Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast is live! Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 works. Oh, it worked. Okay, let's see if this works. Oh, all right. All right. All right. All right. Here we go. Singapore, where's everyone calling in from? What do we got? What do we got? Athena, not uppercase, welcome. Junk removal, Omar, welcome. Back in business. I assume you guys can see me now. Can you see me? Oklahoma, Minnesota, Tennessee, aerospace engineer, India, Texas, California, Ontario, City of Angels, 55 people in here.

00:58 Sandy, Utah, right next to Draper, hardly know her. Welcome. I'm going to be in I'm going to be in Utah this July. Hey, tell me what your business is or ask me any business questions. Um, tell me what your side hustle is. I'm glad it works now. Alabama, what city in Alabama? Zimbabwe, let's go. Missouri, Saint Clement, all right. CDA, Coeur d'Alene, baby.

01:31 Beautiful part of Idaho, up on the finger. Appliance repair, that's a good business. Restaurant business, tell me about your restaurant. Cleaning business owner, magnets, okay, okay. The Hat Bar, hey, Rachel, that's awesome. Congratulations. Calgary, okay, it's like kind of bumpy right now and the font is very small, so I'm having a hard time reading that Calgary Oh, thank you.

02:01 All right, Oklahoma. Calgary. Aviation photographer. Trash can roll out business. Welcome everyone. Ask me your questions. So, right now I'm with my buddy Braden. Yo, what's up? He is my friend {slash} videographer and we are driving from Dallas to Fort Worth to film a video about ice like an automated ice business. So, I sent out a poll you guys want to learn about it and and then later today I'm going to go deliver for DoorDash.

02:31 I just downloaded the DoorDash for Dashers app. I got approved. My background check passed and I'm going to deliver food for DoorDash this afternoon and I'm going to live stream while I do it. So, I don't know what time it'll be maybe 3 to 5 hours from now. Yeah, call it 3 to 4 hours from now. And I'm just going to see how much money I can make DoorDash and we're going to like turn it into a nice edited polished video, but we're also going to live stream it uh uh as I do it.

03:00 So, I One of my favorite jobs of all time was when I was 16 I delivered pizzas for the Hut. Uh I tried to out pizza them, didn't work. They're still around, but it was my favorite job ever because you know, the contrast of me going out and delivering pizzas in Titusville, Florida compared to uh all the people that were stuck in the store, it was hot, cooking, cash register, answering phones.

03:27 You know, I would just go back to the shop. I would see, all right, here's some pizzas, here's my address, here's my order. We'd have to look at a physical map. This was like 2004. This is pre-Google Maps, pre-smartphone and I would just go turn on my punk punk band music, Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, Jack's Mannequin, Manchester Orchestra, Blink 182, uh and I would just deliver za's with my bros.

03:50 And I had a I had a girlfriend at the time, Evan. Shout out Evan. He married my friend. Not happy about that, but you know, whatever. Water under the bridge. She would go with me to deliver pizza sometimes, and that was a good time. And so, I want to get back to that. It was like a really, really fun job, and I made a lot of money. I I like I ended up making like 15 bucks an hour, which was a lot as a high schooler in 2004.

04:13 So, I'm going to do that for DoorDash today. Uh it's not sponsored. DoorDash doesn't know who I am. Uh I just want to see do I have that same feeling um when I'm like driving all over the metroplex and having to pick up here and deliver there. It's like more variables, right? I'm picking up from all kinds of restaurants, and I'm delivering uh to all kinds of people.

04:33 Um so, can I do anything to influence my tips? Can I send them messages like funny jokes or whatever to influence how many tips I get? Like I just want to test all these things with DoorDash and then publish the video, and hopefully um people can learn from it and make more money from DoorDash. So, I'm going to be doing that this afternoon. Right? Is that what we're doing?

04:53 That's what we're doing. We don't have anything else to talk about. issues. Got what, kid? Oh, and I'm interviewing a kid in Allen, Texas, 15 years old, who he finds rare ants. Ants, a n t s. He sells them for thousands of dollars to people in some weirdo Discord group. Color- He drove all the way out with his parents to West Texas and like went out in the desert and found color- colorful ants and sold them to people on a Discord group for $5,000 as a 15-year-old.

