The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Starting a Business Has Never Been Easier. Here’s How to Capitalize⏐ Ep. #185

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Check out my newsletter at TKOPOD.com and join my new community at TKOwners.comHoldCo Bros are back! In this episode, Nik and I talk about why starting a business has never been easier—and how to actually take advantage of that. We go deep on AI-powered outreach and automation, including a guy closing $7K/month deals with in-person pitches and guarantees, and a 24-year-old automating CPA services with 140 clients at $50/month. We also got into selling custom GPTs, why friction kills momentum, and the idea of a local handyman “fantasy camp” for guys like us who never learned how to fix a sprinkler. Finally, we brainstormed more B2B piggyback businesses like pool digging and fence post augering—ideas you can copy and launch fast. Learn more about Nik here: http://linktr.ee/cofoundersnikShare your ideas with us:[e-mail]@cofounders.comTimestamps 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 Highlights00:45 Intro for New Listeners02:48 Start of The Episode06:02 Cold Outreach and Sales Strategies08:55 Piggybacking on Existing Businesses11:59 Emerging Opportunities in Home Services17:43 Leveraging AI for Business Growth23:56 The Importance of Reducing Friction in Entrepreneurship29:46 Hands-On Learning and DIY Business Ideas

There is no excuse for you to not be able to build something right now. I just had a call with a guy that's selling a $7,000 a month service. And this is a service that anyone could do. Automations is a service, AI Automations. I met a kid this week. And he's like, I sold my first company and I have eight duplexes. And then I have kind of a side business that is showing people how to implement automations. I have 140 clients.

So I'm like, wait a second. You're making $16 grand a month passively. Why the freak are you here? He's like, honestly, I just want a steady paycheck and to feel like I'm safe. And I'm just going to make bets on all these. other things. It blew my mind. He's 24 years old and it's all automated. Could you imagine having AI when you were 24? Yeah, I can because right now I feel like a kid in a candy store and everything's free. Welcome to the Kerner office and especially welcome to all of those coming over from MFM. I

appreciate you joining me here. And I want to give you a quick little intro about what this podcast is and what this episode is today and who I am. I live in Dallas-Fort Worth. I've started about 80 businesses, several of them reaching eight figures in revenue. I've had a couple exits. I've had some good success, but I just love starting and building businesses, and I love putting it all on the internet. I started about 70 businesses before I ever started talking about it, but I also have a series on YouTube where I talk in detail about every single business I've ever started, if you're ever interested. I'm also the partner on an RV park investment fund. We have about 31 RV parks worth about 150 million collectively. I have four kids. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of

Latter-day Saints. I like camping, doing stuff outdoors, but I love, love, love business. My wife of 17 years was my high school sweetheart. She's incredibly supportive. We have a good life. Today's episode, style is called hold co-brose. I own a holding company with my best friend Nick. This style of episode happens about once a week, sometimes once every two weeks. And we just talk about business ideas. We talk about businesses that we're building or starting or experimenting with in real time. It has a similar vibe to MFM. And Nick has found a lot more interest in acquiring businesses over the course of his career, whereas I've been more interested in starting businesses. So he brings a really unique perspective.

He's taken part in over $100 million worth of business acquisitions. He's had some really good exits. He also has four kids. He lives in Idaho. He's a super, super smart guy. His podcast is called Nicanomics. It's also really good. And it focuses more on the economics of business and on buying businesses as opposed to

starting them from scratch. Today's episode, we riff on a ton of really exciting business ideas, some about home services, some about AI and everything in between. I wanted to make sure that if you are new to this podcast, the first one you listened to was really, really good. So you're going to love it today. And if you're interested in binging more episodes like these at the end of this episode, I'll list out a ton of other episodes that are certified bangers so you don't have to go and

find them yourself. But without further ado, please enjoy today's episode. Nick, has it ever been easier to do mass outbound outreach to people that you're trying to sell something to? No. Never been easier. We have so many tools, AI tools. one prompt, few clicks, instantly, lemless, G-MAS, you can send hundreds and thousands of cold emails, right?

