The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - You’re Doing Everything Except the One Thing That Works w/ Sam ⏐ Ep. #187

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

Check out my newsletter at TKOPOD.com and join my new community at TKOwners.comI sat down with Sam Thompson again and we talked about how starting a business really isn't that complicated. We broke down why perfect logos, pricing models, or websites don’t matter early on, and how getting on sales calls with nothing to sell is often the best place to begin. We shared an example of a guy who launched a Google Maps optimization service from scratch (no prior experience) and closed clients in under 30 days. We also talked about pricing strategies, paid ads, building confidence through customer conversations,  and even how AI tools like Replit and ChatGPT can be packaged into customizable templates and sold as one-time products. If you’ve been thinking about launching something simple but powerful, this idea might be exactly what you need. You can find Sam on X/Twitter (https://x.com/ImSamThompson) and check out what he’s building at https://www.unlimitedcontent.com/Timestamps 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 Impatience with Action, Patience with Results03:02 The Power of First Party Customer Research06:00 Adapting to Customer Needs08:55 Understanding Willingness to Pay11:47 The Importance of Action Over Research15:05 Pricing Strategies for Success17:59 Creating Value for Customers19:58 Navigating Idea Hopping23:44 Innovative Product Ideas and Market Fit30:45 Replit Wrapper Idea

It's just not that complicated. Don't sit there and make your pitch deck. Don't sit there and build a perfect website. All of that is irrelevant. All that research is just advanced forms of procrastination. You know what I should do instead of jump? I should watch a YouTube video on how to jump. And it's like, dude, just jump.

Impatience with action, patience with results. Go launch the thing today and be patient with figuring it all out. Get on sales calls with nothing to sell. Just ask them what they're struggling with. They just tell you the problem. It's first party customer research. A lot of people don't do the first party part. I think people want to know how your sugar water experiment's going.

Dude, it's so interesting. Welcome, welcome. I had my buddy Sam on again here on the Kerner office. And man, it was a banger. My head is still spinning. We talked about pricing strategies. How to charge the most amount of money that your local market will bear for whatever it is you're selling.

How to kind of reverse engineer into that final price on a sales call where your customer builds the price for you. We talked about Facebook ads, of course. We always talk about that. And then at the end, we talked about a business idea that I really, really, really think is good and could be applied to so many different concepts. Please share with a friend and enjoy. Tell me what's not that complicated. It's just not that complicated.

Like sales or specifically when people are trying to launch like any business really, right? Like I think a lot of people try to like have this perfect pitch, perfect offer, perfect. everything before they start. The only thing that I tell people to do when they're trying to start any business is just get on sales calls. Yeah. With nothing to sell, you can align yourself to kind of a specific thing. There's this dude in the Grow Faster community that got on, he was like, yeah, I want to start a Google Maps optimization business. He was like, I want to help people manage reviews. Which is a great idea. phenomenal idea.

And I was like, cool, go get on sales calls. That's literally it. Don't sit there and make your pitch deck. Don't sit there and build a perfect website. All of that is irrelevant. Run some ads that say business owners, are you struggling with Google Maps? Schedule a call. That's it.

Like super broad. Not like we're going to achieve this result. We're going to do this service. We're going to, no, no. No, it's like, are you interested in improving this kind of broad stroke area of your marketing? Get on the phone and then just ask them what they're struggling with because they'll just tell you the problem. Yeah.

You can even go a step further and say, like go to chat GPD beforehand and say, I want to ask business owners what they're struggling with, but I'm afraid that they won't know how to answer because I think a lot of times people aren't creative and they just, they are struggling with things, but they can't remember in the moment. So it's like, give me, give me some ice breakers or give me some like probing questions that will help extract out of a business owner what they're struggling with. Because if you just ask them broadly, like, what are you struggling with? Oh, my employee showing up to work on time. Okay, that's not relevant to what I'm selling.

But if you were to say like, what are you struggling with with regards to your reviews system on Google Maps? Well, it's like, I don't think to respond to reviews. I know it's important, but I don't think to. And I know, yeah, it's like, okay. I'm going to take it out there. Noted. Good to know. Yeah.

Or like one star reviews kill my business. And like if they were to just go away somehow, I could make $4,000 more per month because what I sell is high ticket. And once a series just kill us. Noted. Okay. Reputation management maybe. You know?

