The $16K/Month Business He Runs Without Quitting His Job - Ep. #342

Chris Koerner (0:00)

Spent $100 in Facebook ads and got $10,000 in bookings.

Justin Hall (0:03)

Yes.

Chris Koerner (0:04)

That's amazing. It's an infinite money glitch.

Justin Hall (0:06)

Yeah. Our highest month has been 22.5.

Wow. And then on average, we're right at like 16

Chris Koerner (0:12)

Do you have employees?

Justin Hall (0:14)

No, just my wife and I.

Chris Koerner (0:15)

Really? You still have a job?

Justin Hall (0:16)

Yeah.

Chris Koerner (0:17)

No way.

Justin Hall (0:18)

I have three churches right now.

Chris Koerner (0:19)

Really?

Justin Hall (0:19)

That are every Sunday.

Chris Koerner (0:21)

Holy cow. That covers your rent.

Justin Hall (0:22)

Exactly. They had goat hanging from the ceiling, and they were taking torches and cooking pieces of the goat.

Chris Koerner (0:32)

If someone really wanted to start this business on a budget, what's the least it would take?

Justin Hall (0:36)

You could do it for under $3,000.

Chris Koerner (0:38)

So my guests today rented out an empty church in a strip mall parking lot, spent a little money cleaning it up, not as much as you might think. And today, just a year later, makes $16,000 a month, part-time, no employees doing this on the weekend, renting it out to birthday parties, anniversaries, etc.

Here's what I didn't expect. He spent $100 on Facebook ads that got him $10,000 worth of bookings in one day. He has three customers that pay him every single month that cover all of his rent, and they never even throw a party. And then he has a QR code on the wall that turns every party into four more parties. It's a viral referral marketing loop. Oh, and one night he came back to check in on a party and found a goat hanging from the ceiling. If you have a wife that loves to host, she's going to love this. What first gave you the idea to start a venue?

Justin Hall (1:28)

So my wife and I would do lots of events. And for our kids, we have six and four-year-old.

And so we would do big birthday parties, and they do a fall party each year, which has grown really big where have some kind of large activity where it's decorating pumpkins or decorating hay, something large and hay rides and that kind of stuff.

Chris Koerner (1:52)

And you would rent out other venues?

Justin Hall (1:54)

We would actually, we have a good size house and yard. So we would do all that in our yard. But we would rent, and then for our second child, I said, you know what, we should do somewhere else. So I started looking for venues to have a baby shower. And my wife was with me, and I went to a bunch and just was not satisfied. And we ended up choosing one. And during that conversation, and towards the tail end of COVID, we said, you know what, we should do this. Because we also heard about people saying, they couldn't book restaurants and other stuff, but you could book venues that had laxer laws, I guess, at that point, if you just brought your family to a venue. So we said, we should look into that. And so we spent about three years just kind of playing with the idea and looking for venues, looking for a place that would work for us. And we were really close to signing leases on like four venues until we found the one we're at now.

So yeah, it was just, we thought we could do, and then after hosting her baby shower, at that venue and the price I paid just for the venue. What'd you pay? I think I paid like $2,200.

Chris Koerner (3:09)

Okay.

Justin Hall (3:11)

And I still had to come in and decorate with friends.

Chris Koerner (3:13)

For like an afternoon?

Justin Hall (3:14)

Yeah, it was a Sunday from like 11 to 6 p.m. And we probably weren't even there to six. And so it was a brunch. So I hired a chef and they did like the omelet stations and all the other stuff. And hired, not only hired the chefs, but also hired the team to come decorate with myself.

So on top of the 2200, I probably spent another two to probably two to three thousand dollars on everything else. And you're like, wow, we that we could have we and we could have done a better job, we thought, and no slight to them. But it wasn't it wasn't a huge venue.

Chris Koerner (3:53)

What type of venue?

Justin Hall (3:54)

It was in a strip mall and was probably about 1200 square feet. It's like a narrow, like a retail, like a retail. Yeah, like a retail space. And it was pretty narrow. And I think we hosted 60 people.