AI calls, ringless voicemail drops, text messages, right? We are getting inundated with sales messages. And as marketers, we're inundating others with sales messages, correct? Correct. All right. So you've got to stand out more, more than ever. So I just had a call with a guy that's selling a $7,000 a month service to Fortune 500 companies and he's doing it exclusively through three things.

Are you ready? And this is a service that anyone could do. Automations as a service, AI automations, stuff that a lot of people listening to this are already doing or playing with themselves. But ironically, people at Fortune 500 companies have no idea about. So he's doing three things.

He has a really good pitch in his cold email. He only sells in person and he has a 33% close rate in person and he has a guarantee as part of his offer. Okay, and this is a guarantee that you and I have kind of seen floated out there in different contexts, but not like this. So he's pulling from the Bramosey playbook. He's got a good offer.

Yeah. You got a really good offer. But it's a very simple offer. You guarantee. So he says, I want to meet with you for 30 minutes in person. I promise you, I can find ways to save you so much more money than what my service costs. if I can't, for whatever reason, if you don't want to be a customer of mine, I will donate X amount to a charity of your choice.

Really? And there's a second part to this. He proactively tells them how young he is. And he's like in his 20s or 30, like early 30s, mid-20s, somewhere in there. He's not insanely young. And he says that combo of being young, yet offering to donate money to a charity of their choice, to that market to like Fortune 500 white-collar workers, just crushes. And so he has a 33% close rate, $7,000 a month, very, very low churn.

What do you think? What's his offering? He basically helps save them money by automating tasks that they have employees do. So he'll go look at how many jobs they have posted on LinkedIn and on Indeed and basically say, hey, I'm not trying to take your jobs. I'm trying to prevent you from having to hire more people. I want to sit down with your employees in person face to face, teach them how to use AI. But first, I want to ask them questions about their roles and responsibilities and use that to build automations that will make them, like, have superpowers in their role. So I'm not going to go in there and say, hey, AI is going to replace you.

Answer all these questions for me. It's like, no, answer all these questions for me. And you're going to be a rock star employee. I met a kid this week. I say kid is in his mid-20s who's doing something very similar. So I won't say at a company, but I went met with a kid who's an accountant at a company. We're having a conversation. And in the middle of the conversation, we're talking about AI.

And he's like, yeah, actually, after I sold my first company, I decided to get more into AI. I was like, wait, what? You're an accountant here. What are you talking about? He's like, yeah, well, I sold my first company and I have eight duplexes that we own. And that income actually supports us. And then I have kind of a side business that is showing people how to implement automations

into their companies, specifically focusing on CPA firms. I was like, what? How many clients do you have? He's like, I have 140 clients. What? What is he charging? This part blew my mind. 50 bucks a month.

Oh. Dude, listen to this. 50 bucks a month and he's providing accounting services. He's automated the whole process. He's like, they love me. We automate accounting services. But then he also upsells them for implementing automations. Right.

So then he makes more money that way. But just the accounting services are also $8,000 a month. And he's like, these are sticky customers. They're not going away. I'm like, wait a second. You're making $60. grand a month passively, why the freak are you here? Like, why are you an accountant at this company? And he's like, honestly, some stuff happened with my dad when I was younger. I saw how rough it was for him.

And a job is so important to me. I just want a steady paycheck. And if you feel like I'm safe, and I'm just going to make bets on all these other things. I was like, it blew my mind how simply, he's 24 years old, but just how simply he apparently has acquired all these accounting customers. And it's all automated. He's like, I spend an hour a week basically on this business. So not only has cold outreach become easier than it ever has been, but the ability to implement and actually do what you say you're going to do has become easier than it ever has been. And you get people here who are just, they're going into these businesses and creating real money for themselves.

Like, how much was this guy you interviewed making a year? I don't know. I don't know how many customers he had, but he was doing really well. Could you imagine having AI when you were 24? Yeah, I can because I feel like it right now. I feel like a kid in a candy store. and everything's free. I'm in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory and he says, take all you can hold.

