11 Proven Businesses My Listeners Started + How to Copy Them - Ep. #345

Chris Koerner (0:00)

So, about a year ago, I said something on this channel. I said, if you ever start a business because of something you heard here, then email me, I want to know. And people did, a lot of people. And so I have a folder with a bunch of them. And every number you're about to hear is what they told me. Now, keep in mind, I didn't audit anyone. I didn't look at their tax returns. I'm basing all of this on what they told me. But the purpose of this episode is to give you some ideas of businesses you can start based on people that already did it, because that's much less erratical than just giving you an idea. These are ideas that are proven from people who listened to this podcast, got the idea from the podcast, then actually went out and did it.

So hopefully, you will find this to be even more applicable to you than the average Koerner Office episode. So here we go.

You're going to hear about people that got laid off, a teacher, a college kid, a mom of four, a couple of six and seven year olds. I pulled 11 stories for you today and we're going to get tactical and we're going to talk about what they did that you can do specifically. Things that you should take, things that you should leave. I'm going to call every segment after the idea the copy this version, right? What to charge, where the first customer is, and the one tool that you can't live without. And at the end of this, I have five very specific ideas of how you can find your first customer for any of these businesses for under $100. There might be other startup costs involved with the business, but specifically if you want to find your first customer for under $100, I've got that at the end. So here in a minute, I'm going to tell you about a dude that turned like broken mailboxes into 800 grand while keeping his day job. Halfway through the episode, we'll talk about a guy doing half a million dollars a year in pickleball courts in Nebraska in the winter time. And at the end, one that didn't work, and why I'm even more proud of that one than some of the wins. So let's go. Let's talk about Andrew. Andrew lives in Fort Worth, Texas, about an hour from me, and he made about $800,000 in two years from mailboxes. What happened is that Andrew watched the stuff I was putting out about my tree trimming business. He's not a tree guy. He never started a tree trimming business like I did. But something about that episode clicked for him. And here's what he told me. He said, I started a masonry business, initially focused on brick mailboxes, because if you live in Dallas, Fort Worth, you know, every neighborhood has those brick mailboxes, and every week someone backs into one. And nobody wants that job. They're small jobs, right? The big masonry guys don't want a $400 mailbox. So Andrew did. The first move is that he knocked on doors on his own street. He found a new build, right? And he offered to do their mailbox. That's it. And in my opinion, that's not even a very good idea, because it's probably going to be a brick home, and those masonry guys are probably going to be the one who do mailbox, but he did it. And he got the job. Cost him about $2,000 to start, and he had a day job. He was seven years into like a medical devices career, and he's still there, never quit. He spends about 15 to 20 hours a week on this business. But the magic about this business that he didn't expect was that the mailboxes got him into HOAs, homeowners associations. HOAs have a lot of mailboxes, and once the HOA trusts you with mailboxes, they're like, hey, can you do this retaining wall? Can you do this entrance? And after two years of saying yes to a bunch of things that, you know, the gurus on Twitter would have told you to say no to, he's got three crews, two admins, and he is working on building relationships. His best month, he did $80,000 at about 30% gross profit margin and 15% net profit margin. He also told me, and I love this because it's very real, taking profits can be hard, right? It can be hard to like trust the business enough to first start to pull profits out of it. But this same guy also tried the washer dryer rental business, and he got 60 customers with it, but ended up winding it down. Said it was quite painful of a business, and we're going to revisit that one later. So here's what you should copy. Brick mailbox repair here in Dallas Fort Worth runs somewhere between $600 to $1,500, depending on whether it's just a patch or a rebuild. I would imagine those quotes are similar in other markets as well. Materials on a full rebuild are going to be a couple hundred bucks. So one mailbox a weekend could be good money. It could be really good income. Your first customer is probably going to be in a new build subdivision. The builder is going to want to put in the cheapest mailbox allowed by the HOA, and half of these are going to be crooked within a couple of years because Texas soil. So offer the first one at cost just for the before and after photo. Then you take that photo to the HOA board, right? Because the HOA is the one customer who owns 200 mailboxes. And of course, you'll watch the next door for anyone for posts about, you know, anyone know a Mason. You can't really count on those. They'll probably be pretty few and far between, but they're highly motivated. Of course, you want a website, but what's going to get the phone to ring will be a Google business profile with at least 10 photos. I mean, come on. This guy started business with two grand, knocked on the door, kept saying yes, and he made a hundred grand in revenue within two years without quitting his job. Okay, let's talk about Walter. Walter is just north of Ann Arbor, Michigan. And this is one of the best e-mails I've ever gotten. Walter got let go in June from a consulting gig with no warning. Family of four. He spent the summer interviewing, making it to final rounds and getting told, yeah, we're holding off until hiring until next year over and over. But in August, he found this podcast and heard the episode about storage tote shelves. Big wooden racks for like the 27-gallon totes, and we'll link to this in the show notes. But he thought, I can build that. It costs almost nothing. I can sell where people already are. So he launched in August and he made $3,000.