The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - You Don’t Need to Invent New AI Tool. Just Package One Use Case ⏐ Ep. #188
Episode Date: June 27, 2025Check 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 a bunch of AI wrapper ideas you could build today without nee...ding to invent anything new. We talk about using ChatGPT to create personalized trivia games for parents and kids, then turn that into a full-blown business idea, just package it as a niche mobile app. We also brainstorm an AI handyman mentor, where ChatGPT walks you through fixing stuff around the house via voice and video. Later, we go deep on how image generation tools can power things like AI-powered postcards that show homeowners what their house would look like with new paint, windows, or landscaping. All real tools. All working today. You just need to package the use case. Learn more about Nik here: http://linktr.ee/cofoundersnikShare your ideas with us:Nik@cofounders.comChris@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 - Highlights01:00 - Trivia Game Idea with ChatGPT05:34 - Build a Family Trivia App07:45 - AI Captures Family Stories12:27 - HandymanMentors.com Idea19:37 - DIY Kits for Learning Home Repairs23:56 - ChatGPT as a Virtual Handyman28:46 - Free Gifts Hack: Mailing Wedding Invites31:07 - Personalized Postcards with AI33:31 - Live Remodel Previews Using AI
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I start to FaceTiming a chat GPT.
It's insane.
My house isn't cooling.
And it's like, well, show me this coil down here.
Okay, put your hand on it, Chris.
Is it cold?
It's not cold.
I think you're out of Fri-on or else your condensers broke.
It was being my mentor.
Put that in a wrapper.
I promise you.
93% of Americans don't know that that feature exists.
You get their Google, Maps, picture of their house,
and then you have AI change the paint color,
where you have AI change the roof.
It removes the friction of not knowing what the end result looks like.
I was just talking about the postcard.
What about an app?
For the guys who go door to door, it's on their iPad, and they're like, hey, that's freaking genius.
These businesses didn't exist three months ago.
Someone listening to this will build this, and I hope it's successful for them.
Welcome back to the Kerner office.
More cool business ideas today with my friend Nick.
Let's get right into it.
All right, I have a business idea that I shamelessly ripped from you, that I think someone listening should start like this afternoon.
Okay?
I'm ready for it.
You ready?
But hurt.
All right.
But I'm ready for it.
So you told me about a month ago that you were using chat GPT.
to play trivia games with your sons, correct?
Yeah.
Okay, so about a week after you told me that,
I was on a date with my nine-year-old boy,
and we were driving around,
and, you know, sometimes it's hard thinking of things
to talk to your sons about, or your kids, right?
Yeah.
How was your day?
Good.
What do you like to do?
I don't know.
And so chat GPT can really be a relationship enhancer.
And so I took a page out of your playbook.
I used the chat GPT voice to speech feature,
which is amazing.
Like, if I'm on my phone using chat GPT,
I rarely type anymore.
I just talk to it.
It's amazing.
And I'm kind of like my uncle,
who only does like speech to text.
I'm like that version now with chat GPT.
Everyone in the room can hear me.
Yeah, I'm the,
Hey, chat GPT,
I have a fungal infection on my scrota.
I was just going to say fungal infection.
I was just going to say that.
I'm like in the middle of church.
Fungal infection, third toe, causes?
Did we quickly talk about how much I hate the new voice?
I hate it.
I don't want you to pause.
I don't want to hear you breathing.
I don't want to hear you chuckling.
Be a robot.
Be fast.
Like mine,
I don't know if yours sounds like this.
This is exactly what mine sounds like.
Okay.
Yeah.
So what happens in these,
I'm like, I don't stop.
I want you to sound authoritative.
1.5x.
1.5X.
Why is that not an option?
It will speak faster.
It will?
It will.
Yeah.
just speak faster and it objectively does, but you have to say it every time you start a new chat.
Anyways, you're on a nice date with your son and you start using that mode.
And so I took your playbook and I said, hey, I'm a dad, my nine-year-old is here, make a trivia
game between us where we can compete against each other, but make each of our questions
like age-appropriate.
And it was amazing.
It kept track of the score.
It asked him questions about Pokemon.
It asked me questions about world history or whatever.
We had a great time.
And I wonder if this is like, you know, Web 1.0 was like late 90s, early 2000s.