I'm in a Mr. Beast video where he gives him 10 grand to go in a grocery store. This is the best period of my life. I'm in my Renaissance era, baby. You are in Replit four hours a day. Oh, and I love every second of it. What I just said, like, not only has it never been easier to do cold outreach,

but the ability to fulfill has never been easier. And that's where I think you have, like, your superpower's always been on cold outreach. So juice that up a little bit. Okay, you're a little bit better at cold outreach now with AI. But now you can fulfill, bro. Like, the opportunities are endless. You can build literally anything you want. What did you build last week? We were on whole cool bros and you're like, hey, I have this idea. And what did you throw up? How to use AI.com. Yeah. Unbundled subreddit.

Yeah, you got to log in. You got to submit ideas. You can vote on them. You can comment. You built the whole website. And now you've got a community of people who are contributing AI ideas. Like, there is no excuse for you to not be able to build something right now. It's insane. 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. Honestly, it gives me like as cheesy as it sounds, I get tingles just thinking about it. Up until six months ago, what did I do? If I had an idea that was technical that required some code, I'm going to get Justin, my brother-in-law on the phone. Justin is extremely bright. He's a 10x developer. He's busy. He makes a ton of money. He's like, yeah, I'll get to you when I can get to you.

Because he has worked on so many projects for me, you, us that just never materialized. And he put a ton of hours into them. Now, I don't have to bug Justin at all. I'm going to his house in a couple weeks and we can just bro down about disc golf. I can build my own stuff. Now, if he were to see my code, he'd probably laugh me out of the room. But I don't care because it works. I don't even know how to read my code.

Where do I see my code? I don't know. What is a computer? The files are in the computer? Are you my grandson? I've got some piggyback ideas, all right? Okay. So for those new to the pod, we like talking about piggybacking,

which is instead of like starting from scratch and finding your own customers fresh, just plug into another business and piggyback on their customers in a non-competitive way. For example, I want to start a stump grinding business. Let's go find a bunch of homeowners. No, let's go find a bunch of tree-terming businesses that are willing to outsource all of their dump grinding on a weekly basis, right? piggybacking one-on-one. I've got two ideas in one here, and I'll just explain what people are watching. These are called fabric ceilings, and they're super popular in Greece and elsewhere in Europe, and I think they need to be here in the U.S., and here's how you should do it.

I call it the piggyback method. I've already done content about people that install pergolas. It costs like $8,000 to $12,000 to install a pergola, but look how they look. They're ugly. Who wants that? If I were you, I'd go find a dozen or two of these pergola installation businesses and piggyback on them, say, hey, I install fabric ceilings on pergolas. You need, need to offer this as an upcharge, I know how to do it. You upcharge a thousand bucks. I have 200 of that for you just for referring me and I'll do all the work. Let's say your cost or 200 bucks, your labor takes a couple hours and you're making $200 to $300 an hour to install something that objectively looks awesome and that people would pay for. So I made a business plan for it right here. What do you think?

Dude, I think it's amazing. Like literally, I just got a quote last week to have a pergola on our deck, $15,000. And like, and we want it. Now, I wouldn't do that because we want it for the winter. And like the snow's just going to like wreck that. But I think it's an amazing piggyback method. Yeah, for those only listening, a fabric ceiling is like it just looks all wavy. It blows with the wind. It offers more shade. It looks really cool.

And it's something that's being done in the Mediterranean, but not really out west. And so bring something over there, over here, piggyback with pergaly installation businesses. They make more money. You tap into their customer base. Bada bada bada bough. Okay. Bada bada bambam. So, Nick, one of our most popular.

Holdco Bros episodes ever was from July 10th, episode 37, B2B stump grinding. For those just catching up, we talked about hypothetically B2B stump grinding. Then we did a public experiment. We called every tree-to-ring business in Houston, yada, yada, yada, and this guy, Tyler, and subsequently several others went out and started B2B sum grinding businesses, which, as far as we know, wasn't a thing. Like, sum grinding was not a B-to-B type of business, but now it is. So you could say we kind of invented a new industry.

but I found a new, I found a new B2B stump grinding for us. Okay, you ready? I'm here for it, dude, yeah. Storytime. So I went to my friend Ed's house. You've met Ed. He just put in a pool. And Ed is like me.

