The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Small Town Beginner Made $50K in His First 2 Months (No Experience)⏐Ep. #254

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

beehiiv is the newsletter platform I’ve used for over a year and a half because their data shows you exactly what’s working. Get 30% off three months at ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.beehiiv.com/chris━Check out my newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://TKOPOD.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and join my new community at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://TKOwners.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠━Quick update before you dive in. We’re shifting our upload schedule from three times a week to two. Instead of Mo-Wed-Fri, we’ll now be posting every Tuesday and Friday. With all the new formats we’re producing, three a week became tough to keep at the level we want. This new cadence will help us keep the quality high.━A year ago I interviewed Cinco about his line striping business. That episode is here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6xd6KRw895dstoagycodp5?si=SE8Zssb_SvGNToYYHWazUQHunter heard it, got inspired, and nine weeks later he had nearly fifty thousand dollars in revenue with zero experience.I sat down with Hunter Schenewark to break down how he made almost fifty thousand dollars in his first nine weeks with a simple striping and seal coating business. He had zero experience, started in a small town, did his first job for free in a local Facebook group, then used cold email to land big church projects. We walk through how he priced jobs, how he found customers, the equipment he bought, what it cost, and why seal coating became the real money maker.Hunter on Xhttps://x.com/HSchenewarkHunter’s websitehttps://417striping.comEnjoy! ---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---

I had seven jobs and my revenue was 46,825. Whoa. I'm showing up to these quotes in my minivan. And it's a beat-up minivan too. You knew nothing about this industry going into it. You heard my podcast. You joined some Facebook groups. And your first two months, you've done just under $50,000 in sales.

Yeah, exactly. That's incredible. The playbook's working. All right. Almost exactly a year ago, I had a guy on the pod named Cinco. Sinko started a. line striping business in Waco, Texas, and he was crushing it. It was one of my best episodes ever. If you're on Spotify or listening to audio only, that's going to be episode number 99 that went

live on December 2, 2024. And then just a week or two ago, I found a guy named Hunter in Springfield, Missouri that started a line striping business. And what do you know, he got inspired to start this business based on that episode. So this is kind of another stump grinding situation all over again. But Hunter leveled it up a notch and his business is crushing it even more. He's done $50,000 very profitably his first two months without any knowledge or experience in the field. So of course, I asked him, how are you finding customers? How do you start this business and how can people copy you? Please enjoy. So Hunter, why don't you tell us who you are and what you do? Yeah, great. Thanks for having me on, Chris. My name's Hunter Shenorg. I run 417 striping and sealing.

and it's a small seal coating, crack filling, striping business in Springfield, Missouri. And how long ago did you start this? I started this in September. My first job was September 27th. Of 2025. Of 2025, yep, yep. I had the idea, or I first started looking into it back in May. So it took me a few months to pull the trigger.

But it's been active for just a couple months now. So two full months you've been active. Correct. And what is your revenue to date? What did your monthly revenue look like for your first two months? I'll go September 27th, my first job to October 31st. So just over a month. First month, I had four jobs and my revenue was 22,874.

Holy crap, from four jobs. Those are big jobs. Yeah. And that's something that I liked about the industry was, was it is a little a little bit of a bigger ticket. And then in November, I had seven jobs and my revenue was 46,825. So we had a big jump, yeah. You had almost twice as many jobs and your average job size went up as well. Yep. So, Hunter, I don't know if you know this, but I'm an expert in industry because I spoke to Cinco a year ago about his business. So clearly I know everything. I know those are good numbers. Just kidding. I don't know. anything about this industry, which is why we're talking.

That's what kickstarted this, though, was your, was your inner, your podcast with Cinco. And I just thought, man, that's a great idea. And I'm sure we'll talk about it, but I thought, I thought I would be 100% in striping. And it's turned out to be, I like the seal coding aspect a lot more. But isn't that beautiful? Like, the business never ends up where it starts. And that's how it should be. And that means you're flexible enough to go with the energy.

and to go where the product market fit is the most. Yeah, sure. So I'm going to get into how you acquired those customers. That's a key part of this. I want to talk about your equipment, where you found the machine, what type of machine, et cetera. But before we go there, what made you flip from primarily line striping to primarily seal coating?

