He Makes $20k/Month on the Weekends Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 I started going farmers market after farmers  market and over the course of a summer I sold $60,000 worth of product working part-time  under 20 hours a week. Your first 3 months you did 20,000 a month working 20 hours a week. Yeah.  Give or take. Yeah. Holy crap. In the beginning, we didn't really know how good this was going to  do. So, we just started it out of our basement.

00:22 You don't need a team there. You're making  a couple hundred bucks an hour of profit for the time spent of the market. That's an amazing  living that you know you can only scale farmers markets so much. So you start going online. What  does your first three months of online sales look like? When we went online in the beginning, we did  in less than 30 days what we did in 4 months.

00:36 Our best month so far, we did over $160,000 in sales.  Holy cow. Basically over the past couple of years, just online sales alone, a little north  of3 or 4 million. Wow. We've kind of just scratched the surface of the marketplace.  What other farmers market items, products, services did you see around you that seem  to be extra popular, extra profitable?

01:09 I met this guy who sold pizza dough mix at  his local farmers market. He made 60 grand in a summer, mostly profit, working 20 hours  a week out of his basement. No restaurant, no food truck. Started the business with next  to nothing. Basically, every market he walked home empty. his best day. Pulled in three grand  in four hours. So, we're gonna interview this guy.

01:27 But before I get there, I'm going to start  this episode today by breaking down how you can start your own farmers market because guess what?  I just did this with my wife. We're doing this right now and it's actually really profitable.  So, I'm going to cover that first. Then, I'm going to interview Michael about his pizza  kit business. At the end of that interview, we're going to talk about other farmers market side  hustles that are printing money, homemade pasta, all kinds of stuff.

01:48 And then he's going to give  us more farmers market hacks that you can apply to any business. And my favorite hack is a branded  bag trick that sold his product before customers ever reached his table. Enjoy. Okay, so let's talk  farmers markets. Now, I haven't spoken about this publicly yet, but it's a pretty cool story. So,  my wife and a friend launched their second kids farmers market here in the Dallas Fort Worth area  about a month ago.

02:07 They did their first last year, and it was a big success. Their first one last  year had 50 booths, and it took them a couple months to sell all the booths. This one took  them about a week to sell twice as many booths, hundred. And it was a huge success and it just got  me thinking more and more about farmers markets. Not just from the perspective of a vendor at a  market, but from the perspective of the person who owns the market.

02:30 So I know a farmers market  is like the least sexy business out there. But the unsexy businesses are the best. They're the most  profitable ones. They're the ones that people are sleeping on. So hear me out for a few minutes and  then I'll get into my interview with Michael. Let me try to convince you to start a farmers market.  I'll tell you exactly how ours broke down.

02:43 So let me be very clear. My wife and her friend/ business  partner did like 95% of the work here. I vibe coded an app for the judges so that they could  score the booths on three different age categories and several different factors. That's what I did.  And then I showed up and filmed content. They did all the work, but I had a cool inside look into  how it works and how much money it could make if the one that we didn't just do were a nonprofit.

03:08 We're doing this to help kids become entrepreneurs and not to be rich. But plenty of people could  do this to get rich and it costs almost nothing to start. So the magic is in the overhead or  the lack thereof. We had almost zero overhead. Now typically your biggest overhead is going to be  your lease or your rent or your land or like where are you going to put this market all these people  to set up 10x10 tents 6 foot plastic folding tables and chairs.

03:34 Where are you going to do this?  Well, you could do it like near city hall like I do here in my small town. But what my wife and  her friend did is they went to a popular outdoor walkable shopping area here in the Dallas Fort  Worth area. It's been here for about 15 years. It's got all the typicals. Cheesecake Factory,  Grimmaldi's Pizzeria, burger place, frozen yogurt, grocery store, you name it.

03:54 It's nice. It's cool.  But these guys are in the business of occupancy. They want as close to 100% occupancy as possible.  And they also have uh apartments. It's a mixeduse complex. So, they need things to be bustling.  They need things to appear busy. And so it's in their best interest to host a farmers market.  And so I think it was my wife called the marketing manager or emailed them or whatever and they were  thrilled to be a part of this.