2.0 is like mobile, right?
And Web 2.0 brought us all into our screens, which is a shame.
I'm very hopeful that Web 3.0 slash the new AI that we have in front of us is going to hopefully bring us more together.
It can like augment, supplement our relationships.
Because if it weren't for this, we would have just been like sitting there in silence listening to brand new, which could be
worse. We just had this, we were joking and we talk about the questions and oh, oh, and it just,
it just brought us together. So here's the idea. Yes, please. Well, I was just going to say,
this is a quick up level. I've started doing that now with two of my boys and me. So there's three of us.
And each one of us have different topics. So like Otto, my youngest, he didn't, he's like, I don't
like geography. I want to do Minecraft. His trivia category was Minecraft. Mine was geography,
Royces was history. Oh, cool. And then we played it and like Otto ended up winning. I don't know how
he knows so much freaking about Minecraft. But it was so fun, man, because it was a game for like
each one of us that we were playing together. It wasn't like, let's play risk and two of the three
people actually hate risk, but the one person were like, you know what I mean? It's like,
it was really fun. It was really cool. Now that you mention that, like, are there even games that
exist? Like there are games where it's like the minimum age is three. Like Uno, we're all in the same
level and the older people are like, I'm bored, there's no strategy here.
The young people are like, this is fun.
Has there ever been a game, like other than some random obscure board game that works like that?
You know, it's like literally on everyone's level.
You're going to laugh at me.
I think a game like Dungeons and Dragons is like that in the sense that it's, I've never
played it, but it's like, you can tailor it to each person.
And so it's like, oh, I'm a third level mage and I have my little bag of tricks or whatever.
And, you know, another person's an archer.
I don't know.
but like it is unique to each one of them.
But no, I don't think that there is a game like that because it was just, it's too hard.
Like there had been no way to actually do it up to this point.
Right.
Anyway, the idea is someone needs to build, build a version of this in a mobile app, a rapper.
You could use lovable, replet, windsurf, cursor, bolt.com, new, Versel.
Like, you pick.
All of them can build mobile apps.
So easy.
Like three bucks a month, maybe $20 lifetime.
You could charge for this.
And like you would have user engagement.
It would bring the kids would go to it.
The dad was go.
And you don't have to make this like a family trivia game.
Like you could literally make this father-son trivia, like mother-daughter trivia, as niche as you want.
And then test all the marketing angles.
Like once you build one, it's significantly easier to build four or five other types of trivia games.
Insert any niche you want.
And then see which one just resonates and takes off.
I thought about building it.
And really the way you would do it is you'd have a thing.
screen up front that was like, okay, what topics are, is this person interested in and what age are
they? And then once you have that, you can play the game. Because on the back end, you would prompt
it to say, make sure that each question is tailored to their age and it's age appropriate.
Level of difficulty is going to be balanced or made for each age. So like the back end is super
easy. You want to know the reason I haven't done it? This is going to be really stupid. I'm worried
that it would do really well, and I'd, like, wake up and I'd have, and I'd have, like,
a thousand dollars in API charges. You know what I mean? Just because, like, so many people all
a sudden they're doing it. That'd be the best problem you can have. What are you talking about? I know.
I know. I know crass. That's like the most backhanded compliment ever. You know why I'm not doing
this? 99% of the population, because I'm lazy. I just haven't done it. It's like, no, I'm just,
I'm genuinely worried it would be too successful and I wouldn't know what to do with all that
newfound wealth. No, because then I have to figure out how do I, how do I,
integrate the payment. And I'm like, crap, because that's the problem you want to have, Nick.
That's why we're different, crass. Because I start looking into it and it's like, oh, hey,
GitHub, will you please do an audit of my code or super base, do an audit of my code? And it's like,
a fatal error here, security protocol is missing here, flaw here. And I'm like, oh, crap.
If I'm going to do it like, if I'm going to have a payment model, I can't have all this crap.
to get somebody else to finish developing it.
Those are like the cascading steps that stop me from actually doing it.
Okay.
Is that what you wanted to hear?
No one cares.
Work harder.
Jaco.
Jacko.
I do love that idea, man.
I do, I do freaking love that idea.
Someone's going to build this.
Someone listening to this will build this.
And I hope it should be me.
It should be me.