And before you even answer that, let me interrupt myself. What is seal coding? Yeah, so seal coding is you've got some old asphalt, think of parking lot, but also a driveway. And over time, you just have, it gets worn down. So it starts to fade. It turns a lighter shade of gray. You start to get some cracks developing. And so seal coating is where you are applying, whether it's by squeegee or by spraying, just a thin, super thin layer of asphalt to resurface it, make it look nice, and hopefully prevent more cracks forming. And those videos are so satisfying.

Yeah, it's fun. Watching people do that. Yeah, very fun to watch. So what was it about my episode with Cinco that got you interested in this industry? In terms of background, I was selling. I had run a small marketing agency and we had put it on the marketplace to sell. And we were getting some good, you know, a good amount of interest. And then in May, it started to, we were in.

talks, you know, trying to finalize an LOI and everything. And that was, that was for me a point of, okay, I know this isn't going to be forever. It's going to be sold. What do I do next? And so I was, I was binging a lot of your content actually and just trying to figure out, okay, what's a good idea? I want to do something in the service space, blue, blue collar services, home services. I liked that it was a lot of B2B in my experience that that seems to be better customers. I don't think that always holds true. But in general, they're going to pay without complaining as much or just they're used to paying more. And then I also like that it's a higher ticket item.

So power washing, that's great. But doing. It's 500 bucks. Yeah, or less, right? A couple hundred bucks here. You really have to get a lot of jobs. All right. So you heard the episode.

What were your next steps? It just kind of percolated a little in my mind. I wasn't in a big rush. Luckily, I connected with with this guy who does striping in Utah. We were group to, well, we were part of some golf group on X. And I just reached out to him. We had a little conversation. He's been super helpful.

that's what really convinced me, okay, this is a great industry. I've heard it from two people now. There's a lot of potential here. So honestly, though, after that, my next step was just get this company sold. And so it was kind of put on pause for a few months. And in those few months, the biggest thing I did was just join some of the Facebook groups. For line striping and seal coating? For line striping.

At this point in time, seal coding, I knew nothing, was not on my radar. I thought 100% line striping. Yeah, just tried to learn a little bit about the equipment, what everyone in the industry was doing. And then in July, I ended up buying my first machine. And that's when my business sold. But there was a little bit of a transition period, took a little bit of time off, and then really, really got going in September. What did that first job look like, both from a revenue perspective and a profit perspective, and logistically.

Like how did you perform it? How did you learn what to do? What was it like? Yeah, I just made a Facebook post in my town's Facebook page. I said, hey, I want to give back. What's a good business that I can do some lines for free? Completely free, no strings attached. I just, I mean, I can't put it on my driveway, right?

Yep. Yep. And the paint's relatively expensive. So I wanted it to go to a good cause. Please don't suggest Walmart. I can't afford that. Maybe a sandwich shop. Yeah. So, well, and my town's really small. So it's a town of 3,000. There's not many businesses at all. Sorry, what town is this? It's called Rogers. Rogersville. It's just outside Springfield. Okay. And then Springfield is like 170,000 people, greater Springfield, 450,000 people, right? Yeah. Give her tip. Rogersville. Okay, 4300 according to Google. One thing I always like to say, we don't have a stoplight in town. But yeah, there's not a lot of businesses. So I got a lot of great comments and awareness from that Facebook post. And I ended up just working with a nonprofit in town. Yeah, there's a lot of green on that map, right? Yeah. So I worked with this nonprofit in town, super small place. They do a lot of good. and I striped five lines. Okay.

That's a small job, right? Super small. I mean, they didn't, so they didn't have lines there to begin with because it was too small. You know, a lot of people, it's a minimum charge of like 500 bucks and they're not going to pay that for five lines. Yeah. So it took me probably two hours. Okay. Which looking back, that was way too long.

Oh, I mean, it's a mile. from my house, it should have taken me 10 minutes. Okay. Max. And yeah, so it was a struggle. And I did it in the dark too, which was harder than I expected for my first job. Would you be able to tell me the name of the nonprofit? Yeah, it's safe haven.

Safe. I want to pull it up on Google Earth. Right there, right? Yep. All right. So. We'll see if the image is updated. This image is from 2025. It doesn't say the month, so it might be. Was it this building right here?

