Side Hustle King: The Most Profitable Business You’ve NEVER Heard Of! | Chris Koerner

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Iced Coffee Hour

Episode: Side Hustle King: The Most Profitable Business You’ve NEVER Heard Of! | Chris Koerner
Date: April 26, 2026
Hosts: Graham Stephan & Jack Selby
Guest: Chris Koerner

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Episode Overview

This episode features serial entrepreneur and “side hustle king” Chris Koerner, who unpacks the realities of hustle culture, building profitable overlooked businesses, the psychology behind starting a business, and actionable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. The conversation covers Chris’s entrepreneurial journey from selling golf balls as a child to operating multiple million-dollar ventures, with practical insights on income variance, mindset, side hustles versus full businesses, and how to truly get started.

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Main Topics and Key Discussion Points

Chris Koerner: Who Is the “Side Hustle King”?

• Introduction to Chris: Started over 80 businesses, operates 9-11 at any given time.
• Philosophy: “Overlooked businesses are the most profitable.” (00:55)
• Current Income: Personal net between $2MM to $6MM per year, driven by diversity, business exits, and investments. (01:12)

The Mindset of Entrepreneurship

• Motivation: Grew up poor, started selling used golf balls as a kid for survival, not glamour. (05:00)
• Motivation Takeaway: “There’s a million ways to make a million bucks.” (00:58)
• Barrier to Entry: People’s concern about others’ opinions is the #1 thing that stops them. “They need to care less about that than they care about being broke.” (01:17)
• Rock Bottom as Catalyst: “Everyone needs to hit their own personal rock bottom...there has to be a big enough need.” (01:25, 06:36)
• Bias for Action: “They need to just do things...not just research endlessly.” (06:36)
• Abundance Mindset: “When a new entrant joins an industry, in most cases, it grows the entire industry.” (32:45)

The Truth About Passive Income

• Is Passive Income a Scam?
  • “No, but there’s a big asterisk. You have to work your way up to passive income.” (02:04)
  • “A lot of course creators make a lot of money putting those two words in the name of their course.” (02:20)

The Reality of Failure and Business Volume

• Failures: Fewer than five businesses have fully failed, but many have been left behind or pivoted away from. (02:40)
• Why So Many Businesses? Chris enjoys building, doesn’t want to report to boards/shareholders, and values time with family over growing a single massive company. (02:54)
• Leaving Profitable Businesses: “Opportunity cost, ADHD, shiny object syndrome...I just decided to put my energy elsewhere.” (04:43)

Chris’s Origin Story and Building Resilience

• Early Hustles: Selling golf balls at age 8–10, motivated by need.
• Mission Experience: Serving in Hungary forced him to overcome fear, embrace rejection, and be “rejection-proof.” (08:49)
• No Fear of Failure: “Came home with no fear of failure, no fear of rejection...just ready to take on the world.” (09:54)

Launching a Million-Dollar Business

• First Major Success: Started an iPhone repair business in college after noticing demand; borrowed $20k from a contact met during his church mission. (11:34–13:05)
• Learning by Copying and Testing: Explains how he modeled the store based on successful businesses in similar cities. (13:07–14:00)
• Exit: Eventually sold the business for $1M after it grew to four locations. (14:03)

The Psychology and Traits of Entrepreneurs

• Does Everyone Have It? Chris believes anyone can be an entrepreneur under the right conditions, but not everyone would like it or thrive. (07:23–08:34)
• Impatience and Resilience: “Impatience can be a superpower” if it compels action, but can also be dangerous if unchecked. (06:36, 07:40)
• Scarcity vs. Abundance Mindset: Most successful entrepreneurs operate with an abundance mentality; scarcity is linked to playing it safe or being merely frugal. (31:49–33:02)

How to Get Started and Test Ideas

• Don’t Overthink; Take Action: Momentum is more important than idea selection or “focus.” (15:33)
• Skills vs. Idea: “Find a customer first...Steal an idea, honestly” — better to copy what has a proven roadmap than to invent from scratch. (18:52)
• Testing Demand: Use Facebook Marketplace, groups, and ads to test demand rapidly with minimal investment. (22:52–23:37)
• Sales as Skill Generator: Recommends if someone is “hungry enough,” they should put themselves in outbound sales roles to build grit and capacity. (72:07–72:37)

When to Quit Your Job

• Chris’s Advice: If you can see the path to scale and test conversion formulas (e.g., Facebook ads for local services), then consider quitting—even if you aren’t yet matching your salary. (37:42–38:59)
• Jack’s (Co-host) Advice: Maintain employment until your side business consistently matches or surpasses your primary income. (38:59–39:13)

Paths to Opportunity & Hidden Goldmines

• Start Where You See Money: Often begins with seeing vendors/service providers at day jobs making good profit. “Start with an idea you already have.” (39:47)
• Leverage Existing Skills: Connect what you already do—social media, sales, Facebook Marketplace—to business models. (68:51)
• Seek Out Positive Signals: If an idea keeps pulling you back for 2-3 weeks, it may be worth commiting to. (19:45)
• Copycat Strategy: Don’t reinvent the wheel: model after proven businesses, using similar channels, offers, and even suppliers. (58:19–60:22)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• "There has to be a great enough need. I like to say that everyone needs to hit their own personal rock bottom." - Chris Koerner (01:17)
• "Any side hustle can become a full time business. Anything." - Chris (00:58)
• "Momentum is everything. If we keep momentum going, it doesn't matter if we focus or not. We're gonna win if we just keep going." - Chris (15:33)
• "Find a customer first. On any idea, just steal an idea, honestly." - Chris (18:52)
• "Not everyone should [be an entrepreneur]. Most people wouldn’t like it. It's not as free as people would like to think." - Chris (07:40)
• "It's all I know. So it looks easy to me. It feels easy." - Chris (08:34)
• "If I wanted to work four hours a week, I could, and I would make really good money. But work is my passion." - Chris (24:36)
• "What people don't understand is that when a new entrant joins an industry, it grows the entire industry." - Chris (32:45)
• "If I got 500 subscribers from [this podcast], it'd be thousands of dollars. But it's more of just like a halo effect… I just want progress, I just want growth, whatever that looks like." - Chris (77:11–77:23)
• "You can just do things and people should just do things… Just test it, just try it… you will have a much more rich and rewarding life, and you'll have stories, you'll be interesting, good things will happen to you." - Chris, closing advice (99:28)