Right. And these conversations will like, we think we go into these conversations thinking, all right, now I'm going to know how to sell better. But really what it becomes is now I know what to sell. Yes. That's the thing. I was going to sell GMB optimization services. Now I'm going to sell reputation management because eight out of ten people talked about their Google reputation.

Yep. And that's the flip that would happen. So he was thinking he was going to do review management. He set up a super simple sales funnel. He ran some Facebook ads at like $30 a day. Right? Like he was booking calls for $30-ish, right? He's never taken a sales call in his life.

Like this man is, he's, he's awesome because he's actually doing it, but like has no experience. Gets on these calls. I'm coaching him through like what questions to ask and all that stuff. And he goes, these people don't really care about the review management side. They care more about where they rank. That's all they're talking about is how do I rank higher? How do I get more people in the door? How do I do whatever?

So then he changed his ads to speak to that of like, we'll help you rank. on Google Maps better. And his landing page, schedule a call for your ranking audit or whatever and started booking calls for $18. And then closed his first deal and has two more that are supposed to close this week. This man started from zero, has never touched a Google Maps optimization in his life, figuring out of a lot. He's not like a lifetime local business owner.

No. No. He's a kid behind the MacBook. Yeah. I mean, he spent his career in customer service in England and was, Like, I just think that this is interesting. Like, it's cool. And he's killing it.

Like, three active clients, like, after a month of going, like, from literally zero. What are his unit economics? He's white labeling a software. I don't know what he's charging. I told him, like, don't set pricing. Just, like, talk to people and see what they can afford as long as, like, your math makes sense. And I told him he's going to have to spend the time on these people, right? Like, it's not like he's going to hire.

anybody to come and do this. He's just trying to build like side income. Like if he can go making a couple extra $1,000 a month, like he's a happy camper. I don't think the software is that expensive. Like, maybe a hundred bucks a client. And I told him he should be able to sell it between like four and six hundred pretty easily. But he's trying to do. He was like, I need to close my first ones.

One, to like get proof that this is worth doing. And two, to get some reviews or testimonials from people. so that it makes it easier to charge higher prices later. That's the beauty of Facebook ads is the first person we find is someone unrelated to us, someone that doesn't care about us, which is the most valuable customer, right? Right. There is a lot of value to go into your cousin, your uncle,

the guy at church to get your first customer 100% because it's low friction. And like learning Facebook ads, even just bare bones, there's some friction there. If you have to learn Facebook ads before you find your first stranger customer, we'll call them, then you might not ever launch, right? But when you start with a first customer that's a stranger to you, it's like a clean slate. And it's a perfect case study. Indie hacking is still like a thing.

But like it was really blowing up a few years ago. I was watching all these guys that were like they'd build something and launch it on Twitter. Right. And they'd be like, oh my gosh, I got to 1400 an MRR, right? Like off of my launch and like all this stuff, put a non-product hunt, whatever. And then it would stop. They would launch. and that was their only growth marketing strategy.

And what I realized was it was a bunch of indie hackers. It's like a circle jerk of indie hackers. It was like all these guys signed up for each other's platforms when they really didn't need it. And so they would just end up churning. And then the ones that actually went and saw any, I'll say at scale success figured out Facebook ads, cold email. Like every business that's going to reach a meaningful size. comes from getting people to pay you that do not know you. You're always going to end up selling to strangers if you're trying to grow something big.

If you're trying to do a side income, like you want to run a car wash on the weekends, like yeah, you can probably make your $3,000 a month off friends and family. Yeah. And referral, right? Like, but to go build something big, you're going to run ads anyway. So you might as well just start there. Or you get the false, I call it a false positive. It's like you getting five-year friends to sign up is not the same as five strangers buying your thing.

Because like those people are, it's like warm versus cold audiences. It's like the warm people are just more likely to buy because they know you. Cold people need you to prove to them that the value that you're providing is worth the dollars that they're paying very directly. There's no, like, oh, he's a nice guy. I'll support his journey. Like, no, no, no, no. That doesn't help anybody. No.

And then if your product sucks, they're not going to tell you either. No. Like that problem is like, dude, this is my favorite t-shirt. And it ends up like goodwill two weeks later. It's like, you know, it doesn't matter. There's a lot of frameworks going on here. The offer just being, I will help you rank more. It's just perfect because that's something that every business owner can comprehend.