Correct. Yeah. So it was just like three parking spots, basically? Five. Okay. Oh, five lines. Yeah. Okay. Big difference, right? Oh, there it is. That looks fresh. Is that one to the left. So it doesn't look like it was updated. Okay. Oh, there it is. Yep. So they needed it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's super great people. I, I wish I knew what I knew now. I could have done better, whatever. But they got five lines. I had some experience. And I should say before I did this, I went to a parking lot. And I just filled up my machine with water.

And I just sprayed water to at least get the feel of pushing it and lining it all up. That's smart. Which Facebook page was it? Rogersville Residence. So it was a group? Correct. Yep. Would it be okay if I pull up the post or,

do you think it's not visible to me? I could probably pull it up. I don't know if it would be the bottom. Yeah, that one. It's private, so I won't be able to see it. I just wanted people to like visualize. All right, 11,000 people in here. It's a private Facebook group.

Every town has at least one of these. It looks like you have at least two, Rogersville 2, Rogersville Residence, uncensored, etc. I just want people to see how approachable this is. Like you don't live in too small of the city. You have a Facebook group, at least one. and the fact that you did it for free is genius. Did you tell people like, I'm an idiot, I don't know what I'm doing, I want to practice, or were you just like, I want to do some good, I want to paint some lines?

They're assuming that this is your business. You've done this 100 times. Yeah. And in retrospect, I wish I would have taken that approach and said, this is new for me. I just want some practice. I'll even take two or three lots. And instead, I was trying to be because I thought people voted on the businesses. and I thought, okay, I can contact all of these who are voted on and try to pitch them

and actually make some money from it, which I think is a good idea, a good marketing idea, but I should have been a little bit more upfront and straightforward and just said, hey, this is new to me. I'm going to take my time and do a good job. But there's a little bit of a learning curve. It's not hard. It's my first time, though. So that is one thing. I, I wish I would have done. And in fact, I did get some quotes out of it. But because I was, I was still holding myself out as this is my business, this is what we do. I didn't get any of the jobs.

Why do you think that is? I think it's because I didn't have the answers to everything. And I should have just, and they asked questions. They would have been more lenient if you were like, hey, full disclosure, guys, I don't know what I'm doing. which is why I'm not charging, but I also want to do good for the community. This is perfectly free. You have nothing to lose. If it looks ugly, I'll remove it. I'll fix it. If you go into it with that, then people will maybe have more grace on these sales calls. You know what I'm saying? Oh, 100%. And so I did switch my approach. But from this initial outreach, yeah, I did not lead

to any money, unfortunately. For those of the listening, it's time to give back. I love Rogersville, have lived here for one year now and I want to give back. I run 417 striping and ceiling. Who here has a parking lot that needs a refresh? We'll provide free striping, painting all the lines, handicapped spots, etc. comment with the business you think needs it most and will coordinate with the one that gets the most votes. Community Park, 69% Taco Bell 1%. No love for Taco Bell. Yeah. You know, they're publicly traded. Henderson Lodge, 7%. The library, 10%. Street from parks out through old trailer parks, zero percent for love of all things, 193 South Marshall, 7 percent, and Safe Haven, New Rogersville. Now Rogersville, 6 percent. So you can see, I mean,

almost 200 votes. It got some decent. Whoa. Okay, I didn't see that. Holy cow. There were seven comments. So. So five percent of the town voted on your, your poll. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You should run for mayor. So the community was, I reached out to them. I was supposed to meet with the town manager. He ended up, you know, he stood me up. And he apologized. And we set up a different time and something else happened. So it just, you know, I wasn't in a rush, but it took a couple weeks.

And I'm like, forget it. We're just going to go with option number two. You mean to say you had a hard time coordinating with a local government? That sounds shocking. Exactly, exactly. That wanted that you were trying to offer free services to. I know. We love Rogersville.

We don't want to talk trash. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we talked on the phone. Great guy. He was really busy at the time. But it just, it did not end up happening. So maybe, maybe next year.

Yeah, I did Safe Haven. So that's the story there. That was the first week of September. And then I went door to door in Springfield for some. So I did that. I had one job under my belt, took some before and after pictures. And then I went door to door in Springfield trying to get more business. I think I spent two afternoons doing that.

And it was just terrible. It's the worst. I learned a lot, but no one likes it. I really struggled to reach the actual business owners. It was usually just some $15 an hour person managing the store, the cash register. And so it just went nowhere. So you're telling people to give them hope. You don't have to go door to door to be successful in this business.

