The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - These Local Businesses Are Hidden Goldmines ⏐Holdco Bros. Ep. #194

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Check out my newsletter at TKOPOD.com and join my new community at TKOwners.comHoldCo Bros are back! In this one, Nik and I talk through some crazy profitable ideas for local service businesses that almost anyone could start. It all kicked off when a real-life hot tub crew showed up at my Airbnb just as I was scripting a video about them. We dug into why hot tub maintenance and moving services are such great opportunities. We also talked about launching a lake house concierge business, touchless vacation rental SaaS tools, and even a boat and paddleboard rental monopoly that charges $95 a tube. Toward the end, we shared a genius cold outreach trick using Shopify and a creative lead gen strategy based on building AI-powered directories. 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 Exploring Unique Business Opportunities03:01 Innovative Service Models for Vacation Rentals05:54 Leveraging Technology in Rental Services08:43 Identifying Lucrative Business Niches12:08 Creative Cold Email Strategies14:59 Building Directories for Lead Generation

They charge between $50 and $100 a week to service these. They were here for five minutes. They do 25 a day in the middle of nowhere, Idaho. You know those little intertubes? You buy an Amazon, $15. You go floating out of river, you rent him for $5 for a day. That's common price. $95 to rent an intertube for Maxin.

This is a three-hour rental. It's like now when you go to Enterprise or you go to Hertz, you just show up, grab a car, and leave. Why don't we have the same processes for going and renting things? Instead of using hundreds of dollars per month cold emailing software, you're using Shopify, which is like 39. You're landing in the inbox, which is a cheat code because that's the hardest part of cold emailing. So I'm sitting in my Airbnb.

My wife takes the kids to go see some friends. I got the whole day to work. So I'm thinking, what can I film? I want to film some content about small businesses and I see this hot tub out here. Thinking, oh, that guy Austin on Twitter, he has a hot tub maintenance business where he only services Airbnbs. That could be cool. I could do a video on that. So I'm kind of writing it up.

I'm scripting it. And in the front yard, I see someone pull up, a white van. I'm thinking, who's this? Is this the cleaner? Because I'm here for three more days. Why is the cleaner here? Guess who it was, Nick? I don't know.

It's the hot tub servicing business. They pulled up right at the same moment that I was trying to make content about hot tub servicing. Hmm. I'm sorry. So what am I going to do? Do I have any option? But to go out there...

You've reached a whole new level, Chris, of... influencer. You influence the universe to send hot tub maintenance people to your house. That's how much of an influencer you are right now. What can I say? So I go out there on the deck. I surprise these two girls. They're probably 16, 17 years old. Sisters, I think. Their dad owns the business. And this business does two things. They do hot tub maintenance and servicing for short-term rental owners. And they do hot tub moving. Because guess what? A retail business that sells hot tubs, they don't want to move the things. have the equipment. They don't want to be in the logistics business, the delivery business. So this company moves all of them for them. First of all, that's one of the most Mormon things that

I've ever heard. Like their dad owns the business and they're coming out to service your hot tub. Like, oh, how's it going, brother, coroner? Yeah, dad sent us here. It sounds like there might be a maintenance issue. Do you mind if we have a word of prayer before we start? Like, again, the word prayer was a joke at the end of that. But like, seriously, how many Mormon entrepreneurs are there that have their kids working for them. Dude, that's like genius. I love it. I know. I know. And so I start picking their brain and they're doing, they do 25 hot tubs a day, a day in the middle of nowhere, Idaho. They charge between $50 and $100 a week to service these. They were here for five minutes. And that includes the time that I spent peppering them with questions. So I spent the next three

hours down a rabbit hole researching all types of like hot tub related businesses hot tub moving hot tub maintenance repairs hot tub cover sales and two days ago i posted that whole deep dive on the podcast and i just love the hot tub business now what would you start like of those businesses that you just mentioned which ones would you start you know i want to say hot tub maintenance and servicing that was my number one but the more i ponder it the more i think i like the moving business more You were thinking about hot tubs. I think you and I have talked about this idea before, but I just got reminded of it. I was up at Lake Cascade.

Oh, dude, it was so beautiful. You know, Owen, it's got a big company. He's been super successful. He has a cabin on the lake in Cascade. He's got a boat and beautiful. But in order for us to go up there as a family reunion, what did we have to do? Everybody had to buy their own food. We had to go up there early to gas up the boat and the jet skis.

and we had to make sure that everything was perfect in the backyard. We had to stock the fridge. After we got done, we had to take the stuff off of the betting, yada, yada, yada. And it just reminded me of this idea that I've had for a couple of years where I think that there's an opportunity for somebody to create a concierge prep a service for rich people. Because if someone came to my brother-in-law and was like, hey, look, just text us before you come up. We'll gas up the boats. We'll gas up the jet skis. We'll make sure that they're serviced and maintained.