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Timestamps of Major Segments

| Timestamp | Topic / Question | Key Content | |-----------|------------------|-------------| | 00:52 | Why “side hustle king”? | Chris’s origin, approach, and high business count | | 01:12 | “How much do you make?” | Income range and breakdown | | 02:04 | Is passive income a scam? | Reality versus hype | | 04:43 | Why leave profitable businesses? | Opportunity cost, shiny object syndrome | | 05:00 | Early entrepreneurship | Selling used balls out of necessity | | 06:36 | Entrepreneurial traits | Hunger, bias for action, rock bottom | | 07:23 | Who shouldn’t be an entrepreneur? | Nature vs nurture debate | | 08:49 | Building resilience | Chris’s mission in Hungary, dealing with rejection | | 11:34 | First big business | College iPhone repair store, raising money | | 13:05 | Business validation | Scraping data, identifying opportunity | | 14:03 | Business exit | Sold for $1M after expansion | | 15:33 | Encouragement to start | Action beats research, momentum is everything | | 18:52 | Developing business | Find a paying customer, “steal” good ideas | | 19:45 | When to cut an idea | Duration of sustained interest as a test | | 22:52 | Testing demand | FB Marketplace & ads, rapid iteration | | 24:23 | Four Hour Workweek | Chris’s take vs reality | | 27:26 | Becoming “rich” | Second business, LCD recycling | | 31:49 | Money mindsets | Abundance mentality and its impact | | 37:42 | When to quit your job | Scaling path vs matched income | | 39:47 | Starting points | Leverage job insights for business ideas | | 46:48 | “Credit card offers” app | Live brainstorm with hosts on fintech product | | 48:52 | AI tools for business | Vibe coding, embracing new tech | | 53:09 | Working with friends | Personal story: $50M business destroyed by partnership fallout | | 55:03 | Healing after business betrayal | Forgiveness, lessons learned | | 57:54 | First step after episode | Find a customer, no matter how basic | | 62:13 | “Boring but lucrative” businesses | AI consulting, recurring service models | | 67:01 | Managing multiple ventures | Assistants, chief of staff, operating partners | | 68:39 | “I don’t have time” | Audit your day, link skills to opportunity | | 70:33 | How to “get hungry” | Sometimes you need your boats burned for you | | 74:54 | Raising hungry kids | Involving them in business, service, and sales | | 80:14 | S-tier business ideas | Rapid-fire ranking: AI, ATMs, detailing, content creation, etc. | | 99:28 | Final advice | Just do things, seek stories, chase action, embrace risk |

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Notable Segments: Business Idea Tier List

S Tier:

• AI implementation (“very approachable, no money needed, can scale”) (80:28)
• Facebook Marketplace flipping/businesses

A Tier:

• Car detailing (“so approachable, can scale”)
• Online tutoring (“tons of platforms and demand, high upskilling”)
• Real estate agent
• Short-form video/shorts editing
• Solar sales
• Window washing

B/C Tier:

• ATMs and vending machines (pros/cons, scalability, investment)
• Dog walking, garage sales, print on demand (issues with scaling, recurring revenue, luck)
• DoorDash/Uber Eats mainly for the chance to scale into car rental for drivers

D/F Tier:

• Content creation (“survivorship bias, hard to monetize”)
• Day trading (“asymmetric bet in the wrong direction”)
• OnlyFans (personal ethics)
• Panhandling (skills-building, but ethical issues)

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Chris’s “Just Do It” Philosophy

Closing Message:
“Just do things... If they have a question about, like, what if I tried? Like, just do it. Just test it. Just try it. You will have a much more rich and rewarding life, and you'll have stories, you'll be interesting… you will have a lot of surface for luck if you just go out there and chase your curiosities.” (99:28)

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Practical Takeaways

• Taking action and building momentum trumps endless research and “perfection.”
• The best way to validate a business is to get a paying customer.
• Almost any idea can be a viable business if you understand distribution.
• “Copying” a proven business model is more likely to succeed than inventing.
• Hunger and bias for action are core, and can be built via hardship or deliberate exposure to rejection (sales).
• Most people are better off not being entrepreneurs—but those who want to jump in should start by leveraging skills and solving obvious problems.
• Abundance, gratitude, and humility are massive personal and business multipliers.

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For more advice and to see Chris’s “Side Hustle Tier List,” listen to the full episode.
[Chris Koerner contact: SideHustleKing.com (he just spent $4k to acquire this domain!) (29:41)]

Transcript

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[Jack]

how did you become known as a side hustle king?

[Chris Kerner]

Probably by starting 80 side hustles. I've always said that the overlooked businesses are the ones that are the most profitable. Any side hustle can become a full time business. Anything. There is a million ways to make a million bucks. This is a business that nobody talks about.

[Jack]

So how much are you making in total from all of these businesses?

[Chris Kerner]

Millions of dollars a year net to me.

[Jack]

Personal income why do you think most people never even start?

[Chris Kerner]

What do people think about me? That's the number one thing. They need to care less about that than they care about being broke. There has to be a great enough need. I like to say that everyone needs to hit their own personal rock bottom.

[Graham]

What do you think could be a death sentence for an entrepreneur?

[Chris Kerner]

The worst situation we can be in is when our job is just good enough. But sometimes when the boats are burned for us, it can be the best thing that ever happens to us.

[Jack]

And what qualities make the best business?

[Chris Kerner]

It comes down to.

[Graham]

Chris Kerner. Thank you so much for coming on the Iced Coffee Hour.

[Chris Kerner]

Thanks for having me.

[Graham]

So you have some pretty crazy statistics with all of the different business that you run. But first we have to ask you is passive income a scam?

[Chris Kerner]

No, it's just there's just a big asterisk by it. You have to work your way up to passive income, which takes a lot longer than most people think.

[Graham]

So it takes active work to then create passive income at some point in the future.

[Chris Kerner]

Or money or a lot of money.

[Graham]

Why do people think it is a scam?

[Chris Kerner]

Because there's a lot of course creators that make a Lot of money by putting those two words in the name of their course.

[Graham]

So there's a lot of passive income stuff that isn't actually passive income.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah. Because the click through rates and all the metrics show that it converts better, if you call it that, but it's not actually that.

