Chris (2:21)

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.

Sean (2:27)

All right, so here we go. Look at this freaking thing right here. And I see a. Basically a. A golf putting green. So, like, the. The Where. Just the part where the hole is. And it's just floating out in the ocean. And you said that this driving range in New Zealand pays out $10,000 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 (2:58)

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 1 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 weeks.

Sean (3:38)

Yeah. There's like a scuba diver.

Chris (3:40)

Yeah.

Sean (3:40)

Swimming around the thing. Is he there all the time or he just does that once a week. Goes and gets all the balls.

Chris (3:45)

Just once a week. And so I can surmise, based on math and statistics, that this place net profits like 3 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?

Sean (4:04)

Wait, so you said this is just roadside in New Zealand.

Chris (4:07)

There's one. There's one of these in the World that I know of off the side of a road in New Zealand, but.

Sean (4:12)

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.

Chris (4:18)

Yeah.

Sean (4:18)

All right, 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?

Chris (4:37)

So, to me, it's all about piggybacking. Right. 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. You go. 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 sight. So you could. Yeah, you could do this as a service and say, we'll install this. You're going to have more net income.

Sean (5:24)

We.

Chris (5:24)

Without doing any work, we're going to take 30% of all your revenue as a fee.

Sean (5:28)

Okay. 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 (5:41)

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.

Sean (5:48)

Yeah. I think visually, there's a. There's a. There's something that, like, my testosterone went up, like, 15 points just looking at this. Like, I could. 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. Yes, there's something to that.

Chris (6:11)

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, you're paying money to play golf, which is why you're there in the first place.

Sean (6:27)

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, how much do you say people pay to take a swing at this? Or, you know, they buy 10 balls.

Chris (6:40)

Or what do they do, 30? It's like 20 bucks or like 35 bucks for 20 balls or 50 bucks for 40 balls. Something like that.

Sean (6:47)

Oh, so you get like 20 to 40 hacks at it to do it. Yeah, that's pretty good.

Chris (6:53)

And every guy thinks he can do it, right?

Sean (6:55)

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 cad, 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 (7:37)

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. You could use the same principle. And to me, the principle is just math as a service. Right. We're calling this a math business. Okay.

Sean (8:00)

Right.

Chris (8:00)

And it's like, let's say you have a one in a hundred chance.

Sean (8:04)

It's an outdoor casino.

Chris (8:06)

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Sean (8:07)

What is a slot machine? What is roulette? What is craps? What are all these games? These are games where the house just said, cool, we'll take an edge. We'll take a math edge. And you get to play and have fun, right? Yeah, but we, we take the edge. And that what you're saying is to do the same thing.

Chris (8:21)

Yeah. Even like a putting green in a mall or something, Or a walkable outdoor shopping area. Let's say you've got like a 1 in 500 chance of making a 30 foot putt.

Sean (8:30)

Right.

Chris (8:30)

So you say, hey, 30 foot putt. You get it? We'll give you 500 bucks. And you just do the math and you say, all right, I'm, you know, every $3,000 I get, I'm going to pay out 500 bucks, statistically speaking.

Sean (8:41)

Dude, I love this idea. If you, if you want to do this idea, email me seanpurri. And then me and Chris, we will. We will help you do this. And we will document the journey. We'll put it out there in the public. We'll kind of make it a thing. Because I think part of it is the branding and the novelty factor. And you want to see this online first. And then people will actually drive out to do it or they'll plan to stop, not just whoever happens to see it and understand it while they're driving 50 miles an hour down a road. You know what I mean?

Chris (9:07)

Yeah. I like the name 19th Hole. That's a good one.

Sean (9:10)

It's good, right?

Chris (9:11)

We might need to snag that domain name before this goes live. All right.

Sean (9:19)

This episode is brought to you by HubSpot. They're doing a big conference. This is their big one they do called Inbound. They have a ton of great speakers that are coming to San Francisco September 3rd to September 5th. And it's got a pretty incredible lineup. They have comedians like Amy Poehler. They have Dario from Anthropic Dwarkesh, Sean Evans from Hot Ones. And if you're somebody who's in marketing or sales or AI and you just want to know what's going on, what's coming next, It's a great event to go to. And hey, guess what? I'm going to be there. You can go to inbound.com register to get your ticket to Inbound 2025 again, September 3rd through 5th in San Francisco. Hope to see you there. All right, so I love the hole in one golf course. All right, give me the next side hustle idea.

Chris (9:59)

Okay, well, I want to talk about Facebook Marketplace. I feel like there's an entire economy in Facebook Marketplace. There are seven figure business owners, let's say fencing business. All they do is post to Facebook marketplace organically once a week to get all their leads.

Sean (10:16)

By the way, Facebook Marketplace has 1 billion monthly active users. Just that tab.

Chris (10:20)

Crazy. And no one's talking about it. What are we doing? So I've got a. I've got a story for you. I've got a story.

Sean (10:28)

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 Facebook marketplace fencing services. Is that what you're saying? Or answering the request for fencing server. What are they actually doing?

Chris (10:44)

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.

Sean (11:00)

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.

Chris (11:06)

I saw that. Yeah.

Sean (11:07)

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.

Chris (11:13)

Like window washing or something.

Sean (11:15)

Yeah, it was like window washing or like, oh, it was gutter.

Chris (11:17)

Gutter cleaning.

Sean (11:18)

Was there 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. Cause 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, 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 rest, 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? We got to get after it with this next door, you know, next door lead gen, basically. And so you're saying the same thing's happening at a bigger scale on Facebook Marketplace?

Chris (12:08)

Yeah, both great opportunities.

Sean (12:10)

Okay, great. So tell me the story you're going to tell me.

Chris (12:12)

Yeah, this is. This is an outlier example. Okay. Results not guaranteed. But 20, 20, 21, 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.

Sean (12:58)

$10,000.

Chris (12:58)

That's great. 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 miners. 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.

Sean (13:31)

And you were. Just to be clear, you were selling miners that you. That you already owned, or what were you doing?

Chris (13:36)

We were pre selling them and then ordering them from China. So we had a positive cash flow conversion cycle in addition to all that.

Sean (13:43)

All right, so you went on Facebook ads. You specifically did the marketplace ads, is that right?

Chris (13:48)

Not even ads. We were just posting.

Sean (13:49)

Just posting. 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?