04:14 They said, "Yeah, let's set a date a few months in the future.  Let's rope off some parking spaces for you and we'll help you advertise it. We'll put it up on  our electronic billboard that like 100,000 people drive by every day." That's not an exaggeration.  It's right on the freeway. We'll send an email out to our list. like we will advertise this market  for you and we won't charge you for it and we're going to give you gift cards to our shopping  center to all the businesses here to give to the judges just to say

04:41 thanks for helping participate.  So, we did it last year. It was a huge success and then we did it this year and it was a mega success  and I basically played zero role in marketing it either to the vendors or to the people that showed  up. I posted about it on Instagram the morning of. I have no idea if it drove any traffic but it was  way too short notice to make a difference.

04:57 So, I don't want anyone to think that you have to  have an audience to do this. It was packed. And it's perfect because people are already coming  to that shopping center. Most of the people at the market probably had no idea there was even  a market there that day. They just went there to buy some Lululemon leggings or whatever and then  saw a bunch of kids selling cool stuff and so they started shopping.

05:19 But a lot of people did know  there was a market. So, they came there and then they might have bought some Lululemon leggings as  well, which the shopping center would be thrilled about. And then you have all the friends and  family. You have these 7 to 17year-old kids with a booth and their parents are posting about it on  Facebook and Instagram and everywhere to friends and family and extended family and they're showing  up and driving business to the shopping center and to the other kids as well.

05:42 So, it's this beautiful  win-win all the way around. Now, here's what we did wrong. We provided tables and chairs. Never  again. Ever. Ever. Ever again. What you need to provide is just a space on the ground. Hey, here's  a map. You take a laminated piece of paper with a number on it. Take a sandbag. You throw the piece  of paper on the ground. You throw the sandbag on it so it doesn't blow away.

06:03 And then you tell  people the day before, the week before, you are booth number six. And then around 8:00 a.m. all  the vendors show up an hour before it starts. They set up. They set up their tent. We set out the  tables and chairs beforehand, which is a big pain, and I won't get into it, but we're not going to  do that again. And that was basically our only overhead.

06:20 That was our only cost. And then they  have an hour to set up or 2 hours or whatever they want or need. And then people start showing up at  9 and it lasts until 12, 1, 2:00 in the afternoon. That's how it works. A lot of these kids made  hundreds of dollars in profit. I think a few made over a thousand. And then some kids made less than  a hundred.

06:33 It just didn't go well. And the kids that typically didn't do well were the ones that  sold really, really cheap knickknacks, you know, like 3D printed objects or crafts or stuff that  people buy to be nice, but they don't really need. And it's also the stuff that takes forever  for these kids to make. So, side note, I don't recommend you sell that stuff.

06:53 The kids that did  well sold higher ticket stuff. And in this case, higher ticket is like $ 20 to $50. My daughter  sold $35 custom hats. She had an 80% margin and she made hundreds of dollars of profit in a  few hours. Her overhead was a $70 hat pressing machine and some like $4 blank hats she bought  on Amazon and some patches and stuff like that.

07:15 Great business. So, I think there's even more  opportunity to do this for adults and you could charge a lot more on booth fees as well. And this  concept of doing it at an outdoor shopping market, that's not really a thing. Now, I know Tractor  Supply, they have markets on Saturdays, and it's genius because it brings people to the Tractor  Supply. And Tractor Supplies usually aren't like in as good of location as a Walmart.

07:33 They're  usually kind of off the beaten path in more rural areas. And so it's a great way for Tractor Supply  to market to the community to let people know that they're there and then also to have a high sales  day on that Saturday because people are showing up, buy hot chocolate, then they go in and buy a  bunch of chickens or whatever. So Tractor Supply is kind of pioneering this along with my wife  and her business partner.

07:52 But at the end of this, the shopping center went up to my wife. Remember  this is the second time they did it and said, "This was amazing. How soon can we do this again?"  And they don't even have results yet. It's not like they signed a bunch of 10-year leases on  the spot. like, you know, commercial real estate doesn't work that way, but they just want bustling  activity, and that's what they got.