No. And I think, I mean, I think Cinco did. And that's part of what inspired me to do it. But that's not who I am. I'm not very good at that. Well, there's more ways to win than one, you know? Yeah, yeah. What does the process look like for striping versus seal coding?

If you could get all the business in the world, but you had to choose either striping or seal coding, which would you choose and why? 100% seal coating. So, so one, seal coating is a bigger ticket for, for these churches, when we're doing like a $1,500 or $2,000 striping job, we're doing a $10,000 to $20,000 seal coating job. So it's basically 10x. Wow. For the most part. So, so that's one.

Number two is it's simpler. the material costs are higher, but the actual equipment is actually cheaper, I would say. It's just easier to run. I cannot tell you how many issues I've had with my striping equipment. And part of that's on me just because I bought it used, but it's been a headache.

And so I did go from one machine to two machines recently, which I never expected to do at this point in time. But I just felt like I had to because it's been such a headache when when a machine goes out and it's Saturday and I say, hey, pastor, your lot's not going to be done. We'll put down some temporary lines, but it's not going to look great for your services tomorrow. And I know they've been super nice,

but I would hate to be thinking, okay, I just spent $10,000 and you're telling me it's not even going to look good or it's not done on time. That's business 101. I would imagine there's a lot more moving parts. Literally, there's a lot more precision in the striping equipment. There's more that can go wrong, more variables, right? Yeah, there's a ton of variables, yep. How does the equipment cost compare between the two? You said it was more expensive on the striping side? You can deck out both of them and pay a lot of money. I paid $2,300 for my first striper. It's nothing. Nothing, right? You get that back. in two jobs, yeah. Yeah. But if you were going to buy it new or buy an upgraded version, you're talking like 10,000 bucks. I actually did rent one for a weekend and their setup was $25,000 for just the striping machine. For seal coating, I know people who are doing this

out of a big, a big plastic drum. Just freaking dumping out some tar and spreading it around with a squeegee. Am I over simplifying it? No, exactly. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And if you want to do. Yeah, exactly. If you want to get a, you know, a basic setup new 3,000, 4,000, put it on a trailer, say 10,000 all in max.

Oh, my gosh. Okay. All right. So your first few jobs, you do four the first month, seven the next month. What do your profit margins look like on all these jobs? So on striping, my first few jobs. It was just me. I actually did, I don't remember how many jobs I did out of my minivan where I was loading it up,

seats are down, and it just fit with an inch to clear. But it was just me. Paint would average about like 20% of the job. And then I'm pocketing the other 75 or 80%. And you're doing everything yourself. No, just me. Yeah. And now where we're at with seal coating, the material costs a lot more.

So the profit margins are lower. But I would say even after labor, still 30 to 40 percent. So you knew nothing about this industry going into it. You heard my podcast. You started doing some research. You joined some Facebook groups. You posted in your local Facebook group saying, I'll do a job for free. and your first two months you've done just under $50,000 in sales and about $20,000 in net profit,

which would have been about $30,000 in net profit had you not subbed out those first jobs. Do I have all that right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's incredible. I mean, I interview a lot of business owners on this podcast, and that's way up there when it comes to amount of money earned in what amount of time. That's incredible. And in a small town, nonetheless.

Can we talk some more about customer acquisition? So what does your website look like? What does your Google business profile look like? Like how much are you worried or concerned about the little things as far as web presence or paid ads or any of that is concerned? Yeah. So I have not been at all. My website, I paid some guy overseas, 200 bucks to build it.

I've worked with him in the past. He's a great developer. He did a good job. I did not give him content. to work with, we spun up some images with AI and just got something live. It's, I don't even know if anybody goes to it, but they at least know that I have a domain. You know, it's even better than a perfect website. $50,000 in sales in two months. Yeah, exactly. It's a, it's a wintertime project.

We're going to, we're going to update it. We're going to make it look good. It's great. There's nothing. Yeah, that's not the point. Like, it hasn't taught me. Yeah. I launched a business this year. We got to $5,000. sorry, we got to 500,000 in revenue and we never had a website ever. Like, it's just, it's situational dependent, but like, well, and that was the biggest thing was, yeah, I didn't want to have an excuse to say, this is why I'm not, I haven't done door to door, or I haven't done the emails. And there were a few times in this process where I just had to say, okay, forget it.

