This Cheap Business in a Box Makes $2K+ a Day - Ep. #297

Chris Koerner (0:00)

So check out this fricking guy named Marc. What did Marc do? He went to a festival in the middle of a desert, and a guy rolls up next to him in $150,000 pizza truck. Now, what was Marc selling? Iced coffee out of a Home Depot tool cart that he gutted in his garage for under $1,000.

But here's the kicker. By Sunday, the end of this festival, Marc had cleared $8,000 in pure profit. It's a two-day festival, which was more than the $150,000 pizza truck right next to him. He calls this a business in a box. Every cup of iced coffee he makes costs less than $3 to make. He sells it for $8 and he pours it in 30 seconds flat. Whereas all the other coffee guys out there are using a $30,000 espresso machine and taking five full minutes to pour that same cup of coffee. He doesn't need that espresso machine. When I said under $1,000, I meant everything. All the equipment, materials, cart, everything. He's already set up the same system for divorced moms, military spouses, and immigrants here on visas. At the end, we dive deep on home run locations that nobody else is tapping into. Now, whether you love coffee or have never even tasted it like me, as long as you love business, you're going to love this episode. Please enjoy.

Before you get into your awesome business, can you tell me a little bit about your background and what makes you so entrepreneurial? Like, where does that mindset come from? Instead of giving my kid five grand, I'm going to help him build a business.

Marc Hyman (1:23)

I'm a lawyer by training, but I grew up with my mother was a war refugee from Europe. My father went through the depressions. We lived very, we didn't make big expenses, and war refugees, the mindset is, what you have today might disappear tomorrow, and you've got to always learn how to make do.

So that was kind of just for the first 18 years of my life, that was the dinner talk about everything that was lost and everything that was regained after the war, and that just shaped me. I went to law school knowing that I didn't want to practice law, I just wanted to use it for my advantage. When I was a teenager, we used to have a little business that we put people's beach shares out on the beach. You know, $35 for the summer, you know, 20 or 30 people paid us $700, $800, you know, back in the 70s, early 70s, that was a fortune for us. And you know, that's where I kind of got bit by that. And I was always looking at businesses, and I was way more interested when I lived in New York, in the little guy who built his business from zero to really good. You know, Wall Street didn't interest me, the giant corporations around New York didn't interest me. It was the guy, even the-

Chris Koerner (2:33)

The hot dog cart.

Marc Hyman (2:34)

Well, so the hot dog vendor that I saw every day, summer, winter, you know, he started with a little, he was a Greek guy, started with a little cart. And over the years, it grew and grew into a cart where he actually stood in. So he was no longer subject to the winds and everything. And then his son later on, you know, I lived long enough in the neighborhood that his son moved into that business. And so those kinds of businesses always excited me, what people can resource. And so, you know, so that's what got me hooked on it.

Chris Koerner (3:03)

It's funny you mentioned the hot dog cart because when my wife and I were first married, our first year, my grandma's friend had just like retired from having a hot dog cart in New York. And he used his retirement to buy a beautiful home in Greece, in this little city called Karystos. And we wouldn't stay to them for a week. And I'm like, holy crap, like you bought this home, second home in Greece from a hot dog cart.

And he did, he had a great life.

Marc Hyman (3:29)

And in New York City, the hot dog vendors in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue, they pay the city $100,000 or more for the right for the license card to sell in front of that. So it tells you that, I mean, there's the winter, there's the summer, but it's something that almost anybody can do and creates wealth so that you can go back, you live the American dream kind of in a suburb and then you go back to your country. That's the stuff that, that's my gospel.