11 Proven Businesses My Viewers Started + How to Copy Them Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 He has done $500,000 since February of this year,  2026, one out a week. $0 to start. He had never used any AI of any kind before this business.  Walter got let go in June with no warning, family of four. How much money do you make?  $21,000 on his first job. David, a teacher and a basketball coach, $175,000 per season three. His  teaching salary is $45,000 to $48,000 a year.

00:20 Yes, he is leaving teaching to scale it. Andrew, he  made about $800,000 in two years and he had a day job. You don't have to quit, so pick one tonight.  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.

00:45 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, but the purpose of this episode is to give you  some ideas of businesses you can start based on people that already did it. I pulled 11 stories  for you today and we're going to talk about what they did that you can do, specifically.

01:05 What to  charge, where the first customer is, and the one tool that you can't live without. Halfway through  the episode, we'll talk about a guy doing half a million dollars a year in pickleball courts  in Nebraska in the wintertime. 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.

01:24 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.

01:44 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 mailbox boxes  and every week someone backs into one. And nobody wants the job. They're small jobs, right? The  big masonry guys don't want a $400 mailbox, so Andrew did.

02:05 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 cuz it's probably going to be a brick home  and those masonry guys are probably going to be the one to do the mailbox, but he did it. And  he got the job. Cost him about $2,000 to start and he had a day job.

02:26 He was 7 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?

02:49 Can you do this  entrance?"And after 2 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 cuz it's very real, taking profits  can be hard, right?

03:14 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 is 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 1500 dollars, depending on whether it's just a  patch or a rebuild.

03:42 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 years because Texas soil.

04:08 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. Then of course you'll watch  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.

04:30 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 his business with 2 grand, knocked  on the door, kept saying yes, and he made 800 grand in revenue within 2 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 emails I've ever gotten.

04:50 Uh Walter got let go in June from a consulting gig with no  warning, family of four. He spent the summer uh interviewing, making it to final rounds, and  getting told, "Yeah, we're holding off till hiring until next year."over and over. But in August he  found this podcast and heard the episode about storage tote shelves. Big wooden rocks for like  the 27-gallon totes, and we'll link to this in the show notes.

05:16 But he thought,"I can build that.  Cost almost nothing. I can sell it where where people already are."So, he launched in August,  and he made $3,000. September, $8,000. October, 10,000 plus. And here's where his experience in  supply chain shows up. He took his gross margin from 39%to 58%in 90 days because of a magical  thing called batch production.

05:34 In other words, not just making one shelving unit at a a but  making all the same cuts at a time. He would buy the totes for customers with his military discount  and resell them. These small little upsells add up over time. His wife told him,"If you can pay the  mortgage every month, I will handle the rest."And he told me, verbatim,"This podcast literally  saved our mortgage."But here's the twist, when you deliver like a giant wooden shelf to  someone's garage, they look at you and they're like,"Huh, you're handy.

06:09 Do you know how to fix  other stuff?"And he kept getting asked that over and over. Kind of like the last story, he started  saying yes. So, he took November and December off from shelving and started a handyman company.  This was 2025, by the way. Put up a website, CRM, the whole thing, launched it in January of  2026. First 2 weeks, almost $9,000 of jobs were booked at 52%gross profit in the slow season, and  he's doing six figures this year, his first full year.

06:39 And like many, if not most businesses,  that first thing, the first product or service you start with, does not usually end up being  the business. It's just what gets you started, what gets you going. So, I say this a lot, but  you cannot be too proud to start a business that seems too gimmicky or too small for you. You can't  be too proud. And you can't be proud and broke at the same time.

07:01 My wife just bought $2,000 worth  of Swedish candy so we can sell them at farmers markets. That's about as humbling of a business  as you get, and we aren't too proud, right? Cuz it's awesome and it's fun. So, how do you copy  Walter's business? Build one shelf. One, you can get plans for 10 bucks on Etsy, or have Claude,  ChatGPT, make plans for you.

07:16 Just build one. The lumber is going to cost you 150 bucks, 80 bucks,  something like that. Lumber, screws, chop saw, and you sell these for 300 to 800 bucks, depending  on the size. List it on Facebook Marketplace, that's where most of this happens, before you  ever build the second one. If it sells in a week, build three more. If it doesn't, then just wait.