08:10 So, here's how the unit economics breakdown. First of all, this  shopping center is not massive. I would say it's midsize for DFW, certainly on the lower end of  midsize, but it could fit at least 200 booths. And these booths are on sidewalks and in parking  spaces. And they also have a parking garage, so they have plenty of parking. That's not an  issue.

08:30 So, a booth fee realistically at an average market is 50 to 100 bucks. And remember, you don't  need to provide anything. They bring their tent, their tables, and their chairs and their supplies  and their equipment. And if they need electricity, they just plug up to an outlet and you know, the  shopping center covers that. So, 200 stall market, $100 a piece, that's $20,000 for five or six  hours of work on a Saturday, plus of course like some prep work beforehand, some marketing.

08:56 But in the case of my wife, like they have a Facebook page with like 300 followers, Instagram  page with something tiny. like they didn't have a big audience. They're just piggybacking on an  existing audience of this shopping center. That's why it works. So, you do one of these every  weekend, put 10 grand profit in your pocket, 40 grand a month. I think that's possible.

09:15 Or  just be a vendor at these things. Or show up to one of these and see which booths are consistently  busy and then copy that concept at the same market or at a different market. I really, really love  the branded bag idea that you're about to hear in this interview. You ever heard of Justin's Nutter?  multiund million dollar brand sold in thousands of grocery stores that started at a farmers market.

09:36 Tate's Bake Shop, I think that's a billion-dollar business. Farmers market. Berts Bees, Green Goo,  Sprouts Markets, that started as a farmers market. I am actually going to finally launch my powdered  drink mix business that I've been talking about for years called Busy Juice at my local farmers  market. That's 2 minutes down the road from me on May 9th.

09:56 And I'm going to document that whole  process, buying the bags, sealing the bags, buying the ingredients, mixing it in my kitchen.  regulatory stuff. I'm going to have a live stream set up at the tent all day. I'm going to bring  samples of drinks. People are going to taste it. I'm going to sell it for 30 bucks a bag. It's got  like 70% profit margins.

10:09 I'm going to eat my own dog food or drink my own powdered drink mix in in  this case. So, be looking for that video in late May or June. These markets are just an amazing  place to get immediate real-time feedback from strangers on your product. Doesn't have to be  food. It could be cutting boards. It could be anything. Beef jerky. I guess that's food.

10:28 But go  find what works. In the case of this guy I'm about to interview, he had no precedent for a pizza mix  making a,000 or $2,000 in four hours at a farmers market. That wasn't a thing. He didn't go copy  anyone else. He just blazed his own trail and now he's got a multi-million dollar business  on his hand a couple years later. So go start a farmers market or go be a vendor at a farmers  market or go support your local farmers market as a consumer and check out this interview and please  share with a friend.

10:52 Hey, YouTube's fine, but what about when you're driving around? What about when  you're mowing the lawn? You need my audio podcast, The Kerner Office. Just look up TKO Pod in Apple,  Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, why don't you start by telling us who you are  and what you do? So, my name is Mike McCoy and I'm co-founder of Prep a Pizza where we sell  a pizza dough making kit to people who want to make better pizza at home.

11:18 That's basically  what I did for more than a decade is kind of nerded out. Bought every bit of equipment, tried  all kinds of brands. Like in the very beginning, I created a fake pizzeria so I could contact  every vendor and get like flowery you wouldn't buy anywhere else on Amazon or interesting in any  kind of specialty stores or even the restaurant stores.

11:39 So I could find, you know, kind of what I  was looking for realistically. It was, you know, I always try with food at home is like how can  I emulate a restaurant that I love? And so I start with, you know, okay, well, what brands of  flour are they using? What kind of techniques are they doing? What types of other ingredients are  incorporated with this?

11:57 And how can I, you know, almost exactly mimic it, you know, to the point  where now we've created this? Gotcha. What was what background did you have that led you to start  this business? So I, for lack of a better word, I've reinvented myself in business about  five different times. I had been doing a lot of business in the past that I wasn't really  passionate about.