[Jack]

So how many businesses have you built?

[Chris Kerner]

Over 80.

[Graham]

How many have failed?

[Chris Kerner]

Well, do you define like me pivoting away from it as a failure or like probably less than 5 have like properly failed.

[Jack]

So why spend your time building all of these businesses when you could spend that time building one massive one?

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah. Cause it's really fun. And no one will be able to prove that I made the wrong choice. Right. I can't ab test my life and say, Chris, if you just want to focus on that one, who knows? There's too many variables. But what I do know is that like I don't want to report to a board, I don't want a bunch of shareholders, I don't want to take a company public. I don't want to be in meetings all day or zooms all day. I don't want to be away from my family. And to build a billion dollar business, I feel like I would need to do those things.

[Jack]

And what's the biggest business you currently run and how much does that make?

[Chris Kerner]

Let's see. I have a portfolio of rv' parks that I'm a partner in that is worth in about a month or two it'll be worth $250 million. I'm one of many partners in that, but that's the biggest asset I have.

[Jack]

So how much are you making in total from all of these businesses?

[Chris Kerner]

Millions of dollars a year net to me. Personal income between 2 and 6, depends on the year.

[Graham]

How is there so much variance in your income? That's crazy. I feel like very few people we talk to have a 3x variance.

[Chris Kerner]

It just depends on the year. It depends on do I exit something? Is there a big distribution one year, something fail the year before? Did I have a good year in some, a bad year in others? It's just all across the board. I've had multiple years in a row with $0 of income. So if you would have asked me a few years ago, it would have been much, much lower number.

[Graham]

I could be getting the numbers wrong here. But if I'm doing some reverse math, if you run 80 businesses but you can make $2 million a year, then wouldn't the average business be like $25,000 a year?

[Chris Kerner]

I've started 80 businesses. I don't have 80 today.

[Graham]

So how many do you currently operate?

[Chris Kerner]

Like nine to 11.

[Graham]

Nine to 11.

[Chris Kerner]

What you call like a business versus an investment. It's kind.

[Graham]

Yeah. Okay, that makes sense.

[Chris Kerner]

Call it 10.

[Graham]

And so how many businesses have you exited?

[Chris Kerner]

Less than 10. Most of the 80 businesses that I've started, I've just moved away from.

[Graham]

Why would you move away from a profitable business?

[Chris Kerner]

Opportunity cost, sometimes they weren't profitable. Right. They weren't failing. I could see like the path to scale, but shiny object syndrome, adhd, opportunity cost, whatever you want to call it. I just decided to put my energy and efforts elsewhere.

[Jack]

And how did you get started doing all this? What sparked the interest?

[Chris Kerner]

I grew up poor and I lived across the street from a golf course. And these golf balls would fly into my yard and for whatever reason I had the thought to sell them, to sell them to golfers. And so I lived on this busy road in Logan, Utah and I put up this big piece of plywood. I leaned it against my mailbox and it said, use golf balls. Three for a dollar. And at 8, 9, 10 years old, I would just haggle with these golfers and just sell them used golf balls so I could pay the bills.

[Jack]

Did they know you were so young when they would show up and see the sign?

[Chris Kerner]

Probably not Looking back. I think it's kind of crazy because I have a 9 year old. I mean, I would let him do that, but I just can't imagine him doing that. Like talking with 35 year old golfers about like, can you do four for a dollar? Like, but that's what I was doing.

[Jack]

Why were you different than your son in that capacity?

[Chris Kerner]

Well, my son didn't grow up poor and I, to me it was just like a necessity. Right. A lot of times people ask me like, why are you an entrepreneur? Or why do you start businesses? And they want like this big like fil. Philosophical answer. And it was just like I just wanted to be able to have money for a yearbook or a bike or candy. It was just a necessity.

[Graham]

A lot of people are going to hear your story of selling golf balls when you were young and they're not going to be able to relate to that at all. But they know that they want to be an entrepreneur. And so there's going to be like this, this weird dissonance with most of the viewers where they're like tuning in because they want to be a business owner. But they're like, I, I have not been that person. What would you say if they could look inwards are the main traits that would be indicators of them. Successful entrepreneur.

[Chris Kerner]

There has to be a great enough need. Right. Because some people just like the idea of entrepreneurship, but then they try it, they taste it, or they have a good job that pays them well, and they just. It doesn't give them energy because they don't really have a need. So they. They kind of need to be at like, their own personal rock bottom. I like to say that everyone needs to hit their own personal rock bottom. Right. And that looks different to different people, but there needs to be a. A big enough need there, and they need to have a bias for action. Like, they need to just be impatient. Impatience can be a superpower. They need to just. Just do things like, not just like research endlessly, but like, be willing to go out there and like, try to get a customer. And if they're not willing to do that, then they probably don't want to be an entrepreneur.

[Graham]

And then what personality trait do you think could be a death sentence for an entrepreneur?

[Chris Kerner]

I think anyone can be an entrepreneur. Not that anyone should.

[Graham]

Anyone can.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Graham]

I don't agree with that.

[Chris Kerner]

Really?

[Graham]

Yeah.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Jack]

I think some people are just naturally can't do it or they're way too impatient. Well, when Jack talks about qualities, the first thing that comes to my mind is impatience.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Jack]

And wanting something too fast.

[Chris Kerner]

I think that we are survivors as humans. Right. We haven't had to survive in centuries, but if we truly had to. If. If I'm a father and I have to feed my family and there are no jobs, I would. If I didn't have an entrepreneurial bone in my body, I would find a way to make it work, to feed my family. I might not like it. It might not be my true nature. I might be terrible at it, but I think that everyone has the capacity. I don't think everyone should. I don't think everyone would like it. I think most people would not like it. It's not as free as people would like to think. But maybe I oversimplify it because it's all I know.

[Graham]

No, I think that's. That's a better justification is like, okay, everyone's sure they may have the capacity.

[Jack]

Like, if they.

[Graham]

If it was that or death, then yeah, I would assume people can find a way to spin up some buc. Continue living. But also, like, would they end up living a fruitful, successful life? I would say not many people have that ability.

[Chris Kerner]

It's all I know. So it looks easy to me. It feels easy. It's all I've ever done. And so I, I tend to oversimplify

[Jack]

it, but how do you scale up from golf balls though? Like you're making money as a kid, how do you turn that into all of these different businesses?