I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not ready, but just do it. I'm never going to be ready. Listen, Beehive has always been the best newsletter platform for monetization. Their ad network and their analytics are unmatched. But they just had their biggest update ever. And it's something that all digital creators have to hear about. It's not just newsletters anymore.

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your site. This replaces both Callenly and Gumroad and it saves you tons of monthly fees. So stop paying for five different tools to do all of this stuff that Beehive offers within one platform. I've been using Beehive for two years at this point, but it's about time you got started. So switch over at Bive.com slash Chris and use the code Chris 30 to get 30% off your first three months. That's B-E-H-I-I-V.com slash Chris. So I don't have a Google business profile. Google for some reason, labeled me as they've suspended me. I'm working through that. It's a pain.

I might just rename the company. I don't know. But it's not live yet. That's frustrating. And so the next thing I did was just an email, an email campaign. I paid someone on Upwork, five or six bucks to compile a list of all the churches in Springfield.

When we were thinking about moving here, the one negative thing about Springfield, there were a couple negative things. One of the negative things about Springfield was there's so many churches and it's like a religious revival every weekend here, which I'm like, okay, that's great. That sounds like a great place to raise a family. And so there was over 300 churches in Springfield that I emailed. So 150, 175,000 people in the city.

And I've done a little bit of cold email before. It's hard. No success ever before. And this one just popped off. I think I was getting like five or seven percent response rate. Sheesh. And this is in a campaign. This is just one email.

And I would say two thirds of the emails were to info at the church name. Catch all. Catch all addresses which are not good. Not good. Specific. Right. Like, dude, like three hours ago, I taught a tutorial on hold email and I said delete the catchalls don't even mess with them now like it's context dependent right

and I still would have said that based on what I was teaching them about like the industry but if I were doing this I would have done the same thing because that's all I know you're telling me keep them in there baby well and I I know they're not as high quality but but where I'm I'm not blasting it out to millions or even thousands it's like just hit them all it's worth a shot did you scrub the emails first to validate them, make sure they're still active? Wow. Okay. And no follow-ups. No. All the magic's in the follow-up. Yeah. Well, it got busy fast. Good. Yeah. So I did not. And I, and it was a little bit strategic as well because I knew that I, there was a lot to learn. I didn't know what my pricing should be. I didn't know. I wanted to

test some different email language. I wanted to hit these people up. This, coming spring to say, okay, here's a new offer, here's something else. So I will be emailing them again. But yeah, it was one and done here. Okay. So 300 churches. Let's talk like as exact as you can remember on these numbers. How many did you email? And then how many responses did you get? Five to seven percent of what? I wish I had pulled these exact numbers. Let's say seven percent responded. So that's, you know, and it might have even been a little bit high. now that I'm thinking about it. Because I've done about 20 quotes.

Wow. And I would say half of the people who responded said, thanks for emailing, talk to me next year, good luck on your business, God bless, all that. But it wasn't an actual quote. So that if we say 40, we're talking like 12% response rate. Wow. Yeah. And then half of those led to actual quotes.

and and I should say at this time, I'm pretty frugal. I don't want to put a lot of money into something until I know it's going to work. And so I'm showing up to these quotes in my minivan. And, you know, it doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't look. Well, and it's it's a beat up minivan too. It's, it's had a better life in the past. So, so I'm showing up.

It's not super professional. I didn't even have a business card day one. I just had a printout that I was handing out. But yeah, the response was great. And I realized pretty quickly that the people who wanted a quote on just using satellite, give them a quote fast, because part of my thesis was, okay, if I can give a quote to them fast, they're more likely to book. But that's not the case in this part, in this situation. And I think it's mostly because I was doing outbound. they weren't reaching out to me.

If they were reaching out the moon, they were probably already in the market. Yeah. But in this case. Yeah. I realized I needed to be there in person. They needed to see that I'm not some druggy or whatever. You're local.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm local. And it's a church especially. It's like the most local type of organization there is. Well, and I should say too, just show that I'm, I'm a person because there's a lot of scams out there. These are older. It's an older generation for the most part running the churches. And so they they want to make that face to face connection. Yeah. And your close rate like all else equal, your close rate is always going to be higher in

person, regardless of industry. Yeah, regardless of vehicle. Although I have noticed since I upgraded to a truck, my close rate has increased. That makes sense because it's like, whoa, dude, like you're laying down this permanent paint on my parking lot that everyone in the world is going to see, you're not signaling to me that you know what you're doing in a van. Yeah, exactly. Yep. All right. So 12% response rate, give or take.