12:18 None of the things that I did were really anything that I loved. And for a  while, I was kind of in a rut. Wasn't really happy. You know, family wasn't really happy with  what I was doing anyways in business. And so we kind of like sat down one night and it's just  like, okay, well, what's something that I could do that I really love and I'm passionate about  and that I could really like, you know, sink into, you know, the first thing that came to mind was  like we should start a piece pizzeria because, you know, I'd

12:49 been making pizza at home for, you  know, more than a decade. I've been nerding out on it just like you did. And realistically,  it was my passion. It was my love, you know, for a really long time. And everybody else loved  it, too. like, you know, we'd always have pizza parties and things like that and everybody would  say, "Wow, you should really open a pizzeria.

13:03 You should really open a pizzeria." And so one day I  turned to my wife and said, "Would you like me to open a pizzeria?" And she said, "No." Cuz we've  both worked in the restaurant industry before. It's brutal. Like, you'll be there night and day.  Like, I don't want you to open up a pizzeria. So I sat and I thought and I was like, well I kind of  come from a direct response marketing background and basically have all kinds of background with  restaurant training as well as you know online training and things like

13:33 that. So I thought well  how can I marry all of that together? And that's where kind of our pizza dough making kit kind of  was born where basically I provide you with the best quality ingredients and also training and  support so that way you could execute because that's the biggest problem with most people.  Most people have a challenge in getting to the finish line and so then they go back they revert  backwards and go to the grocery store and you know buy what's pre-made, what's kind of easiest.

14:00 And  once you get past the point, just like you did, once you get back past the point of making  something really good, you're like, "Wow, this can be amazing at home." And that's kind of  the biggest hurdle that I think most home cooks have with making pizza. It's funny because you had  that you said the comment where you're so good at making pizza, you should open a pizzeria.

14:20 Like,  I swear every failed restaurant that ever failed was because someone had that same experience over  and over and over. they were good at making X, Y, or Z food and all their friends and family said,  "You should open a restaurant." What those people don't realize is that opening a restaurant is  nothing like being a good cook. Like being a good cook is like 20% of it.

14:38 You still have to run  a dang business, you know? And so then they open this restaurant and they're there till midnight  every night and then it fails because a business is much different than just cooking in your  kitchen. So what did that first month look like? How did you start your business? So basically  in the beginning we didn't really know how good this was going to do.

14:57 So, we realistically  kind of just started it out of our basement, for lack of a better word. I would measure, me  and my wife would spend, you know, evenings in the basement like measuring out ingredients and  building these kits and, you know, we pre-ordered all of these different bags and stuff like that  that we could then load everything with with, you know, just like normal gram scales in our  basement at on tables and stuff like that.

15:17 And then we had a ceiling machine and we would build  these and we'd build, you know, typically like a hundred at a time. And then I would go out to  farmers markets because I knew that that was kind of like the fastest way that you could go and  present some type of food related product and see if there was a market for without, you know,  realistically low-end investment.

15:41 weren't really spending any money online or anything that I  started going to farmers markets and then I started to go to three or four farmers markets  a week and every single time I'd go, you know, I'd show up, I'd have a little pizza oven and my  table set up and, you know, 30 to 40 of these and every single time I'd walk home without and people  would buy them.

16:02 And I wasn't the cheapest product at the farmers market. You know, we charged $30  for our kit, $29.97 online. And realistically to a consumer for pizza dough, I mean that's  probably the biggest comment we get online. Oh, that's really expensive. But it's not just about  the ingredients inside of the bag. It's about the training, the support that you get, you know,  the actual level of commitment to making sure you pass the finish line and enjoy your experience.

16:28 That's what really sells. At any rate, I started going farmers market after farmers market. And  basically over the course of a summer, you know, I sold roughly $60,000 worth of product kind of  your first summer working part-time. Like I mean typically the farmers market is like a couple  hours. I was maybe like three to four a week. So under 20 hours a week that I was working on  this project selling $60,000 worth of stuff.

16:51 So it wasn't that at all. So your first three months  you did 20,000 a month working 20 hours a week, give or take. Yeah. Holy crap. What was your  profit on that 60,000? So, in the beginning, it was pretty much all, you know, for the most  part profit because the margins on the actual product. So, I would say if you factored in our  time, we spent a lot of time making everything.