[Chris Kerner]

At 11, I moved away from Utah, I moved away from the golf course, I moved from Utah to Florida and I just worked odd jobs. I wasn't even an entrepreneur. It just kind of went dormant, right? I waited tables, I mowed lawns, whatever it took to, to make money. My parents got divorced at 13. My mom raised by a single mom, she was a waitress. She bus, she waited tables at this Mexican restaurant. I bus tables. And then everything changed when I went and served a two year mission for my church. I went to Hungary, I learned Hungarian and I knocked doors and I approached people on the street as an extreme introvert for years. And that just like completely rewired my brain to make me embrace failure, embrace embarrassment, and just not care anymore.

[Jack]

What sort of failure did you see knocking doors?

[Chris Kerner]

Everything. Like we were selling Jesus. We were teaching people about our religion. And in a post communist European country, in most countries, that doesn't go over well. In Hungary, it especially didn't. It was especially difficult.

[Jack]

And what did that teach you about people going door to door like that?

[Chris Kerner]

It made me grateful for America, honestly. Because these people, that's all they knew. They had lived in like this communist society for decades and all they knew was darkness, there was no hope. And so it didn't like make me a pessimist, I'm an optimist. It made me grateful for America. And so to answer your question about how do you go from, you know, selling golf balls as a 10 year old to 80 businesses, I came home with like no fear of failure, no fear of rejection. And that entrepreneurial gene that was, you know, implanted in me at age 10 was reawakened and I came home just like ready to take on the world.

[Jack]

How long did it take you to get over the fear of knocking on someone's door?

[Chris Kerner]

This might surprise some people, but for the entire two years of my mission, every time I knocked on a door, I would kind of silently hope they didn't answer. I never got over it. Like it was hard the entire time right now when they rejected me, I said no. That got a lot easier. I didn't take it personally. After a week maybe, but I never like, I never wanted them to answer the door, but then when they did, I would go all in. You know what I'm saying? It's kind of like you don't want to go to the gym, but you go anyway and you're glad you did when you're done.

[Jack]

I had a similar occurrence. I did a video where we would go door to door window washing, and I hated it. Going door to door was so scary for me to knock on a door and feel like I'm intruding, I'm bothering them. And every single time I thought the same thing. I hope they don't answer.

[Chris Kerner]

I did the same thing for a video like a month ago. And it was no different. It was just cringe. It was bad.

[Jack]

But when you start your first big businesses that start making money, how much did that cost you and what gave you that idea?

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah. So I was a student at the University of Alabama, and I had learned about another business that was fixing iPhones from a retail location. And they were like bragging to the local news that they were making 20,000amonth. And I had been reading these business books. I'd been looking for my thing to start. And for whatever reason, I said, I can do that. I can fix phones. And so right around the same time, one of my classmates gave me a broken iPhone. And I saw like a flyer on the bulletin board for a guy that fixed iPhones. And so I went to his dorm room and I had him fix my iPhone in front of me. And I asked him all kinds of questions. And then I went and signed a five year lease on a store. A storefront.

[Graham]

How did you sign a five year lease on a storefront with no income?

[Chris Kerner]

So I went to all my previous bosses because I didn't grow up around wealthy people. My parents had no money. And I basically said, hey, Danny, like, I want to start this business fixing iPhones. This was 2010, so iPhones were still very new. No one thought it was viable, right? And the only data point I had was one news article I read about some guys, right? But he's like, no. I went to my boss at the Thai restaurant where I was waiting tables. He said no. Everyone I knew said no. Until I went to a guy that I met on my mission in Hungary. He was Austrian, but he was living in Hungary. And I knew he owned a few businesses. And I told him, and he's like, no question. How much do you need? And I had some pell grants, I had some credit card advances, but I needed 20,000. And he gave me the 20,000. And. And I put my pell grants in my credit card advance and started the business.

[Graham]

Why could you not just do that from your dorm?

[Chris Kerner]

That's what everyone told me to do. Right? And that would have been wise, but I looked at it as, every day that I don't open, I'm losing money. Like, I'm effectively losing money. And so if I start small and scale this, I'm losing money. I want to be at scale now. And I did do some research. So I scraped every single iPhone repair shop in the country with some random piece of software I found online. And I learned that a city of a hundred thousand could support about two iPhone repair stores. And the city I lived in, coincidentally, had 100,000 people and there were no stores. And it was. It was a similar demographic city as Baton Rouge, where Louisiana State was. So I thought, okay, 30,000 students, they're all gonna get iPhones or smartphones. There's no one here fulfilling this need. I just knew, like, this will work. This works in all these other cities. It will work here.

[Jack]

And how much did you make from that?

[Chris Kerner]

I sold it a few years later for a million bucks. Right. At a million bucks.

[Jack]

Who bought it?

[Chris Kerner]

A private. Just a guy that wanted to quit his W2. He had a six figure job and he wanted to own his own business.

[Graham]

And you just had one storefront?

[Chris Kerner]

We had four.

[Graham]

Okay, so you'd expanded and how many in that city?

[Chris Kerner]

1. And it's still there. Fifteen years later, that store is still there.

[Graham]

So how much did you make in your first year running this iPhone screen business?

[Chris Kerner]

Not much at all? No, no. The second year, maybe 60, 70,000. And then I partnered with another business and they took over it. I owned a third at that point, and then they added at one or two more stores and sold it.

[Jack]

So why do you think most people never even start?

[Chris Kerner]

They're just afraid of what people will think or say. And people don't care. That's the whole secret is people don't care about you.

[Jack]

Do you think it is that or do you think people just overthink what they want?

[Chris Kerner]

Absolutely. Yeah. They get their dopamine from research because it feels good to, like, crunch numbers, make spreadsheets, copy the sheet, make this scenario, this scenario. It feels really good. And we're getting dopamine from that, but we need to get our dopamine from action, right? From calling and trying to get a customer, trying to get a sale, like trying to call and negotiate a lease. We get dopamine from both things, but the former is easier, the research side of things. So they get stuck in that loop forever until they get bored with it, and then they move on, and then they Tell people, ah, it just didn't work out.

[Jack]

So how do you encourage somebody to start if they're either overthinking the idea or afraid of approval?