I will help you rank higher. Does this kid have like a set offer or is that kind of it? Does he have like a guarantee and no-brainer offer? he just still kind of feeling it out. I told not to. I said get on the phone with as many people that fit your target demo and like loose benefit, right? Because they'll tell you, if you ask the right questions, they'll just tell you what they're struggling with, what they're looking for actively from a help perspective. And most of the time, they'll tell you what they'll pay for it.

You can A, B, test pricing live on the phone as long as you know what you're, your floor is, especially early, right? Like early on, you're just trying to like get cash on the door. Yeah. And so even if it costs him $100 to like do the software, like, cool. Then you know what your floor is. You can go in and be like, yeah, well, you know, we charge $800 a month for this service. Right.

And the guy goes, dude, I can't really afford that. My answer to that is, okay, like you want this thing. You want the benefit. let's just shoot straight human to human what can you afford for this if i can if i can deliver a b c and d what is that worth to you right and homie goes i can pay 300 bucks a month me on that sales call i'd be like cool because i like you i'll do 300 dollars a month for your first three months again you're like collecting data you're like okay this guy will pay 300 he runs a business in a less populated area that doesn't have as many reviews, right?

Versus the guy, I talked to another guy later this week that has like twice the number of employees is in a really nice area. And he can pay eight hunt. You just start to like play it out versus like, I sell this for a thousand bucks a month, especially if you're early, you have no clue. Yeah. Like that's just your brain coming up with something that like your brain wants to hear versus like turning to the customer it's funny like i think about like apie economics in high school

wTP willingness to pay was like a thing that we talked about for like a week it's like you're just trying to figure that out like what is the willingness to pay like how much are they going to pay for this thing right like where in my brain the easiest way to get the most real gauge of that is talking to the customer. Everyone else is like looking at their competitors and like Googling it of like and that's all dope. Like cool. What is their willingness to pay you? Like how do you get the first party data of conversations versus chat GPT saying the average Google Maps optimization business charges $400 a month? And it's like I know dude's not going to be that accurate. Yeah. Even chat GPT. I don't know. It's one of those where it's like first party data run your own ads figure out what your cost per click is. Do your sales calls, figure out the customer's willingness to pay and what they're actually interested in.

And like, if you just do that for 30 days, I like can guarantee that you'll step into the next 30 days with so much clearer thinking around what you're trying to sell. Yeah. All that research is just advanced forms of procrastination, right? Oh, 100%. It's kind of like you're on, you're walking the ladder up the high dive and you're scared. And on the way up, you're going to stop a tire your shoe. You have a few more runs up.

You're going to check your Instagram real quick. Go up a few more times. You're going to look around. Hey, where's the concession stand? And it's just like, dude, just get up there and jump. Then you get on the end and you're like, you know what I should do instead of jump? I should watch a YouTube video on how to jump? You know what?

Like, should I do a cannonball? Like that would be crazy, right? Should I? Right. Oh, should I like do a, it's like, dude, just jump. Right. Just jump. Just do it.

The perfect analogy for this was my mission. I served a mission in Hungary. and I went to the MTC, the missionary training center, which is like 10 minutes away for where I am right now, for 12 weeks, which is such a long time. They don't even send people there that long anymore. It's like torture, right? And all day, flashcards, flashcards,

conjugations, flashcards, studying, flashcards, flashcards, vocabulary. And by the end of the 12 weeks, you are like, I am a genius. I am fluent in Hungarian. My accent is perfect. How did I learn this in 12 weeks? And then you get on a plane to Budapest, you hop off and you get out and you're like, what language did I just learn?

This is not Hungarian. I hear it. I don't hear any words. And then you start talking to people and you're like, it's like Michael Scott. I understand nothing. Right? You understand. But then you start talking, you pick up a little bit. And like over the next 12 weeks, you learn 10 times more than what you learned in the

previous 12 weeks because you're in the deep end. Right. And the church is catching on to this. And so people are staying in the MTC for. shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter amount of times because that's just kind of like a formality. Like does it help to know your conjugations like or what's plural, what's singular? Yeah, when to masculine, when to family. Yeah, it's helpful to have us somewhat of a foundation.