17:21 So, it wasn't, you know, like realistically the  showing up to the market and everything like that in the end result of selling that part was,  you know, kind of a limited amount of time. the backend time which was you know us being our own  in-house manufacturing facility that was probably the majority I would say of the work but as far  as you know ingredients are not inexpensive but they're not expensive but then we also were buying  in bulk so I could lower my cost and things like that but then we were

17:49 manufacturing in house so  technically we literally in house manufacturing in basement yeah manufacturing at home so and then  you know, we just kind of grew from there. Yeah. Then when I took it online, basically we kind of  knew we had something, didn't really know how well it would do online and I was a little bit new to,  you know, like Facebook advertising and I kind of hired agencies out then took everything over on my  own and now we've been pretty much exploded from there.

18:19 So I want you to grade my pizza recipe and  then I'm going to guess your margins. my my pizza double zero flour 1 kilogram 1,000 gram that's  going to that's going to set me back and I I don't buy in bulk that's going to set me back like  eight bucks or something right six bucks something like that six to eight bucks then I'm going to put  in 700 gram of water and I'm going to put in like six gram of yeast and 25 gram of salt that sounds  about right so if I were selling that it looks like you're 30 bucks for six

18:46 pizzas worth and  so that's like I'm guessing I don't know is that like a pound and a half. So, the package itself  weighs out to 2 L pounds. Okay. 2 lbs. Okay. So, I'm guessing you've got like 80% margin on that  product. As far as the the actual ingredients and things like that, I'd say that's that's probably  pretty close. Gross margin. Yeah. Yeah.

19:04 I mean, I I will say that our good friend Zuckerberg gets  the majority of our money right now. Sure. Yeah. We'll go in we'll go into the ecom side, but  now I'm thinking for like I'm still thinking on uh the farmers market side. So, first summer, are  you doing like one farmers market every Saturday or are they more often than that? So, there are  ones that you can do like throughout the week.

19:24 So, I did a Wednesday, Thursday, and two Saturday  markets and that was the four that that I did in a week. Okay. So, I had my wife go to one and I went  to another one on Saturday. But realistically, in a lot of towns, there are ones that you can do.  You know, essentially Wednesday through Saturday, typically there's a market in some some place or  some town close to you.

19:51 It just depends on what town it is. So, okay. But realistically, someone  could easily get three in by themselves. So, you guys were doing like, call it like 12 to 16  markets a month that first summer, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, call it 48 markets. You're doing  like 1,200 to,500 in sales per market on average. And I'm sure some are like 400 and some are  2,000.

20:17 Is that accurate? Yeah. It just depends on the day. Yeah. And then markets are what, four to  six hours. So, typically the the ones around here are about two to three hours of the total time of  the actual market itself. So, like I'd say you're probably there for maybe four and a half hours  total, if that. Okay. Like it really wasn't that long. So you're only making pizzas for samples.

20:42 You're not selling pizzas. It's just the kids. Right. Right. So the goal in the beginning was not  to become a pizzeria, but to sell Yeah. You know, show pe showcase the product, sell people on, hey,  you can do this, too, and this is how good it can. So I would make it exactly the same. So there'd be  no difference in the dough, you know, and I would do minimal stuff like minimal cheese, minimal  toppings, you know, things like that.

21:05 highlight the dough. Minimal sauce, minimal cheese, so  they could really taste what good dough could be versus, well, you're just putting a ton of sauce  or you're just putting the best. Yeah. Yeah. Now, are you putting anything else in the mix other  than flour, salt, yeast? So, we add a couple of helpers. We provide honey as a helper, like  powdered honey.

21:26 We're going to change that in time for vegan people, but basically a healthier sugar,  which helps the yeast activate. We also provide diastatic malt powder. We do a two-part recipe.  We teach pish, which is a bread making step of making a pre-ferment before you actually finish  your dough. So, when you mixed more ingredients in the pizza industry, it helps to kind of move  things along faster.

21:51 That's why we chose this recipe because we're trying to, you know, like  if I said, "Hey, man. All right, cool. You know, mix all that stuff together. All right, now let it  sit in the fridge for three days, you know." Yeah, that's what I do. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. So  some people, you know, are are definitely more into like the faster time. So we were trying to  sure, how could we give people the right recipe, but also the fastest recipe where we landed  with this.