07:38 Keep testing. Boost the post. Wait. Drop the price. Every single time you make a delivery, you  say,"Anything else around here need fixing while I've got the truck?"Before you know it, you got a  handyman business. Something that AI is not about to take from you. You don't even need a website,  although you could vibe code one with, you know, three sentences in any given AI tool.

07:58 You don't  need one. You need a Google business profile, 10 pictures, and some low-margin shelf customers  to feed you the bigger jobs. Okay, number three. Derek, Ocala, Florida. He started his business  with zero dollars. Derek was literally lying on the ground painting when my episode about plant  bingo came on earlier this year. He almost skipped it.

08:23 Then 10 minutes in, he decided to start a  plant bingo business. So, he went from ignore to I'm starting this business in 10 minutes. Sounds  like me, very impulsive. We'll also link to that episode. It is what you could imagine. It's bingo  where you win plants, and it seems like a gimmick, but and it literally cost just about nothing  to start cuz you could do it in your home, someone else's home.

08:45 You could do it in a bar or  a restaurant where they don't charge you because they're thrilled that you're bringing people  there. You use organic Instagram and Facebook to promote it, and you sell tickets in advance.  And then you use those ticket sales to buy the plants. How did he start it, Derek? He walked into  a bar, pitched it in person, and the owner said,"I like where this is going."He built the entire  digital side of the business and the and the plan with Claude, and he told me he had never used  any AI of

09:08 any kind before this business. His first two events were in September of this year, as in  last month. And this month so far, he's already done four. 50%profit margins, zero dollars to  start. And he considers himself a math guy, and he lives in what he calls the bingo capital  of the universe, also known as God's waiting room, also known as Florida, where I spent my life from  age 11 to 19.

09:30 Wrestled a guy from Ocala Courtney James, I remember you. I beat him. His goal is  two to three events a week next year, which is basically a full-time job that is also a party.  It's full-time job income, but at a part-time job's time invested. So, how to copy this? You  want to pick the deadest weeknight at a bar with a patio. Call it Tuesday, walk in and say,"I  will fill this room on a Tuesday and you keep the bar tab."That's it.

10:01 That's the pitch. That's  the trade-off, right? Bars will say yes to that all day. You charge $20 per bingo card. You get  plants from a wholesale nursery. They're all over the place. They're going to cost five to 10 bucks  each. So, 40 people show up, you're grossing $800 to $1,000 and spending about 300 bucks on plants.  Do the math on that. One night a week.

10:18 What tool do you need? Eventbrite or simply a Stripe payment  link, a local nursery that will sell at wholesale, and whatever AI you would like to write the  Instagram post. Derek had never even used one. $0. One walk-in to a bar, okay? Number four, David in  Lafayette, Louisiana, a teacher and a basketball coach, started a Christmas light business.

10:42 That time of year, David heard me talk about location-based names, so he called it Acadiana  Christmas lights, right? Name of the city plus the name of the industry. And here's his numbers,  straight from his email. His first season, he did 21,000 gross, 7,000 net. Second season, 75,000  gross, 35,000 net. And he told me that he was expecting 175,000 for season three.

11:06 His teaching  salary is 45 to 48,000 a year. So, season two, on the side, he netted almost what his full-time job  paid him. And yes, he is leaving teaching to scale it. It works because he owns the lights. Clients  don't buy them. He custom cuts commercial-grade C9 strands to fit each house, and he installs  these mid-October through mid-December. Takes them down in January and stores them at a storage  unit.

11:34 Clients sign one to three-year contracts, so it's recurring. Lights are paid for after year  one. He bought all of next year's material at his suppliers end of season sale and his crews in the  winter are roofers because roofers have nothing to do in December. His marketing is bandit signs, all  right? Those little signs on the side of the road. You buy them for like $1 to $3 a piece.

11:56 He does  giveaways, Google organic. He gets referrals from customers. Nothing too fancy. And yes, this  fall he's adding porch pumpkins because his Christmas light clients are saying yes to it. The  same customer, same house, one more season. So, to copy this, well, it's October. You've got  about 3 weeks. Price it the way he does by the linear foot.

12:17 And the going rate in most markets  is somewhere between $15 and $30 a foot installed, which puts a normal house at like 800 on the  low end to 2,500 on the high end. Year one, the price covers the lights. Year two, the lights are  basically free and it's almost all margin. You're just paying the crews. And you're not selling an  install, you're selling like a three-year contract that includes install, take down, and storage.