And I haven't.
Yep.
All right.
All right.
What do you got?
Well, a quick follow on.
Owen and I are developing this thing called One Life Tale.
And part of the experience is an AI guided
or like AI facilitated conversation
where family members can call at the same time
because they're in different locations,
but it will spur them to tell stories about things.
Like, you know when you get together with your family at the holidays?
Yeah.
You tell the same five stories over and over.
Yeah, yeah.
You know?
Remember the one time, Chris,
where you just freaking showed up on the way home from school
and you had one bag of candy and one bag of fruit
and you were just happy as could be.
Well, who captured this?
Every time I'm with my parents, they tell me the story about me waking up in the middle of the night as a four-year-old to sneak pizza out of the fridge.
And I accidentally snuck the jalapeno pizza and I woke up crying and screaming with a jug of milk in my hand in my underwear.
Okay?
It's embarrassing.
Don't tell that in front of my friends.
You were diagnosed with habaniero butt.
So as I like to call it.
Hobbuttineero.
How about.
Anyways, like, who captures those stories?
and unless you're with the family that's all together.
So anyways, a part of this app is capturing those stories
and AI is facilitating the conversations.
So to your point, I think in a weird way,
there will be AI facilitated human interaction.
Like, it's going to happen.
I really like that idea, actually.
And we have like next to our dining room table,
it's like a little card game.
It's called table cards or something.
And it's specifically for generating conversations
at the dinner table with your kids.
So you just pull out a card,
and it's like a thought-provoking question.
It's not customized to your family.
They've sold millions of those things.
So to me, it's like a personalized version of that in a digital form.
What I think you should have it do is connect to either your ICloud photo album or your Google photo album, whichever you use.
And use that to pull up questions.
Like, tell me about the vacation you took to Orange Beach in 2017.
That's super smart.
Yeah, that would be amazing because it's just going and mining things that are already there.
So this app is actually, do you remember when we talked like last November and I said one of my favorite ideas would be to capture
stories of people in assisted living facilities? Yeah, wasn't that episode 101, I think it was,
back on, like, December 6th, how to cash in on the $16 billion genealogy boom with AI tools?
That was it. So, like, the general premise behind the idea was we have these generations that are
passing away. My dad's here this week, which we're getting a bunch of stories. What happens to those
stories? They die with that generation. Or it's like, oh, you remember that story your dad used to
tell you. So my dad is telling my son all of these stories. And guess what they're wearing this week,
Chris, they're wearing my limitless pendant.
They're capturing all the stories.
And I don't have to be there for it.
And so we're capturing and be able to catalog that.
It's amazing.
Anyway, so we had that idea last year and the premise is to let families capture these
stories, even when their family members in an assisted living facility.
And then to like go to these facilities, set up a room, capture the information,
and then create a product for them where that story exists.
So Owen liked that idea.
and he already had a product that was similar, but it wasn't geared towards the elderly of the population.
And he's now like retooled it and we're focusing it on this, on capturing stories.
He's got 11 labs on the back end that is taking their voices.
And so now you'll have, you know, grandma's voice, mom's voice, dad's voice.
It's also facilitating conversations with people where you can capture the conversation that they're having about the stories.
Like we were just talking about, oh, remember that time when you were 16, you were such an idiot.
you crash that car.
So now there's like a repository of these stories.
And what it will do then is take the stories and the input from each person and it will
create like a consolidated story effectively with a narrator who's telling it.
I just love that piece of it because now we can actually capture the cool things that have
happened and the stories that have passed from older generations.
And like my kids can hear it because my dad tells a story about when he was captured by
the Indians and almost cooked alive or the time that he beat some guy up who was a
county hunter because he was swearing at him too much. These are just funny stories that you
probably forget over time. Okay. I love all of it. I love everything you're saying to me right now.
But I think I just leveled up our original idea. This is so obvious in retrospect.