It's kind of cheap. He doesn't spend too much if he doesn't have to. And he used to be a home builder. So he knows a bunch of subcontractors and he can get stuff done around the house very cheaply. He put in a pool. Nice pool. Not plain, not extravagant. middle of the range, middle of the pack pool.

A little slide, little waterfall, medium size. And he, like, was very prudent about what he spent on it. What do you think that I think costs? $50,000. Oh, what? Yeah, that's like going rate. And that's like a good price for a pool like that. And you'd be like, yeah, it's nice.

So I have a pool and it has like a liner in it. I don't even know what to call it, like acrylic. It's like a proper positive pool. It's like a real pool. What you have? have as a doughboy that you have what's called above ground that's what they have in alabama no so 150 grand and oh my gosh in all seriousness 2019 you could get up that pool for 70 grand you cannot get a pool in texas under a hundred grand you just it's not going to happen okay so that's the that's the

backstory then i'm talking to our business partner james fast tree care and he says chris i just met this guy or he operates excavators he doesn't even own an excavator And for those listening, Excavator, it's a, it's a freaking, it's a bucket truck. Excavator, hardly know her. You know? It's a big digging machine, okay? And I rented one to dig a culvert. It's a lot of fun.

I'd never used one before. I just hopped on. It started pulling levers and I dug a bunch of holes in the ground. Anyway, this guy has a B2B pool digging business. He has no website. He has no Google Business profile. He has a phone number and a handful of relationships with pool companies. Okay?

pool company goes into Mary Jones's house and says, yeah, $150,000 for this pool. Cool. Can you show me an itemized invoice? Sure. Digging, $5,000. This guy, hey, hey, I got a job for you, $5,000. You good for it? Yeah, sure.

He goes to United Rentals. He picks up the excavator. He pays about $700 for it for the day. These things cost about $70, $80,000 to buy, which you can finance them and lease him. And he goes there for about four hours, digs out of pool. He's on his merry little way, $5,000. What are we talking about here? So who's he piggybacking off of?

Pool companies. Pool companies just sub everything out. Then they're going to go find a framing company to put the forms in, all the two by fours. Then they're going to find a plaster company. Then they're going to find a landscaping company to put all the tiles in around it. Then they're going to go buy the slide from a third party. They're just like home builders. They're just subcontracting everything out.

And the homeowner is just another line item. So they're not super price sensitive. The pool companies aren't. Okay. First of all, I love this idea. Because effectively what Tyler did is he bought a stump grinder and then rented it out. That's effectively what he did. Right? Like these tree trimming businesses don't want to spend $20,000 or whatever the, no, it's more than that, $50,000 on a stump grinder. And so they are renting it out from Tyler. And Tyler goes and he fixes it. This is the same problem, right? These pool contractors, they don't want to have an excavator. So they're renting it out from this guy. I really like this idea of piggybacking. And I was doing it while you're talking. piggybacking off of high ticket home services. So literally, as you're talking, this is what I did. I asked chat GPT, what are some high ticket home purchases like a pool and tree trimming? So pools, it names, tree trimming, landscaping, redesigned, and hardscaping.

So this is just off the top of my head. All right. Go find contractors that do the landscaping. And maybe you're the guy that they don't want to run it to the dump. So you're like, hey, dumpster rentals, right? What's the big ticket purchase item that they don't want to do? maybe it's disposal. Deck and patio installation,

that's going to be disposal as well. That would be an amazing one to piggyback off. If you just contact all these contractors and say, hey, I have a dumpster. I'll come pick up your old deck. Don't even buy a dumpster. Do what I did last weekend when we took down our bubble in the back over the tennis court.

We just had two trailers and then loaded the trailers up and took them to the dump. So you could start just cash flowing by getting a trailer and having a hitch on your truck. But then you buy a dumpster. Anyways, that would be really interesting. Ooh, fencing installation. How could you piggyback off of fencing installation? You could have like auger as a service, like digging the post holes. Yeah, that's a real.