12:39 Your first customer is going to be on your own street. It's going to be the nicest five homes  in your neighborhood or your the neighbor that you know really well. A bandit sign at the  neighborhood entrance is golden and you just want it to say Christmas lights and then a phone  number and maybe a QR code. That's it. No logo, nothing fancy. You need a ladder.

12:58 You need someone  to sell you C9 lights and that is one Google search away. And you need a roofer buddy who is  slow in December. Probably a good time to mention that if you're starting any of these businesses,  especially one where liability is involved by Christmas lights business, you're going to  want an LLC, a limited liability corporation, right?

13:18 And the absolute best place in the world  to register an LLC is through bizzy.com. That's b i z e e.com. I've been using them for years.  They sponsor this podcast. It doesn't actually cost anything to use Bizee. You still have to pay  the state filing fees, which you pay to Bizee and then they pass on to the state, but I dare you. Go  to your state website and try to figure it out for yourself and it is brain damage in a can.

13:39 Bizee  makes it easy, user-friendly, simple. They'll handle your registered agent service. They'll give  you an EIN number, aka a tax ID number. They just have one-time payments, no sneaky subscriptions.  And they are a family-owned business, which is what we're about here on the Corner Office.  Do not get caught off guard with some stupid paper that didn't get filed, some scary letter in  the mail.

14:03 Just use Bizee and you will never have to think about it again. Okay, let's talk about  pickleball courts. Cam, this one is the one that I teased. Cam is in Omaha, Nebraska and he has  done $500,000 since February of this year, 2026. And Cam is honest about where he heard this one.  It wasn't this channel, it was me on M FM talking about easy businesses that anyone can start.

14:26 So,  I'll just take partial credit on this one. Cam and his buddy Luke both come from tech. Cam built  websites and Luke worked at a software company, but neither one had ever built a pickleball  court. By the way, if you notice my hair's kind of spiky right now, it's because I just  got done playing pickleball with my oldest and my second youngest like an hour ago and my sweat  just dried and so I'm living this.

14:43 I'm doing this. They decided to build custom pickleball courts in  Nebraska in the wintertime. They launched and the first thing that happened was a cease and desist  letter because guess what? You can't use the word sport court. It's a trademark. I know this because  I have a company that builds them. So, they made a funny video about it and put it on their homepage.

15:05 That is exactly what you do when you handle a cease and desist. You turn it into a David and  Goliath story. The first move that they did was handwritten notes. Cam has a different business  that does handwritten notes at scale. So, he used his own product and sent notes to people who might  want a court. That got his first customer. And in this business, your first customer is worth like  30 to 60,000 dollars.

15:24 And remember, these guys didn't know what they were doing, so they flew  in help to learn more about, you know, laying concrete on the production side. And they built  these courts with something called post-tension, which he says nobody in Nebraska was doing. And  I'm not going to lie, I did not use post-tension on my court cuz I'm cheap. But I did on the  foundation of my house.

15:42 From what I understand, it's a bunch of cables in the concrete that you  tighten that is kind of like rebar, but even more strong, I believe. Anyway, they started doing just  backyards like mine, but now they do municipal stuff. 25%margins, cost about 10 grand to start,  but it is a full-time business making really good money. The lesson he gave me that I did not  expect was that you should launch sooner, in the wintertime if needs be, because cities set budgets  in the wintertime, okay?

16:08 All right, little alpha for you. If you show up in the spring, that money  is already allocated. It's already spent. So, if you want to copy this, you don't need to know  how to pour concrete, Cam didn't. You need to sell the court and sub the pour to a concrete crew that  already exists in your town. How do you find that? Use something like Muse or Grockbot to go reach  out to a bunch of concrete guys on the internet for you.

16:34 I'm assuming you're lazy here, cuz I am.  Or you can just call them yourself. You're going to want to target, depending on the thickness of  the concrete, which you're probably looking at like 5 to 7-in thick concrete. If you're not doing  post-tension, you're going to want to target like 6 to 750 per square foot. If you're already doing  post-tension, it's going to be a little higher than that.

16:53 But you're not actually out there  building sport courts yourself. You're subbing it all out. And depending on what payment terms  you work out, you can start this for a lot less than 10,000 dollars. Remember, a backyard court is  30 to 60 grand. 25%margin, that's 7,500 to 15,000 grand per court. Cam used handwritten notes to  find his first customers.

