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Podcast

The Side Hustle King- “I’m Making $8k/Day From Easy Businesses”

My First Million

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  • Floating Hole-in-One Golf Business
    • Chris Koerner shared the idea of a floating hole-in-one golf challenge that pays $10,000 for a hole in one.
    • This roadside golf game uses math to profit despite frequent payouts, making it a fun, low-maintenance side hustle. Transcript: Chris Koerner Other people could do. Dude, I think you should pull up that video of the hole in one golf challenge. This is one that I can’t get out of my head all right so here we go look at this freaking thing right here and i see a basically a golf putting green so like the the we’re just the part where Shaan Puri The hole is and it’s just floating out in the ocean and you said that this driving range in new zealand pays out ten thousand dollars if you hit a hole in one. It’s 111 yards away, you get this like, plaque, if you hit the hole in one. And so what is the business here? They basically, they it’s like a carnival game, they charge you a little bit to try to hit a hole in one. Is that it? Chris Koerner Yeah, it’s kind of like think of like unbundling a carnival. It’s the business is math. They’re just using math, right? And here’s the math. The average amateur golfer, and I don’t golf, I hate golf, has a one in 25,000 chance of getting a hole in one on a par three, which this is, okay? And so this company in New Zealand, it’s right off the road on this lake. They have announced multiple times that they pay out on average once every two weeks. So I can use math to say, all right, these guys, and I know how much they sell balls for. It’s like 40 bucks for 25 balls or something. And they have a sensor in the hole and they have divers go get the balls every couple of weeks. There’s like a scuba diver swimming around the thing. Is he there all the time or he just does that once a week, goes and gets all the balls? Just once a week. And so I can surmise, based on math and statistics, that this place net profits like three to $500,000 a year, which is, there’s nothing to see there. It’s a little stand with a floating green, one guy just standing there with an iPad. So why isn’t this all over the place? Wait, so you said this is just roadside in New Zealand? There’s one. There’s one of these in the world that I know of off the side of a road in New Zealand. Shaan Puri But it’s off the side of the road. It’s not even like near a golf course or tourist attraction. You’re just saying this is just in a random area right now. Yeah. Chris Koerner All right. Shaan Puri So let’s say we wanted to do this. Let’s brainstorm this together and maybe we’ll actually do this. Maybe we’ll find a listener to run this for us to make it happen. But like, we’ll make this an MFM case study. All right. So how would we do this in order to make this happen, you know, quickly, like get momentum and then have it actually work, have it actually be successful? So to me, it’s all about piggybacking, right? Chris Koerner I don’t want to guess where the golfers are. Like, there are no golfers where this place is, but how much better would they be doing if there was already a captive audience right there? And so I would just find one golf course. You know how you go to a golf course and like after the 18th hole, there’s just like a putting green where you can chill. It would be like that. Okay. Take your nearest pond, put a floating green out there, put a tee and have a little iPad with a stand and say, here’s your ball, just like a driving range. 20 balls, 20 bucks or whatever, $10,000 if you get a hole in one. And it’s a way for a golf course to earn additional revenue. They’re not about to build a floating green and work out the logistics of the point of sale. So yeah, you could do this as a service and say, we’ll install this. You’re going to have more net income without doing any work. We’re going to take 30% of all your revenue as a fee. Okay. Shaan Puri I kind of love this idea, but you need the water for this floating thing, right? Or what do you, what are you suggesting? So like, how would you do this if the golf course is not situated by like, you know, like in this case, it’s like the ocean or whatever. Chris Koerner Like, I think I’m glad you brought that up because I think the water is a key point. Like as men, we want to throw rocks in the water. Shaan Puri Yeah, I think visually there’s something that, like my testosterone went up like 15 points just looking at this. Like I could do this, right? Like if it was literally just like, oh, like here’s just like a hole. Here’s the 19th hole, right? You could do that. You could brand it. Oh, this is the 19th hole. But just having that obstacle of mother nature there. Chris Koerner Yes. There’s something to that. I mean, you win either way. So you get it on the green, you feel awesome. You get a hole in one, you win $10,000. You really feel awesome. You miss, you see a splash. You can’t lose. Or worst case scenario, you’re just playing golf. You’re paying money to play golf, which is why you’re there in the first place. Shaan Puri And you’re going to get content out of this also. You’re going to have your buddy film you, or we set up a camera here where you get like an Instagram worthy story for, you know, for, for this thing. How much do you say people pay to take a swing at this? Or, you know, they buy 10 balls or what do they do? Chris Koerner It’s like 20 bucks or like 35 bucks for 20 balls or 50 bucks for 40 balls something like that oh so you get like 20 to 40 hacks at it to do it yeah that’s pretty good and every guy thinks he can Shaan Puri Do it right of course or that today might be and also golf you’re already like i don’t know what the average spend is of a golf day like of a golf outing i don’t play golf personally but like There’s the, there’s the actual, like the cost to actually play that day on the course. There’s all the clubs, investments you’ve done. There’s the cat, there’s the tips, there’s the food, there’s the, the beer along the way. There’s all this like money spent. Dude, to spend an extra 40 bucks to have a blast with your buddies at the end or to have a story or to just like, you know, do something at the end. That’s an absolute no brainer. If you actually did this with the golf course, I thought you were going to say though, that you would do it just on the route to the golf course. You know, there’s a lot of golfer traffic. Who’s going to take a roadside stop here and try to do this. Chris Koerner I mean, you could do that too. Like I’m picturing like a freeway with a lake over to the right and an exit nearby. You rent the billboard right above it, arrow pointing down $10,000 for a floating hole in one. And people can just pull off and do it. Like it doesn’t have to be a golf course. Like you could use the same principle. And to me, the principle is just math as a service, right? We’re calling this (Time 0:02:20)
  • Leverage Facebook Marketplace
    • Use Facebook Marketplace to post organic local service offers like fencing or Bitcoin mining hosting.