You only emailed churches to start. Yeah. And I don't recall exactly where that idea came from. I know I bought a couple other lists as well. I bought one for property managers for commercial real estate agents. But yeah, I only emailed the churches. What did you pay for that list? Each one was like five or six bucks.

Each email or each list? Each list. So I bought a couple. But yeah, for those 300, it was literally like six bucks. So your return on ad spend, it was like a thousand X. It's not even, it's just stupid. Yeah, it's crazy. So of the seven plus four, of the 11 jobs you did the first two months, were they all churches?

So I did three Taco Bells. And that was someone that I knew. I reached out to him and. Franchisee? Yeah. Yeah. But he owned all three. Yeah.

So, but everything else was a church. So all of your jobs came from cold email or a friend. Yep. Beautiful. And you haven't even tried cold emailing any other industry. For all you know, transmission and muffler shops have a 20% response rate. Like, who knows?

Yeah. I'm sure some will be. better. Yeah. I would think most would be worse because 12% is great, but it can't be the best. Like, statistically speaking, there's too many other industries to try. I will say one reason I did go for churches is because most of them have a pretty good size lot. And I didn't want to show up to another one like Safe Haven where it's, okay, I would have to charge you 500 bucks to do those five lines. That's just not, that's not great for you. It's not going to be great for me. How price sensitive are churches compared to like a Taco Bell?

Honestly, I don't know. I would say from the conversations I've had, most churches want to be wise with their money, but they also have fun set aside because this is something that they have to do every three, four, five years. So they're ready to spend it. So how big is an average church parking lot? How do you price stuff out? So most of the church parking lots that I've done have been around 200 parking

stalls. So my first actual job that I did, I think I charged $450 per line and then $10 to $20 per stencil. So I would do $20 for a blue and white handicap and then $10 for a parking or a directional arrow. How'd you land on that price? These Facebook groups have been super helpful to me. So I saw some info there. I think Cinco shared some pricing info as well. And honestly, a huge resource has just been AI, just asking whether it's GROC or chat GPT, what I should be at. I have to think that most business owners or pastors in this case don't really know what a fair price is for this, because it's such an infrequent service. Is that the case? Or do they kind of have a ballpark in mind? I think a lot of them ended up getting additional quotes. This is what.

why October revenue was so low, but November was fantastic, is because it, they have to present it to their board. They have, they have pretty, they have a process to go through, to go through before anything gets approved. Longer sales cycle. Yeah, yeah. And, and that's something I wish I had realized before I contacted them first, because it was a slow few weeks getting, getting started. Those 11 jobs, you're not counting the first free one, right? Or you are. No, I'm not. Okay. So those 11 jobs, you basically closed eight because the Taco Bells were three locations, right? Seven churches and four Taco Bells or what was it? Eight churches and three Taco Bells. Okay. So you've closed nine jobs, basically. One was your friend, eight were strangers. You've quoted 20, right? I'm trying to get to what your close rate is. We're talking like 40, 50 percent?

Yeah, yep. That's pretty good, especially for such a high ticket item. Yeah, I've been really happy. And again, it's just a longer same. cycle. I'm really excited for the spring, though, because, so I'm done here for the winter right now. We are shut down as of a week ago, but I'm going to hit it hard. I've got, I've got around 200,000 in quotes that I've already given out that I'm going to be following up on, and I think I'll get a lot of them for the spring. So your average job size is like, we're talking like seven grand, somewhere like that? Yeah, it's, it's a little, a little, misleading just because we've had, I would say my average striping only job is between one and $2,000. And then, yeah, seal coating is a big ticket.

All right. Tell me what happened during that first job that turned you on to seal coding. Yeah. And so let me backtrack just a second and say when we're talking about my close rate, my close rate could have been higher, but I show up to these jobs. And I think my email is pretty straightforward. I said, we do striping. I'm going to give you a discount for striping services.

And I got, you know, all these people saying, hey, give me a quote. Well, I go to meet them in person and they say, oh, I wanted a quote for striping and sealing. No one wanted. And you're like, what's sealing? Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so I know some of those jobs, those early quotes I lost out on, because I was like, I don't do that. You know, I can get you a quote, but honestly, it's, I just do the striping. And in my mind, it's like, okay, that's great. And in their mind, they're thinking, X, let's get the next guy because I need both. I don't need this one. Which, what a great lesson in being willing to be flexible because it's like, focus, focus, focus on one thing. What if you don't? Like, where would you be today if you're like, no, I only do striping because that's what I'm focusing on. I want to be the best in the world at striping. And that is the There's many ways to win.