17:09 What's stopping you from doing the same? You can go to your city's website,  find out when they approve the next year's budget, and show up 2 months before with a proposal.  How do you build a proposal? Use AI. You can make an AI agent like Muse or Grokbot watch your  state's RFP site, request for proposal, for the word pickleball, and text you. I showed you how to  do that like two episodes ago.

17:30 Okay, Tom Berman, McKinney, Texas, basically my neighbor. And I  like Tom's story because he tried two of my ideas, and he's honest about both. Tom is a software  engineer in Big Tech consulting. He's got a third kid on the way, and he told me,"I'm over  it." So, he decided to build an exit ramp. He heard the vending episodes and the Kyler episode  on appliance rental, and he did both.

17:51 Vending was first. He used his network to land what he called  an absolute rockstar of a client, a hockey rink, and he treats vending like enterprise software  sales. He sends proposals. He calls it"account management with price discovery,"and he told  me that at a hockey rink, they will pay over $4 for a Smartwater without adding an I. And he's  done 100 grand so far 12,000 a month right now, 40% margins, and $0 out of pocket because  he put the machines on a 0%credit card, and the cash flow paid it off in 3 months.

18:24 I'm not  telling you to do that. I'm just telling you that he did. And appliance rental, the other business  he started, cost him 320 bucks to start, which was like one washer dryer set and a couple of hoses.  And he had a hundred customers in 3 months, which is insane growth in a very saturated market, and  he's shutting it down. He's selling off the assets because, in his words, that business came with a  lot of problems.

18:47 And I will say that business came with a lot of problems in the context of another  business, because I've had businesses at certain times that were working and profitable, and I  shut them down because I had other businesses at that same time that were much more fun, or  much easier, or more profitable, right? So, I'm sure if Tom had nothing else going on and  needed to pay the mortgage, he would have kept going and kept growing.

19:11 But, in the context of  his vending business that was doing much better, he decided to shut it down. But with a baby coming  and managing all these units, something had to go, and he picked the one that was all sweat. What is  crazy here in one episode we're talking about two different people that's hit between 60 and 100  appliance rental customers and then walked away from it.

19:32 The idea clearly works. The question is  whether you want to be the guy carrying the dryer. Know thyself. Forget the vending machine for a  second. In the vending business, the business is the location. Tom got one rink and it's 12 grand a  month. That's not normal. Results are not typical, okay? But it just goes to show how important the  right location is.

19:48 So, write a one-page proposal. Not just a cold call. Put in that proposal who you  are, what your story is, what goes in the cooler, what they get, what you charge, which is usually  going to be a cut or a free amenity for their members. You're going to put it into a place  where people are stuck for one or two hours with a wallet. Skating rinks, gyms, dance studios,  car repair, tire shop, youth sports complexes, car dealership waiting rooms.

20:15 Price above retail  and people don't flinch because the alternative is just leaving and you're in business. And I've  got a couple episodes about the vending business. I'll link to that as well. Let's talk about Tim.  Tim Krupnick. Tim is the slow mover, number seven, lives in western North Carolina, Blue Ridge  Mountains, and he watched the Alex Boyd brush clearing episode, which is on track to be my most  viewed YouTube video of all time.

20:35 He listened to almost the whole thing thinking,"Ah, cool story.  Not for me. All right, that's entertaining."And then at the very end, Alex mentioned a machine  called a GreenClimber. You may remember that. I'll link to that one as well. That's a  remote-controlled mower built for steep slopes, and the light in his brain went on. Because Tim  lives where there is no flat land, and running a skid steer on a hillside is literally how you die.

21:00 But a specialized slope machine? Nobody near him had one, so he did some research, talked to some  realtors, engineering firms, and everyone said it would and should work. So, he bought a trailer,  built a website, started an LLC. Hopefully, he's busy. Financing the machine took forever, but  keep in mind, he did finance it. Didn't pay cash. So, because of the fact that it took so long, he  paused this whole idea over the winter, and then an inquiry came through the website that he wasn't  even checking on.

21:27 He went out, looked at the job, bid it. He didn't even have the machine yet,  remember? He won the job, then bought the machine, which is exactly how I would have told him to  do it, and spent 9 days on the first job. But, how much money did he make? $21,000 on his  first job. Sent four more quotes out. He's got two moving forward, worth about eight grand.