    • Posting often across multiple accounts and cities can generate millions without paid ads. Transcript: Chris Koerner Let’s say fencing business. All they do is post to Facebook Marketplace organically once a week to get all their leads. By the way, Facebook Marketplace has one billion monthly active users. Shaan Puri Just that tab. Crazy. And no one’s talking about it. What are we doing? Chris Koerner So I’ve got a story for you. I’ve got a story. Shaan Puri And by the way, just explain the thing you just said real quick before you go to your story. So you said there’s people who own like local fencing companies. Their entire sales machine is posting on face marketplace fencing services. Chris Koerner Is that what you’re saying? Or answering the request for fencing service? What are they actually doing? Yeah, like they’re just posting, hey, I put up fences, cedar, six foot, $8 per linear foot. And then people message him and he goes out and gives a quote and he has a $7,000 job. Like there’s nothing paid. There’s no paid ads. This is just one organic post that takes him five minutes and he’ll refresh it every couple of days. Shaan Puri Dude, I don’t know if you saw this. We did this episode with high schoolers. I think it was like a high school version of Shark Tank. I saw that, yeah. And there was a kid who was, I think, 17, 18 years old, and his entire business, I forget even what the service was. It was home services of some kind. I don’t remember. It was like window washing or something. Yeah, it was like window washing or like, oh, it was gutter cleaning. Gutter cleaning. Actually, it was their highlight thing. It was like gutter cleaning. And his entire business model was off of Nextdoor. So he’s like, yeah, I just started this in my neighborhood where I live. I went on Nextdoor and I said that I do this and I serviced, you know, the last year I serviced 60 homes in this neighborhood of 600 homes or whatever it was for gutter cleaning. And that generated, I’m making up the numbers now because I don’t remember off the top of my head, but it was like 500,000 in revenue. And we were like, what? And he’s like, yeah, I just post on there that this is what I do. And then it’s people in our neighborhood. And I was like, so could you post in the next neighborhood? He’s like, yeah, I’m trying to figure out how to get around the, you know, like, yeah, I can. I just haven’t done that yet. It’s like, wow, this is, everybody should do this. Like, you know, what is my kid doing? What are they teaching you in pre-K right now? Got to get after it with this next door, you know, next door lead gen, basically. And so you’re saying the same thing is happening at a bigger scale on Facebook Marketplace. Chris Koerner Yeah. Both great opportunities. Okay, great. So tell me the story you’re going to tell me. Yeah, this is an outlier example. Okay. Results not guaranteed. But 2021, China had canceled Bitcoin mining, right? 2021 was a crazy year. A lot of money being printed. And we started a Bitcoin mining facility. And people were selling Bitcoin miners and hosting services on Facebook Marketplace. And so these miners cost $10,000. So you go type in the name of the model and you see them listed. Cool. But I thought, huh, the hosting price, because if you buy a Bitcoin miner, you have to host it at like a data center. And it’s usually like 200 bucks a month for the hosting fee. So I just posted organically to Facebook Marketplace, Bitcoin mining hosting service. But instead of putting in the price of the miner, which turns people off, $10,000. $10,000, right. Yeah, I put in the price of the hosting, $200. And then when you click into it in the description, it’s like, it’s actually $200 for hosting. Here’s the cost of the minors. I’m not exaggerating. That one ad, and I had it going on multiple accounts. We would refresh it. But no paid, no paid. Did $9.8 million all on Facebook Marketplace in three months. Profitably. Like, this isn’t like you’re oh and we spent 9.8 million in ads like right profitably that’s like the potential and kind of an extreme outlier but i have other more and you were just to Be clear you were selling miners that you had that you already owned or what were you doing we were pre-selling them and then ordering from them from china so we had a positive cash flow Conversion cycle in addition to all that. Shaan Puri All right. So you went on Facebook ads, you specifically did the marketplace ads. Is that right? Not even ads. Chris Koerner We were just posting. Just posting. Shaan Puri Just organic posting. And you’re posting every day. You’re posting it and you’re posting it in every city. Did you set up like a farm to post these? How’d you do that? Yeah. Chris Koerner We used VAs and multiple Facebook accounts and (Time 0:09:30)
  • Pet Cremation Business Model
    • Chris launched a pet cremation business after learning about its 90% net margins and market potential.