Chris (13:58)

Yeah, we used VAS and multiple Facebook accounts and we posted in multiple cities. Cuz most people want to buy from someone local and the funnel was, you know, VA answers response. Then they push them to a sales call because it's hard to sell something so expensive over the Internet. Once they got on the sales call, we would close like half of them.

Sean (14:19)

Right. And so. And then you would close them and then you'd go order that same thing from China. Because there's like a knowledge arbitrage here of like, I don't know how to go or I don't trust spending $10,000 on Alibaba or AliExpress. And so you would then do that and you'd have a margin. What was the rough margin on something like that?

Chris (14:36)

Call it 30%. 30%, but like high ticket. So.

Sean (14:40)

And this one, I'm guessing didn't last in the sense that like, you know, in 2025, maybe the same market dynamics, the demand, the supply are not the same. Is that true?

Chris (14:49)

Yep. Really the biggest variable here is like the frothiness of the mining market, which is not good right now. So I think this would work again if the mining market turned around more.

Sean (14:59)

When the timings like, like, would you do this? Like, are you planning to do this again if the mining market know gets gets hyped again?

Chris (15:06)

Yes. Yeah.

Sean (15:10)

And how do you spend your money, dude? So let's say you make a few million dollars doing something like this. What do you. What does Chris like to spend his money on?

Chris (15:17)

Oh man. On my family we go on cool vacations and starting more businesses. I invest in real estate, but I just, I love like starting businesses is my. It's the only thing I know.

Sean (15:29)

But it seems like you start businesses that don't take a lot of capital.

Chris (15:33)

Yeah, that's true. But I like investing like tripling down on businesses that are more mature along the way where I can see a clear path to growth with more capital.

Sean (15:45)

What's another Facebook marketplace idea that somebody could do? Like, is it as simple as, hey, I noticed that there are garage shelving companies. They're not currently active in my area. I go talk to 10 business owners, I say, hey, if I bring you a customer, give me $300 or whatever it is. And you do lead gen. Because that business owner doesn't even think to do Facebook marketplace activity to drive leads. Most service people, most small business owners don't even think this way, right?

Chris (16:11)

Oh yeah, yeah. I mean you could literally build an Agency that just posts to Facebook Marketplace for business owners, sells them the leads. Right, Right. But you mentioned shelving. I interviewed this guy named Alex on my podcast, the Kerner Office, and he has a six figure business just building not shelving, but garage shelving on wheels with Costco totes. Like, that's it. Only with organic Facebook Marketplace post, and he net profits $180,000 a year. That's the whole business.

Sean (16:41)

Right?

Chris (16:42)

Garage shelving on Facebook Marketplace. He has a $300 saw, and he goes and buys two by fours. And. And he. He didn't even have a truck for, like, the first year and a half.

Sean (16:52)

Right. Okay, what are your other ideas? I see a list of 10 here, and we've probably done two or three, so give me. Give me more.

Chris (17:00)

All right.

Sean (17:00)

Any idea or marketplace you want you want? No, no. Any idea you want me just call out one of these.

Chris (17:04)

Just team me up. Yeah.

Sean (17:06)

Take local tourist traps and put them in your home market. Is this like the hole in one challenge, or are you talking about something else different?

Chris (17:11)

Yeah, this is a good one. So I went. You've seen a arrest development, I assume?

Sean (17:16)

Of course.

Chris (17:17)

Okay, so there's money in the banana stand. We all know that. We all know.

Sean (17:22)

First day in Harvard. That's what they teach you.

Chris (17:24)

Yes. So I went to Balboa island with my family last year, and we went to the banana stand. For whatever reason, this one street, it has, like, seven banana stands, and there's one that's supposedly the best. And I shelled out, like, $8 each for these bananas covered in chocolate and nuts. And I made a video about, you know, how much profit these guys make, because as I went to the window, I had to. I asked her, how many of these do you sell the day? What's your busiest day ever? What's your slowest day ever? All these people are behind.

Sean (17:53)

Dude, do you want nuts or no nuts on a banana?

Chris (17:57)

People were, but I had to know. And then to make matters worse, I pull out my phone and make a video about how anyone could copy them. So I'm a great guy, but exactly. I don't remember the exact number.

Sean (18:08)

Steal your girl over here.

Chris (18:10)

Steal your banana. This one little shop that's like 300 square feet is doing like, 7 million a year in frozen bananas. Like, and what's the margin on an $8 banana with chocolate and peanuts? And so I just thought, like, why isn't this. Like, why isn't this a thing? I didn't go to Balboa island for the bananas once I was there, I got them. But there are Balboa islands all over the world and most of them have no banana stand. Like, so this idea isn't just about banana stand. It's about taking something really unique and novel. Maybe it's like the old western timey photo booths that you see in Pigeon Forge. Maybe it's like funnel cake or like the mini donuts that you see in Gatlinburg. Like, take something like that and just test it. I'm not saying it's going to work, but you could test it very, very cheaply in other tourist markets or in non tourist markets.

Sean (19:03)

Yeah, that's interesting. I wonder if that would work. Like, I wonder how much of the appeal is that, oh, humans just like these kind of frozen chocolate bananas. Or is it that in that area, on that street, it's kind of known for this and you see a line, and so you see the line, you start doing it. Like, I wonder if that, like, it's kind of like an organ transplant. I wonder if there's like that, you know, donor rejection or sort of the host rejection of the, of the organ when you put one of these in a new. In a new area.

Chris (19:32)

It could be. But I think that the greatest chance you've had, you would have for success is, is taking specifically a tourist trap and putting it in a different tourist trap where it's like, this is a unique, novel thing that people don't buy when they're home. But like, for instance, I have a friend in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee that owns an indoor sledding facility. You can't tell me that wouldn't work in other tourist traps that have the same type of demographic there, you know?

Sean (19:57)

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Okay, give me another one. How about Toasted Tours? What is this?

Chris (20:04)

This is a. All right, this is in Northern California by you. This Guy took a 40 foot shipping container, put it on the back of a semi truck, cut out the walls, put handrails on there, put tables in there, chairs in there, and he takes people on wine tours.

Sean (20:21)

It's a party bus, but it's not even a bus. It's a shipping container.

Chris (20:25)

It's open air.

Sean (20:26)

Open air? Yeah. They cut out the sides.

Chris (20:29)

Yes. And so I'm swiping Instagram one day and I see this video that just broke my frame. It's the shipping container and people are like dancing inside as it's going around a bend at a high rate of speed.