But you just got to jump and learn. You just got to go. With regards to pricing, one trick that I found is to like catch the potential customer in their words. And so instead of like you go into the conversation saying, I'm going to charge 800 bucks a month. Instead, you're going to say, all right, let's talk about. about your inbound leads right now. How many calls are you getting a day from Google? And they're not really going to know. And you just kind of coach them, right? Four or five, let's say five calls. Cool. How much is your average job worth? A thousand bucks? Cool. How many of those calls are you closing?

Would you say? I don't know, maybe one. Okay, so 20% of your calls you're closing. Yep. Okay, how profitable are your jobs? If you make a thousand dollars top line, what's the net profit? $300. Cool. $300 net profit. You close 20% of them. what's 20% of $300, $60. So are you telling me that every call you get organically from Google is worth $60. Is that I get? Yeah, I guess since you say it that way, yeah, $60 net profit in my pocket, every call. Cool.

You're getting four a day. That's $120 a month. What if I could increase that to $500, 500 calls a month? What would that be worth to you? Oh, I don't know what it would be worth to you. Yeah, we just ran the math. We know exactly what that matters. Yeah.

Okay. So it's like 60 bucks times 500, $30,000. Well, you've got pretty good news for you. Because this is only $800 a month. Like this is only, well, what if it doesn't perform? Then I give you your money back. You're nothing to lose. And this is a bromozyism.

I can't claim this, but like the offer should make them feel stupid for saying no. Why would you say no to paying $800 to get $3,000 or $30,000 or whatever it is? Right. But if you just go into it and you're like, You get to that awkward moment that every salesman hates. And like, how much is it? Oh, I don't know. And you hem and ha.

Like, by the time you say the price, it should be stupidly obvious that they should say yes. Yeah. 100%. I mean, it's like, it's a, so I've always, early on, the math that I always run was like the 10x value creation on pricing of like, if I'm going to make you $2,000, I can super comfortably charge you 200 because you'll 10x and the nice part is it it bakes in even underperformance right where it's like even if I 5x you're 200 you're still happy but it's like easier math for them to think about of like oh dude if you land me one more job a month for this 500 bucks I'll make five grand and it's like in their brain it's like oh yeah that's a no brainer here's a trap that we

fall into, though. Let's say it is 10x. Like your product or service provably provides a 10x return on dollar spec. Then the temptation is to say, man, that's pretty juicy. There's a lot of meat on that side of the table. I think if I raise my prices and make it 7x, that's still really good. And they're right. But look at the companies, like just look at the Fortune 500. I guarantee you that the ones that are worth the most amount of money and or the ones that make the most amount of net profit, sell products or services that have a 20 or 200x return on investment. This MacBook right here, I bought it in Apple the same way. Dude, I bought it four and a half, five years. I can't remember. It was like five years ago. It was a MacBook Pro, top of the line, 16 inch. And it was $3,300.

And for a cheap old like me, that's a lot of money. And I've spent eight hours a day on it every day for four years. What is the return on that? Like, that's why Apple's a two and a half trillion dollar company. Yeah. And why I have the watch and the phone and the studio display and six laptops and a desk. So I'm like, dude, this thing is printing cash for me. I want to spend more on Apple. Yes. So it's like, don't be satisfied with the 10. Like, whatever. I don't know what your goals are. If you hit your income goal, then do whatever the freak you want. Right. But if you really want to level up, then try to have like 100x ROI on your product or service to your customer. Because then they're going to shout you from the rooftops.

They're going to tell all their friends. They're going to come back. They're never going to churn. It's a no-brainer. That's what happens for us, a 72-hour sites, right? Like, we're giving people really like a $10,000 to $15,000 website for $2,500. Yeah.

And then they tell everybody. Conversion rates go up. It's beautiful. Like, we don't spend a dollar on advertising for that. It is all referral because our clients love their sites so much that they tell everybody else. but you got to be patient. That's the thing. You got to be patient and say,

I trust. That doesn't happen immediately. We've been doing it for 18 months. Like it's, it takes time to build that side of it. One day I will get the Mr. Chris Kerner to buy a $2,500 website from me. One day,

one day, dude. You'll be so lucky. Dude, I'm like the Apple of website design agencies. Dude, I promise. I know. It's like a 30x return, baby.

I know. I know. It's so funny. This isn't my quote either, but impatience with action, patience with results. Go launch the thing today, but be patient with your pricing. Be patient with figuring it all out. Yeah. I think a lot of people get caught up in the speed.