    • He combined lead generation with logistics solutions to serve veterinarians and cremation facilities profitably. Transcript: Chris Koerner We started a pet cremation business. And that’s a fun one. That one’s actually very profitable. That’s a fun one. Fun for you, maybe. Shaan Puri Okay, so explain. How’d you get the idea? And then what is it? How’d you do it? Chris Koerner Okay, so it all started with a relationship that my business partner had with a very high volume veterinary clinic here in DFW. They do as much business as five veterinary clinics. And he learned about the industry and how pet cremation has like 90 plus percent net margins. It’s a very old school business. And so there’s a, but you know, we’ve had this puppy boom during COVID. So all these puppies are five years old now. There’s more dogs than children. That’s, that’s like the whole thesis. There’s more dogs than children. It’s only getting crazier. And cremation has 90% margins. Most of the operators are 60 plus years old. They’re doing great. They’re doing fine. They don’t need ads. They don’t need organic. And if you go look at the Google keyword tool, we saw that the search competition was low. The ticket size was high, and the search traffic was high. Shaan Puri So we launched a business around that thesis. Sorry, so explain, you went to the Google Ads keyword tool, right? That’s where you went to kind of diligence the demand for this. That’s it. And you found, obviously the holy grail, low competition, high ticket. And what was the third one? Growth or demand? Volume, high volume, low competition, high ticket. Yeah. Holy grail. And so you start one of these and you’re actually the service that does it or you’re the lead gen? Chris Koerner We are both. We have two different businesses. One is a programmatic SEO site that generates leads for cremation facilities all over the country. And then the other one is we’re just a middleman. We have refrigerated vans and we pick up the pets frozen from the facilities and deliver it from the veterinarians. And then we deliver it to the cremation facilities and take a margin. Okay, gotcha. Shaan Puri And so tell me a little about this business. I don’t, I know nothing about the pet cremation business. What did you do in the first 90 days to make this business come to life? Because I like the speed with which you operate. We’re going to talk about another one in a second that I think is like a quick off the ground version of these ideas. And you very much are a zero to one kind of guy. Like I like that you do a lot of different things. Like that you’re high energy and you’re basically like, not lazy. There’s a lot of people out here who sell this kind of like side hustle, passive income. There’s nothing passive about you. I feel like you are Mr. Active actually, in the sense that you get after it. Once you have an idea, you know, I have this phrase like, you know, inspiration is perishable. Ideas are avocados. They go brown very quickly. And I think what’s great about you is that you don’t let the ideas and the inspiration perish. You actually act on it very quickly and you have, you have a high, high bias reaction. So what are the first 90 or so days look like when you have a new idea? Chris Koerner And maybe you could use this one as an example, or if not, you could use a different one. Yeah. I focus most of my energy on validating the idea with like some ad spend or a couple conversations or whatnot. I don’t do any like extensive market research. I don’t talk to any potential customers. And I’m not saying there’s not value in that. That’s just not how I roll. I really, really like using tools like Facebook, like general publicly available tools that most people know and love. Stuff I can do from my boxers at home. Shaan Puri That’s what I like. Chris Koerner Right. Yes. And a lot of times by the end of the day, I realized, oh, this is a dud. Let’s move on. But also a lot of the times by the end of the day, I’m like, oh, wow, there’s something here. My thesis was true. Let’s put another day into this. So like what would you do in this pet cremation business? What did you do? So the thesis here started with this relationship that my business partner had. And the pitch was, let’s get the cremation facility owner and the veterinary clinic owner in the same room together and pitch them this. Like win-win. Hey, we’re going to get you more veterinarian clinics because we’re really good at sales okay and then to the vet hey uh you need to raise your prices you’re way too low uh you’re going To make even more margin working through a middleman believe it or not because we’re going to be we’re going to only do one thing we’re going to pick up pets and we’re going to drop them Off and so there was a big conflict of interest interest here because the cremation facility owner was about to lose some margin. But he was like we were selling him on the fact that we would bring him a lot more customers. And so basically, this was a good example of what I normally do. If that conversation doesn’t go well, I don’t launch the business. Shaan Puri I just move on. And you weren’t afraid that when you put those two in the same room, they’re like, great. Yeah, we should do this. Who’s this guy? What is it? Why do we need this guy? Did you see any risk in putting yourself there as the middleman with this and actually connecting the two dots, the really high volume vet clinic with the information service that you Thought