Sean (20:39)

And it's like dangerous.

Chris (20:41)

What am I looking at? But this guy crushes it like his first year and he had experience in doing like wine tours, but nothing like this. I think he did like over a million bucks his first year with like 3 60% margins.

Sean (20:56)

What I like about some of these is that they are visually viral. So you know, the definition of virality, people get it wrong. People think it's word of mouth. Word of mouth is actually a different thing. Word of mouth is. I like this so much, I want to tell my friends about it. Viral is actually more like a sneeze. You spread a virus without even wanting to spread it. Right? This was like back when, you know, Hotmail started. I'm just sending you an email. I'm not trying to tell you to use Hotmail, but because I'm sending you an email from my Hotmail address and at the bottom it says, I sent this via Hotmail. You know, they added that to the bottom of the email. It spread like a virus. And that's how, you know, a lot of the big viral services actually spread. Facebook was like this, right? I'm uploading photos, I'm just tagging my friends. I'm not trying to tell them, hey, you should join Facebook. I'm having a grand old time here. They tagged a friend, it sent them an email, said, you got tagged in a photo. And people can't resist being like, somebody put a photo up of me on the Internet. I must see this. And that's how Facebook grew early on was like this, this one viral loop. And then there's this other types of virality. One is like this visually viral where it's not like the people on this truck were trying to go tell everyone about it, but it's so novel looking that I can't help but look at it, learn about it, you know, and, and I think the, the hole in one challenge has the same benefit, which is like, you see it, it's super interesting to look at. You get the concept right away and it's worth remarking on. You're talking about it with people, you notice it, you want to do it. The act of somebody else doing it made you want to do it. And so I like these things that are sort of walking billboard style businesses because you know, they market themselves once you get them going. This episode is brought to you by HubSpot Media. They have a cool new podcast that's for AI called the Next Wave. It's by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lands. And they're basically talking about all the new tools that are coming out, how the landscape is changing, what's going on with AI tech. So if you want to be up to date on AI tech, it's a cool podcast. You could check out, Listen to the next wave, wherever you get your podcast.

Chris (22:54)

Dude, I have some really good, good examples of visually viral stuff. Have you seen that guy that does, like, he'll mow people's lawns for free.

Sean (23:04)

Please tell me you've seen who's this guy?

Chris (23:06)

Okay, this guy out of Kansas or something, young guy. He owned a lawn care business, small kind of struggling business. And one day he sets up his tripod. SB mowing and SB pressure washing. He sets up a tripod in the garage.

Sean (23:18)

He's got a big YouTube channel now, right?

Chris (23:20)

So this guy has 45 million followers across platforms combined. 45 million. And all he does is he sets up a tripod, he puts on a mic, he walks up to the door, he says, hey, your lawn looks like crap. Mind if I mow it for free? What's the catch? I publish this to YouTube and make money. Cool. And then he mows it for free with a time lapse video. Visually viral.

Sean (23:40)

Yeah.

Chris (23:41)

Yes. We want to see the outcome. The retention is there, so the platforms push it. Like, what is it going to look like when he's done? And this guy, I mean, what is the value of 45 million social media followers versus the value of a local lawn care business?

Sean (23:53)

Right? I mean, dude, look at this, by the way. Like, if you just sort by popular, you know, he stacks the things. So there's the visual viral part of before and after, which humans want to complete that. They want to know the solution. Then you have the sort of novelty surprise factor, like, oh, this guy's doing this for free. That's interesting. Why? I want to know what's the answer here? But then he stacks on drama. So the top videos are angry. Homeowner confronts me while I'm mowing this vacant home. Cop approaches me while I'm mowing this deserted home and tells me, this homeowner, stunned at how wide the sidewalks are. Her tears said it all. My prayers have been answered. So this guy has this skill stack where he's got the lawn care sort of. That's one skill that, okay, is worth, you know, only X dollars in the market of. Of the economy. But then he stacks on being really good at content. And those two together created the. How many lawn care guys are really good at content? I don't know. Zero. Like, you know, the number's less than a dozen. And so suddenly he became rare. And when you're rare, you're Valuable.

Chris (24:58)

Exactly. Yeah.

Sean (25:00)

That's really cool. Okay, so let's jump in. Side hustles and the ones that you currently have. So let's do some of the fun ones. The one I met you on is about BUC EE's. And so for people who don't know, could you explain just how crazy of a business Buc EE's is and then the side hustle you created off the back of Buc EE's?

Chris (25:18)

Yeah, Buc EE's is like your redneck Disney gas station. They're about half the size of a Costco. There's 51 locations and they do like 60 to 80 million in revenue per year each. And it's just, if you haven't been there, there's nothing like. It's like a really.

Sean (25:34)

So the math on that is like 3 billion in revenue on 50 gas stations.

Chris (25:39)

Yeah. Yeah.

Sean (25:41)

What? Yeah, I've never been to a Buc EE's.

Chris (25:44)

What.

Sean (25:44)

What makes a Buc EE's so great? Is it even a gas station or is it just something else with that happens to have gas?

Chris (25:49)

It's a brand with a gas station. They have over 100 pumps. You walk in, there's just things happening everywhere. You've got tacos being made. You've got people shouting about brisket. You've got beaver nuggets, T shirts like beavers, walking around the cleanest bathrooms you'll ever find. There's nothing else like it. You just walk in and you're. You're amazed from the get go.

Sean (26:08)

Okay, before you tell me your side hustle off the back of that, what's the quick kind of origin story of this? Has this been around for like 100 years? Who started it? Like, why is this so successful? I mean, I've never heard that $3 billion in revenue on 51 gas stations.

Chris (26:22)

They founded like 40 years ago. This guy named Arch, he was called Bucky as a kid, and he opened a gas station. And then they just started going bigger and bigger and bigger. They just kept pushing the envelope and their whole signature was this mascot, just this cheesy looking beaver that people just loved. And so once they started selling merch, T shirts and tumblers and all that, they just exploded. And they're really unique in that they put themselves in far flung areas. They're not like in the city. They're on the way to a vacation or close to a vacation destination.