05:22 So, I'm going to interview him later this afternoon as well, and that will go live. Do you got paid? YOU GOT PAID? OH, FIVE BUCKS. HEY, that's half my Chipotle order. Thank you. He says, uh GHL2103, "If I start a for-profit kids market, do I charge the kids to have a booth?" Absolutely, you do. Charge between 30 and 50 dollars, but they have to bring everything.

05:47 Hey, I like that. He paid me five bucks and the question got ahead of me. So, I don't need you guys to pay me, but I will say it will be easier like on the UI, the user interface it's easier for me to see your comment if there's money attached. So, pay me one cent. And uh and what you provide is you don't give them a table, a tent, or chairs. They got to bring their own stuff.

06:16 Don't even offer it as an option for an upsell. And then if you're doing a farmers market for adults, you can charge, you know, $75 to $200 per space. But I just posted an episode a week ago about the farmers market business both as a vendor and as the owner organizer of the farmers market. It's a really good business. Anyway, so we're talking about Oh, yeah, the kid with ants and I was thinking for like So, yesterday we did we filmed 10 videos.

06:40 Seven were with people we found on Facebook Marketplace. And so my team just went to Facebook Marketplace and just started scrolling and like, "Oh, wow. This woman rents out uh bouquet bars." Like so like a if a bridal shower wants, you know, a bar of flowers so women can make their own bouquets, she rents out the hardware to enable that. Uh a woman that rents out coffee cart, a guy that has a basketball hoop trailer for parties and events.

07:09 Anyway, I interviewed seven different people from Facebook Marketplace on my front porch and I was thinking, we should livestream that as well. We should. Like just set up a camera and people can watch live as I'm interviewing them. We'll still publish the published version or the edited version. But then once I'm done with the interview, whoever's like behind the the camera that's livestreaming can be like, "Chris, so-and-so wants to know this."

07:31 So, and like you guys can interview them with me. How cool would that be? So, I should have done that yesterday actually. Cuz you and Molly are just kind of like hanging out, you know? We can do it on Saturday. Ooh. Saturday? Hey, let me know in the comments if you if you guys would like that where I find like these aren't just random businesses on Facebook Marketplace.

07:52 My team goes out, they find random businesses, and then they send a poll to my newsletter. And the poll says like which one of these do you actually want to learn more about? And then only if you guys vote yes, then we reach out and invite them to my house and interview them. So, if that sounds interesting and you want me to live stream, so it can be like a an interactive YouTube video.

08:13 Um let me know in the comments if we should do that. Jason gave you A DOLLAR BILL. OH, A DOLLAR? >> NO QUESTION. No question. Thank you. Guys, I'm honestly not doing this to try to make money. I appreciate you. Um I'm just driving. Again, my truck is driving me. I am looking at the road. You can see I'm Like now is when I'm looking at you. But if I do that, my truck will yell at me.

08:33 So, I am looking at the road. But it's in full self-driving anyway, so it's lit- it's literally driving safer uh than I can drive, which isn't saying much cuz I'm not a good driver. But um anyway, what's your question? So, just to get people caught up, we're driving to Fort Worth. Uh we're going to film a video about ice machine uh businesses. And then we're going to be delivering for DoorDash while live uh here on YouTube.

08:56 So, uh I would love to learn about your businesses, your side hustles. If your story's interesting enough, then I'll send a poll about it. And then if the if it does well in the poll, I want you to come on my podcast. I have no interest in interviewing like billionaires and like just like finding more and more higher, you know, high-profile people. I want to interview the most random, you know, 15-year-old that sells ants.

09:20 Like I just want to find the most off-the-wall business ideas that uh that are approachable, that are affordable to start, and have high profit potential. That is what I love doing. Any other questions? Anything coming through I should address? Uh no, not really. One one person asked asked what the right time to start an LLC Okay. Right time to start an LLC is once you've tested it enough to know that you have like a repeatable process that's actually going to scale.