they should be using? Well, the thing is, is that they were already working together, right? Chris Koerner And so what you’re saying was correct. That was the risk. We insert ourselves. You saying there was some friction there was some friction that you were offering to remove is that right yeah and the friction in this case was what it was that the the veterinary or the Cremation facility owner made all his margin on the actually doing the cremation and he was losing money on all the logistics okay um but this customer we were talking to was one of his Biggest customers and so we were saying hey you’re going to lose some margin on this biggest customer because we’re inserting ourselves, we’re going to take some of it. But we’re going to more than compensate for it by a removing that logistics off your plate and be finding you more veterinary clinics. Shaan Puri And then for the vet clinic, you were saying, hey, raise your price a little bit. And we need to be able to do that to make this work. Chris Koerner Yep. Shaan Puri And so our thesis was if that conversation doesn’t go well, the business doesn’t launches. Chris Koerner Right. It’s an asymmetric bet. Shaan Puri But if it does, then we have the hardest part. We have customers and revenue through the door from day one if they agree to this. Exactly. And then you went and tried to recreate that with, you know, getting 15 other veterinary clinics. Now, most of them, I assume would already have had a partner or some vendors for cremation services. And so what’s your sales pitch to them? How did you go and get more customers on board? Chris Koerner Yeah, our sales pitch was like, our competitors were very unsophisticated. Like they would literally walk through the front door of a veterinary clinic, get the frozen dogs, put them in a bag and then walk out the waiting room. And so our pitch was like, that’s our competition. We will never do that. We’ll pull out back, unmarked van. We’ll be very caring and respectful. In some cases, they don’t even have to pay anymore. Shaan Puri And we’ll just pick out the phone and be reliable. That was the pitch. And is there something (Time 0:37:20)
  • Validate Market Demand Efficiently
    • Use a virtual assistant or AI voice agent to call businesses and validate demand for services like stump grinding.
    • Early market research helps identify willingness to outsource and potential pricing before launching. Transcript: Chris Koerner Him. Like, yes, that actually works. We own a tree trimming business and a big bottleneck for us is stump grinding. So we thought, I thought, man, there needs to be a business that’s just stump grinding, but B2B. Not stump grinding that goes through homeowners, but only the ones that goes through the other tree trimming companies. Because we own a tree trimming company and we could see it from the inside. So I had a thesis. I hired a virtual assistant and today I would just use an AI voice agent. And I took the city of Houston, and I scraped every single tree trimming business in Houston, there was about 1000. And I had this virtual assistant call every single one and notate, did they answer? Did the number work? If they did answer, say, do you grind stumps? If yes, then would you ever outsource that? If yes, then how much would you pay? Shaan Puri So I spent like $200 getting this research. I’m not familiar with the tree trimming business. Surprise, surprise. So why does a tree trimming business not also do the stumps? Chris Koerner Why is that a separate problem that they don’t like to deal with? Yeah, great question. So a tree trimming business needs sometimes a bucket truck to get up high and a chainsaw, right? But that’s only half the battle. Then you got to get the stump out of the ground or else, you know, you can’t grow grass there. And so it’s a stump grinder, you’ve got to pull on a trailer, whereas before you don’t even need a trailer. It’s just a whole different system. And they got to go rent it, they stand in line, they pay $300, they rent it, they put gas in it, they drive it back to the job site, they grind it, then they got to bring it back. And it’s like, it eats into their profit. And so I thought, okay, if a tree trimming company could just outsource all of their stump grinding, B2B only, is there an opportunity there? Shaan Puri So the assistant goes, she calls everybody, she asked him, would they be willing to outsource that? And are people just saying, yeah, yeah, we’d be willing to outsource that? Is that like, can you get that clear of a signal just off of a VA’s phone call? Chris Koerner So only 22% of people answered the phone. That’s it. And of the ones that did, almost half of them said, if I could outsource this, I would gladly. And then we, then we even got further down the script and said, would you pay seven, uh, $7 per inch or whatever of diameter? Yes. And then I published all that info on my podcast and people went out and started stump grinding businesses with the exact thesis. And we learned, yeah, pick an industry where people seem to be doing well, and call all of them, see how many answer their phone, you can cross reference that against like the Google keyword Tool, and you know, publicly available stuff, and see how much demand for supply is there in any given market. Okay, (Time 0:44:40)
  • Building Private Pickleball Facility
    • Chris is building a private indoor pickleball facility by converting an existing space, targeting membership revenue.