21:50 And all of this is a side gig next to a remote full-time job that he already has. And he told  me something that I think about a lot. He said he had to stop watching my content for a while, or  he would have switched businesses and delayed it. And that's pretty self-aware, but I kind of hate  it. Okay, so don't listen to him. Keep listening to this podcast.

22:08 But, the takeaway here is find  that one machine that nobody in your area owns, but solves an expensive problem. Maybe if you  live near a lake, it's one of those lake cleaning machines, right? I know that's really random. I  did an episode like a year and a half about these teenagers in Chicago that clean private ponds,  and they sell a boat that's like a giant weed eater in a boat format.

22:29 And no one in that area  had one. They got one, and now they make tons of money cleaning out lakes. But, put up the  website before you buy the expensive machine, and let the inquiries tell you whether or not you  should buy it. Tim's first job paid for most of the machine. So, if you're in Hill Country,  you can charge by the day for mowing slopes, and a day runs like a couple grand.

22:49 Your first  customer may come from a realtor, may come from just knocking on someone's door. It's probably  going to be business to business. Often times, land realtors will have listings that don't  sell, cuz you can't even see the land very well, or civil engineering firms that need right of  way cleared. Tim was quizzing both of these, you know, potential clients before he spent  a dollar.

23:09 The tools you need, you know, guys, come on. Website, Facebook page, your Google  Business Profile. You know the drill. Okay, let's talk about that Monticellis. B.J. and  Genevieve in Cassadaga, New York. Genevieve is a middle school health and P.E. teacher. She's got  four kids. She comes home drained every day. B.J. heard my two episodes earlier this year, I think  February and March, about snail mail businesses, the flower letters and the tiny project one.

23:33 He  took the transcripts of both, fed it into probably ChatGPT, and they landed on Big Sister Letters,  which is a monthly subscription where tween and teen girls get letters in the mail, like advice  from a trusted big sister or something. And then the mom of these kids will get an email about what  their daughters are getting in the mail. Their first move was just to post in a local Facebook  mom group.

23:54 They were looking for 10 founding moms, and they promised the first month free to all 10  of them. They ended up getting 12, and then the next month they had 14, five, and then five.  And right now they're about 100 subscribers, and their MRR, monthly recurring revenue, is  about $1,000. It's small, it's early, but it's real. And their only regret, in their words,  is that they should have done it sooner.

24:15 So, in my opinion, the most copy-pasteable part of  their story is the 10 founding members post, right? That makes it feel special and exclusive,  and people want to be on the ground floor of something. You can do that with any business, not  just this. Pick any community or group that you're already in and write,"Hey, I'm starting X. I want  10 founding members.

24:34 You get the first month free. Here's what you get."If you can't get 10 people  to say yes to free, then you've learned something for $0. And I love to say you either win or you  learn. And if you learn that nobody cares, that is the best thing you could learn, cuz it means  move on to the next idea. There's no shortage of them here. Just pick your next favorite.

24:53 Snail  mail subscription businesses run between 10 and 25 bucks a month. You just need a stripe link  printer, some stamps. It's pretty simple and I know because my wife has a snail mail subscription  business. Shout out snailmailsuperclub.com. Okay, let's talk about Steve Michigan freeze dried  candy. Michigan saw my freeze dried candy video. This is a short form video not long and bought  a small harvest right freeze dryer.

25:16 He started at farmers markets. It worked so he bought a  bigger one and then started doing fairs and carnivals. That worked even better so he bought a  second big one and moved into a commercial rented kitchen and then late summer he did the thing  that makes this whole thing a story. He reached out to a local hospital about getting into their  gift shop.

25:36 I don't know why he thought of that. I never would have thought of that but he didn't  end up getting in the gift shop but he worked out a deal with their fundraising department  instead and that's kind of how all of this works, right? We don't get what we're looking for but we  get something better. So now because of that idea he has a contract with one of the largest hospital  systems in Michigan and what he does is set up in a different hospital each week and 20%of sales go  back to the hospital.