I catch myself in that a lot right now, right? Like I'm moving very, very quickly. And a lot of the stuff that I'm working on has longer term payback periods. and that is where the most like you'll just make more if you can extend that timeline and you see these people that do like they're like I call them idea hoppers right where it's like I had this idea on a Monday I did three things to try to see whatever oh but I had a better idea on Thursday let me jump to the next thing try super hard at that for three days oh but I'm not making any money right it's like oh yeah no product let's do that oh let's launch a

service business. Oh, wait, what do we do e-com? Well, what if we did lawn care? Like, it's like, yo, yo, yo, like, pick something, commit to it for 60 days and just actually do the things that drive results and give it the time to be able to actually give you what you need out of it. And then you get a real working on something for three days doesn't give you anything. You've got to let it run. I think the tricky part with idea hopping, which is like, that's my whole brand, right? Right. Is knowing when you've done enough before you try another one. And that took me years to figure out. 100%. It's the reason I talk about paid ads to everybody all the time as they're trying to figure stuff out. It's like, I would rather spend $500 over the course of the first week to get

real data on can I sell this. Are people interested in this? Like first party data on it. Like not looking at exploding topics and being like, oh, more people are interested in X thing. I'm going to go chase that. It's like, cool, use that as the seed. Now go run some ads and get on the phone. Get on the phone with people, even if you're trying to launch an e-com brand, if you're trying to launch a software product, no matter what the vehicle is that you're trying to go and push, run a funnel on Facebook that says attention, target customer, stop struggling with pain point, talk to an expert today. Simple one-page funnel. Email opt in Cal andly, think, get on the phone with them.

Even if you're not going to sell them anything, just like talk to strangers who are interested in that value prop. And you'll like know very quickly what's good. It's like it's first party customer research. And I think a lot of people don't do the first party part. They rely like we were saying on chat GPT, to tell them about a market or Google search trends to see if people are interested. Like cool.

All of that is good to give you the beginning concept of like this might be something. Next step is get on the phone with 20 people in that market that want that thing and ask, do you want coaching? Do you want a book? Do you want software? Do you need a service? The only reason you're on the phone with me right now is because you're struggling with X. Yeah.

What can I do to support that? Like, oh, you want coaching? Sick. I charge $100 an hour. Buy four hours. We'll do four weeks. Cool. Then you made your first dollar off proving the fact that people will pay for us.

solution to a specific problem. Game over. Then you start to build it. Confidence more than anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, for me, it's all first party. Like, do it yourself. Like, first party data. First party data. Like, can I get someone to buy or express interest in this? And is it painful enough that they will talk to a stranger about it? Speaking of idea hopping, that people want to know how your sugar water experiment's going. Dude, it's so interesting. Did you get a repeat order. I turned off ads when I ran into those so those bags take forever to get. And I was moving a good amount of inventory. And so after our convo about the shipping issues, I was like, okay, I'm going to move down to 15 ounce bags. Yeah. Cheaper shipping. If they order one,

my cost would go from eight to four. I can make that work. And so I order I order the bags, dude, they are really small. I think I did my math wrong on the size of the bag that I needed. And so now I just got a shipment of eight ounce bags, dude, little, little guys. I still have a surplus of the big ones. I maybe have, you know, 20 or 30 units of the big boys, which people with no email, no Facebook ads running are coming back for repeat orders. And so they bought some from me a month ago.

They're coming back. Lady yesterday bought a six pack of these things. Dude, spent a hundred bucks with me. That's where I make my money is on that second order because those six bags cost me seven bucks and she spent a hundred. So it's like I'm a happy, I'm a happy camper over here. Are these like 50 to 80 year old women in Middle America? Is that your customer? Yeah, women and men, but yeah, generally skewed in 50, 50 plus.

Women and serial killers. Yeah, most of the time. And most of them in Midwest, Southeast. A lot of Georgia, Tennessee, like that area. There's something all over. But like that's kind of the hot zone. And so I got these little bags. And so I'm going to change my top of funnel offer to sample pack.

And so I'm going to send you two of the little bags as the sample pack. and each of those little bags probably lasts, I don't know, a week or two for somebody. And so two bags is going to be a one month supply. And then they can bump up. And so I'm going to frame it more as like monthly supply than I am like a pouch. Because like these things are tiny. It's a happy accident though. Oh, I'm chilling.