Sean (26:55)

Oh, so it's like the perfect rest stop. Right? Because yeah, if anybody, like, I was just on a road trip, we drove to Tahoe and it's a three, three hour drive roughly. But there's these patches where you need to stop in the middle. And the bar is so low for rest stop experience. Right. It's like, you know, it's basically a porta potty in a. In a good scenario. And then you get like the trucker rest stops and you get a gas station. Then you get like maybe a little strip mall with the Starbucks. But what you're saying is they built something actually, like, really cool out and that's on those drives, and that maybe is like one of the golden insights for them.

Chris (27:30)

Yeah, it's just they. You walk in and you're a captive audience. You can buy lunch, you can buy gas. Most people just park at the pump. You can buy a T shirt. And the average ticket, I don't know what it is. They're privately traded, but people spend hundreds of dollars there. You're not just like buying a Celsius and hopping out.

Sean (27:46)

All right, what is this business you created on top of Buc Ees or like your side hustle for Buc Ees?

Chris (27:50)

Yeah. So back to what you said about me not being able to focus. I was in the middle of running this business that was growing and demanding all of our time and attention. And I took my business partner to Bucky's, and he was from Utah. It was his first time. And on the way home, I distinctly remember this. I remember the overpass. I was driving, I'm ashamed to say I pulled out my phone and I said, kirk, these guys must kill it online. And I said, do you know Disney does like X billion just through their online merch store. These guys must kill it. So I go to buc EE's.com, i look for the shop button, and it wasn't there. They didn't sell online anything. Not food, snacks, shirts, anything. And I just like, I just sat there in silence. I felt like capitalism was being murdered. Like, what is?

Sean (28:32)

Why?

Chris (28:33)

What good reason is there for this? And this was like six years ago. And so then we just started talking and we're just like, what if. What if we launched a website for them? What if we went online for them because we were running a 3 PL, third party logistics business at the time, really hard business. And we thought we could launch this business for them as like a permissionless way to get their business end to end and get them as a customer. And maybe they'll try to sue us, but worst case, it'll be a great story.

Sean (29:00)

And so what'd you do.

Chris (29:01)

So the first thing I did was started cold emailing the founders, the executive team, everyone, and saying, hey, you need to be online. We can do it for you. We'll build a Shopify store. We'll do everything end to end. We have a warehouse shelf space explorer, etc. No response, Just crickets. So at that point, it's like, all right, let's take this into our own hands.

Sean (29:17)

So most people give up there, right? Try to partner. Most people won't even cold email. But if you do cold email, you give up when they don't reply.

Chris (29:24)

Yep, exactly. So we bought Beaversnacks.com because that's their mascot, was a beaver. And I went to thumbtack and I hired a photographer for like $200. And I. I documented all this. I have pictures of all this. I took my four kids and wife to the nearest Buc EE's and. And my wife and I split up. I said, you get merch, I'll get snacks. If it has a Bucky's logo on it, buy it. Like, I don't want the Doritos or the Coke because they white label a bunch of stuff, right? Okay. Like, I only want something with a Buc EE's logo. So we spent like $3,000. We had a receipt this long. We took it back to the warehouse.

Sean (30:00)

Was the lady like, wow, what are you. What are you doing?

Chris (30:02)

They were. Everyone was looking at us, and I'm like, an introvert. I hated it. I felt so weird. I'm like, don't look at me. Just let me do my thing. So we bring it all back to the warehouse. We put it in this office, hire this photographer, and she takes pictures of everything. We upload it in a CSV to Shopify. We launch a website, beaversnacks.com and I say, launch like nobody knew it existed. So the first thing I did was start scraping and cold emailing every Texas reporter I could find. Eater, Southern Living, Texas monthly, Fox News, 38, you know, San Antonio district, you name it. And I just start saying, like, here's who I am. Here's what I'm doing. Here's who I am. Here's what I'm doing.

Sean (30:42)

And so you weren't afraid because most people try to be laying low doing this because, hey, we don't have an official partnership. You took the opposite approach. You're like, hey, can I use this story to get some attention, whether it be good or bad? Is that right?

Chris (30:54)

Yeah, because I thought like, okay, worst case scenario, cease and desist. We have Great story for a podcast. One day, best case scenario, we get them as a customer. Or this is a. A standalone business. Somewhere in between is going to be interesting, right? Maybe I have to fill my pantry with snacks, like $3,000 worth of snacks, and my kids eat it for the next seven years.

Sean (31:13)

We had a guest come on and he said, you know, do what makes the best story. When in doubt, like when you're at a fork in the road, do whichever. Take whichever path will make the best story. You chose the path that'll make the best story here. Okay, so you.

Chris (31:23)

Yes, and I heard that. I heard that episode and I thought, that's me. I agree with that. So I also did my research and it's called first sale doctrine, which means anyone can sell, resell, whatever they want. They just can't pretend or imitate that brand. Right? Like the. There's a guy that imitated Trader Joe's to do what I did, but he called himself Pirate Joe's. The logo was similar, the store layout was similar, and he got sued out of existence. So I thought, okay, as long as I say I am not Buc EE's, I'm a third party reseller and I'm clear about that. They really don't have grounds to sue me. So I started cold emailing people, they loved the story and, and I started getting on the phone with reporters and.

Sean (32:01)

Any tips on that? So, you know, I've learned this with, with pr, which is that there's PR is this very specific niche game. And once you understand how a journalist thinks, you can reverse engineer what you need to actually do. So, like, for example, our buddy Ramon did this recently. He went mega, mega viral because. And he knew this, he texted me, he called a shot. He's like, as soon as the tariff dues came out, and some people thought, this is going to be horrible for businesses. Some people thought, well, why don't those businesses just make it in America? We'll buy it if it's made in America. And so he launches an A B test on his website. So athena.com it's like a shower, a clean shower head. So he was, he runs an A B test and he says, you can either buy the one that's sourced out of China or you could buy the one that's sourced out of America. And the American one costs a little bit more because it costs more to make it in America. But you know, here you go, you have a choice. And the results were something crazy, 25,000 visits or something like that. And there were literally zero checkouts on the American product. There was a few hundred on the. On the. On the Asian made product. And he goes to the journalist, he ran the test because he knew, look, either the results are going to show people will buy made in America or they won't. In either case, I have a very strong story. And he goes, and he gets it written up. It's been written up in like 40 major publications now. And he got tons of traffic to the site, tons of backlinks. His SEO went way up. It was a genius, quick acting move. On the back of the tariff news, when most people were playing defense, like me in E Comm, you're like, oh, shit, I just need to survive. He went and played offense. So I was. I'm curious, do you have any tips from your experience about how to get people to actually write about you?