So we had talked about putting like some sort of a booth or a laptop or something lightweight
in an assisted living facility where someone could walk up to it. They could be prompted,
once again, because they might not remember all the most relevant stories. So the voice agent would
just start talking to them and get all these stories out of them and record.
them. Why not just make this an app that's just an AI voice agent or a phone number that you
call? Anyone in the assisted living facility that has a phone or the person themselves with their
own phone could just start talking to an AI agent and they probably wouldn't even know it's an
AI agent and it would ask them like, tell us about this, tell us about your time in the war,
tell us about and it would, it's the same idea except done through an app or through a literal phone
number. Yeah. I think the only hard part with that would be to get
them to adopt it and to utilize it. Although, I think once you got them to use it once,
they're going to use it over and over and over again because all of us have that like innate
desire to connect with other humans. And dude, it feels like you're talking to another human,
right? Like you're having a conversation. You're telling stories back and forth. And when you get
to that age, generally, you're more interested in like telling your story than you are necessarily
of like hearing everybody else's stuff. So all you have to do is prompt them. They start talking and
then you capture it. I think it's a great idea. It's a banger.
All right. So this brings me to my favorite idea of the week. Last week you talked about piggybacking. It's one of our frameworks. Another one of our frameworks is writing tailwinds, tidal waves. All right? And there are a couple of big tidal waves. One big tidal wave is the aging population like we just talked about. Another really, really big tidal wave is the lack of skilled labor. And I want to go through some statistics to sort of set this up. So right now we are
short, 550,000 plumbers, 600,000 auto mechanics, 80,000 electricians right now, okay?
Just in the U.S.?
Just in the United States.
By 2033, almost 2 million unfilled manufacturing jobs, which is crazy.
Our generation grew up and it was basically like, if you don't go to college, you don't want to
end up like that guy and they point to the plumber or the electrician.
And it kind of screwed a whole generation of craftsmen out of the job force, right?
And so now these guys are retiring. Don't get my growth started.
Now these guys are retiring and there's not enough people to replace them. But what we're seeing also is this other massive tidal wave.
An aging infrastructure within the United States. Homes are aging like crazy. So stuff's following apart. Are people selling it and just moving to new builds? There are some people moving to new builds, which also need tradesmen. But people also need to fix up their house. Maybe they remodel their kitchen. Maybe the electrical's going bad. We just replaced our, our, uh,
panel here at our house because it was a big problem. So we know that there's these sort of big
tidal waves happening. The number of craftsmen is going way down. There's a big demand for it because
we have an aging population and we have an aging infrastructure in the United States. And then you also
have guys like me and you. And we did talk about this idea last week, but we have guys like me and you
who don't really know what to do with their hands. I'm going to tell you right now, Chris, I can't
build it, but I think someone needs to build it. I bought the domain, handymanmentors.com.
Why isn't there somewhere for people like you and I to go and just find a handyman mentor?
Not even like, oh, I need to find a guy to go and fix my HVAC or whatever, right?
Because if you go right now and you try to find a business that's going to fix your HVAC or
your plumbing or your electrical, how booked out are they?
They're like weeks or months booked out.
They're not going to come to your house.
I don't necessarily need a union bonded, licensed plumber to come to my house.
I just need a guy who knows how to his way around the kitchen to come show me how to change a couple of pipes.
Like if your dad lived in town.
Right.
Exactly.
Or your uncle or whoever you're close with, like literally a mentor that can show you how to do this stuff.
Because it's not complicated.
And I'm not going to sue somebody.
But I'm also, I don't want to wait for, you know, my air conditioning to get fixed in the summertime.
And maybe HVAC is too complicated.
But I think there are a lot of things that you could fix around your house.
and if we're just waiting on a company to fix it, we're going to be waiting a long time.
So why not take back some of that lead time and some of that demand and start hooking up guys
like you and I with local mentors who know how to do this stuff so that we can learn how to do it.
So we can learn how to actually just the easy stuff instead of waiting on a freaking electrician
to come out because my breaker tripped and I don't know how to flip the switch back.
You know what I mean?
So you're saying like not to connect millennials,
with handymen, but with like other older dudes like boomers that just kind of know their way around
a house. Yeah. I went to Home Depot today. Who helped me at Home Depot today? This older boomer,
super nice guy, super knowledgeable, probably just is working at Home Depot after he retired. Actually,
not probably. I asked him. He's working at Home Depot after he retired because he knows his way
around the yard, basically. And he was like, that's every Home Depot employee. That is every Home Depot employee.
That's what, and honestly, if I mean help a Home Depot, I'm not walking up to the millennial.
I need some white hair on a brother.