I've hired guys to come out and do that. Like I'll get my fence repaired and I'll plant trees at the same time. So it's like, hey, $350 come out and dig 13 holes for me. Dude, that could be the same for landscaping. Let's like if somebody's going and doing a big backyard landscaping, having somebody come out with a bobcat or just to grade the land. Right? Because they don't want to have the expense of that bobcat.

Like, okay, cool. I'll be the guy who actually comes out and moves dirt around. Let's remind our listeners of what Tyler, the stump rental, the stump grinder did. He bought a $60,000 stump grinder, but he financed it. His payments like $450 a month. His truck finance, $450 a month. His trailer, finance. Parking.

He pays like $250 a month for a lot. He doesn't have a building. Like, he works from home. Like, you don't have to have $60,000 to start a business like this. Well, and the way to validate it is so simple. It's the same way that Tyler did it. You scrape a list of the type of contractors that you want to piggyback off of. You find a market to test it in. See if there's demand there. Before you spend a dollar. Yeah, before you spend a dollar, see if there's demand there. And then if there's demand, you actually jump into it. You actually start booking jobs and do it. That's what Tyler did. And in his first month, I can't remember what he did in his first month. I think he did like $7,500 his first month. He did $9,000 his first. He did $9,000 his second. Right. And just two months ago, I don't know what he did last month, but just just two months ago, he did $30,000. He's making good money as a solopreneur and hopefully he expands, but the home services piece in my mind is such a freaking cool opportunity to piggyback off

of these companies that have effectively distribution. Dude, this is mind-blowing. Gen Z and millennials are the most entrepreneurial generation we've ever seen. Check this out. According to like what metric? I'm going to tell you right now. So there was a recent study, I think that U.S. Bank just published, 36% of Gen Zian millennials who are business owners plan to acquire a business from a retiring owner. Only 54% of current owners, though, like have a formal succession plan. So there's this gap in the marketplace. And I think there's a huge opportunity right now for these individuals who are like trying to figure out how do I take advantage of AI to utilize AI to help them figure out how to take advantage of it. Does that make sense what I'm saying? I know it's like

super stupid and meta. But one more time for the ADHD is in the back. I'll say it a different way. Last year, 72% of business owners thought AI was going to play an important role, 2024. This year, 87%. A 15 point swing, right? So like they're seeing the value.

That's very surprising to me. Isn't it? I would feel like there'd be like 25% of holdout. And they're just going to like out of pride, ego, whatever, like, no, this is just a fad. But for that margin to cut in half in one year is shocking to me. It's insane. But not only that, they're utilizing AI in their business. And from the report, they're mainly utilizing it as like a better search engine.

Right. So they're like using chat GPT, whatever, as a counselor, so to speak. But I actually think there's a really, really good opportunity for them to use chat GPT as a therapist and as like a business coach. So I went to chat GPT. and I literally asked it this prompt, are you ready? You've seen people say, like, the best way to use AI and to fix a prompt is to use AI to fix your prompt. This is the same way. Like, the best way to find an opportunity for you to take advantage of something is to use AI to help you find that opportunity to take advantage of something.

So we've talked about quizzes. I'm just going to bring this up really quickly. But I think that people need to start using AI as an interactive conversational as opposed to just, hey, I put this in. spits it out. And I think that there's a market for people to create GPTs very simply that enable the interaction. Does that make sense what I said? I think so. It removes friction. So people don't have to think as much about what to ask. Yeah. All you have to do is give it like created a custom GPT that has a prompt. You could have a custom GPT that's like, hey, you're helping this person decide on which business to buy. Ask them these questions. How much capital do they have? What's their experience?

And to anyone listening that thinks that sounds too complex. You're literally just going into chat, GPT, you're clicking projects. You're creating a project with instructions, right? That's literally all these. In fact, you want to share my screen? Yeah. All right. So I'm in chat GPT. I'm here. I have, these are all my GPTs over here. I have projects, blah, blah, blah. Now, people get overwhelmed because they think, oh, GPT, that sounds complicated. It's not complicated. It's literally just a saved prompt. What I'll do over here is I'll come to this business research assistant and I'll just show you what this looks like. Edit GPT. And now I'm looking at what the GPT is on the back end. And you can see here, I named it. Here's a quick description. It generates business research,