Chris (33:42)

Yeah. I mean, you have to understand that reporters want something cool to write about. I get DMs all the time from people wanting something from me. And 98% of them, they have nothing interesting to talk about. But if someone DM me and said, hey, I did this cool thing, will you post about it? I would because I want to post about cool things.

Sean (34:01)

You know, my job is to post interesting things.

Chris (34:03)

Yes, please send it to me. So once you realize that, like, do something interesting, something cool, and then go tell as many people as you can about it. And a small percentage of them will post about it, reporters included.

Sean (34:16)

How did you frame it at the time?

Chris (34:17)

I framed it as I am doing a viral marketing stunt and I want to get Bucky's attention. And if I don't, then I'm going to run this business as well as I can.

Sean (34:27)

Oh, so you told the reporters that up front?

Chris (34:29)

Yeah.

Sean (34:30)

Oh, okay, Gotcha. But by the way, give us the headline because, you know, we're talking about this idol, so we haven't mentioned how well it's done. Can you give us some numbers that give us an idea of, like, the success of this?

Chris (34:40)

I mean, I'll tell you what the headline literally was, and it was like, Texas man makes 200 grand in his first 30 days reselling Buc EE's goods online. That was it. And so Texas Monthly reach out to me. They're the biggest Texas news publication. And they were like, we love this. We're going to make this a feature story. Give me everything you can. So we talked, we talked, talked. And then later that afternoon, they're like, chris, good news. Bucky's in house counsel, would love to chat. And I'M like, what's good about that? Like, I'm dead. I'm dead in the water. And so I was like, okay, you told Buc ee's great. I'm glad you were able to get a hold of them. So I get on the phone with him and he's like, listen, we actually don't mind what you're doing. I don't like the name Beaver Snacks. We're a beaver. It's kind of confusing. I don't like that your colors are yellow. We're kind of yellow. Change the name. Put a disclaimer in your logo that is persist throughout the whole website. Put a disclaimer on every product page. And you have our blessing. Like, we're not going to sign anything, but we're not going to come after you. Like, we will support you. And so we did. We made those changes and then they linked to us.

Sean (35:46)

What a cool ass general counsel. That's pretty rare.

Chris (35:50)

Yeah, yeah. And then they linked to us in their FAQs, which is like the most amazing backlink ever. So on one hand, going viral meant we got a million competitors and like all these copycats. But on the other hand, we have like the biggest SEO moat that we could ever hope for.

Sean (36:09)

So wait, how? You skipped a step. You said their headline was $200,000 in 30 days, but you didn't say how you got the $200,000 in 30 days. How did you initially get that traction?

Chris (36:19)

It was all based on those viral articles. We didn't do any paid ads. We just went viral. We put everything as in stock, you know, on Shopify you can do that whether it's in stock or not. And we just started selling out.

Sean (36:30)

So the articles initially must not have been 200,000. The articles initially were just like, Texas man starts shop to sell Bucky stuff online.

Chris (36:38)

Correct? Yeah, yeah. They've written about us since then. But in the beginning it was Texas man. They called it Tex Pats instead of expats. Like Texas man launches online Bucky store for Text pats. That was like the big headline.

Sean (36:51)

And that's how a tech pat, like a person from Texas who's no longer in Texas but misses their stacks. Misses.

Chris (36:56)

Yeah. And that was the whole thesis. Because these Buc EE's are in like Ennis, Texas, like these places that you'd never heard of because they're on the way to the beach. And so if you fell in love with this random bohemian garlic jerky, you could never buy it again.

Sean (37:11)

Right.

Chris (37:11)

And so that's where we came in. Like buy it from us.

Sean (37:13)

And so how's this business doing now? Was this a flash in the pan or is it still doing well?

Chris (37:18)

This business has grown 20 to 50% per year, every single year. Steady Eddie. We just, we are completely riding on the coattails of BUC EE's and we are not ashamed to admit that.

Sean (37:29)

So can you say how much revenue you guys are doing on this thing?

Chris (37:32)

We're doing between 3 and 500,000amonth profitably with very, very little paid ad spend.

Sean (37:38)

And the funny thing is, here you go. Buy it retail, right? You don't have like a wholesale discount. They're not, they're not giving it to you at a cut. So you, you buy retail and then you just mark it up what, 10, 20% or something. What do you do?

Chris (37:49)

We mark it up 100%.

Sean (37:51)

Oh, because you're like, if you want it, if you want it that bad here, this is the, you know, this is your way to get it.

Chris (37:57)

Honestly, we mark it up as much as we have to. I mean, you know, e commerce to make a 15, 20% net margin. And that happens to be about 100% markup.

Sean (38:06)

Right. That's amazing. Okay, so that's one of your side hustles. We said that there was, you know, like six that were each, you know, six figures. I don't know if we'll get to all six, but give me another one. So what's another of your side hustles right now that are contributing to your, your cash flow?

Chris (38:22)

So we started a pet cremation business. And that's a fun one. That one's actually very profitable.

Sean (38:30)

That's a fun one. It is fun for you maybe.

Chris (38:33)

Yeah.

Sean (38:33)

Okay, so explain how'd you get the idea and then what is it? And how'd you do it?

Chris (38:38)

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, the, the search traffic was high. So we launched a business around that thesis.

Sean (39:35)

Sorry, so explain. You went to, you went to the Google Ads keyword tool. Right? That's where you went to kind of diligence the demand for this.

Chris (39:43)

That's it.

Sean (39:44)

And you found obviously the holy grail, low competition, high ticket. And what was the third one? Growth or demand volume?

Chris (39:51)

High volume, low competition, high ticket, Holy grail.

Sean (39:55)

And so you start one of these and you're actually the service that does.

Chris (40:00)

It or you're the lead gen. 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.

Sean (40:24)

Okay, gotcha. And so tell me a little about this business. I don't know. I know nothing about the pet cremation business. What did you do in the first place, 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. I 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 do the first 90 or 90 or so days look like when you have a new idea? And maybe you could use this one as an example or if not, you could use a different one?

Chris (41:25)

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.

Sean (41:51)

Stuff I can do for my boxers at home. That's what I like.

Chris (41:53)

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.

Sean (42:06)

So what would you do in this pet cremation business? What did you do?