I have a thousand of these little things. I was like, all right, we're going to cruise on that. And I can get those. They hold eight ounces. I'm going to do it at like seven on both so that then it's still sub a pound. I can drop my shipping and I can ship them in not a poly bag, but one of those padded envelopes. And so it just gets way easier for me to do that.

And then I think I can honestly charge more because I charge 18 for the big bag, which is what I'm still going to push on retention. And so I'll sell a bunch of the little bags top of funnel. repeat orders will come through and buy the big bags. And then we'll take, I'm just going to try to move through as much of the little bag inventory as possible where my cogs are way less. Like each of those things is only 55 cents. I think I could sell a starter kit for like 22 and just see.

Like I'm going to test it, run discounts. If it's two for 18, cool, like we'll figure that out. But the other piece is there's this guy on Amazon that. sells the hummingbird nectar extender. Extender. It's this little vial. It's literally just water and micro nutrient copper sulfate, which you can buy for like 18 bucks a pound.

But he's sending out one ounce bottles that are 90% water. And he sells them for $16 on Amazon and is moving like a thousand units a month right now. And you put a drop of it. It just makes the hummingbirds healthier? It's an antibacterial. So your hummingbird nectar doesn't. like go bad. Oh my gosh.

And so as if the hummingbirds care. Dude, the hummingbird rolls up on. He's like, I don't know. They're like expired. Yeah. Yeah, dude.

That thing's been out here for six days. Replace that. That's a one star review. The hummingbird just looks up through the window at the owner's like, really? Yeah. Like, are you kidding, dude? We're never coming back.

I'm going to make that an ad. So his cogs on that is sub a dollar and he's selling it for 16. And so for me to bump AOV, I was like, oh, well, if I do two seven ounce pouches plus one one ounce. It's a tincture bottle. You can buy them on Amazon for like 30 cents each. That kit is one pound. And then you get a month of the hummingbird food plus the extender.

And I think I can push because he's selling that for 16. I think I could sell that kit for like 28. And so I think that's going to be my play. I haven't figured out supply chain on a liquid yet. I don't know what that's really going to look like. I'm going to be out there in the garage mixing up micronutrile copper sulfate or whatever. RV in the middle of the desert just like stirring this pot. Dude, trust, I had my garage open last night.

I was scooping sugar. And I was like, dude, my neighbors looking in as they're walking their dog are like, what is this dude pouring these bags of white bags in these buckets? Southern California. Yeah. It's like, oh, geez, dude. But yeah, I think it's going to be good. Please do this.

Please go to V-O-3 and generate a five-second clip before and after. One of them is like they're both identical hummingbird feeders sitting outside the same window. One of them is like a hummingbird rolls up and then he bounces. And then a hummingbird rolls up and then he bounces. And then on the after, it's a hummingbird rolls up and then a second and then a third and then a And they're all, there's just like this flurry of, it's like before hummingbird extender, after hummingbird extender. Literally, dude.

Yeah, I'll do that. I think I said it on the last pod. I'm really excited for next summer. I'm going to do Amazon next summer for sure. You have to get like to really do Amazon right. You got to get some trademarks and, you know, all the Aces. Yeah, it's a pain. All of this stuff.

And it's like, it's definitely a process. And I'm operating off of, you know, a three to four month. busy seasons. It's very seasonal, right? I feel like Michael Girdley over here, dude, selling fireworks. I was like, dude, we make all of our money in one week a year. And so I think it's like, it's just like that because, you know, hummingbird migration patterns, dude. You could read my book on it. On your attraction 101. It's $14.40. It's on sale. I mean, only 92% of it. The migration patterns will start to be unfavorable for my business heading into like September. And so I'm going to prep it for next summer on Amazon because I think I can compete way better there.

And then I'll just keep scooping sugar, baby. You know, I'm in. That's going to be the name of your documentary. It's like it's like I said before. Like, do I think it's some massive thing? No. But like, do I think I could make 100K a year? Yeah.