22:15 I mean, you've got to you've got to build it for the lowest common denominator for the  everyday at home. You got to make it easy, simple, frictionless. Yeah. You said the word poolish  and I I heard Veto, that YouTuber. I'm sure you you know him. Yeah. Yeah. He's so entertaining.  I know him very well. I see him every year at the Pizza Expo. Oh, that's awesome.

22:35 We talk a good  bit. So, he's a good friend. It's funny because I'm thinking back to the conversation you had with  your family. Like, what is your passion? Like, oh, it's pizza. If I were to have that conversation  with my family, oh man, it's pizza. It's barbecue. It's mowing the lawn. It's trimming trees. It's  planting trees. It's fruit. It's horiculture.

22:54 Like, I have so many passions. But I will say  like in the passion versus profit argument, like passion is just the way to go, man. Like you might  not be able to afford starting a business that's your passion early on, but as soon as you can like  do a business that you are passionate about and you will have the most rewarding, fulfilling life  ever.

23:10 They always say if you do what you love, you never work a day. You never work a day. And it's  true. It's a cliche, but it's so true. Okay, so by my count, you're making it, you know, exclude  the time it takes you to prep the stuff. If you just look at the the time spent at the market,  it's only you because you're offering something that's very simple.

23:30 you know, pay here, here's  the QR code to Venmo or whatever, right? You don't need a team there. You're making a couple hundred  bucks an hour of profit for the time spent at the market. Of course, doesn't account for your time  before then. That's an amazing living, but you, you know, you can only scale farmers markets so  much. So, you start going online.

23:44 What does your first three months of online sales look like?  So actually in the very beginning and another thing too just like a sidebar is that we didn't  just do farmers markets. We did different food shows. We did lots of golf tournaments. We did  neighborhood events. Basically anywhere that would let me show up, make a little bit of pizza  and had a crowd like is kind of where you know golf tournaments was really big one.

24:12 like it was  a super, you know, lowfi thing to spend, you know, a golf round sitting around making pizza, chit  chatting with people and, you know, easily I was selling 40 or 50 of them at a golf tournament.  Wow. It was definitely a good place for it. Guys, tkowners.com. That's my community where people  are building businesses. I do AMAs, Q&As's every week live.

24:33 You can ask me anything you want. You  can have accountability partners. It's about a thousand people in there building, starting,  growing businesses. Check out TKO as in the kerner office. tkowners.com. When we went online  in the beginning, I was kind of I was a little bit new to Facebook marketing. So, I hired an agency  on at first and we did okay, but realistically, we didn't really do great.

24:54 And it wasn't until I took  things over myself and really started investing in to the marketing and understanding everything that  we went like probably our first four months of marketing basically our sales online were dismal.  Although we did, you know, get a call from a show that everybody knows that you go on their show  and they'll maybe invest in your business.

25:13 Oh, did you did you go on it? We haven't yet, but  basically they invited us to try out for the the show. And I laughed because when they called us,  I said, "Well, we've sold five of these online, so I'm not really sure we're ready for you guys yet,  but I guess we'll sign up." Uh, so maybe at some point we'll get on that show, too. But it's kind  of funny.

25:35 At any rate, so after that basically we did in less than 30 days what we did in four  months in sales just by me taking over everything and really understanding the marketing and how  Facebook marketing works and you know kind of applying the right principles and like we've been  just scaling from there. We're our best month so far we did over $160,000 in sales.

26:03 Holy cow. You  know, and basically over the past couple of years, just online sales alone, a little north of three  or four million dollars in sales. And we've kind of just scratched the surface of the marketplace.  We're just understanding how to build this business. You know, as I'm sure you're aware of,  the ecom world is not, you know, the it's not just like press play and you're instant millionaire.

26:28 You've got to actually like do a lot of things to get it going right and efficient and, you know,  cost efficient. based on your advertising and that's the most expensive thing. But kind of like  the good thing about what we're doing is that we had, you know, margins in place that allowed us  to really kind of explode our marketing where other companies out there might only have  a 10 or a 15 or 20% margin.