[Chris Kerner]

I was afraid of what people thought as well. And so I did something kind of dumb. I put, like, a false constraint on myself, and I was like, I'm not ever gonna post about this to Facebook, because if I have to. What I told myself was, if I have to start a business that relies on my friends and family, then they might not scale. You don't have a business. But what the real reason was, was I don't want people to see what I'm doing because I might fail. I might not do it. I don't want to be publicly accountable, right? So everything I did, I did without the help of my friends and family who were willing to help. They were willing to be my first customer, right? But I didn't use that. So people need to, like, just let go of that and be willing to ask for help from their friends and family to be their first customers. And they need to do something every single day to keep the ball moving. Because we. We focus a lot on focus, right? That's the question everyone asked me. Like, what if you just wanted done one business? What if you focus? What would happen if you focus? But we don't focus on momentum. We don't talk enough about momentum. I think momentum is everything. And if we keep momentum going, then it doesn't matter if we focus or not. We're gonna win if we just keep going, right? In my opinion, compounding does not care if we're doing one thing or multiple things. Because if we're getting positive signals from an idea, we're not gonna be distracted by other ideas. The distraction is a signal that something isn't right with this idea.

[Graham]

But that would require a good idea in the first place. What would you say is more important for someone looking to become an entrepreneur or make a lot of money in business? Should they try to come up with the idea first or hone their skills first?

[Jack]

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[Graham]

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[Jack]

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[Jack]

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[Graham]

The Black Addition Powder works extremely well for days at home or when you want something more customizable. It has 40 grams of protein per serving, mixes Super EAS, and can be blended with ingredients like fruit or milk, depending on your preference.

[Jack]

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[Graham]

It's just a really simple way to stay on track with daily protein and overall nutrition without needing to plan out every single meal. Seriously guys, I absolutely love Huel. I'm not kidding. I drink one every single day. The reason is because 1 I want the protein and 2 I don't keep track of all of my micronutrients and there's basically everything in hu and so I'll drink it. I feel great, get some protein and I love it.

[Jack]

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[Graham]

What would you say is more important for someone looking to become an entrepreneur or make a lot of money in business? Should they try to come up with the idea first or hone their skills first?

[Chris Kerner]

I think they should try to find a customer first. A paying customer. On any idea, it's just steal an idea, honestly, like a burger restaurant. People try to think of a new idea. New ideas are more likely to fail than anything because it's new. I want an idea with precedent, right? I want a roadmap of someone that's gone before me and done that and then I just want to copy that. So I think that's what people should focus on is taking another idea that that meshes with their background. Maybe like their college major had something to do with it or their previous job or their passion or something. Some idea that they've seen out there in the market that looks interesting to them and they should try to find a customer there. And they'll learn so much more in the effort of finding a customer than they would in the effort of trying to research that idea forever.

[Jack]

And at what point do you decide to cut the idea that maybe it's just not working and you just.

[Chris Kerner]

That's an excellent idea. That's an excellent question. So that answer for me is different than for others. For me, if two weeks have elapsed and I'm still thinking about it, I can go into bed, I'm on a walk, and I'm just like, there's something, there's really something to that because I come across a ton of ideas on a daily basis. And so that idea has to compete with all kinds of others coming into my brain, right? So for me, two to three weeks is about the test that I give it. But for the average person, they have this thing called product market fit, which I'm sure you guys are familiar with. And a normal business, let's call it a business or a business idea, feels like pushing a boulder up a hill, right? It's exhausting. It's hard. We acquire two customers, we lose one, we acquire three, we lose two. That's normal. That's okay, right? But 5% of the time you've got product market fit, where instead of pushing that boulder up a hill, you're sprinting down a hill. And the boulder represents demand, customers, right?

[Graham]

Money.

[Chris Kerner]

And they're chasing you. You can't even sleep because you're fulfilling orders, right? You just, you just find the sweet spot in the market. The pricing, the offer, it's just all aligns and you have product market fit, right? That is a beautiful thing. Like that is when you should not have shiny object syndrome. And you won't like, just by default of the idea being so successful, you won't be looking around, you'll be figuring out how to fulfill these orders, right? It's then when you should not look around. But if it's the normal thing and you're pushing a boulder up a hill and you still have shiny object syndrome, it doesn't mean you should just chase the first idea. Because that boulder, like you could get over the hill and you could find product market fit, keep pushing it. But also listen to those signals because if something sounds like a good idea to us, it's for a reason. And so it might sound woo woo on the surface, but like, we need to get to the bottom of like why that idea sounds interesting to us and then maybe spend a little bit of time just kind of exploring It a little bit.

[Jack]

You probably get pitched so many ideas. What are some of the common ideas that you hear that are just a waste of time? Like a lot of times I like the first thing that comes to mind for me is always like dropshipping or like Amazon FBA or like things like this that are so saturated it's just not worth anybody's time.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, I think that with the right distribution, the right marketing, any idea could work. Like literally any business idea could work. If I were to think of the dumbest idea, like a hello Kitty themed mousetrap. Right. Just objectively dumb. And if I were to tweet about that, I might get zero customers. Right. If Elon Musk were to retweet me, I would get some customers because there's more distribution. That's it. It's not suddenly a good idea. Right. So I think that people should spend less time on the ideation and more time on the distribution strategy. More time trying to find customers. And if they do that, then a bad idea can become a good idea.

[Jack]

And how do you test that idea to make sure there's enough demand?

[Chris Kerner]

Facebook ads, Facebook groups, Facebook Marketplace, meta ads, Instagram ads, short form video, Facebook posts.

[Jack]

And what are you doing? You're running an ad to a landing page and then seeing if they just put their email address in.

[Chris Kerner]

You don't even need to go that far. You could just post your idea to Facebook Marketplace. It doesn't need to be a product idea, it could be a service idea. Post it to Facebook Marketplace, post another variation of it with a different price point or a different title, and just see how many impressions each one gets. And then you got one signal, you're like only 5% of the way there. Then you just do it again. You change the price point, you change the picture, you change some variable, leave the other ones the same and just keep testing. And by the end of a week you're gonna have a really good idea if that idea is worth anything or not.

[Graham]

How difficult is it to be decent at Facebook ads?