blah, blah, blah. But then I actually created this. This GPT assists users in drafting a comprehensive business research document using a structured approach. And let me guess. You use Chad GBT to write its own instructions. Huh. Huh. Huh. I don't know. Did I create? Huh. Yes. That's exactly. Like, I went to Chad DBT and I was like, hey, help me write this. prompt. This is what I'm trying to do and I want to create a custom GPT. It doesn't even have to be, like you can literally say just that. Help me write a GPT prompt for finding the best business use cases at a carnival. You don't like go do that and it will help you write this prompt. I literally just took it, copied and pasted it. And now it tells the GPT exactly how to work. I hit update,

boom, and now I have a business research assistant. So what I'm saying is you can do this and sell it to people. You can put it on the GPT store within chat TPT or you can sell it as a rapper. It doesn't matter. But let's say that you're really good at helping people understand, I don't know, how to write a book. Okay, I'm going to go take my knowledge. It's here in my head. This is the exact process for writing a book. Please write a prompt for this that enables other people to write books. You throw it into a GPT and now you have a custom GPT that you can share. If you get it approved in Open AI store, you can actually share that GPT with people. You can sell it. Or you could just go to replet and say make a very simple chat window, just a wrapper with this prompt.

Then you can show that link anywhere. 100%. So my point is, I wasn't trying to be overly technical with it. And it's not even a major idea. It's just use AI to help you identify what opportunities are available to you. Like this kid, right? He's going to Fortune 500 companies because apparently he has a skill set with automation. I would bet you could approach Fortune 500 companies or SMBs with your skill set of cold outreach or

somebody maybe has a really good skill set with, I don't know, some type of architecture, but find whatever your skill set is, build a custom GPT around it, and you can actually sell that to help people find their own opportunities. I kind of love that you told me that that CPA guy is only charging 50 a month. I didn't think you were going there, but I think that people get so partially our fault, they get so hung up on like a high ticket monthly recurring revenue, right? We talk about it a lot, that it's like, I have an automation agency, I have a short-form video editing agency, I have an outbound agency, whatever.

it's 2,000 month, 1500, 4,000, and they have a really hard time getting customers. And they're like, what is wrong? What happened? But this guy is like, okay, I know what I'm offering. It's very, very low lift, hands off for me. I'm going to charge 50 bucks a month. At enough customers, that's a six-figure, fairly passive income. But I'm going to have these upsells.

Once I get my foot in the door, they see me and trust me and know that I know what I'm talking about, they're going to buy all kinds of stuff from me. And so let's be patient. 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. It's 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. TKO pod.com. You might be listening and think, and you might be think this like, oh, this kid doesn't know pricing. That's what I thought.

I was like, oh, he doesn't even know what to charge. Oh, that's cute. He's dramatically under-charging, right? because how much is outsourced bookkeeping a month in our experience? Hundreds. Hundreds. Sometimes in the low thousands. In my experience, it's like between $1,000 and $2,000 a month.

If you're doing it onshore, if you're doing it offshore, you can do it for cheaper, right? And so I asked someone, I was like, dude, do you even know what people charge for this? He's like, yeah, about $1,200 a month. And I was like, okay, he's not, like, he even knows what the pricing is. And like you just said, he has purposely picked this $50 price because he knows it's going to be sticky for these customers and he can fulfill on it. It blew my mind. Oh, man. I was having a conversation earlier today, and this guy asked me what my approach is in starting a business,

which is a very broad question. But he's like, you want to rush to monetization, right? That's what you talk about, Chris, right? Get monetized as fast as possible. And as he said that, I kind of thought of a framework. And what I told him was it's not about running towards monetization as fast as possible. It's about running away from friction as fast as possible, because that's all I'm asking you to do.

this is more of a mind game than anything, right? So when I tell you, go get your first dollar, preferably from someone that isn't related to you, it's not so you can like get rich faster. It's because every second it takes for you to get that first dollar is more friction slash less momentum for you to actually do the thing. The higher likelihood that you'll just abandon this whole entrepreneurship thing altogether. You need to keep the momentum going. That is the most important part of starting anything. Well, how many businesses have you started? If it's 50 bucks a month, then it's 50 bucks a month.