Why not? Like, it's easy enough. You just need a jungle scout account and the ability to use chat, GPD and Google and Facebook ads. And you can use ChiatjibD to learn how to use all those tools. I just got an idea and I kind of love it. Do you know if like Replic, Curse or Bolt, Windsor,

do you know if any of them have like white label ability? Like where you can just resell it? Okay, well, it's happening, right? Clearly someone's going to do it. Someone wants to be first. Okay, we talk a lot about building wrappers. For those that don't know what a rapper is, it's basically taking all of the functionalities of an LLM like Chadjibati or

Claude and wrapping it. in a different interface for a specific use case. Like Sam and I have talked about building a recipe builder app that's literally just chat GPT. But the whole marketing angle is how to build recipes or cook food. Here's my idea. I know you've got like a personal CRM that you've built for yourself and you're loving it and other people are using it

or like a productivity app, which you could talk about. But everyone wants a personal CRM. Everyone's talked about it. Like there's been a lot of people that have tried and failed to launch it. But personal CRM is just one example. I think the brilliant idea here is to sell like a customizable personal CRM. That's basically a white labeled Replit where you get something that fits 80% of people, a personal serum, right?

It has these features, these features, these features, and it fits most people. But then the whole sales pitch is once you get into it and you're like, you know, I kind of want dark mode. Click dark mode. Okay. And really on the back end, Replit is just making it happen. And right now in Replit, if we're building something, we can see the code happening on the right side. And that's fine.

But for most people, it's not fine because it's friction and it's confusing. And it's just, it's friction, right? So I would hide all that. And it would just be like one click. Or you could have a chat box that's like, you know what? This might be a little more complex. But I would love my personal CRM to text me reminders when it's my friend's birthday. And that's not part of this feature.

But I know what I paid for is customization. And so I'm going to go to this chat box and say, text me every time my friend has a birthday so I can text them happy birthday. And then it's like, all right, give me, all right, five minutes later, done. And all it is is just replet fixing it. And then it's like, would you like to publish this? Just like Webflow or whatever. Yes, publish. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I have a thought. I got to hear it. Okay. So love, I think that that's sick. I think there's a bunch of people that are looking or are aware of the fact that, that they can build their own stuff, similar to my, my app. Now, I'm not trying to go and make money off that and sell it as a thing or any of that. I think if I were to do it again, I think I could sell that as a template, right?

Because I don't think you need to white label or like hide the fact that replet exists, right? I think you pick a platform. You build this core foundational product on it, right? Let's just say personal CRM. I think you do more of what, what's his name, Mark LaVern, something like that. He runs launch fast. It's essentially a boilerplate. It's launchf a DA.

Launch fast. Sick thing. Makes a bunch of money selling a one-time purchase of a starter template for, it's a boilerplate for a software. Very cool. That devs can come in, buy, install it does all there. It's a foundation. I think that that business model is going to become way more popular because of subscription fatigue on software. People don't want to have to pay

$18 a month for a personal CRM. But if they can buy a personal CRM template for $100 one time, and you package that with, hey, we'll give you a bunch of prompts that help you customize this, right? Here is the prompt that we would use to install dark mode. Here's the prompt that we would use

to have it integrate with Twilio. And so you build that template piece and then give people the support on the back to be able to customize it. I think a lot of people are excited about this recurring business model. Like everyone wants the MRR stuff to happen when like you and I have those conversations of like MRR and LTV right like you can front load

your LTV by just paying one time like if you're average if you charge $20 a month but people are only staying on for six months on average from a growth perspective it makes more sense for you to charge $120 one time yeah get that money first of the transaction like then waiting for your cash flow like to catch up to that number and I think That's what we've seen the success with launch fast. Like he's not charging a subscription. Like he's just charging it one time, $200 every time you want to use this thing.

And it's the foundation of your software. And so I think that there's a world where people can go and do that. I think lovable and these tools will continue to get more popular. I think that the people that are your customers of looking for something that's a more customizable CRM are not like the Nancy. of the world that are using their contacts app, right? Like these are people that are probably more tech advanced, probably aware of way more tools that doesn't fit their specific use case.

And so their likelihood of being able to use a lovable is a lot higher. And so you go build, we've built the personal CRM template that you can go and change to whatever you want. Here's the core foundation. $200 for this plus. 80 prompts that help you customize it to whatever you want, one-time purchase. Yeah. I just think that that's easier versus what, you're going to charge me $18 a month for a

software you're going to ask me to build. Like, you know what I'm saying? Subscriptions are in for a world of hurt in general. Oh, 100% with all this AI. Dude, I just hung up with a guy, my friend, a couple hours ago. He works for a company. They spend $200,000 a year on Salesforce. And guess what?