[Chris Kerner]

It's not that difficult. Difficult to be okay at it. You watch a few YouTube videos, play around with it for a few hours and you're probably you're where you need to be to post ads and start spending money and start seeing some signals that look promising or not.

[Jack]

Most people seem to want to do this for the money, but do you find that there's an underlying reason beyond the money that someone wants to take on a side hustle or try to get passive income? Seems like In a lot of these cases, they just want time.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah. And they don't want to be told what to do. They probably had a crappy boss. They just want to own their time and they want to be able to provide for their family. I mean, the American dream is ownership in all its forms. Whether that's ownership of a house or of your time or of your idea or money, financial situation.

[Jack]

What do you think of the four hour work week?

[Chris Kerner]

That book changed my life.

[Jack]

Do you think it's possible?

[Chris Kerner]

Absolutely. 100%.

[Jack]

Have you seen it in real life? Someone working four hours a week and making that much money?

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah. Like if I wanted to work four hours a week, I could and I would make really good money. But I work is my passion. Like I love working. You guys love working. It's fun to me. So I'll never retire.

[Jack]

Do you think though that if you only worked four hours a week that after maybe a year someone else would take over that spot? Who is putting in the time and the effort?

[Chris Kerner]

100%. Yeah. And I think the same thing about remote work versus in person. I think if two companies are selling the same product or service, one is in person, one is remote, the in person company wins. So I look at that as the same principle.

[Graham]

So if in person is so successful, why do some of the biggest companies not demand in person work?

[Chris Kerner]

I don't think they agree with me, honestly. I think that they like good is the enemy to great and they think they're doing fine remote, so they're okay with that.

[Graham]

So you demand all of your companies to be in person?

[Chris Kerner]

No, I don't because I'm not trying to build a world beating company. I know my companies would do better if I were in person. But I've got really good employees that are remote and they don't want to move and I'd rather keep them. And I don't want to go into the office every day anyway. I work from home.

[Graham]

But you're saying if all of those employees were in the same place with you, then the businesses would be more successful?

[Chris Kerner]

100%.

[Jack]

What's the biggest advantage that that gives you? Just being in person?

[Chris Kerner]

It's hard to quantify, like those water cooler conversations or just being able to go right down the hall and talk to someone. Because if I needed like a file from you and we were in the same office, ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer all day play, you choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, A deep end dj, A Road dog or a train. Just add a song to your chosen

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[Chris Kerner]

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[Chris Kerner]

And I just went down into your office to ask for the file. We'd probably start talking about something else. What are you working on? What's that on your whiteboard? And we would just start talking. And amazing, beautiful things come out of those conversations. I've seen it. I've had businesses where I've gone into the office every day, and it's incredibly fulfilling to do things together in person. And you. I. That is just my soapbox of mine. You cannot replicate that.

[Graham]

I agree. It also lowers the bar for what makes something conversation worthy. So, for example, if I have a problem that comes up, I'm not going to call Graham and bother him if he's not here at the studio, like, working just to try to, you know, workshop the idea, come to a quicker conclusion. Or maybe I won't even come to a conclusion at all to just stave off the problem. Push it off, push it off. But if Graham's there, then I'm like, hey, by the way, you know, what do you think about this? Just lowering the bar for what's worth bringing up, and then we solve the problem right then and there. At what point would you say you became rich?

[Chris Kerner]

My late 20s.

[Graham]

And what caused that?

[Chris Kerner]

My second real business. So I had my iPhone repair business. I ran that for two years. And then right at the end of year two, I merged with another company that basically took it over, and I still had a third ownership stake in it. The day after I merged, I started a business that started selling iPhone parts and recycling iPhone parts. It was called LCD cycle. And we, we did 28,000 our first month, 60,000 our second, 150,000 our third month. And we ended up doing over 2 million the first year. And we doubled every year for five years.

[Graham]

Was that the easiest business you ever started?

[Chris Kerner]

That's a good question.

[Graham]

Because to make close to $30,000 in the very first month of operations, like, that's crazy. And you seem to be, you know, have your finger on the pulse of that market.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, when you say easy, it wasn't easy operationally, but it was the second, like, most successful business I had started in a short amount of time. Does that make sense? Yeah, it was like the second most successful business. I had gotten from zero to a million in a short amount of time.

[Graham]

And why would you say you became

[Chris Kerner]

rich then because we had a lot of free cash flow. I was in my mid-20s and we were netting 700,000 to a million dollars a year and I was distributing most of that to myself.

[Jack]

Did that make you happier?

[Chris Kerner]

What made me happy was showing to my wife that I could do wasn't the money. My wife is incredibly supportive, incredibly patient. Anything I've ever wanted to do, she's like, I trust you, go for it. Right? And even when things didn't go well, she never had like a snide comment, Nothing. Not even once. So being able to say, hey babe, like, look at the bank account, that made me happy. Because she's never asked for handbags or nice things or anything. Right? But did you get her one she doesn't want today? She doesn't want.

[Graham]

But you didn't ball out at all. You're in your 20s with a ton of money.

[Chris Kerner]

We ball out by, we have a night, we got a really nice house that we still live in today. And we go on really nice trips with our family and we eat. We're foodies, so we eat really well. But we don't have like fancy cars and clothes and handbags or anything.

[Jack]

How did you become known as a side hustle king?

[Chris Kerner]

Probably by starting 80 side hustles. 80 businesses.

[Jack]

Who gave you that name? Did you name yourself?

[Chris Kerner]

No, I didn't. That was Ben Levy. He's friends with the. He's business partners with the My first million guys and I think he came up with that. And then they titled one of their videos with me as that and then it kind of stuck. I actually just spent four grand last week on side hustleking.com. i just wanted to own the domain. I don't know what I'll do with it, but.

[Graham]

But you wouldn't even consider what you do. Side hustles, you'd say they're more businesses.

[Chris Kerner]

No, I kind of like cringe at that, at that phrase. Because anything can scale. Any side hustle can become a full time business, like anything. I will go to my grave in saying that. So, yeah, it's just, I don't know, it seems kind of like a negative connotation to me.

[Graham]

Are there any true side hustles like

[Chris Kerner]

something that can't scale? Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, a lemonade stand can scale anything. Used golf balls can scale because we have the Internet. Like we have unlimited distribution.

[Graham]

What did you crave so much to continue working in business and to get started in business in the first place.