Chris (42:09)

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, you need to raise your prices. You're way too low. 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, like, example of what I normally do. If that conversation doesn't go well, I don't launch the business. I just move on.

Sean (43:02)

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?

Chris (43:19)

Well, the thing is, is that they were already working together. Right. And so what you're saying was correct. That was the risk we insert ourselves.

Sean (43:27)

You're saying there was some friction. There was some friction that you were offering to remove, is that right?

Chris (43:32)

Yeah.

Sean (43:32)

And the friction in this case was.

Chris (43:33)

What it was that the veterinary or the cremation facility owner made all his margins on the actually doing the cremation and he was losing money on all the logistics.

Sean (43:43)

Okay.

Chris (43:44)

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 B, finding you more veterinary clinics.

Sean (44:02)

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 for, to make this work.

Chris (44:09)

Yep. And so our thesis was, if that conversation doesn't go well, the business.

Sean (44:14)

Right.

Chris (44:15)

It's an asymmetric bet.

Sean (44:17)

But if it does, then we have, you know, the hardest part, we have customers and revenue through the door from day one. If, if, if they're, if they agree to this.

Chris (44:25)

Exactly.

Sean (44:26)

And then you went and tried to recreate that with, you know, getting 15 other veterinary colleagues. 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 (44:40)

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. And we'll just be, we'll just pick up the phone and be reliable. That was the pitch.

Sean (45:06)

And is there something to learn here about like, you know, there's so many of these simple businesses where the bar is really low or people are simply not doing any outreach, they're not doing any door to door sales. Like, have you made a killing in just, you know, Warren Buffett has said this before. He goes, the secret to winning is low competition is weak competition. Right. Like, he's not looking to prove that he's a genius at the hardest games. He's looking for very weak competition where he can simply be competent and he could just do best practices.

Chris (45:35)

Oh, dude, like, it is so true. We see it on Twitter all the time. Like, just go, go find a business with a fax machine and compete against 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 a thousand. 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? So I spent like $200 getting this.

Sean (46:35)

Sorry, I, I, I'm not familiar with the tree trimming business. Surprise, surprise. So why does a tree trimming business not also do the stumps? Why is that a separate problem that they don't like to deal with?

Chris (46:45)

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.

Sean (47:21)

So the assistant goes, she calls everybody, she asked them, would they be willing to, to outsource that? And are people just saying, yeah, yeah, we, we'd be willing to outsource that? Is that like a, can you get that clear of a signal just off of a VA's phone call?

Chris (47:35)

So only 22% of people answered the phone. That's it. And, 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, seven dollars 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, 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.

Sean (48:20)

Hmm.

Chris (48:23)

All right.

Sean (48:24)

This episode is brought to you by Mercury. They are the finance platform of Choice for over 200,000 companies. Shouldn't be surprised because I use it myself for not one, not two, but I have eight different Mercury accounts. I have seven for different companies that I'm a part of. And then I have my own personal account because now they have personal banking, which is a really cool feature. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I use it myself. And the reason why is because the way that Mercury works is beautiful. It's very intuitive. And you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder. It's an entrepreneur. You could tell it's made by somebody who used other banking products in the past and didn't like all the different rough edges and annoyances and decided to actually fix it himself. And really, any type of entrepreneur you are, let's say you're an agency. Well, one of the things every agency has to do is be able to send invoices, easily create them, send them to customers, and stay current on your balances with all your customers. Well, you can do that inside Mercury. And so I think that Mercury is great. Highly recommend you check it out. And thank you for sponsoring the show. For more information, check out mercury.com Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details. Okay. I like that you did one recently. You had this Instagram video. I'm going to actually play it here. But I love this video for a couple of reasons. One, just the idea is fun, but the. But two, like, you know, your energy and what you're describing here is pretty great. So here, I'll love this. This is you talking about starting a pickleball facility.

Chris (49:44)

This freaking thing right here. I'm right here in my warehouse shop. It is 2100 square feet and I'm putting a business here. It's called Secret Pickleball. And it's going to be 99 bucks 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.

Sean (50:16)

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 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.

Chris (50:32)

Yeah, so that shop that I'm in in the video is in my back backyard. Basically it's at the back of my property. Historically, I've rented it out to landscaping businesses for like 25.

Sean (50:41)

You live on like a ranch or something. What is this?

Chris (50:43)

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.

Sean (50:57)

Yeah. Yeah, I love that place.

Chris (50:59)

Yeah, that place does like 9 million a year in pizza. And they don't have a Google profile. No. Website. Yeah.

Sean (51:04)

If people haven't been there, it's like five feet wide. It's like a tiny hallway. Like in high school if your locker was like on the side. It's basically that. And they just sell slices of pizza at the Cosmo Hotel in Vegas.

Chris (51:16)

Yes. So I was going for that, like, I call it Secret Pickleball. And I just thought, okay, I'm going to run some Facebook ads. Going to go to my shop. I'm going to take three videos. I'm going to ABC test them on Facebook ads. Instant form, six mile radius.

Sean (51:31)

Sorry, was your ad a video like this where you're saying, I'm going to build this here, or was it like a mockup?

Chris (51:36)

That was one of the three. Yeah, the one you showed was one of my three ads. Yeah.

Sean (51:41)

And what were the other two? Were they like finished product, like a rendering or what? What did you do with the other two?

Chris (51:46)

One of them had like an AI, really bad AI image rendering, like overlay for a split second, but that's it. I'm just standing in this empty Warehouse.

Sean (51:54)

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, you know, a certain budget, like, hey, I'm gonna run five, I'm gonna 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. 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 a thousand or $5,000 in order to get my 200 members or, you know, $50,000 to get my 200 members, whatever it is. Can you explain your method for Facebook ad testing this?

Chris (52:38)

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. It forwarded them to a type form with 19 questions that are very granular. What is your skill level at pickle ball? How often do you play? How do you do doubles or singles? Because all of this is going to determine how many members I can take on. And the whole. The whole thesis is to be one pickleball court indoors, nice private air conditioning that people pay one to two hundred dollars a month for. So I don't want the pros that play twice a day. I like. It's a very finite resource. I want people that hardly ever play, like the planet fitness model, except expensive. I want them to help the enthusiast 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 5 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 $1,000, 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.

Sean (54:12)

And so how many members does this secret. Does this exist now? Like this? I don't know.

Chris (54:16)

When you post this, I'm building it out. I'm. I'm literally putting a septic tank in the building right now. Like, it's being built out, but I'm accepting preorders.