We'll clean up the yard a little bit. We'll stock the fridge with what you want. And we'll charge you, you know, whatever, a thousand bucks to do that plus cost in a heartbeat. I know in a heartbeat my brother-in-law would do that. And I just think anybody who's got a lakehouse or has enough money to have a lakehouse would pay to do that. Who would not? Like, why would you not do that? And I don't know why there isn't a service that exists like that.

I love it. We did the same thing. We rented a boat on Bear Lake on July 3rd. And we had the same thing. We rented it, right? So it was different scenario. But it took us an hour to like sign the waivers and fill up the tube and learn how to do it. And we could have skipped all that.

Like we could have done that before we went. So I feel like there's also a SaaS play here where you could build something. You could vibe code something that these boat rental places pay for monthly to help streamline the waiver process, the learning process. Like take this video, check the box that you learned how to. to start it, how to back it up, yeah. Then you just show up and go, you know. And there's like two ways to do it. There's the one way which is like, hey, I'm starting this business and I'm going to go actually do the fulfillment, right? I'm going to gas up the jet skis. I'm going to stock the fridge. I'm going to get the beds ready, et cetera. Flyers would be perfect. I'm just going to go to each

one of these houses and I'm going to set flyers. And it might take a couple months for the owner to actually come up and see that. But I think that would be a fairly easy way to get customers. And then on the back end to your idea, let's say that you're a boat rental place. You do the same thing. You just drop the flyer off and say, hey, if you want to come rent a boat, scan this QR code, fill out all this stuff before you come. And it's like now when you go to Enterprise or you go to Hertz, where you don't have to interact with an agent, you just show up, grab a car and leave.

Like, why don't we have the same processes for going and renting things? It seems like such an easy, low-hanging fruit. That's an interesting framework now that I think of it is like find an established industry like car rentals, been around forever. Look at the features and the offerings that are just now starting. starting to come out, such as, you know, no need to check in, just walk up to your car and leave. Okay, that's innovative. That's new.

Take that same feature to like a sub industry of that, like boat, ATVs. We're renting a side by side tomorrow. Insert anything rentals and just implement that, like as a service, right? And then offer that service to their companies. Dude, that would be a genius idea. Paddle boards, skin boards, like anything but kayaks, anything boat related. near lake, it's touchless. Okay, cool.

I'll go, yep, this is what I'm picking up. I mean, you do that all the time with Uber Eats, right? Like, there's got to be some way for them to have compliance where they come in and they just grab the food and go. Side note, for example, anytime we go to a Chipotle, Chris makes this joke. Anytime. If anybody ever goes with Chris to Chipotle, anytime, he's ordering and he's like, oh, hey, why don't we just grab some food from the free food rack?

The free shelf, the Chipotle free shelf. Okay. That's the Chipotle free shelf. It's where, you know, Uber, Uber, Uber drivers coming to pick up the food for their orders. But yeah, why would they not do that at the lake for any rentals? Why not? Dude, I think I've spent half of my summer inflating paddle boards,

and it's the worst experience in the world. It's terrible. Can someone invent a paddleboard that has an integrated electric pump? You just press a button. It pumps it up to the right PSI, and then you're done. You press a button, and it deflates it. Because they have electric pumps. You hook it up to your car.

They're so slow. Like, if we have integrated electric pumps on our air mattresses, just do it on a paddleboard. Oh, it's water. Dude, dude, stop. We can put freaking rovers on Mars. We can figure out how to waterproof an electric pump. Okay. I can just hear the haters.

Someone, please make a paddleboard. It takes 30 minutes to fill those things up. It's the worst. I actually really like that framework. Go to places that are vacation destinations and find the, those businesses who are renting out things to people. Like it doesn't just have to be lake related things. It could be ski, you know, anything like that and be like, hey, this is going to make your

service even better. It's touchless. You're going to eliminate the number of employees. You need to have people come check in, all of that stuff. And then implement it as a SaaS product. Why would you not do that? No, dude. Speaking of renting stuff in a vacation destination.