I've started about 80 businesses. You started 80 businesses. Why have you started 80 businesses? It's because 75 of them didn't reduce friction fast enough and you moved on to the next thing. I mean, 75 is too much. But you get my point, right? It's like you're very good about not cut my losses, not cut my losses. I'm out of here.

And to your point, it's not about running towards monetization because I think probably of those 80 businesses you started, 75 of them did monetize. The question was how well did they monetize? How quickly could you get to scale? Were there margins there? Was the juice worth the squeeze? Was the juice worth the squeeze, right? And if you're trying to get into entrepreneurship, that's the whole goal. As quickly as possible, find the one thing that you can be better than anybody else at.

Get there really fast and then exploit it over and over and over and over again. And the most successful people do that. They don't continue to just test, test, test, test, test forever. Yep. All right. Can I bring up an idea? I got to hear what you got. Oh, please.

Okay. No, go. My dad's here. He decided to drive up like last minute yesterday. We have a broken sprinkler out front. It's been broken for two weeks. I've been trying to get somebody out to the house to fix it. I know in my head that it's not hard to fix sprinklers, but I know in my heart that I am not mechanically inclined at all. So I've left it. And I've just been like waiting. And now that my dad's here, he's helping me fix it. And it's been a lot of fun. This week as well, I started talking to this guy on Twitter. And for whatever reason, I started looking at it. his profile. And can I show you? I'm going to share my screen really fast. I promise this all makes sense. This is his business. So what I'm looking at is metal shop fantasy camp. So those listening. What it is is it's a camp where anybody can come. And for four hours, he just teaches them how to make a couple of things. There's a cool video on the website. And you can actually look at what classes are here, one hour introduction to welding, $130 per participant. How to make a cube, $2,000. $250 per participant. Steel bowl welding class, $190, right?

So he's got all these classes. People come in. He's not certifying them so they can go work on a building. Yeah. They're just learning how to weld. And so I had for funsies. For funsies. So I had that conversation with him, with this guy.

My dad comes over and shows me how much of a man I am not. And it hit me. How many men are they like me who don't know how to change oil? who don't know how to change, I don't know, any electrical in the house, who don't know how to do a simple project, who don't know how to fix the sprinkler heads. But they have the means where they could actually attend one of these fantasy camps to learn how to fix things themselves. Maybe it's a fantasy camp around landscaping. Maybe it's a fantasy camp around like changing the oil. But they all get together.

They have an instructor. And it's one weekend. Again, they're not certifying them to start businesses. But these are local sort of chapters, if you will. where I could just go and learn how to freaking fix a sprinkler head without having to go on YouTube. Does that make sense? Yep. Okay.

Because I could go on YouTube and watch how to fix a sprinkler head, but that's not me actually going and getting my hands dirty. What do you think? I love it. I love it. I'm trying to boil it down to the first principles. Why is this guy successful? Could you take that model and copy and paste it to anything, like landscaping? Or is welding something special, something you need?

And first of all, I think that there have probably been studies done, I'm completely guessing, that millennials, more than any other generation, just don't know how to do stuff with their hands. We didn't have to learn, right? Yeah, totally. We've had phones for the last 15 years, okay? So there's something there. But I also think, if we boil it down to first principles, most millennial men would like to learn. My pull-out trash drawer was broken.

And it was such a small job. No handyman wanted to come out there. So I figured out how to do it. And it took me like three hours and it was so simple. And I know it probably would have taken a handyman 15 minutes. But you know what? Every single time I open that drawer to throw something away, I feel so good about myself. I feel amazing.