Sean (54:22)

How much is it going to cost you to do this? All right, so you already had the structure there. How much are you going to put into making a pickleball court to bring this idea to life on the low end?

Chris (54:31)

20,000? Realistically, 30 to 40.

Sean (54:34)

That's it. Wow. I would have guessed it's more.

Chris (54:37)

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. And then I need to paint lines.

Sean (54:47)

So anybody could just Google Maps pickleball 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. 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 a hundred bucks or what'd you end up charging?

Chris (55:22)

I'm going to end up charging 149.

Sean (55:24)

All right, so you're. 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?

Chris (55:33)

I can accept around 150 members if I accept the right members.

Sean (55:37)

All right, and so you're talking about 22,000amonth 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?

Chris (56:11)

Yeah, key card entry, 24. 7 online booking system through a third party app, cameras, no employees, cleaner that comes there. And I'm going to use the cleaner I use for my house. Go there like two to four times a week, depending on how dirty it gets. Insurance, utilities, Internet. It's like we're talking, including cleaning, 1500amonth, 2000amonth.

Sean (56:34)

All right, so we're talking about, like, you know, 90% profit margins on this. But let's be conservative. Let's even say 80%. That would be roughly generating about 17 to 18,000amonth in cash flow off of pickleball. Off of one pickleball court.

Chris (56:51)

Yeah.

Sean (56:53)

That's pretty crazy to me.

Chris (56:54)

Yeah. And it's actually pretty unique. I use deep research to, to see if. Are there any other private indoor courts that only have one to two courts? Because there's a lot of franchises that have 15 courts. And a lot of the haters on Twitter were saying that, like, no one, no one would pay for this because people, they want multiple courts. They want other people to see them play pickleball. I'm like, dude, nobody wants to be seen playing pickleball.

Sean (57:16)

Well, no, but maybe they just don't want to wait. Right? You know, they want.

Chris (57:19)

They're not able to get courts. And so there, there are very few of these. And anyone. This is something anyone could do. Like with some Facebook ads, you don't need to buy a building or have a building. You could go rent a building and run some Facebook ads before you even sign a lease. Like, what are we talking about?

Sean (57:36)

What are we doing here?

Chris (57:38)

What are we doing?

Sean (57:38)

All right, now let's be realistic because, you know, there's a lot of people on the Internet who will say it's so good, so easy. Look at this. The math is. The math is math. And where does a business like this actually suck? You've done enough businesses now to know that there is no such thing as these, like, perfect businesses. So in this one, realistically, why would this fail? What might you be getting wrong here? Or maybe at least, like, why would the numbers not be as rosy as they sound right now?

Chris (58:06)

Yeah, it's going to be like, customer support inquiries like that are a lot higher than I thought. Things breaking the AC going out in July in Texas, zoning issues. It's not the type of business where you're going to Have a hard time finding customers. But pick your problems. There will always be problems. I think it's going to be customer support and, you know, getting calls at three in the morning from someone that's playing this random game in the middle of the night and the AC went out.

Sean (58:34)

What sort of problems do you like to pick?

Chris (58:37)

I would love to not have to worry about customer acquisition and operations. Like, I am terrible at operations. I would much rather try to sell or market something than operate it. So if it's marketing heavy and I don't have an issue finding customers, that's my business.

Sean (58:56)

And then the operations either being simple or you offloaded it to somebody else.

Chris (59:00)

Yeah, exactly.

Sean (59:02)

Give me some of your beliefs here. So what, what, like, you do all these random things, you have all these random ideas. Actions come from thoughts, thoughts come from beliefs. And so what are the beliefs that are leading you to do all these random actions? Like starting this pickleball secret pickleball court or going and, you know, being like, bucky should sell online. I'll do it for them. And now I'm gonna do this as a publicity stunt. Maybe they'll partner with me. Maybe this will work. I don't know. Maybe it'll just be a good story and I'll get sued out of existence. Like, what are some of the beliefs that you have? We talked about one at the front, which is like, focus is overrated. Talk about that one and then give me some of your other ones.

Chris (59:35)

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. I like, if I gun in my 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.

Sean (60:38)

Yeah. So focus actually does work, but it's not the only way. And it's a lot of fun. To not focus is actually what I'm hearing. 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 yes 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 have something called the restaurant hostess analogy. Can you explain that a little bit?

Chris (61:07)

Yeah. Let's say you're, you're a hostess at a Michelin star restaurant in New York, Manhattan. You're slammed 24, seven people coming 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 you know, a soccer team pulls up and like, oh, table for 15. And she's like, oh my gosh, table for 15. Oh geez, what do I do? Like to, to the woman in New York, like, that's nothing. That's nothing. Because that's her norm. That's her, 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 like took on way too much and, 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, you, 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.

Sean (62:14)

Yeah. 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 100%. The answer's not 100% 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 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 is take on an extra project, or maybe it is, but sometimes it's just go faster. Sometimes it's just think bigger. And these all sound cliche, but they're.

Chris (63:34)

Yeah, they are.

Sean (63:34)

They are cliche for a reason. They've been around for thousands of years. Because I think humans tend to have this problem where, you know, we don't actually tap into, you know, how fast we can go, how big we can go. You know, what. What truly going for it looks like without, you know, the fears, doubts, and hesitations that people have. And so I agree with you. You know, are you. Are you a family guy as well? Like, I guess, like you're doing a bunch of these businesses. Is that because you're, you know, the counterargument is, well, yeah, you're 21 years old and you don't have kids and a mortgage. You know, that would be a way that somebody would maybe try to discredit the amount of output that you have.

Chris (64:08)

Yeah, I mean, I've. I've got four kids. I had all four kids between the ages of 23 and 29. And I was building all these businesses throughout that time. I never miss dinner. I travel very rarely. I never miss a sporting event. And I'm in my office, you know, from seven to four, give or take, working. Sometimes I pop out to hang out with the kids. But I think it's important that my kids see me work. But it's also obviously Important that I spend time with them. So we go on a lot of vacations, four to six a year. We've seen all 50 states. We go all over the world. You can do both, period, Right?

Sean (64:44)

I think it's important for my kids to see me work. Unfortunately, my work just looks like me talking and laughing with friends. And so I don't think they get it. I don't think that's happening. What about. What about, you know, you said you were building your family and you worked, let's say the seven to four. What are you doing during that seven to four to make those hours count for more than maybe the average person is doing? So, like, how. What do you do to have more productivity or more effect in those same number of hours? How do you structure your day? What are some things that you've noticed you do maybe better or differently than the average entrepreneurial bear?

