23 Beginner Friendly Businesses You Should Start In 2026⏐Ep. #255

Chris Koerner (0:00)

Welcome to The Koerner Office Podcast. This is Chris Koerner, and this is Episode 255 Today is December 8th. You're probably listening to this on or after December 9th. And today was a big day for me. I appeared on the Dire of a CEO podcast with Stephen Bartlett, and it is the second biggest podcast in the world, and the first biggest business podcast in the world. And so I assume I have a lot of new listeners today. So I wanted to do something a little different, and I wanted to make an episode that would be great for both my existing, my OGs, my current fans that have known and followed me for a little while, and an episode that was great for all of my new fans coming over from Dire of a CEO. So whether you're new to me or old to me, you're going to love this episode, and it will apply to all of you.

What I'm going to do in this episode is take all 254 episodes of this podcast and distill down the best ideas, the best learnings, takeaways, guests, everything, so you don't have to go back and listen to all of them yourself. You're going to get the best of the best right here. And if you heard all or some of those episodes already, it's going to be a great refresh on some of the best episodes. And I'm going to add my take to these ideas, why I like them, what I don't like about them. And some of these episodes didn't do super well for whatever reason. Maybe they had a title that didn't describe it well enough or something. But the common theme between all of these ideas is that they are approachable for almost anyone to start, whether you're in the US or abroad, you have a lot of money or a little. So let me intro myself real quickly, and then I'll get into the ideas and I'm going to rank them based on how much I like them. So there are 23 of these episodes slash ideas, and I'm going to rank them from 23 to 1, 1 being my all time favorite. Okay, but who am I? I'm Chris Koerner. I live in the suburbs of Dallas, Fort Worth. I have been married for almost 18 years. I got married at 21 We had all four of our kids in our 20s. My wife, her name is Jessie. We were high school sweethearts. She is an amazing person. She is incredibly loyal, incredibly patient with this wild entrepreneurship ride that we've been on, and I couldn't do without her. My four kids are between the ages of 9 and 15 I have three boys and a girl. We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We used to go by Mormons. You probably see missionaries walking around with white shirt and ties. That's us. That was me from 6 to 8 I served my mission in Hungary, and it was the most transformative, most amazing two years of my life hands down. Our faith is a big part of what we do, and we're a pretty tight family. We live on a few acres. We've had animals in the past. We've been in the same house for about nine years. We don't plan on moving anytime soon. I'm a huge foodie. I used to do endurance events running ultra marathons between 30 and 140 miles. I'm basically an all-or-nothing person. I'm either going to be fat and just sit around and watch TV all day, or I'm going to be up and about doing way too much all day every day. I've learned that about myself, and so I try to say on the right side of the spectrum, because I did spend about 10 years of my life obese, all of my 20s. I was still building businesses, starting a lot of businesses I talk about in this content, but I just didn't take good care of my health, and at age 31, I fixed that. I lost all the weight. I started running these endurance events, and I've kept the weight off ever since. I was born in Utah. As you've probably heard, my first business was selling used golf balls, and it's funny because a lot of the comments on my interview were like, oh, you grew up poor, but you lived across the street from a golf course. Yeah, I did. All of those things are true.

Look at Park Avenue in Logan, Utah. We sold our home for $40,000 in 1998, which was today's equivalent of about $80,000. It's a 70-year-old, 1000-square-foot home that was across the street from a golf course, Logan River Golf Course. My dad worked in a greenhouse, a nursery at Utah State University. He ended up getting a job at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. So when I was 11, we moved to Florida. I started going to the beach, making friends, wrestling, dating girls. That's when I met my now wife. I worked a bunch of odd jobs in middle school and high school. I bussed tables. I waited tables. I delivered pizzas for Pizza Hut. I sprayed pest control every summer. I mowed lawns. Just whatever it took to have some income. My parents got divorced about four years after we moved to Florida. I was 15 I lived with my mom. My dad lived across town. My mom now lives in Utah. My dad is still in Florida, living in the house that I lived in in Florida. As I was growing up. My parents are awesome people. I have three siblings, an older sister, a younger brother, and a younger sister. They live all over the country, and I love them very much. My mom waited tables as she raised us at the same Mexican restaurant where I bus tables. It's still there, El De Encito, right on US-1 in Titusville. And my parents taught me the value of being charitable, being kind, being honest, and working really hard. And I'm grateful for them. Again, I served a mission for my church.