We got there.
I'm with my dad and he's like,
oh, don't worry.
We'll just ask one of the guys there.
They'll know.
And I'm like, Dad, I don't think he can just do that.
And we walk up there and my dad finds this, finds one guy.
And I'm like, oh, yeah, go ask him.
He's like, no, no, no.
He won't know.
And he was like a guy like our age.
He does not have new balances.
Hold on.
Oh, his hands look so soft.
What is he doing?
No sure icing every day?
Come on.
Sissy, Mimi.
Anyway, so he wouldn't found this guy.
He just walked and they just started talking about it.
And so he comes over.
But it's that, right?
Like, I don't necessarily need the local guy who owns an HVAC company.
I just need the retired guy who probably is feeling useless and maybe doesn't see his kids as much as you would like to.
I need that guy to, like, connect with me so he can just show me how to do stuff around my house.
And I would start, I honestly would start at Home Depot.
And like, hey, what do you think?
Dude, that's how I was going to say.
Like, get your first customers.
start this locally, pick your city, go to Home Depot and Lowe's, every different shift,
and round up as many guys as you can.
And just start with the database.
It's a marketplace.
So build the supply side first, right?
You can either name, phone, email, right?
And this is very much a do things that don't scale thing in the beginning.
You're just making connections.
Then you start finding helpless millennials like us to text you anytime they need help.
And then you just play matchmaker.
Literally low tech, you just put them in a group text together and let them go out.
There's not even money exchanged.
Maybe there is.
Maybe you Venmo the guy, 20 bucks for helping or whatever.
But you just kind of, you spend three months doing this just to get a feel for how the
interactions are working.
Maybe you find that the mentor ends up going to the guy's house 80% of the time.
You didn't expect that to ever happen.
You thought they would just hop on FaceTime.
But because he's an older generation, he would rather just get his hands on it.
Maybe that changes the pricing structure.
Like, this is the type of business that you don't want to approach it from like, oh, I know
how this is going to go, I'm going to build it like this. No, this is innovative. This is new.
People aren't doing this. So you really want to start very, very flexible and be willing and
ready to change your mind or pivot the offer, the pricing, the whatever, as quickly as you can.
Do you remember when you went and worked for Amazon for like a month? If people don't know this,
it's amazing. Chris had multiple businesses. And for whatever reason, you're just like, I want to go
work at Amazon because I want to see how it works. I'll tell you why. It's because we were running a third
party logistics business. And I wanted to know how the best in the game did it from the inside.
And they'll hire anyone with a pulse. And luckily, I have a pulse. So they hired. Game recognized game.
I don't know. Jeff Bezos saw something in me. And he said, I want you, I did personally. I want you to run our
Plano, Texas after hours between hours of 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. shift. It's always what I'm on my team.
It is crazy. Like the warehouse I worked at was one of 23 D.F.
W. Area warehouses. They only stocked shoes. And I worked the like 7 p.m. The 7 a.m. shift on a
forklift. And it was on this invisible track. I couldn't like go crazy with it and knock over all
the pallet racks. You literally, you just press go. I could. One day I'll make a whole episode about it.
Because it was very interesting. But it was awesome. Well, dude. And so you would call me at the end of every shift.
That was when we talked multiple times a day, which we don't anymore because we're both.
Have a family and our business.
We don't talk anymore.
Anyways, do you remember, like, every day you'd come out and we'd have, like, a different
idea?
You're like, dude, we could start a business where we just bring a food truck to the Amazon
offices.
Or we could start a business where we just bring X, Y, and Z.
And what you wanted to do was place flyers on every car in the parking lot.
I don't remember if you actually did.
Okay.
No, I love that idea.
Yeah.
That's what I would do.
That's what I would do for this at the Home Depot.
I would go find Home Depot's and just be like, all right, the guy.
The guys shopping here and the guys working here are my target mentors.
We'd have to then fill the other side, which are the helpless millennials like you and I.
I think that would be maybe I'm like oversimplifying it.
I feel like that was very simple.
Honestly.
Yeah.
You can use targeted Facebook ads to that geography.
And to me, what I would do is a simple like, hey, just pay through the app and pay us a percentage.