[Jack]

Place.

[Graham]

Like what did you feel like you were missing in your life?

[Chris Kerner]

We. I was poor. I was always poor and I hated it. My best friend, one of my best friends was wealthy and I lived in a very middle class area. Right. Titusville, Florida, you can go look it up. Is very middle class, if not lower middle class. I was below middle class. My close friend was my close friend and my boss, my wrestling partner's dad. They were both business owners and they did very well. One lived on a river, one lived in a really nice house. And it was just this weird dichotomy for me to be poor. Like I never had name brand shoes. My shoes came from Payless, hand me downs. I had these jeans that would get holes in them. My mom would cut them off, hem em and turn them into shorts. Like I went back and looked at my school pictures as a kid and you can just see in my picture I was poor and I just didn't like, I didn't like it. I didn't like not having money for a field trip, like $35 for a field trip or a yearbook, you know. And so I just, I wanted to grab that myself and fix it myself.

[Graham]

But did you have an abundance or scarcity mentality around money? Because it seems like you have an abundance mentality. Like you can make money wherever you know, money is everywhere.

[Chris Kerner]

I think definitely abundance. I know I have abundance mentality now. Back then I didn't know what it was, but if I had to label it, it would be abundance because I saw what was possible in my friends.

[Graham]

Have you noticed that most of the successful entrepreneurs have an abundance mentality towards money or a scarcity?

[Chris Kerner]

1 1000% abundance.

[Graham]

So what do you think is so important about an abundance mentality for an entrepreneur? And also if you have a scarcity mentality, what is the advantages that can come with that?

[Chris Kerner]

I don't know if I can think of any. I mean honestly, maybe being a little

[Graham]

conservative on things, tight with the budget,

[Jack]

maybe not over expanding, not over indulging. There's gotta be a few things that's true.

[Chris Kerner]

I don't know if I see that as scarcity though. Maybe that's just like being financially conservative. Like I think you could have an abundance mentality and be frugal, right? Yeah, probably. That was a two part question though. The second part was yeah, like why

[Graham]

do you think the abundance mentality is so important for people that are growing in business?

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah. I think what people don't understand is that when a new entrant joins an industry in Most cases, not all cases. It grows the entire industry. Right. The reason that some of the world's best venture capitalists passed on investing in Shopify, because back in the early 2000s, Shopify's total addressable market was like $10 billion. Right? And so they said, okay, if Shopify owns 50% of this market, it's a $5 billion outcome. Their valuation today is 500 million. Is 10x really worth it for us at a Series C? And they passed. What they didn't know was that Shopify's market would become a trillion dollar market. And now they own 15% of it, which is 50 times bigger than they thought the entire market was. So to me, that stat right there is the abundance mentality. Right. When you join a market, it grows the market. I knew a woman who made a million dollars decorating porches with pumpkins, right? That's all she does. October hits, and she charges $700 to put fancy pumpkins on a porch. And I posted about her, and it went mega viral.

[Jack]

I think I might have seen that on Twitter.

[Chris Kerner]

You probably did. Yeah, everywhere. 20 million views, right? And now, like, she was literally the only person decorating porches with pumpkins. Now there are hundreds. And her business is thriving because now people know I can pay someone to make my porch look awesome. So that helped her. But most people I reach out to, I'm like, hey, let me profile you. Like, no, no, no. I don't. I don't want people to copy me, but they don't realize it. It doesn't work like that. Yeah.

[Jack]

The Christmas lights is another huge opportunity. Like, we pay. I think it's like 800.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Jack]

For them to put up the lights and then take them down, and they're doing the entire neighborhood. So you could imagine like, 150 homes at $800 each.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, it's a lot.

[Jack]

It's a lot of money.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Well, for a seasonal business.

[Chris Kerner]

To your example, Elon Musk. Right. Very abundance mindset. And he wants Mercedes, Ford, Toyota to make electric cars. He wants his market share to shrink because he knows he'll sell net more cars if they own 40% of the EV market, as opposed to 60%, because they're that much more normalized. That's the abundance mindset.

[Jack]

So what do you think of the term side hustle? It doesn't sound like anything of what you're doing is really a side hustle. It seems like starting a small business and expanding that.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, well, I think any business can be proved out as a side hustle. I don't think people should just outright quit their jobs to test something. There's probably an exception out there, but basically anything can be proven without having to quit your job and go all in. So if someone hears side hustle and they think that's my escape hatch from the 9 to 5, like that's what I need, a side hustle, and that's what they get from that term, then I love it. If it enables more entrepreneurs, then I love the term. But I just don't want it to be seen as, like, derogatory or demeaning.

[Jack]

How many people are just better off, though, working harder at the job they currently have instead of doing side hustles or side businesses?

[Chris Kerner]

80 to 90% of people, maybe. Yeah.

[Graham]

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[Jack]

No joke. Since I've known Jack, he's probably lost his wallet at least about 20 or 50 times. And that's why we're partnering with Magback and their Smart Wallet.

[Graham]

Magbach Smart Wallet has Apple Find My built into it. So if you leave it somewhere, you open up your phone, tap it in Find My and it plays a sound right where it is, and it will show you exactly where it is as well. So I was just at Coachella and it would have been an absolute nightmare

[Chris Kerner]

to lose my wallet.

[Graham]

And knowing that I lose my things all the time, I had to make sure that I had my Magbach Smart Wallet with me.

[Jack]

It holds up to nine cards and cash, snaps magnetically to your phone and is super slim. It's really nice because the Hagwin wallets are bulky and it just doesn't fit right in your pocket. But with Magback, you could carry a lot and you forget it's even there.

[Graham]

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[Jack]

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[Graham]

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[Jack]

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[Graham]

At what point should you decide to quit your job to pursue your side hustle?