I'll go to my grave saying that, right? But you were like, let's try seal coding. And then it's like, holy crap, this is the whole business. Yeah, there's a market for just striping. And I think now that I'm a few months in, I would say that if you just want to do striping, forget outreach to church, forget, well, and I'll add one more caveat here. But forget outreach to church, forget outreach to property managers. talk to construction companies

because you're going to be striping the new lots and that's about it, at least in this area. And so the caveat is, as Cinco is in Texas, he's in Waco, yeah, Central Texas. Completely different. And so I'm actually going to be doing some jobs in Texas over the winter. They don't need seal coating for the most part.

It's a way smaller industry. Their parking lot lines fade though with the sun. And so they just have to be redone. It's a standalone service. All right. So have you tried anything else texting, calling? You've done door to door.

You've done your friend with the Taco Bells. Have you done or tried anything else to acquire customers? Nothing as of now. So I mentioned doing some jobs in Texas in winter. The playbook's working. I got another list of churches in Texas where my parents live. and I emailed, I think I've emailed the first half of the list, and we're going to get some work from it. We've already gotten some quotes, and some of them are going to close.

Okay, so you've done the same outreach to two different markets entirely, and were the metrics from the Texas campaign, was it better or worse than Springfield? It was a little bit worse. So I think I sent about 100 emails right around 100. and I've done four or five quotes. So I still look a little bit lower, but still like it. So good. Yeah. I mean, Hunter, just promise me you'll start following up with these.

I know, I know. Please, you're going to triple those numbers. This was in a small town. This was, you've talked about pecan plantation. That's my parents live 10 minutes from there. So you're, you're an hour out of DFW. Yeah. And, yeah, I know.

Granberry. Yep, exactly. I need to move closer to DFW and things will really blow up. Dude. Okay. All right. What about equipment? What did you spend on the equipment?

Where did you buy it from? How did you choose what brand or make model new use? So startup costs, I paid $800 for my stencils. So all the arrows, the letters, the no parking. What do you buy those from? I bought them from one, $800. stencil. They just had the best price online. I went solely based off price. I mean, they've, yeah, they're a reputable company, but it worked for me. I've continued to buy from them. I spent about,

oh, and then I spent $2,300 on my machine. And that was, that was the extent of my startup costs. In my email, I would say, hey, I'm licensed and insured. And then before I did my first job, I did buy insurance, but, but I did not have it when I sent the emails. And that was like $230. Okay. So all in startup costs were $3,000. Yeah. $3,000. What is your ongoing overhead? I pay $29 a month for, uh, for quote IQ just to send out quotes. And then insurance. It's $9250 a month. $93? Yeah. But what about like a gas, like truck insurance, stuff like that? So truck, the advice I got was keep. I actually do want to move it over to be a business truck fully. But at this point in time, I still drive more for just personal activities. So it's not a commercial policy yet.

I think it added 30 bucks to my insurance. Any like crazy stories or headaches from this business yet? Something that people can watch out for. So one would be just men. Yeah. When the machine breaks down and you, you're on a time crunch, it is, it is tough. You know, this, this has not been just a walk in the park. There, there have been some stressful moments. The, the most stressful part, we haven't even talked about crack filling, which has been a really good, a really good addition as well in tandem with seal coating. And so with that, you're, you're just putting some rubberized tar in the cracks to seal them up. And before you do that, you have to clean out the weeds from the cracks.

and then also run over it with a weed torch just to heat it up and help it seal better, right? I started a fire. I mean, just thinking about it, there's a little bit of PTSD there. That was scary, you know. In the minute or two, I just thought, man, I just ruined my family's life because the wind was whipping and it started spreading fast. I was 20 feet from a house, 20 feet from a church. I don't know how it started.

I was being really cautious, but some, something that I, some piece of grass caught in fire, blew over to a pile of leaves. And yeah, it got up fast. What did you do?

