Anthony says, Any hacks for Craigslist? I didn't realize the platform was still relevant. Anthony, I would use a software called Cubics. Cubics, I'm making sure there's still around. Cubic solution.

There it is. This guy has been around for over a decade. Craigslist automation software. If you want to do stuff on Craigslist, this software costs like $4. I've no affiliation, but I've used it many times. I don't think it's, I don't think it works on Mac, which kind of sucks. It's a great, great software. You can auto email people as soon as they list things.

You can scrape stuff. There are a zillion ways even today to make a lot of money on Craigslist. Let's go to a college student submitted question. Okay. Jennifer has the idea for a travel website where users will have the opportunity to interact with locals from different countries. I also want to create educational content to learn about their cultures, history, etiquette, and safety while traveling. In addition of virtual travel experiences, the platform will also offer in-person tours for those who prefer physical exploration. These tours will be curated based on specific themes such as cuisine, history, culture, nature and more. These guided tours are within the city state or even multiple states.

Depending on their interest, I have been doing customer discovery, researching competition, and working on my MVP, which means minimum viable product. By offering this platform, I aim to promote cultural understanding, foster connections with people from diverse backgrounds and inspire curiosity about the world. Okay, travel website for people to connect with the locals. In addition to virtual travel experiences, it will also offer in-person tours. Here's what I think you do. I think you start with a travel website like this to do what you're saying. Start with one market, kind of like the idea, just the advice that I just gave with the AI idea.

Start with one very specific things. Maybe it's Americans traveling to Bolivia, right? Start generating content about that. You could use AI to generate it, I'm sure. But then instead of offering in-person tours, I feel like you should, or I know, you should, should monetize this by sending furrows to current tour operators in Bolivia for a percentage of their revenue. You don't want to be in like the tour business and the content creation business. That should just be how you monetize instead of banner ads or or a monthly subscription.

Use the content to drive SEO, drive very, very targeted traffic. Use something like maus.com or some SEO research tool to find which countries are people researching. information for that your future competitors are not bidding on keywords. You can use that SEO research to lead which country you start with or which area. Maybe it's Tuscany. Maybe it's all of Italy. Whatever it is, find an area that people are searching about. There is an asymmetric amount of information on the internet for travel information about this area. And then there's an asymmetric amount of competition for people bidding on those keywords. Start building content around that. Collect emails. Always collect emails. Okay. You could create a newsletter around this as well.

Start with just this one area. Make the name broad, but the area specific because you're going to add more areas so you don't want to pigeonhole yourself into Tuscany Tours.com or something. And then when you monetize, use existing tour operators to just send them traffic because that's a high ticket item and then just make affiliate fees, referral fees from that. All right. I've got a student named Evan who submitted this idea. Content creation and marketing business. I help entrepreneurs actively participate and engage in the synchronistic flow of life through creative awareness, coaching, and mass short form content creation, recently graduated from Temple University and now I'm all in on my business. Okay, Evan, here's what I love

and here's what I hate about this idea. I love that you're all in on this business. Love it. This is a business that is proven. It's going to work. You're going to make it work. Here's what I don't love. I don't love the phrase synchronistic flow of life through creative awareness coaching and mass short form content creation. I have no idea what that means.

That means no one else has any idea what it means. It sounds smart, but in an effort to sound smart, you're sacrificing future potential customers, right? I know I'm not your customer, right? But I assume that if you're pitching your idea this way, that you're pitching your customers in the same way, you want to speak and write. on a third grade reading level because fourth grade and above reading level equals friction and friction equals loss of sales or profit okay sounds like you're doing short form video content

creation or editing or your short form video agency which is great we're still in the early stages of that you're going to crush it i would just change how you sell it but it's a good idea and you're already doing it so keep doing it okay let's do one more question this person did not leave a name, but they said, when you are traveling, you pay a small fee to hang with people's pets in your hotel for an hour. Okay. I assume you had this idea because you're a pet lover. I have a pet, but I'm not a pet lover. I don't like this idea because I've never heard of this idea before. Okay. You can cringe all you want, but I stand by that statement. I don't like new ideas. Maybe this isn't new. Maybe someone's doing this, right? I've been surprised by pet ideas over and over and

over again. All right. So just because of the fact that this is a pet idea that sounds sounds kind of dumb on the service, that probably means that it's a good idea. Okay. Because you're probably a pet person and you probably had this need at some point. And as they say, which I agree with, you should create businesses that solve your own problems because that means there's likely someone else out there that has the same problems. I would never pay a fee to see someone else's dog or cat while on vacation. I just got a vacation. And I left my dog with a border. And I love my dog. But But I didn't miss him. In fact, I didn't really think about him that much because I think people are more important than dogs, period. That's me. That doesn't mean you should build a business around my opinion. I think you should test this idea in a very niche way. I just don't know that people are in the mindset to play with someone else's pet when they're on vacation and they're busy and they're hopping from thing to thing or they just want to relax in a hotel. So all else equal, even when you're considering the fact that a lot of pet ideas that sound dumb are actually good ideas because they

become big businesses and they're profitable. Setting all that aside, I just don't like this idea. I think this is a dud. But I think you could test this idea relatively cheaply and you should so you could get a chip on your shoulder because of what I just said and prove me wrong. Anyway, thank you all for joining me. I would love to hear your business idea. You can email it to me, Chris at cofounders.com. No dash, just cofounders.com. And I'll do another episode like this. I hope you learned something. I hope this was good for you. And thank you for joining.