Oh, hello. Talk about a monopoly. If I were to buy a business, I think I would buy a business like this. I'm going to give you two examples. Okay. Island Park, Idaho, population 236. But in the summertime, and in the wintertime for skiing, it booms. It's exploding, right? All there is here are like two gas stations, a subway, and a grocery store. But it's packed with people. It is a hidden gem, okay? Crappy cabin up in the woods, 800 grand. Yeah. For those who don't know, it's like, what, an hour from Yellowstone?

It's like 30 minutes from Yellowstone. We were at Yellowstone yesterday. Anyway, they have this float on the Henry's Fork River, right? It's a two-hour float, and there's this hotel right on the river called Max Inn, M-A-C-K-A-A-P-A-P-S-A-S, Max-In. And they rent stuff that you can use to float down the river, maybe an intertube, kayak, paddleboard, and a raft. Okay? Now, we brought our own stuff because your boy's cheap, right? We rented it from the BYU, like, BYU, Idaho Equipment Center, which is like $2 a week. It's honestly a joke how cheap.

there, which it has to be that cheaper. They would have no business, right? Oh, my gosh. There's so many jokes you want to make right now. There's so many jokes. Like, how far is BYU, YIDO, Idaho from Eagle Park? Or Eagle Island. Island Park, it's an hour.

It's an hour, yeah. So Chris goes and rents and drives with all that stuff. Well, we were in Rexburg. We were in Redsburg. Oh, okay, okay. So we picked them up. Got it. Yeah, yeah.

But then we stayed because this was our next stop. This is how much they charge max in. This is what a legal monopoly looks like. This is what a moat looks like, okay? You know those little intertubes? You buy an Amazon, $15, right? You go floating out of river, you rent him for $5 for a day. That's common price.

$95 to rent an intertube for Maxin. $95. What? Stand-up paddleboard, $105. One guy is $130. Canoe, $170. This is a three-hour rental. That's what we call surge pricing?

Yeah, but all the time. Three-hour rental, not even an all-day rental. That's insane. Do you're insane? Yes. Talk about profit, right? And this place in Bear Lake, we rented a boat. Their domain name, Bearlakerentals.com.

All right? And for those unfamiliar, Bear Lake is a huge vacation destination for people in Utah, Idaho, all over, right? Imagine buying that boomer-owned business, Bearlakerentals.com, with their own marina right there, right in the center of everything. Is that thing ever going out of business? No. No.

Like you really have to screw it up. Like what's going to disrupt boat rentals? You know what I'm saying? Like not AI, not a competitor that has the location, it has the domain name, it has the 30-year history. I love these businesses. Dude, they're amazing. I just talk to a guy who's under LOI for a sign printing and maintenance business. Like that's his whole business is not just sign printing.

I'm sorry, sign creation. So it's not just billboards, but it's like custom whatever. I don't even know, neon signs, et cetera. That's not going on a business. No. I'm sorry, do people still have eyes? Do they still make impulse buys? Like, yeah, that business is going to be around for a long time.

Okay? I think it's going to be, yeah, yeah, I think that'll do it. Freaking love businesses. So we got Watercraft rental businesses. We got Watercraft service businesses. We've talked about Watercraft SaaS businesses that you could vibe code. Once again, I really like hot tub maintenance to Airbnb owners, hot tub rentals to Airbnb owners and hot tub moving for hot tub retail businesses.

You could just be their logistical arm. It costs $600 to move a hot tub. Can I pitch an idea that I'm having right now for like a mastermind getaway? How cool would it be in the summer to just get whatever, a group of guys and gals who are entrepreneurial? Go to Eagle Island, not Eagle Island, whatever, island park. anywhere, anywhere that's a vacation destination and be like, all right, we have a competition. There are five teams, whoever can think of and execute the best business model in the next seven days and make the most money wins. Like in-person businesses?

Yeah, like think about Bear Lake rentals, right? Yes, they're selling boat rentals or even the one in Island Park, inner tubes, paddle boards, etc. Okay, cool. You go there for one day. you see what the pricing is and you're like, all right, I'm going to go drive and buy 10 intertubes. And I'm not going to sell them for 95 an hour. I'm going to sell them for 55 an hour. And I'm going to make a homemade sign and I'm going to do it down the road.

Like for people like you and I, like that would just be fun. That would be the vacation is like you're in a cool place. You're thinking of an idea. You go out, you execute it. And it's like within a week who can actually launch this and make the most money. That would be, dude, that would be freaking fun. It's like, you know, the pendulum going towards AI and all that. It would be going the opposite direction and doing it in person hackathon.

a local business hackathon. Dude, yes. A real world hackathon. That's where it is. Yeah. For real businesses. Well, and it's like, all right, don't buy my course. I'm not going to show you how to do start a business.