09:50 So, not pre-revenue, but like, all right, post-revenue, I'm going to stick with this, this is a thing, that's when you would want to start an LLC. Uh, man, that's funky asked, I'd love a series where you, Ramsey-style, walk into a business and interview them, kind of the business breakdown analysis, that's kind of what you're doing with Facebook Marketplace.

10:09 So, what I'm doing with Facebook Marketplace is like, it's more me asking them about their business, their numbers, how they get customers. Occasionally, I'll get an idea for them and I'll tell them. But, so I'm not quite doing that, like a consulting thing, but I want to do that. Kind of like a a Dave Ramsey for small business owners, whether their business is healthy or failing, like I think that would be really fun.

10:30 That is a concept I want to try. It's a great idea. A furnace filter club, I got to hear about that, Yianni. That sounds interesting. Family lives in Granbury. I think that's down by Maybank, uh, down by that lake, or Cedar Cedar Lake or something. So, I know Granbury. Who else we got? Any other questions? Oh, Jason gave me. Okay, Jason's my buddy. All right.

10:54 Okay, Jason, I see you. I see you. Jason's over here like, "Hey, you owe me a text, Chris." Uh, and I do. I do owe you a text, Jason, but you can see I am busy right now. This is live. It is 10:35 in the morning on a Friday. Is it Friday? Friday. Yes, it's Friday, it is. Right now, I'm I got Six Flags out the window. See that? Thoughts on Send? Send Send in Blue, that is like a an app where you can text message people in blue.

11:25 And uh, I haven't used it personally. I use straighttext.com. Um, and it does the same thing. It's like 30 bucks a month, but I see ads for Send Blue. I assume they're good. I don't know. I think they they sync with GoHighLevel, so that should be good. Tolly Ryan, two bucks. Thank you. Sweat Equity Strategies for equity and private equity deals. Uh Ryan, I would love more uh context on that.

11:52 Strategies for certain Okay, so let me let me give you an example. I think you guys should find this interesting. I love it when you guys ask questions that are broad enough that can apply to most people watching. So um my friend Hector he just invested in a forklift repair business. I say business. I'm using that term loosely. The owner is 65 years old.

12:14 He has no CRM, right? Like customer relationship management software. He He just had a a phone. And like people are like, "Hey, come fix my forklift." He's been doing that for 30 years. Turning people down. Like, that's too far. He charges like 300 an hour. And my friend for uh Hector met him through like a church contact and invested not a ton of money in his business to kind of like take it over and help him grow it and capture all the upside.

12:45 So, but now like Hector had to invest more money. He bought like a couple vans, a couple trucks. He rented a warehouse. But it's only been like 6 months and he's crushing it um because like this business just needed to be operationalized a little bit. Uh it just needed some software. Ask Papa give me 20 bucks. Oh, Papa. Thank you, Ask Papa. I think I know that channel.

13:08 I think I know your channel, Ask Papa. Um anyway, starting a business based on inspiration from you. Thank you. How would you figure out what to charge local businesses for advertising slots? I'm guessing you're talking about um the postcard business that I posted a couple weeks ago. Um I think anytime I'm trying to figure out what to charge for anything, I like I don't want to guess.

13:31 I want to charge based on value. So, in in the case of like selling ad spots to local businesses on a postcard, you have to first know what's like what that is worth to them based on precedent from other people doing it. So, for instance, in my interview, he said they did it with for a cookie business and, you know, they gave away a free cookie bakery and every single person that came in um bought something else as well.

13:58 So, it's like in that case, how many people how many new customers did it bring in? And then what percentage of them do you anticipate becoming like a lifelong customer? Um and then you back end into the the price that way. With a business like that where you're selling local local ad spots, um it's all going to come down to finding the best business for that.

14:19 The best offer. Like the the the good match of like conversion rate and ticket price. So, for instance, I'm just making this up. Let's say you find a roofing business that gets that averages a 25% close rate on a $20,000 roof and they got 12 leads. And those leads are just as good as any other lead. 12 leads from your $300 ad. That would equal three closings, right?