    • He used Facebook ad tests to gauge demand with low employee costs and expects high margins. Transcript: Shaan Puri You did one recently, you had this Instagram video, I’m gonna actually play it here. But I love this video for a couple of reasons. One, just the idea is fun. But the two, like, you know, your energy and what you’re describing here is is pretty great. So here, I’ll love this. This is you talking about starting a pickleball facility. Chris Koerner This friggin thing right here. I’m right here in my warehouse slash shop. It is 2100 feet, and I’m putting a business here. It’s called Secret Pickleball, and it’s going to be $99 a month. I’m going to cap it at 200 members, $20,000 a month. There are 7,700 people within 10 minutes of here that play pickleball every week, and I just need 200 of them to make this a six-figure business. No employees, 24-7 key card access right there. Cameras, bathroom, vending machines already in the next 60 days. We’re adding drywall. We’re painting lines, adding the bathroom back there if you want to watch me fail or you want to watch me win follow and i’ll document the whole journey or get the full business plan here Shaan Puri Basically you’re standing in this warehouse and it’s and you’re like look at this freaking thing right here which is how you start all of your videos which i think is a hilarious little Hook so can you uh add some color to this so where’s the what’s the origin of this idea? How’s this going? Tell me tell me more about this idea. Yeah, so that shop that I’m in in the video is in my back backyard. Chris Koerner Basically, it’s at the back of my property. Historically, I’ve rented it out to landscaping businesses for like 20. You live on like a ranch or something? What is this? It’s three acres. And it’s very like, yeah, it’s at the back of my of my property. And so I was just thinking like, what is the best and highest use of this property? And have you ever been to Secret Pizza in, I think it’s the Cosmo in Vegas? Yeah, yeah, I love that place. Yeah, that place does like 9 million a year in pizza and they don’t have a Google profile. They don’t have no website. Yeah, it’s insane. Shaan Puri If people haven’t been there, it’s like five feet wide. It’s like a tidy hallway. Like in high school, if your locker was like on the side, basically that and they just sell slices of pizza at the Cosmo Hotel in Vegas yes so I was going for that like I call it secret pickleball Chris Koerner And I I just thought okay I’m gonna run some Facebook ads I’m gonna go to my shop I’m gonna take three videos I’m gonna ABC test them on Facebook ads instant form, six mile radius. Sorry, was your ad a video like this where you’re saying I’m going to build this here? Shaan Puri Or was it like a mock up? That was one of the three. Yeah, the one you showed was one of my three ads. Yeah. And what were the other two? Were they like finished product, like a rendering? Or what did you do with the other two? Chris Koerner One of them had like an AI, bad AI image rendering, like overlay for a split second, but that’s it. I’m just standing in this empty warehouse. Shaan Puri And when you say I ran some Facebook ads, give people a sense of how you do that, right? Everyone again, I know who does this. They have, uh, you know, a certain budget, like, Hey, I’m going to run five, I’m going to spend $500 and I’m looking for maybe this cost per click, or I’m looking for this much net conversion Of people signing up to my wait list or or they even have a fake checkout. And then they refund people afterwards saying like, Hey, sorry, this doesn’t actually exist yet. Or, you know, I’m still, we got delayed, but it’ll be out soon. I refunded you for now, but you know, it’s coming. And they’re looking for that funnel, the metrics to sort of validate that, Hey, cool. If this works at $500, I think I’d be able to spend maybe a000 or $5,000 in order to get my 200 members or $50,000 to get my 200 members, whatever it is. Chris Koerner Can you explain your method for Facebook ad testing this? Yeah, for sure. So I used one campaign and then three ad sets and three ads, one video for each ad set. And I started it at $25 a day per video. So $75 a day total. My ad was a Facebook instant form asking for name, phone, email. Then after the instant form, it forwarded them to a type form with 19 questions that are very granular. What is your skill level at pickleball? How often do you play? How much do you do doubles or singles? Because all of this is going to determine how many members I can take on. And the whole thesis is to be one pickleball court, indoors, nice, private air conditioning that people pay $100 to $200 a month for. So I don’t want the pros that play twice a day. It’s a very finite resource. I want people that hardly ever play, like the Planet Fitness model, except expensive. I just want to have my cake and eat it too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I