Chris (65:19)

Yeah, the perfect day for me is nothing on my calendar. I definitely time batch. Like, if I have seven calls that week, I'll try to put them all in the same afternoon. I think a lot of people kind of feel insecure about having an open calendar because it's kind of like a comfort blanket. Like, okay, now I know I'll be productive today, right? But when you have so many ideas, like so many ad campaigns I want to run or newsletters I want to write, like, I don't have time filling. I don't have problem filling my time. And so I don't use any fancy CRM notion or anything. If a tab is open in my browser, it's a to do list. When I close it, it's done. My notes app, a lot of caffeine, admittedly. And I don't worry about context switching. I used to really stress like, all right, let's. We could do this for 30 minutes. Do this. Don't context switch. Like, I feel like with anything in life, we can evolve to it. We can become a lot more acclimated to it. And so I'm always context switching, always. And I feel. I feel like I'm good at it because I've done it so much.

Sean (66:22)

Another one of your beliefs. You said, the longer I'm in business, the more I realize this to be true. If you want to be a billionaire, you got to innovate and focus. But to be a millionaire, you simply need to copy paste. Don't even try to copy something that works and put your own twists on it. No twists. Stop twisting. Just copy what's working and organically, over time, you'll discover the tweaks on your own, but you don't have to lead with all the twists or you'll just screw it up.

Chris (66:44)

Yeah, I think there should be like there needs to be a school or something on reverse engineering. Like it is an underrated skill. I'm in like the Meta Ads library and the web archive all the time. Let's say there was this taco restaurant that just in my town that had a line around the corner 247 and they all they sold were steak tacos. That's it. And you said, all right, they've got more demand than supply. All right, this town could use another taco shop. All right, I'm going to copy them. I'm gonna do it even better. People want more variety. They want steak and chicken and there's no drinks. You can't even get drinks there. Yada yada. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. Every change you make is another variable to like to screwing it up.

Sean (67:26)

Risk you've had.

Chris (67:27)

Yeah, like you, you're gonna, you're. Let's say you copy them verbatim and you open. You're gonna learn really quickly. Oh, oh. They're probably using that as their point of sale and not that. Oh, this is why. Because the onions, they have to separate em from the meat. Oh, like you're gonna learn all these things that are you to have to change things. But if you do that before you know if that copying works or not, you're just going to increase the likelihood of screwing it up and thus not being successful.

Sean (67:55)

That's interesting. You know, Mohnish Bhabhrai, who's come on this podcast a couple times, has this phrase, he calls it being a shameless, shameless cloner. And so he says, I'm a shameless clone of the buffet and Munger philosophy. I claim to have 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, because, 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's 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. Yeah, yeah, pride. 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 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 they're trying to take as little risk as is necessary, but are willing to take the necessary risks in order to do something. Unless there's a big asymmetric reward for it, they're not going to do it. And so I think that you're right and I think that this is very true for especially at the local level and service level. 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 a 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, you know, 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. And you're an E commerce 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 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 never wanted to do it. He always wanted to use his own capital, but finally relented and realized Okay, I could do bigger scale and do more projects 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 gonna 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 they do? And turns out it's almost always like, it's very common. This is a common problem. There is a common solution, and we should try that first.

Chris (71:27)

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 three PL and you know, three PLs, right? And it's like the worst. Nobody likes their three plus. It's impossible. And so we saw all the other three PLs 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. That'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 three pls. Cause we're like, okay. Oh, oh. They charge for storage. Because some companies go out of business and. 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.

Sean (72:24)

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? And you know, the Reason I like this idea is because this is not the only way to win. I spent most of my life playing in the innovation space, and I really love that. It's super fun to be creative and to come up with the idea. And it feels really satisfying when you. You're the first to do something that's. I mean, that's amazing. I'm very proud of that whenever I've tried to do that. But that gets talked about a lot because, again, it sounds super noble, and I think that does work. But there are many ways to win. And what I like about what you're saying is that it is another way to win. You say, oh, wow, those guys did that gutter cleaning service using Nextdoor and their neighborhood in Massachusetts. I should do that in my neighborhood in California. Let me start with that. And I think that more people should do that if they want to actually be successful, because that is another way to win. It's not the only way, but it's another way.

Chris (73:18)

Yeah, it's the midwit meme all over again. Right?

Sean (73:20)

Right.

Chris (73:21)

My first was, yeah, I read about this iPhone repair shop making 30 grand a month, and I thought, I can make 30 grand a month fixing iPhones in my city. Like, it's kind of an ignorant thought, but it worked, and I did, you know, so you gotta. You gotta. You gotta be dumb. Like, I, like, I am Chris.

Sean (73:40)

This was fun, man. We still have, like, half of the dock of other ideas and small business and, like, you know, random businesses that you've come across that we could go for. I think maybe. Maybe we do a part two. If people like this. One to have Chris back. If you. If you like Chris, either tweet at me or put it in the YouTube comments would be best that, you know, bring them back because I think this is a lot of fun. I really love the little nooks and crannies of the economy that you go looking in to find these stump grinding or the hole in one business or the shipping container for wine tours. This is fun stuff that I think sometimes on this podcast, to be honest, we have brilliant people talking about what you can do with AI and what you could do with xyz. And that's great. I love that stuff. But those aren't episodes I can send to my sister or my mom, because those businesses are kind of out of reach for what they want to do. But I think what's cool about, you know, the businesses you talk about, you know, your pickleball court, this is stuff that anybody could do. Chris thanks for coming on. Maybe give people a shout. Shout out your. Your Twitter, your podcast, whatever you want people to go check out.

Chris (74:39)

Yeah. The Kerner Office podcast is where I publish three times a week, spelled like.

Sean (74:43)

My last name, and it's on your hat, so.

Chris (74:45)

That's right.

Sean (74:46)

Never miss an opportunity.

Chris (74:47)

Dot com.

Sean (74:49)

Always be promoting.

Chris (74:50)

That's right.

Sean (74:51)

All right, man. Thanks for coming on.

Chris (74:52)

Thanks, Sean. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it. Like, no days off on the road. Let's travel. Never looking back.

Hampton (75:08)

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