It was worth every second of the time that it took me to do it. Right. So I guarantee you there's a business to be out of here. But my counterpoint is I think welding is something unique. I think first principles, men want to create things with their hands, right? a cube, a metal bowl. Like, I think there's something innate in us of taking raw materials, organizing it into something tangible and something useful that we could show our wives and hopefully they're

proud of us about it, right? And so if, I mean, hopefully, like, I know my wife's proud of me, but like others, right? I know my wife's proud of me? So with this as a business concept, I would think you would need to find something that's similar to welding. And maybe it's not like drywall because that's kind of like fixing something around the house. But maybe it is something like woodworking or cabinetry where they're actually creating something. Does that make sense? I think that's the winner. So you really think it has to be married with creation? I think so. Yeah. Because I'm looking at it from like my perspective. If there was

something local where I could go and meet up with somebody and I could learn about plumbing, here's some of the list I have. Plumbing, electrical, landscaping, yard making. maintenance, DIY projects, I would go. For me, that's the biggest hang up. It's like, I'll go watch something on YouTube, but I still want somebody there as like, wait, is this how I hold it? Is this how I actually get the joint to fit? Like, I don't, I don't understand how to do it. And I'm like, insecure about it. And I think a key part is being in a class full of other people that are like openly insecure about it too. You know, there's like a judgment free zone. Well, and that's what, like our generation is, is unique in that sense. Like our parents' generations, they would never show

that but we're all like yeah i don't know how to do that man i'm an idiot can you please show me how to do yeah but like this house i have hundreds of stations there are hundreds of sprinkler heads i'm gonna be like i need to learn how to change the sprinkle head otherwise i'm gonna pay like 10 000 a year for some handyman to just come over to my house and show me how to fix it yeah can i tell you the domain i bought oh dude you're asking a junkie if he wants some crack like you're kidding me please i want some crack Fantasy Handyman Camp. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah.

Yeah, I know you hated it just by the way you said it. Gosh, dang it. Cancel it. It's seven syllables. Cancel it. That's my only, that's my only be. Seven syllables. Seven syllables.

But I do think there would be a local component to where you could kind of organize these. Let's say you're a flipper in an area. Let's say you're just a general contractor and you want to increase your business. It's the bro-mosy example where like, yeah, you'll show them exactly what to do. but they're going to call you for the implementation. I'll give away all the secrets. This is how you, whatever, change the oil on a car, or change the brake pads,

cardboard or whatever. But they're still going to call you the handyman because they're like, wait a second. He showed me how to do that one time, but I don't know if I want to do it. So I could see this as a really cool lead magnet situation for a young contractor of some sort, mechanic, plumber, electrician, whatever,

where on the weekends or during the week, they just hold these classes and show guys like us how to freaking change stuff. I love it. All right, I hope you like today's episode. Come back a week from today for part two of this episode where we discuss other handyman, home service, AI business ideas and one idea about sending out wedding invitations that I think you're really going to like. Just so you know, I have a regular cadence to this podcast, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Every single Monday, Wednesday,

Friday I release. And if there's a Holdco Bros style episode with my friend Nick, it's almost always going to be on Friday. I have Q&A episodes where you can submit questions to me at tkopod.com. Scroll to the very bottom and you'll see a little audio widget. You can send in your question and I'll answer it. I have deep dives where I interview a business and ask them outright. How can I copy your business? How can I reverse engineer it? How can anyone copy it?

Then I have a lot of solo episodes where I talk about what I'm building, how I'm building it. I'll share my screen, how I'm using AI, cool hacks that I'm finding and learning about, and then a couple other types of podcast episodes that I'm always experimenting with. But if you're new to this podcast and you want to go binge some of my most popular episodes ever, here they are. and I'll also put them in the show notes for you. A lot of my best ones happened in April and May, but then I had some last year that were certified bangers as well.

So here's rapid fire. Episode 164, 161, 163, 169, 162, 73, which is about starting a porch pumpkin decoration business. Episode 156, 167, 171, 173, 173, 123, 123, 123, 123, 123, 125, 160, 160, 170, for whatever reason all of the 160s, almost all of them, were bangers. 170 is how to get a yes from anyone and change your life. So if you look at the show notes, we'll list all these out. If I record an episode that doesn't seem like a banger, I just don't publish it.

If I publish one that ends up not being a banger for whatever reason, I'm going to tell you. I don't want to waste your time. I take it very seriously. We'll see you in one week for part two of this. Thanks for listening today. Really appreciate you guys. I would love it if you shared with a friend and left me a five-star review. Have a great weekend.