25:58 The hospital promotes him, nurses buy candy, everybody wins. Now, he wants  to sell the candy company and buy something else which Steve is going to be a whole different  episode but the takeaway I want you to get from this is not about candy, it's about asking the  hospital. So I say this phrase so much but it's so true. Surface area, right? If you're selling at  a farmers market that's a lot of surface area for interacting with a lot of people that are working  professionals and they potentially could bring you a lot

26:29 more money in their job than as just a  consumer at a farmers market. So farmers markets could and should be your foot in the door to  much bigger opportunities like hospital schools, churches, bigger employers and also it's just good  to get out there in the community and get to know people. So number 10, this one's quick. Catherine  got an email from me a about the appliance rental business where I say step one post a free ad on  Facebook Marketplace.

26:51 So she did it. Three months later she has 37 appliances out on rent and she's  getting new customers every week from what started as one free post. Okay? Didn't mean to talk about  three different appliance rental businesses in this but here we are. Two of them quit, one is  still scaling. Same idea, different humans. Back to Facebook Marketplace. Post the thing before you  have the thing.

27:12 Find the demand before you spend any money fulfilling demand that you may or may  not end up having. Hey, believe it or not 62%of you don't actually subscribe to this channel even  though you see my videos in your feed. So just take a second, hit the subscribe button, maybe  even the notification bell and it would mean the world to me. Here's story number 11, Graham.

27:31 This  one was a flop but I'm proud of it. St. George, Utah. He started business called Pumpkin Spice  Porches. He heard the porch pumpkin stuff on this podcast, went all in. Hay bales, premium pumpkins,  signature pumpkin spice scented wreaths. He hired a designer. He ran pumpkin drops around town. He  hid cash prizes in pumpkins which got a ton of engagement and followers.

27:54 He even did the rocks  and flyers in plastic bags thing from an episode I had a while back. I'll link to that as well with  Daniel Kronauer. They did about 20 porches and the most common thing they heard was that's too much  money cuz St. George, Utah is not Dallas, Texas. The pumpkinpreneurs who crush it are in dense high  income markets and he didn't learn that, he didn't know that until he tried it.

28:16 But what he said to  me was even though it wasn't a big financial win, it was absolutely worth doing. He made 20 families  happy. He gave his designer her dream job for about a season and learned more about marketing  and positioning than any course, business, college would have ever taught him. He also learned that  the pumpkin drops, as fun as they were, pulled out the wrong crowd for a premium product, right?

28:38 They  brought out a lot of people that wanted something free or cheap and that was not his customer. But  it didn't cost him a decade of learning or a just a season of time. Kind of like a a semester in  college. So, I'm leaving this one in on purpose. 10 of the people in this story made money. Graham  did the same thing that they all did. He picked an idea, made the first cheap move, and then  found out.

28:59 And that's that's the whole game. Most of you guys are not going to hit 800 grand  on the first swing, but you can all do at least what Graham did and go fail with some dignity  and learn a whole bunch in the process. If you do want to start the porch pumpkin business, go  look for the median home price in your zip code or the zip codes near you and go see if anyone  within 20 miles already charges $400 to decorate a porch.

29:23 And if the answer to those two questions  are nobody else is charging for this and homes are all cheap, then you could probably learn to not  start this business in about 5 minutes. Okay, here's a lightning round. 10 more people, 20  seconds each cuz I could not fit them all and you guys have a lot to do today. So, let's wrap  this up. Donovan built the story post, a 6-week mystery story for kids ages 4 to 10, one letter  a week in the mail, a trading card, a comic book at the end.

29:48 Of course, he got this from the snail  mail episodes. Emily works at Boeing. She trains combat sports 4 to 6 days a week and is launching  a hot tub maintenance service for Airbnb hosts in Seattle. She posted in a host group, she got her  first lead in her first hour, and found over 200 hot tub Airbnbs within 45 minutes of her house.  She has never cleaned a hot tub in her life, but she launches next month.

30:09 Hosts told her that  they pay 50 to 250 bucks a month for this. Branko, I think I'm saying that name right, runs a CNC  machine shop and realized that every machine shop website looks like 2009, so he builds websites  for machine shops. That's it. And plating and heat treat companies, whatever that is. But,  he got his first client last week and he's got two more he's about to close.

30:32 So, whatever  industry you're in, your competitors' websites are your next business. Jonas does etched  graffiti removal on storefront glass in New York. Okay. $300 to $1,200 is what he's getting  per job, and his cost per job is sandpaper and, you know, some calories and polishing powder. He  got the idea from this thumb grinding episode, which has nothing to do with glass, and that's how  ideas work.