knew 5% of Americans play pickleball weekly. And I knew within six miles of me, there’s 200,000 people. So I needed like, there’s like five to 7,000 people in my TAM, my local TAM, right? And I was hoping that I could convert someone for $100. Because my guess is that the LTV, the lifetime value is going to be about a thousand dollars. But I think it’s actually a lot more because no one plays pickleball alone. So I get one customer, they’re going to bring two to three or four. Right. What I learned was I’m converting like I don’t the LTV is still to be determined, but I’m able to convert new customers at $12 each. Shaan Puri And so how many members does this secret, does this exist now? Chris Koerner Like this, I don’t know when you posted this. I’m building it out. I’m literally putting a septic tank in the building right now. Like it’s being built out, but I’m accepting pre-orders. How much do you think it’s going to cost you to do this? All right. So you already had the structure there. Shaan Puri How much are you going to put into making a pickleball court to bring this idea to life? On the low end, 20,000. Realistically, 30 to 40. That’s it. Wow. Chris Koerner I would have guessed it’s more. Yeah. Well, it has air conditioning. I need to expand the building because I need room for a bathroom and then I need to add a bathroom. So if I didn’t need a bathroom, it would be much less. Shaan Puri And then I need to paint lines. So anybody could just Google Maps,ball court in your area, right? Like wherever you live, you could Google maps pickleball. You could just take a map and you could be like, where is there not space? And then you could go drive them and just see, oh, wow, that one’s kind of shitty or it’s outdoors, right? Or this one over here, it’s always overrun. It’s always packed. And you could literally just map out that, oh, wow, I just need to take an industrial space and convert it to a private pickleball gym, a membership, right? One court, two court, three court, whatever. And so the math you’re saying here, are you charging 100 bucks? What’d you end up charging? I’m going to end up charging 149. All right. So you’re charging 149. Are you still targeting 200 members? Or did you find out that that assumption was too high or too low? I can accept around 150 members if I accept the right members. All right. And so you’re talking about 22,000 a month of top line revenue from this. And you’re saying it might cost you, in this case, 20 grand, 30 grand to build. I think somebody else, let’s just assume it’s even $75,000. Let’s triple the price to build out because maybe either space needs it or you’re just being conservative. So you got 22,000 coming in, top line. Is there any OPEX here? Do you need a person there? Is it like, do you have a key membership thing like that? What is your monthly cost in terms of like, you know, roughly you think utilities, everything else? Yeah. Chris Koerner Uh, key card entry 24 seven online booking system through a third party app, cameras, no employees, clea… (Time 0:47:20)
  • Focus Is Overrated
    • Focus is overrated because compounding wealth occurs as long as you stay in the game.
    • Pursuing multiple interests can enrich life and lead to learning that benefits all endeavors. Transcript: Shaan Puri Talk about that one, and then give me some of your other ones. Chris Koerner Yeah, I think focus is overrated, because compounding doesn’t care. Like, the principle of compounding does not care if we’re working on one thing, or a dozen things. As long as we stay in the game, whatever that game is for us and keep going, compounding is just going to keep going with us. Right. So if you’re curious about something like let’s say you’ve got a side hustle and it’s going well and you’re like, what about this side hustle? Test it. Like answer that question. Now, if you have a side hustle and it’s like you’re not sleeping because you’re just cashing all these checks and customers are beating down your door, you’re not going to be thinking About, oh, what about this shiny object? Like you’ve got product market fit. That’s a signal, right? So just chase the signals, chase the curiosities, because you’re going to learn something over here that you’re able to apply over here that no one else has ever thought of because they Weren’t doing these seven other things like you were. So net of net, if I gun to head, I think you will be more wealthy if you do one thing, but you’re more likely to be miserable and not have an enjoyable life. Shaan Puri Yeah. So focus actually does work, but it’s not the only way. And it’s a lot of fun to not focus. It’s actually what I mean. You have a similar thing. I’m going to read you this. I want you to give a little take on it. You said, say to everything. Take on way too much. Increase your capacity for stress and let Parkinson’s law do its job. Most people have no clue what they are capable of because they don’t take on too much and