How did you get it out? I threw, I had a couple bags of sand for the project I was using. I threw that on. And then thankfully, and we might not be talking. I,

you know, I don't know how this would have ended, but thankfully I had a fire extinguisher that I carried with me. Thank you, OSHA, right? So I was trying to be compliant and that put it out, but it spread fast. Oh, my gosh. Just from the time it took to run from, like, I noticed it, I run to the truck, I run back, and it's big, yeah.

That's incredible. What would you have done differently had you, if you were to start this over from scratch today? I would have bought new equipment. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to prove the model. But knowing that it's proved, I would have been. bought new equipment. So that, yeah, just the downtime and the headaches, that would have helped alleviate those. And then I would have hired sooner or faster. I still probably need to be more

proactive on this just because my value, my honestly, the people I have hired, they do it better than I do. I am not an OCD details oriented guy. And the people I've hired, they're amazing. They're snapping. Chalk lines. They're measuring everything. They're getting the angles exactly right. And I'm like, let's just do it. But we want it to be perfect.

And so I should have hired them day one. I can provide way more value getting the jobs and overseeing the work than actually doing a lot of it. But I like it. How many employees do you have and how do you pay them? Do you pay them like hourly or on a per job basis? All of them are hourly. I will hire a couple full-time guys starting in the spring. And that was part of my delay in hiring too was it's like, okay, you only have a few weeks before the season ends. Just find some part-time guys, pay them hourly, whatever. Yeah. So they were just all guys looking to make some extra money on the weekends or in the afternoons. How much per hour? And where did you find them? So everyone I've hired has been from just from my church congregation. They were just guys I knew who could work hard, even a couple teenagers too, who could work hard.

And yeah, I've paid the teenagers 15 bucks an hour and my standard is 25 an hour for the guys. But there have been there have been a couple times where we've had to work at midnight. or later working to 1 or 2 a.m. And I'll bump it out to 30 or 35 an hour for that. Yeah. So your margins are still killer even when you pay someone to do it for you. Yeah. What could I have asked you or should I have asked you that I neglected to?

I would say like why, why did you choose it? Why did you choose this business? Yeah. So when I was selling the company, I was looking, like I said, I binge your content. I was looking at some other options. I thought doing windows in residential homes could be really nice and paid ads would crush on that. We had a client who did paid ads for that and they did great. I was also interested in doing well drilling.

So for new homes or existing. That's high ticket. Yeah, high ticket. Super cool. That's one that that's really interesting to me. But the equipment cost is just insane. It's like a couple hundred thousand to really get going. And so I like this because it's it's B2B, it's construction adjacent.

And then it's really easy to rank on Google. No one is really focused on this market. And so I just thought it would be really easy to get work on an ongoing basis just from Google without having to do any marketing. And that was attractive. Do you compete much with others? Because there's a few franchisors that offer this, right? Like one is famously called We Do Lines, which is a great name.

Do you find yourself competing for jobs? No, not yet. And I know another one's like 1-800 striping. And I've talked to some guys there and they do really well. But no, I think it's a little bit different because most mom-and-pop stores or church and they want you to do all of the services, not just striping. Okay. So what's next?

How do you plan to scale this business? Just more of the same? Cold emailing, other markets, wait for the warmer weather. Yeah, Google. Google is going to be huge. So my online presence is a big, a big focus for me this winter, just getting that ready to rock and roll for the spring. And then there's a lot of room here.

I would love to have two crews going in the springtime, full time. time. I think we'll get plenty of jobs. And then, yeah, with my parents in Texas, I'd love to have some sort of permanent presence there. But that's still in the works. Yeah. Beautiful. Hunter, where can people find you if they want to learn more or just reach out? X is the best place. Just look at my name, Hunter Schenework. Happy to give back in any way I can help people out. and yeah, reach out if you have questions. And if you're in North Texas or Missouri and you need some striping or seal coating, 417 striping.com. Are you ever going to do any residential stuff for seal coding?

Possibly. It's a big driveway, maybe a couple thousand bucks for seal coating. So it's not. There's a lot of driveways out there. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so if you have down days or whatever, absolutely. And that's where I think ads could. come in where it's, hey, book on these days, we'll give you a good deal. Like, let's just,

even if we don't make money, let's just pay the crew and stay busy. So, yeah, I'm sure we will do some, but haven't done any currently not planning to make it a main focus. Love it. Hunter, thank you. Thanks, Chris. All right, what do you think? Please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on the Kerner office.