Don't come to my mastermind that's going to be in a boardroom for the next, you know, three days, 10 hours a day. No. We're going to go get a cabin and guess what? You're going to launch a business. And maybe you put like a, I don't know, camp counselor, quote unquote, in each team that knows that you trust that you've like actually seen that you know could actually. Sam Thompson would be one of them.

And it's like, cool, let's go, let's go figure it out. Whoever went to that would learn more in five days or whatever in one day than they would in any freaking classroom setting because you're going to get your hands dirty. You're like actually trying to charge money. Just imagine like a group of guys sitting there. They're on their MacBooks. You've got partnerships of like two or three people. And then one of them just stands up to leave.

Like, where are they going? Oh my gosh. I heard I'm talking about intertubes. Oh, okay. Let's do intertube. Where are they going? Oh, I heard I heard I'm talking about selling waters. You know what I'm saying?

Dude, that would be fun. That would be super fun. Really fun. We could film the whole thing and actually have it be like a season. Just call it hackathon. That would be so fun. Sorry, I'm getting off topic here, but I just think that would be fun. Cool.

I got an idea for you. You ready? Okay. Yep. I got this email from a guy, Connor Breslin, so shout out to him. I'm going to read this to you. And I want to hear your real-time thoughts, okay? Okay.

Hey, Chris, I thought you'd appreciate this cold. email idea. It's a bit wild, but kind of ingenious. It's inspired by your one cent PayPal trick. Send someone a cent and PayPal nags them to open an account. And then you can put your cold email message to them in the message when you send them the one cent and then they'll see that message over and over from PayPal, right? Here's the angle. Shopify order confirmation emails almost always land in a primary inbox, not spam, not promotions, even if you've never interacted with the sender. That's because these emails come from Shopify's central infrastructure, not from the merchant's domain, which would probably be less trusted by your

inbox. So what if? Instead of cold emailing high value targets and risking spam filters, you use Shopify. Say you're Chris Kerner, trying to get in front of 100 top real estate CEOs about stump grinding. You set up a Shopify store, use an import plugin to manually create 100 orders, which I've done. It's very simple. Mark them as paid. It could be a free ebook, guide, anything, and trigger the order, confirmation email. Now that email lands right in their primary inbox. They're curious, what did I just buy? They open. Boom. It's a tailored message like outsource your stump grinding. We handle it all. Click below for a quote. It's not for everyone, but it might just work. I don't know this space well enough. So how would you have it be generated from Shopify?

How would you piggyback off of their infrastructure? Yeah, yeah. You just make a CSV with like dummy orders. you take all your emails of your target, you put that under email, and then you don't need a lot else in there. You can put in a prize, a product name. Product name could be like outsourced stop grinding. It's kind of like for our vending business, if we had a big customer place a manual order. They're like, I don't want to pay the Shopify fees. I don't want you to pay the fees. Give me a 5% discount and I'll just send you a wire. So you make manual invoices. You can convert those invoices to a CSV. You still want them in Shopify because all you're reporting. is pulled from Shopify.

So you just upload the CSV and then boom, you can see them now in Shopify. And instead of saying like placed on website, it just says like manual import. So you would do that with any dummy product. You like turning Shopify into your own CRM into your own like like in a weird way. Outbound cold email agent CRM is. Yeah. Because this is piggybacking. You're just, you're effectively just borrowing Shopify's infrastructure in order to get in

and their trust. And the trust. Yeah. And I mean, you're doing three things at once. Instead of using hundreds of dollars per month cold emailing software, you're using Shopify, which is like 39 a month. You're saving money. Number two, you're landing in the inbox, which is a cheat code

because that's the hardest part of cold emailing. Okay. Number three, you're standing out even more because it looks like an order confirmation email, right? And in the age of AI, to be successful at cold email, you're going to have to be more creative than ever. So I can't think of an industry where this wouldn't work. How quickly do you get shut down by Shopify? TBD.

I mean, sure. We'll say. Chris Kerner, who's been shut down by more service providers and he can count, surely they would like catch on to you pretty quickly and shut you down. Yeah. So you get a new Shopify account. Oh, I'm sorry. Do you just give up on the first roadblock hits you?

Huh. NGMI, bro. 30 day free trial. 30 day free trial to Shopify. They shut you down on day 21 and get a new account. Dude, I mean, you know this. I love piggybacking. that's a freaking great piggyback idea.