14:44 At a 25% close rate at $60,000 revenue from a $300 ad. So, it's like holy crap. I just need to to offer ad spots for roofing businesses. Like even if it's a dedicated postcard just for one business and instead of charging them 300, right? Where you only get 12 leads, I charge them 3,000 and they get the whole postcard and they might get 50 leads, right?

15:06 So, they get I charge them 10 times as much, but they're going to get at 50 leads, uh 12 and a half sales at 20,000 each, right? Six figures of value from $3,000 investment. So, you really just got to keep testing those ad slots with enough different types of local businesses until you know which one gets the highest ROI from you so then you can charge the absolute max amount possible.

15:29 Um aside from that just try to go on message boards and Reddit and ask around. Just call other postcard businesses as if you're potential client and ask them what they charge and start there. Like start at just market rate but then try to find like the highest and best use of that space on the postcard. What do you like don't like about HTO as a business?

15:52 Okay, I assume you're looking into franchising with them. Full disclosure, I don't drink tea as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Um so I know the business. There's one uh near where where I live. They're blowing up. Um I'm not bullish on that business. I think that it's it's like catching lightning in a bottle to find a fran- a food franchise that is hot that will stay hot for a long period of time.

16:20 Right? Crumbl is one that actually made it and their sales from last year are way down. So like even that like is a fad. The question is how much of a fad is it? Like when all the dust settles are there going to be zero Crumbls? Of course not. But there will probably be fewer locations than there are today. So if you got in early and your location is killer and your territory is killer, like you're going to crush it.

16:42 Like you'll probably do well for decades. Just like a Subway in an amazing location um is probably doing well today if it was doing well 30 years ago, right? But HTO I just don't know. Like for every Crumbl there is that made it or Subway, there's 100 food franchises that were once hot that didn't make it. And I just don't know if tea is broad enough to really to keep up.

17:09 Even Swig, like Swig went like this dirty sodas and now they're like they're leveling out. So if you got a really good location, you got in you'll you'll probably do well for a while, if not forever, right? But, um I don't I don't know enough about HTO. I just know it's a really high um upfront investment. I think they want you to buy multiple territories, um and I don't know if it has the staying power like something like McDonald's, Subway, or even Crumbl.

17:34 So, any other questions standing out? Uh I'm in traffic, so we got even more time now. What would be a good subscription business for my add-on onto junk removal business? Huh. Subscription business add-on to a junk removal business? I would first ask yourself like, do you actually want to do that? Everyone wants recurring revenue, but it's not it's not always worth chasing, right?

18:00 No one talks about the opposite to recurring revenue, which is just like making a lot of money one time. That's not always a bad thing. Um I have a friend and he he helps like uh offices dental offices find new locations, and he makes like $40,000 per deal. But, he always says, "I'm only as good as my next deal." And he like talks crap on his own business, right?

18:23 "I'm only as good as my next deal." There's nothing recurring about it, and I'm like, "Dude, you make $40,000, and you have a a system. You have a process." Your system and process is repeatable. Whether that's like this much ad spend in every month returns this much in profit. Like, if you have a repeatable system or process, that's almost as good if not just as good as recurring revenue, right?

18:46 So, there are no solutions, only trade-offs. If you don't have recurring revenue in your business, and you can't think of like a justifiable way of adding it, then just be grateful for the trade-off that you have, which is whatever junk removal offers. High ticket, um like a lot of people acquiring and buying too much stuff. Like, that is a mega trend that you're riding.

19:07 Um so, I don't Yeah, I just maybe like if you were to pair it with um um dumpster rentals, cuz that's a that's dumpster rentals, trailer rentals, and junk removal, those three go hand in hand. And so, the other two, dumpster rental and trailer rental, that's more likely to be recurring, right? You cuz you say subscribe, I say recurring. So, like a general contractor or some small business owner, B2B, like they might appreciate a discount um from you uh in exchange for you having the liability of them renting X, Y, or Z

19:44 dumpsters, trail trailers every month or every quarter or every week or whatever. That's what I would say to that. What about this one? Business idea cutting programming keys at live events. People always lose keys, and their keys are 200 to 300 dollars. Programming keys? I think like your like the fobs.