they never stress test their life. And you had something called the restaurant hostess analogy. Can you explain that a little bit? Yeah. Chris Koerner Let’s say you’re a hostess at a Michelin star restaurant in New York, Manhattan. You’re slammed 24-7. People come in and out, people yelling, whatever. And then you’ve got a hostess in Des Moines, Iowa, in a diner, and they’re usually pretty slow. And then a soccer team pulls up and like, oh, I table for 15. And she’s like, oh, my gosh, table for 15. Oh, geez, what do I do? Like to the woman in New York, like that’s nothing. That’s nothing because that’s her norm. That’s her new baseline, right? So most people that I talk to are like, oh, I could never run a Facebook ad campaign because I have to clip my toenails that afternoon. Like what? Like they don’t, like they’re not doing enough. They think that like the barometer is down here and they think people like Elon Musk are just, he’s an alien. That’s not even realistic. And it’s like, no, he just took on way too much, and now he’s able to do way more than ever before, because the less important things just kind of fall off the plate. That’s Parkinson’s law. You bite off way more than you can chew, And if you forget about it, then that’s a signal that it was worth forgetting about. Yeah. Shaan Puri I think that if you ask people honestly, you said, what percent of your potential are you tapping into? I think that’s a pretty scary question for most people. Because the answer is not going to be what you would want it to be. Very few people I know, right? Like you almost have to be very low self-awareness to be like a hundred percent, right? The answer is not a hundred percent, right? I think David Goggins has said this about when he trains and he says like, you know, the moment where your brain is ready to quit when it’s over, your body still has 30% left. Like the brain quits before the body and the brain will stop you as a safety mechanism when you still have 30% left to give. And I don’t know if the number is right, but I think directionally he’s correct when it comes to like what you’re physically capable of. And then in terms of what you’re creatively or ambitiously capable of, I think it’s kind of the same thing. I think it’s probably even a worse ratio than that. I think most people are tapping into less than 30% of what they’re capable of doing. And it doesn’t mean you necessarily need to work a hundred hours. I think it’s just like your capacity to output and to be creative and to go for it and go for it with full force on the things that you’re trying to go for. And maybe it’s, maybe it is take on an extra project or maybe it is, but sometimes it’s just go faster. Sometimes (Time 0:57:27)
  • Say Yes and Stress Test
    • Say yes to everything to increase your capacity for stress and test your limits.
    • Most people underestimate their potential, so taking on too much can reveal untapped abilities. Transcript: Shaan Puri On it. You said, say to everything. Take on way too much. Increase your capacity for stress and let Parkinson’s law do its job. Most people have no clue what they are capable of because they don’t take on too much and they never stress test their life. And you had something called the restaurant hostess analogy. Can you explain that a little bit? Yeah. Chris Koerner Let’s say you’re a hostess at a Michelin star restaurant in New York, Manhattan. You’re slammed 24-7. People come in and out, people yelling, whatever. And then you’ve got a hostess in Des Moines, Iowa, in a diner, and they’re usually pretty slow. And then a soccer team pulls up and like, oh, I table for 15. And she’s like, oh, my gosh, table for 15. Oh, geez, what do I do? Like to the woman in New York, like that’s nothing. That’s nothing because that’s her norm. That’s her new baseline, right? So most people that I talk to are like, oh, I could never run a Facebook ad campaign because I have to clip my toenails that afternoon. Like what? Like they don’t, like they’re not doing enough. They think that like the barometer is down here and they think people like Elon Musk are just, he’s an alien. That’s not even realistic. And it’s like, no, he just took on way too much, and now he’s able to do way more than ever before, because the less important things just kind of fall off the plate. That’s Parkinson’s law. You bite off way more than you can chew, And if you forget about it, then that’s a signal that it was worth forgetting about. Yeah. Shaan Puri I think that if you ask people honestly, you said, what percent of your potential are you tapping into? I think that’s a pretty scary question for most people. Because the answer is not going to be what you would want it to be. Very few people I know, right? Like you almost have to be very low self-awareness to be like a hundred percent, right? (Time 0:58:42)
  • Shameless Cloning for Success
    • Shamelessly copy successful local business models before tweaking.