Yeah. I would love for someone to try this and let us know. I mean, that's what you've been good at ever since I've known to use by leveraging non-traditional marketing funnels. And this would be one of those channels. I think that's a freaking amazing idea. Amen, brother. All right, what you got?

All right. So you and I have talked about starting AI agencies in the past. And I just talked to somebody today that kind of blew my mind. You've heard of a directory, right? I have a director idea for you, too. by the way. Oh, okay. So for those who are listening,

directories are basically like Yelp meets Craigslist. It's not a super sexy website, but it has all the information that you need. And it's super hot right now in our space because you can use AI to build directories easier than you ever have been able to in the past and now lots of people are building directories. Well, I talked to this guy today on my podcast,

Nickinomics. He has a healthcare company. And what he's done is he's built a directory. It's actually an ABA directory, Chris, applied behavioral analysis. Autism clinics. Autism clinics. And what he's doing with that is he's using that as a lead generation source for the clinics,

not for patients. I mean, although it will function as that. So what he's doing is he's created a directory with all of the ABA clinics around the country. Then what he's going to do is reach out to them via cold email. And with that cold email, he's going to introduce himself and say, hey, you're on my directory. Check it out. If you want to rank higher, you know, let me know.

but basically get them to buy in to his directory and see that this is another place where they can get patients from because he's currently getting 90% of his leads from a directory. Like he's on the receiving end of the directory. And he has his own digital marketing agency where after he builds a directory and he does the cold email outreach and people come on, he's then going to pitch them his digital agency services. Well, hey, since you're here now I could also do pay per click for you. I could also do SEO for you. that could also do a bunch of other things. I thought it was one of the most creative lead generation ideas that I've heard in a long time where you're, yes, you're building a directory, but you're not just monetizing based on the traffic

that comes to the directory or by selling leads to the end user. You're building the directory to bring the end user to you so that you can get a foot in the door and then sell them other services. So why wouldn't this work for somebody who's like, you know what? I'm a digital agency that specializes in tree trimming businesses or I'm a digital agency that specializes in Bitcoin miners. Great. You create your own directory and you use that as lead generation, not just for selling leads to the end user, but to the businesses themselves. That's your lead generation for them to come in and then start using your services. What do you think?

I love it because if I had to choose between a directory of end consumers that got 10,000 hits a month versus a directory of business owners that got 1,000 hits per month, I'd much rather have the latter. because most directories monetized by just banner ads, which is like the lowest form of monetization. You don't need to do any work. It could be somewhat passive, but you just don't get much from it. You really need a ton of traffic.

And so the play with directories, you need volume. It's kind of like subway. You want to make money in subway? You got to own 50 subways. Because if you own one, you're going to make like 20 grand a year, right? You want to make money in directories?

Probably got to own like 10 directories. And, you know, it's going to be 80, 20. Most of them won't do much. Two or three of them will do really well, right? It's a vertically integrated directory to a high ticket monthly recurring offer, right? Totally. To the right audience that can afford it. It's going to take a minute to get spun up and to gain traction and all that stuff.

But I think that those customers are going to be really high intent. They're going to be really sticky customers. And it's just going to be after you, it's almost like programmatic SEO. After you build it out, it's just going to be generating leads for you forever. Yeah. What are some other ideas we could launch this at? like a B2B, yeah, a B2B directory. So thank you for asking that because I should have said that.

I would look at high ticket services or businesses that have like high LTV. I like the healthcare space because like they're not typically targeted by these types of ideas. So I think you could go to any other vertical within the healthcare space. I think home services are kind of overly saturated. So where I would look like today, 2025, I would look at the other small businesses, like hometown businesses, restaurants, CPAs, lawyers, businesses that are high ticket, high trust and aren't yet overly saturated by a bunch of people like you and I who are like, home services, anyone can start a home services businesses.

Well, it's like not anybody can start a CPA business. Not anybody can start a law business. Not anybody wants to start a restaurant. So that's kind of where I would go is just start building out these directories without necessarily knowing the monetization. play for it and then either finding a digital agency that I can partner with or just selling it at some point. That's where I would go. Yeah. I love it. I mean, we have our directory, animal aftercare, but it's like I wish we were getting leads from cremation clinics and veterinarians,

but we're not. We're getting leads from poor Nancy that just had her dog die. Yeah. So that's a good one. Thank you. All right. What did you think? Please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on the Kerner office. Thank you.