26:48 Yeah. I mean, it looks like you have 60 active ads right now,  which is awesome. Most people don't realize that about Facebook ads. You have to have a way more  creatives than you think, and you have to rotate them much more often than you think. We're like,  we're friends of the farmers market. My wife put on a farmers market for kids. She was in charge  of it with a friend and we're vendors at a farmers market here in town regularly.

27:13 We sell all kinds  of stuff. We're an entrepreneurial family. So, I'm going to one next month and I'm going to sell  a powdered drink mix in a gusset bag like what you sell yours in, right? It's a powdered drink mix  with three ingredients that I personally drink and invented and love. And so, I'm going to do it  a to make money, b to make some content about it.

27:33 What tips would you have for me for selling a  product that has a form factor just like yours but is a powder drink mix instead? It's going to  be a similar price point as well. Yeah, I'd say literally set up some cameras behind you. Yeah.  And have people try it. Do people have issues with the cameras or the mics at all? Ever? No. Never  had one issue, you know, with it or anyone like thinking, you know, something was wrong?

27:55 But to  me, it just felt like if I was too like abrasive about it, then people would care. If that makes  sense. Like if I was just like, "Okay, hey, can you hold this mic real quick because I'm trying  to make content for my, you know, blah blah blah." That people just pretend like it's not there  unless they say something. Yeah. Hypothetically, so you did 60 grand the first summer just at  farmers markets.

28:16 What might you have done in sales that same summer if you had no samples?  You were just kind of selling them on the dream and you just had the product there. Honestly,  I think I will say that it it was 5050 because I also tried selling without samples. Okay. and  more so I would say without samples someone that had bought some equipment and failed you know so  realistically it's kind of like you know the a lot of people that went to farmers markets also  were the outdoor cooking crowd of people and so it was a very

28:53 easy pull for our product I would  say that definitely samples help you know and in the beginning samples I would suggest for any  product doesn't matter what it is like samples because that you know except obviously like eggs  you can't crack an egg and then say hey you know you just get to say my chickens lay the best  eggs right now if in Texas we have the Texas cottage food law where if I were to make pizzas at  this market I need a food handlers permit and it's totally different than if I sell cookies

29:23 because  those don't require refrigeration I don't need any licensing if I sell cookies right in your  case did you need a special license to give out samples or no so that's kind of interesting  And we actually talked with someone in Texas about reselling our product there as well. And the  laws are only applied if you sell the pizza. So, if I'm just giving you a sample of a pizza that  I've made, you know, to test out, it doesn't apply because the exact same laws in Georgia where, for  example, if I show up to a

29:55 farmers market and I'm selling pizza to people, I am now a food truck.  You're basically a restaurant. Yeah. Yeah. So, because of that, so the law is almost like  identical between the two states. Yeah. in most states. I found out that like Pennsylvania  is the only one that's like really weird about it. But other than that, the majority of states,  it's it's been, you know, something where anyone could do.

30:22 Okay. What was your best market ever  with regards to sales and what was your worst? I think my best market ever we did like close to  three grand, but it was a really it was a really big like it was kind of a a big event that was all  tied up together with the farmers market as part of it. So there were basically it was almost like  triple the amount of people that would normally come to the farmers market.

30:48 And I would say that  every farmers market is not a great, you know, great place. So you have to be a little bit  picky and choosy. Yeah. I would say ones that cities hold on like that are actually inside  of the city limits I've found tend to be better than ones outside of the city limits. That's the  one I'm doing. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason why is because I've been to ones that basically are a  farmers market like in the traditional sense of on the side of the road that no one showed up to  because it was poorly

31:19 marketed. Where the cities are trying to, you know, especially smaller  cities, they're trying to get people to come into their town and also do business with the  other businesses in town. And farmers markets is a great way to kind of get people around the area  to actually come in and invest in the town itself. Yeah. Okay. What about these classes?

31:40 Who's doing  classes and what how big is that business? So, every person who buys our pizza dough making  kit gets our free master class. So, basically, we provide them with a course. It walks them step  by step on how to make pizza dough the proper way. You know, has tons of different troubleshooting  information. It's actually something we're reshooting because we also found other things  that people had problems with.