Like these guys aren't, the mentors aren't doing it because they want to make it.
a ton of money. So I'm sure it's not going to like turn into a business for them. But they
probably would appreciate being paid something. And like us helpless millennials are going to feel
better about paying them than just feeling like we're taking advantage of this person. So there's
going to be an exchange of value in some way or form. And that's where I think it's a good
monetized. Yeah. This is I know I've never said this before, but like this one, this one's good.
I don't like any business idea. I know. I really do like this for real. I know. And it's kind of,
there's this dichotomy happening where on one hand, this is very much the type of business
where you sweaty, you go out there, you put flyers on cars, you're shaking hands at Home Depot,
you're doing things that don't scale. But once you see that it works in Greenville, Texas,
like it will work anywhere. Like at that moment, it's like, okay, we're going venture scale here
because we need to blow this up as quickly as possible. Whereas most businesses, I wouldn't
really not suggest you raise a bunch of venture capital for, but I think this could be one where you
do. I know we've talked about this before, but it's, it's, it's,
Almost like the, remember when we talked about cable and the unbundling that happened, where it's like there's all these platforms now. They've unbundled it. First, it was really bundled and then it was unbundled. To me, this feels like the unbundling of the social platforms, right? It's like, this is a very specific niche, but it is social. So you need some type of a platform in order for them to communicate and connect. And this feels like a really cool opportunity to do that. Yeah. A couple other ways you could take this. You know, our friend Hector? Yeah. I'm having him on the pod this week. He helps people start.
trade school businesses, and it's really interesting. But his bread and butter is selling
like a certification course for HVAC technicians. And once they pay like $8,000 or $12,000,
that's fully funded by the government, he sends them an Oculus, like $400. And they just
log into it through some software that he actually, he didn't even build this. Like, I think he's
just white labeling it. And they just put on their Oculus, and he showed me a video of it. And they're
like fixing HVAC units, like in the Metaverse, basically. You could use something like,
you could go that direction. You could build an Oculus app for this. Okay, more technical, more
friction to launching. I like your idea better, but that's another angle. The other angle is to do
what I do when something breaks. This just happened with my HVAC two weeks ago. It stopped working,
one of our units, and I went out there. And have you ever used, like, the ChadGGBT
FaceTime feature? Yeah. Oh, man. I started to FaceTime. We're a chat. I started to FaceTime. I'm going to
at GPT. It's insane. And it's like, it's like, all right, here's what I'm looking at. My house isn't
cooling. The fan's turning, house isn't cooling. And it's like, well, show me this coil down here.
Show me the coil. It's like, okay, put your hand on it, Chris. Is it cold? It's not cold.
I think you're out of Frion or else you're a condenser's broken. Frion's going to be really
cheap. The condenser is going to be like three grand. Let me see your coils. Show me coils.
Okay. What unit is this? Can you show me the label. It should be right on that left corner.
Show them the label. Okay, you're nine years in. You might still be under warranty. Like,
you kidding me? How valuable is this $20 a month subscription? Like that's kind of what we're talking
about. It was being my mentor. Yeah, it was being a mentor. Put that in a wrapper. Take that because
I promise you, 93% of Americans don't know that that feature exists. They might be using
ChagipT every day. They don't know they can do that. No. Put it in a wrapper. Call it Handi Man
mentor, you know, AI Handyman mentor or whatever. And just that. 10 bucks a month, 20 bucks a month,
100 bucks a year, and it just does that exact same thing.
Dude, I literally did the thing today.
I looked at my sprinkler because my sprinkler was broken, and I was like, hey, I'm trying
to figure out what's wrong with this.
Like, what do you think could be wrong with it?
It was like, well, it could be a couple things.
It gives me three reasons.
And one of the reasons was it might be a low point in the grass.
And if it's a low point in the grass, then the water pressure is going to build up.
And so you might need to put in a check valve.
And I was like, oh, that's interesting.
And I tested like three things.
And that's what it is.
It was the freaking check valve.
And I go to Home Depot and I'm talking to the guy.
And I was like, hey, do you think it might be something to do with the water pressure because it's all it's all accumulating in the middle of the yard at the low point?
And in Home Depot, he was like, yes, that's a really good idea.
I hadn't thought of that.
And you got that idea from Chad GBT.
I got that idea from Chad GBT, right?
Like he wouldn't necessarily have known right away to be like, oh, is this had a low spot?