30:56 And then Drew, that's d r u, buys $130 picnic tables at Lowe's, stains them, and sells  them on Facebook Marketplace for 300 bucks or 330 bucks with delivery. His delivery is on top of a  Toyota Yaris. Scott's kids, which reminds me of Scott's Tots, the infamous cringeworthy Office  episode. Scott's kids are 6 and 7 years old, and they run Hummingbird Authority.

31:21 They design  packaging, they pitch store owners, and their product went live in the first grocery store  this weekend. It's hummingbird food, and it was inspired by my episode with my buddy Sam. Another  mailbox business, Alexander fixes mailboxes. He is not a young guy. He says that he's better with his  hands than with a computer, but even so, he had ChatGPT walk him through a website.

31:42 He started  this for under 100 bucks, and he gets at least one job a week at $2 to $400 each. His best week  ever was $900. And then Antonio in the Bay Area, he's a mechanical engineer, new dad, started  renting out appliances 2 weeks before he emailed me. He has five customers, and he finds customers  through door hangers in apartment complexes. Clay has a wife that launched sorbet-filled fruits in  Australia after seeing a reel.

32:03 Her first sale was $390, and she does Christmas deliveries. And Linda  took the car dealership data idea that I posted about and cold called 20 dealerships. Four said  yes, 16 said no. She's using AI to price match and compare, you know, prices on makes and models  of vehicles in local areas. But she got four freaking customers from 20 cold calls. Insane.

32:28 And one thing that all of these have in common is that their first move was cheap and direct.  It was a door knock. It was a cold call. It was a post on Facebook Marketplace. Handwritten note,  cold email, walking into a bar about plant bingo, a post in a Facebook freaking mom group. Nobody  ran ads first or learned how to run ads. They didn't build an app first.

32:49 They found a human and  they asked. Another thing they have in common, the startup costs were a joke. For Derek,  zero bucks. Alexander, mailbox repair, under 100 bucks. 320 bucks for Tom. Two grand for  Andrew. The most expensive was 10 grand for Cam, the sport court business, and that's construction  business. The third thing that they had in common is that almost all of them kept their job.

33:07 Andrew is in medical devices, Tom is in tech, Tim works remote, uh David taught for two seasons,  Emily works at Boeing. You don't have to quit. In fact, usually you probably shouldn't quit. When  you do go to quit, it's going to be the obvious choice. It won't be something that like you're  really scared and concerned and worried about. Number four, the business that they ended  up in is usually not the one they started, and I've said this a million times.

33:30 The first  mailbox business turned into a masonry business. Walter, the shelving business, turned into  a handyman business. Steve started doing, you know, freeze-dried fruits at farmers markets,  that turned into a hospital contract. You can't plan out what the second business will look  like. You can only start the first one. So, the five things that you need to do, and every  one of them is going to be under 100 bucks.

33:53 And every one of them was made by someone in this  video. So, pick one tonight. Number one, post the listing before you own the thing. Catherine,  Tim, Walter, they all did that. Number two, knock on five new builds. Like Andrew. Number  three, send 10 handwritten notes. Like Cam. Four, post 10 founding members first month free  in one local group. Doesn't have to be snail mail business.

34:14 It could be any kind of  business. Like the Monticellis. Number five, walk into one bar on a Tuesday. Like Derek. And  the thing I keep coming back to, I didn't do any of this. I didn't start any of these businesses.  I'm talking into a microphone, sitting in the air conditioning. Andrew's the one that knocked  on the door. Walter's the one that built the shelves.

34:32 Derek walked into a bar. I would not  like doing that. You are one uncomfortable conversation with a stranger away from your dreams  becoming fulfilled. And as cheesy as that sounds, it is literally true, right? So, before you write  that off, check yourself first before you wreck yourself. Cuz it's true. So, here is the ask. If  one of these ideas worked for you or if you took an idea from this channel and did anything with  it, win or flop, I want to hear it.

34:50 There is a form in the description and the pin comment. I  would love to hear from you. Tell me the idea, how it did, and I might have you on the podcast.  And if you love any of these ideas and want to hear more about them that I just talked about,  comment below and maybe I'll have them on the podcast and we'll talk to them for a half hour or  so. We'll see you next time on The Corner Office.