32:01 So, it's something that's ever evolving for us. But then we also  back that by providing customer support. So for example, like if you had a question and you were  making dough and you needed a little bit of help, you could hop on the chat on our website and lo  and behold, I'm the person answering it right now. And so I I help people out every single day.

32:20 You  can even call our 800 number and get real answers to kind of, you know, the goal realistically  our goal is is to have people enjoy what they're making, be successful in their making, and you  know, making it, and then having a really good pizza at home, better than any around them, which  makes them want to make it more often. Okay. So, you've got a master class, but that's free to  anyone that purchas it just so they can learn how to better use your product.

32:45 That's not like  a a revenue generating side of the business, but it supports your revenue. Exactly. Yeah.  Okay. If someone's watching this right now and they love pizza or they love cooking and they want  to monetize that somehow, what suggestions would you have for them? Would it be selling pizza at  a farmers market? Would like in the pizza space, what's like an approachable business idea or more  than one um that people could implement?

33:05 Yeah, I mean I would say that you know reselling pizza  related products versus selling pizza because for example selling pizza there's an initial  investment just like having a restaurant in the equipment to make the pizza as well as the  licensing that you would need to to sell it. Not that it's like super expensive, but sometimes,  you know, not everybody has, you know, let's just call it under $25,000 stowed away to, you know,  start a pizza venture with.

33:37 And so, realistically, selling products like this, I think, or other, you  know, even equipment would be something where, you know, you can showcase equipment and how it works  in certain ways. I wouldn't say like stones and steels are really hard to showcase, you know, like  at a venue like that, but that would be something that easily someone could go and sell.

34:02 You know,  they would just require the inventory. So, yeah. When you were spending time at these markets,  what other like farmers market items, products, services did you see around you that seem to be  extra popular, extra profitable? So, I would say the majority of people that seem to make the most  money were someone who made baked goods. They seem to sell out of their products pretty frequently.

34:30 And especially if they were good at making the baked goods, they didn't have a lot left over.  you know, definitely, you know, I know home making is a really big niche and so, you know, people  making breads and things like that at home and being able to go and sell that at farmers markets,  those seem to do really well. And then, you know, kind of like I would say interesting things as  well.

34:50 Uh, you know, like we had there was a lady that sold pickles, like she made her own pickles  and everything like that. There was a lady who, you know, basically kind of had multiple different  farmers markets and she sold pasta and so basically fresh make pasta. She made it out of her  basement and everything like that. And then, you know, had kind of like this army of girls going  around to different farmers markets selling pasta.

35:16 She did well. So, I think she does pretty well at  it considering she has I mean, if you have an army of people that you're paying to go do it, like  you're not going to scale something that doesn't work. Yeah. That's very interesting. What was  the form factor? I imagine it wasn't dried out. Did she like make the pasta fresh and then bag it  and refrigerate it?

35:30 Basically, it was refrigerated pasta and so they'd show up coolers and basically,  you know, interesting. And she had a following at the market because that's that's typically what  happens is like you start to build a following of people that buy your product and then buy it over  and over again. And almost like weirdly only want to buy it from the farmers market like where I had  to convince several people.

35:51 They kept asking me, "When are you going to be back at the market?" And  I'm like, you know, I I got to go to my website, but you can buy it online. I literally will  ship it to you tomorrow. And they're like, yeah, oh, I don't trust the internet. And  I'm like, just come on, let's let's talk. Michael, this is an incredible business. Thank  you for sharing your time with us.

36:13 I love your story. Where can we find you if we want to  learn more or buy your pizza kits? Yeah. So, if you go to prepap.com, you can buy our pizza  kit and you'll see a boatload of ads from me if you're on Facebook or Instagram or Google. Okay.  Thank you, Michael. No problem. Thank you. Listen, I need more people like this to interview  on my podcast.

36:36 So, if you know of someone with a side hustle or a business that's  unique and cool and super profitable, email Molly M o ly at co-founders.com. That's  one word, coofounders.com. Mollyfounders.com. Tell her your story and we'll give you a  hundred bucks if we end up interviewing them.