But if you walked out into my yard, you would have seen right away like, oh, it's a low spot.
That makes sense.
The water pressure is high.
You need a check valve because otherwise the sprinkler's not going to be able to handle the pressure that's currently present.
Like, it blew my mind.
It blew my mind that it could actually do that.
Oh, my gosh.
And now I'm a handyman.
You're handyman now.
I'm going to give you one more adjacent idea to this before we get into your last one.
Okay.
And this is a quick one.
I also think that there's a way to do this for guys like me who are not handy where you could
have a YouTube-based course and mail them a big package.
And in the package would be some drywall, some electrical wiring, maybe a cover.
And you go through the process of like building.
a small little drywall, right?
Like, I don't know, three by three.
And then it walks you through, like,
how do I cut out for the electrical outlet?
Oh, okay, how do I wire it?
And so then by the end of it,
you are getting the hands-on experience,
but you're also not having to wreck your house.
I think that would be a really cool idea
to have a kit like that.
I saw that idea in our notes,
and I didn't really like it.
But as you describe it, I really do.
The reason they didn't like it
because it's like shipping drywall,
but like, you're talking about fixing a patch.
And if you were to say, here's the course, here's your shopping list, go to Home Depot and buy this stuff.
No, they're not going to Home Depot.
They need to be frictionless.
They need to click three times and then two days later have a package show up.
And they've already paid.
And you know what?
Most of them, they're never even going to open the package.
They're not going to do the thing because that's human nature.
It doesn't matter.
They paid, right?
Yeah.
I like that idea a lot.
Like how to split a wire.
What I would do, I would find it, I try to convince Mike Higgins to do this.
I find a DIYer on like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube.
or whatever and just be like, dude, this would be an amazing offering, you should do this.
And I would just pick you back off of them.
I love it.
All right.
What do you got?
I got one.
So I see this Instagram video of this newlywed, and she said, I forget how it went,
but she basically says, I went and found every major company, Target, Bedbath and Beyond,
yada, yada, yada, and I found all of their addresses.
And I sent baby shower invites.
It was either baby shower or wedding shower invites to all of them.
And it was like 150.
and 25 of them sent me gifts or gift cards or money or something.
And I started digging into it.
And that's a thing.
Like people are doing that, especially women, more and more, when they have a baby or when they get married.
They'll just mass send these invitations, like paper invitations.
Are they physical?
To companies, just at like the corporate address saying like, I'm a huge fan of Target.
I'm a huge fan of Bed Bath and Beyond, yada, yada, yada, yada.
Like, I'd love to invite you to my wedding.
And it's really, they're just asking for free.
But it works because the people in charge of marketing for these companies know that when people
get gifts, they post about it on social media.
And so it's free marketing for them.
It's a win-win.
And so this woman got hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of free gifts simply by sending
$40 worth of invitation.
And she did it by hand.
Like she wrote them all out by hand.
So I'm over here thinking like, why is this not a service?
Why can people not just pay 50 bucks to have invitations sent out to all of these?
these companies. So you build a database and you can have a thousand companies in there, large and
small. Mom and pop own businesses, Fortune 500 companies doesn't matter. And the people go to the
website, how many invitations do you want to send out? 50, 500, $1,000. And you just use an API for a
direct mail company. Many of them have APIs. You're not in the direct mail business. You just have a
website. You could build it with lovable, a replet, or whatever. And you pay money, and that money covers the
cost of the envelopes. Do the invitations match the imitations she's sending her friends and family?
Probably not. It doesn't matter. Who cares? No one knows? And you just take a margin. So let's say it
costs 45 cents to send each one. You want to send it to 100. That's $45. You charge $199 for this
service. And then you can say, in our experience, our customers usually get about $500 or $1,000 worth
of free gifts. What are we talking about? Dude, all right, I'm going to up level it for you.
Push it with Facebook ads.
with this guy. He wants to buy a business and I'm like helping him try to find a business. And one of the
things I told him was you need to send out mailers of you, right? Your family, hey, this is me.
Here's a letter about me. And he's like, should I do like handwritten? And I told him, dude,
this was what, 15 years ago when he's either you or your wife got your realtors license.
And so you, you didn't actually write it, but you had like the computer handwriting it out.