    • Avoid unnecessary risk by replicating proven business formulas and only innovate after validation. Transcript: Shaan Puri That’s interesting. You know, Monish Pabrai, who’s come on this podcast a couple times, has this phrase, he calls it being a shameless, a shameless cloner. And so he says, you know, I’m a shameless clone of the Buffett and Munger philosophy. I, you know, I claim to have no, no good ideas, except for one, which is, you know, to copy the good ideas that already exist out there. If I hear a good idea, I take it on as my own. Right. And he talks about, you know, the dumbest person in the world is the gas station across the street from a more successful gas station. He’s like, cause you know, you see that guy and that guy comes out when a customer’s there and he washes their windows for them and he prices it a certain way. And he uses certain bright lights so that he’s more visible at night. You have to be a real idiot to be across the street, see that guy doing it, and then for your own stubbornness, not just do those things, implement those best practices. And so pride. Chris Koerner Yeah. Yeah, pride. Shaan Puri And I think there’s like, you know, a version of that in business. And like you said, you will organically end up putting your own twists on the business. But you, you know, you bring up an interesting point, which is that baking in all those twists up front is a bit of unnecessary risk. I think there’s a view that entrepreneurs are risk takers when actually the risk minimizers. And, you know, they’re trying to take as little risk as is necessary, but, but are willing to take the necessary risks in order to do something. Unless there’s like, you know, a big asymmetric reward for it, they’re not going to do it. And so, you know, I think that you’re right. And I think that this is very true for, especially at like the local level and service level, like it’s not true. If you’re trying to be a founder, go through YC, build the next big thing, the next breakout app, which is going to be, you know, the next social network. You can’t just copy Facebook. It’s not going to work, right? The next ride sharing service can’t just be Uber, right? They do have to innovate. They do have to do self-driving cars like Waymo or something like that. So this advice does not apply to people who are playing what I call the business Olympics, where they’re trying to do the stuff that’s like global greatness, move the world forward, Disrupt a total industry. Yes, you absolutely do need to be innovative there. But in terms of people who are trying to become financially free, working backwards is not a bad way to go. I have a very annoying phrase I say a bunch, which is in my companies, anytime we have run into an issue and people are bitching and moaning about it, I just say, well, we’re probably not The first ones to have this problem, right? Because it’s so true. You’re in an e-com business and suddenly you have this supply chain problem. Well, guess what? A thousand or a million other e-commerce business have had that same problem and they figured out a way to solve it. So what did they do? Let’s start with that. I was talking to actually a friend yesterday who’s, yeah, this guy’s almost a billionaire and he’s in the real estate game and he’s just crushed it on real estate on his own. And now for the first time after 15 years, he’s raising money for his projects. He’d never wanted to do it. He always wanted to use his own capital, but you know, finally sort of relented and realized, okay, I could do bigger scale and do more projects if I, if I raise capital from other people, Not just use my own personal balance sheet. And so I told him, I was like, you know, he’s giving me all his ideas about how he’s going to raise money. And I’ll go, dude, every real estate guy I know raises money. Have you first looked at what they did? Like, why are you trying to figure this out on your own? That’s the hard way. There’s no bonus points for doing this the hard way. Like, let’s just start by reverse engineering what other people do. Like, go talk to five to 10 other people who’ve already done this. See if there’s a common blueprint. Go try that and only innovate where needed along the way. When you run into some bottlenecks or some walls that you hit along the way of trying to implement that plan. Because for most business problems, you can just ask the question like, has anybody else ever solved this? And what do (Time 1:05:50)
  • Reverse Engineer Success First
    • Study successful competitors first and reverse engineer their business strategies.
    • Innovate only after understanding why others do things a certain way to minimize mistakes. Transcript: Shaan Puri Way. There’s no bonus points for doing this the hard way. Like, let’s just start by reverse engineering what other people do. Like, go talk to five to 10 other people who’ve already done this. See if there’s a common blueprint. Go try that and only innovate where needed along the way. When you run into some bottlenecks or some walls that you hit along the way of trying to implement that plan. Because for most business problems, you can just ask the question like, has anybody else ever solved this? And what do they do? And turns out it’s almost always like, it’s very common. There’s a common problem. Chris Koerner There is a common solution. And we should try that first. Yeah, like we place our innovation on the wrong thing. We place it on the features and the benefits when we should be placing it on being innovative about copying how they’re doing what they’re doing. We had a 3PL and you know 3PLs, right? And it’s like the worst. Nobody likes their 3PL. It’s impossible. And so we saw all the other 3PLs out there when we launched and we’re like, oh my gosh, they charge for storage and pick and pack and this and that. And they mark up shipping. These guys are idiots. It’s so confusing. So we set out to like innovate the industry, simple flat pricing. And like at the end of that two year experience, like we looked like all the other 3PLs because we’re like, okay, oh, oh, they charge for storage because some companies go out of business And then they’re left with this big bill and they don’t, oh, that’s why like, so that’s another signal is if you see other competitors in your industry and your first thought is like, They’re so stupid. Why are they doing it this way? Probably for a reason. Like you just haven’t learned that reason yet. Shaan Puri Especially if they’re successful, right? Don’t copy somebody who’s failing. But if they’re successful, you can start with that and say, all right, can I do that as well? (Time 1:08:53)