Salesforce for them does way more than they need it to do, yet somehow doesn't do a lot of the things that they need it to do either, right? It does like 60% of what they need it to do, but like 400% more features than they would ever need. And they're paying 200 grand. So he went and vibe coded a CRM for their company, for their needs, knowing exactly what it. And now he's presenting it to them at $100,000 a year, that he vibe coded for like $200 in replica credits, eight hours at the computer, having fun while he, watch Netflix. Okay? Yep. So Replit, they just announced they hit like 100 million in ARR in six months or something. But I think someone needs to white label Replit or something for the nancies

of the world, right? Yeah. Not just for a CRM, but like, let's say they want to put all their paper recipes in an LLM and ask it questions. And so you sell them that template, as you said, and then for maybe for the customizable function, maybe there is a recurring fee to that. Maybe it's a flat fee for the template. Hey, upload your recipes and you've got your own LLM for all your recipes. But for 10 bucks a month, you can customize it to do whatever you need. So whatever you want. Yeah. It's a market learning curve question, right? Like, will the nancy's of the world, it's like the 80-20 rule, right? Because like it's, you go to all the nancy's of the world, but like how much different is Nancy A's version of this versus nancy's B? Where like, does it

need to be customized, right? Or it's like, well, 80% of Nancy's want dark mode. So we should just build the button. Right. Exactly. That's a one time. Not like, here's the prompt. You give lovable to customize the dark mode.

It's just like, well, dark, which starts to get into this like, it's, it has parallels to the open source software community. It's like, open source for Nancy. Right. But it's like, then how do you make it approachable for Nancy that like she actually cares, right? it like she's not sitting there as a product lead being like, dude, you know what would make this app way better for me is dark mode. Like I don't even think that thought is actually crossing her mind.

It's like this app is light mode. I want to cook. Right. What that could mean is like, let's say you sell it to 100 nancy's and the foundation, the template you're selling looks this way. And after you sell 100, you learn that, yeah, 98% of people all want these four features that were custom that I didn't add. Okay, I'm going to add those as the default now.

Now when I push Facebook ads, my cost per acquisition goes from $40 to $25. Because because of all the 100 nancies that just bought for me, I know exactly what they want now. So it makes your sales process even easier. Constant product feedback into, it's just iteration. Like same. That model is happening on every single software platform on the face of the earth if it's being operated well. Right. We're like, oh, we've got a bunch of feature requests.

We should probably prioritize that feature build. create that loop, right? And so it's like the world where that sort of product exists well and like is worth doing is farther away than right now. I think that like most of the nancy's of the world just want an app that does 90% of what they want. I don't even think they would customize it like in that meaningful of a way. I agree. But I think one problem with that is that because building these wrappers is more accessible than ever, like Nancy, she's going to log into the app store and just see a bunch of stuff that looks the same. 100%.

And like if one of them were customizable with a white labeled replet, it stands out. It's the only different one. If it's using it as a marketing mechanism to create that, I get behind. And in all likelihood, they may never even use the customization. That's what I'm going to say. But they're going to pay extra for it. Right. That piece of it is the arbitrage, not the.

fact that they're going to use it that much, it's the fact that it makes them pick you. Yeah, exactly. Because they can in theory. And you almost have to have a recurring aspect to that because of the credits. Like you're going to be paying credits to Replit on the back. Right. Yeah. At least in the short term, at some point you'd get to a spot where you would, again,

it's just like it's LTV, but like average lifetime credit usage per customer. Right. We're like on average in the first 12 months of people using us. they use 87 credits each. Yep. Right. And some customers lose your money. Some make your money.

Yeah, you just kind of, you play the average game at scale. And then you can play it and be like, well, I can charge 209 lifetime access because it's the credit usage is not that bad. Or it doesn't work and you have to go monthly. When Chris eats at CCs, we lose money. When his wife eats, we make money. But we have to join out.

Literally, dude. That's the math. Everyone's running it, dude. Well, where can we find you, Sam? On Twitter at I'm Sam Thompson. All right, one week from today, I'm chatting to Sam again about other cool business ideas. So be sure to come back for that one. Thanks for hanging out on the Kerner office.