Or it was like printed in handwriting. It just sent postcards. We just uploaded to CSV.
uploaded the postcard design, we were done. Yeah. Okay. So I told him about that and he's like,
oh, interesting. So he goes and does some research and he finds this company. I think this is the one.
It's called ghosthandwriter.com. These are robots. The robots literally write on a piece of
his messages. And so he wrote like a thousand of them. I can't remember exactly how much it costs.
Not only the open rate, but the response rate is just so much higher when it looks like it was
actually written as opposed to just printed by a computer as it comes out.
So you could even do it where you have a robot handwriting it.
And this is exactly what it is.
Yep.
Goes handwriting.com.
The other thing, similar but related, I talked to a guy this week.
His company is called Hirebus.
And he's just built a bunch of apps.
And one of the apps that he built specifically for home services, and he built this on
Replic, right?
This isn't like an overly complicated app.
He pulled all of the addresses.
And then he had that, I don't know how he wrote it, but he had that then go to
Google Street View of those houses, took a picture of that house, and then that house was put
onto custom postcards. So when the homeowner goes out there, they're getting a postcard with
their house on it. And they're looking at that postcard and they're like, oh, this is interesting.
And then there's a QR code on the bottom. And the QR code pops up to a video of him that is saying,
like, hey, I'm looking for whatever, whatever he was pitching. Engagement rate was 15%. He got 3% of
then the schedule calls and then 1% of the 100 that he sent, the 1% closed. So for every $100 that he spent,
it was about $1 postcard. So for every $100 that he spent, it was a $4,000 ticket item. Like,
that was already mind blowing, but I'm like, what if you took it another step further and you were
a window washing company or a roofing company or some, a gutter company? You get their Google,
maps, picture of their house. And then you have AI change their windows or you have AI change the
paint color. Paying to. A.I.
change, yep, change the roof. Hey, this is what your house would look like with us. Give us a call.
If it's a hundred bucks and you know your clothes rate is a 1% close rate and your average ticket size is
$4,000, like, what are we talking about here? What are we talking about, dude? All day.
It's just, it's another way of removing friction. You knock on a homeowner's door and you say,
hey, we paint your house white. It's like, okay, what's your clothes rate on that? Whereas if you said,
hey, we paint your house white and you hold up a picture of their house.
painted white. Oh my gosh. I liked my house, but that looks much better. It removes the friction
of not knowing what the end result looks like. I was just talking about the postcard. What about an app
for the guys who go door to door? It's on their iPad. Yeah. Like, hey, lip with the iPad. That's
freaking genius. That would be incredible. Oh, you don't like that color? What about this color? Like,
right then and there, you could show them what their house looked like. Or even if it was direct mail,
like you said, like in Texas, I swear every house is red brick, right? Let's see.
take a neighborhood of a thousand homes at a red brick, you send them all pictures of their house,
painted white, and most people that get that are not going to like what it looks like
or else they would have already painted their house white. But guess what? That gets them talking.
They're going to post a picture on Instagram. How ugly does this look? This idiot thought my house
would look good white. Thank you for the free marketing, you know?
Isn't he an idiot? I think that would be an incredible business to start and fairly easy to build.
These businesses didn't exist three months ago because the image generation capabilities weren't
quite there yet, but it is now. All right. I'm going to share my screen. Do check this out.
We moved into a new house. I posted these pictures and I was like, hey, this is what the front of
our house looks like. Okay. And I posted multiple pictures. You can see them over here. Here the pictures
are the same area in my house, taking from different angles. I feel like the area is out of control.
Can you make me an image of what it should look like and create me a plan for getting there?
Right. So like, look at this. It's just a mess. These are some of the pictures I uploaded.
This is what it spits out. You're ready? Look at that. You've been to my house.
It looks amazing.
Like, it looks incredible.
It does look, it does look like my house.
Yeah, it does.
It literally created, hey, here's the image and a plan for me.
This is exactly what we're talking about.
Like, help the homeowner see, literally see, not just in their mind's eye, but see what it might look like.
How many more sales are you going to close?
Oh, my gosh.
Forever and never.
Amen and amen.
Thanks for listening today.
Really appreciate you guys.
I would love it if you shared with a friend and left me a five-star.
Have a great weekend.