[Chris Kerner]

If you can see the path to scale, right? If you're not making enough money yet to replace your income, but you see what it would take, for instance, you're running Facebook ads and let's say you have a pressure washing business and you're making $10,000 a month in your full time job and you're making $3,000 a month on the side in your pressure washing business and you're tinkering with Facebook ads. You're tinkering and finally you're like, oh, I got it. I just need a 15 second video that leads to an instant 4. That is the winning combo for my industry in my local market, right? I'm gonna let Facebook decide who to show it to. But it's gotta be a vertical video. It's gotta be an instant form. And I know that I close 30% of those leads and they cost $20 each to acquire, right? So they can see the path and then they even test it. They're like, all right, I'm doing $50 a day budget, let's do a hundred dollars a day. All right? Instead of costing me $50 to acquire a customer, it cost me 60. But my average job size is 700. I'm still very profitable. I can see the path to scale here, but it's kind of a chicken and egg situation. I don't want to increase my ad spend before I quit because I don't have time to do all these jobs or even quote all these jobs, but they know at this point, like if I quit, I can see the path to scale. I can replace my income with this one marketing channel.

[Jack]

See, I've always felt that the ideal time to go all in on something else is when it's consistently making more than you could make from your day job. And once that becomes consistent, stable enough to rely on, then at that point, I think it might be worth it.

[Chris Kerner]

That's certainly the better route, right? What I say is maybe more approachable to more people because I think It's a lot harder to get to that point to where your pressure washing business on the nights and weekends is making 11,000amonth and your job is making 10. I just think it's harder to get there. In a perfect world that is superior.

[Jack]

Yeah. So for someone who wants to start, where do you recommend they begin? Does it start with a good idea? How do they find that idea? How do they make that into a reality? How do they know that they know enough or know what they don't know?

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah. Well, I think if someone is asking themselves that question, they probably already have some idea. Right. A lot of times we get business ideas from things that we see in our job. Like we see a vendor that's just making a lot of money. They're like, huh, I know how to do what the vendor's doing. That's where we should start. Like, start with an idea that you already have. At that point, do whatever you can do to find a paying customer as soon as possible. Or a free, an unpaid customer, someone to say yes to your product or service whether they pay you or not. Because that is going to be as hard as finding the next 20 customers. But it's going to give you so much more motivation and knowledge and skills than just endlessly researching that idea. So. So don't try looking for ideas. If you're watching this, you're listening to this, you probably already have ideas. Start there and see whatever you can do to acquire customers fast as possible.

[Jack]

If someone does not feel like they have any sort of advantage, what's the thing that they could leverage that gives them a one up?

[Chris Kerner]

Humility and gratitude. It sounds generic, but it's not having the humility to ask. Ask for help, ask for a conversation. Tell me what you think of this idea, right? And then if they think favorably of it, can I do that for you for free? Can I run your Facebook ads for free? Can I implement AI in your business for free? If it's not helpful, then they learned. If it is helpful, then they probably will turn that friend into a paying customer.

[Jack]

See, that's. I like asking someone else, but oftentimes I feel like a lot of people just say, oh, that's a great idea. Because very few people want to be honest. Be like, that's kind of crap. Would it be better though? Just ask. Perfect. If you like the idea, would you pay me for it? Or how do you get honest feedback?

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, I mean, you answered your own question. If they're willing to pay for it, then they actually think it's A good idea, and there actually is a demand for it, preferably unless they're willing to waste money on you.

[Jack]

Is there a popular piece of advice that you hear very often that's shared that you think is total garbage?

[Chris Kerner]

Don't share your ideas because people will copy a.m. that's total garbage. We should share ideas with everyone. I, I what if we share an

[Graham]

idea here on the podcast, though, and we have all these listeners? Is that a bad idea or do you think that's, that's fine.

[Chris Kerner]

All I do is share ideas. That's all I do.

[Graham]

Because Graham and I, we have an idea.

[Jack]

Yeah. But let's just say you have a really good idea that you could implement that very few people have been doing. And if we share it to 200,000 people, statistically, a few of them will actually do that idea and do it really, really, really well. And it might, you know, compete with us if we have a unique advantage.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, well, let me give you some exceptions to the rule. Right? So maybe it's like a unique product that needs to be patented. And if you share that to a hundred thousand people, someone goes out there and it's a very specific idea for a specific product. Let's say it's in the used car parts industry, and someone out there has been in the used car parts industry, and they're also an idea guy and law of large numbers, and it just all overlapped apps, and they're like, I've also patented something, and for some weird reason, they have all the tools and skills and know how to steal that idea. That would not be a good idea to share that in that case. Right. That could be stolen, but that's so specific, it's not likely to actually be the case. I'm curious to hear what you guys have, because in your case, you have an unfair advantage of an audience. So most likely your idea could be grown with your audience, and most likely the person that is capable and willing and has the money to copy that idea does not.

[Jack]

You want to explain your idea?

[Graham]

Yeah. So the idea is, and this already exists, but I think we can do our own rendition of it. You probably do it better if you have a bunch of different credit cards that have benefits and bonuses. Then you have one dashboard that has all of the deadlines, and it can send reminders to you, hey, by the way, make sure you spend this Oura ring credit. Make sure that you spend your cozy earth credit, whatever it is. And then also there's like rotating categories for a lot of credit cards where you can get 10% back up to a certain amount of spend.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Graham]

And if you could do a small survey or put in some companies that you're already interested in, or your credit card can look at where you've spent money and you can like scrape that data instead of just giving someone 700 things that'll have different expiration dates for a bunch of companies that you're unlikely to spend money at as a user. If it was a little bit more curated of a list of like, hey, you know, like, I notice you spent money here. You can get 10%. If you just want to check out, then.

[Jack]

Yeah.

[Graham]

So it's kind of just like a lot of. A lot of data consolidating it. And I'm going kind of broad here. We don't want to get it exactly into like the nitty gritty specifics because that might be unwise. But as a general idea, it'd be credit card optimization for our very credit card 100.

[Jack]

And the Amex page is so convoluted with hundreds of offers, no one looks through it. But if you have the data, AI should be able to sort, hey, you're most likely to shop at these places, get these rewards, or these rewards are the highest ROI based on your current spend and where you spend your money and where you're likely to get value. And then these, these ones expire and at the end of the quarter, they're gone forever. Like, I missed the Dell credit for the Amex Platinum. I just forgot about. But that's.

[Graham]

I didn't do resi credit. That was 100 bucks. I actually didn't even do a hotel credit one time, which is $300 with the Amex Platinum. In fact, there was an old credit card I was going to go cancel, and I pop it open and I'm like, what kind of benefits do I even get from this card? There was no annual fee. I just didn't want the card anymore. I look and I see the rotating categories. One of the categories was Cozy Earth. They're a sponsor of this channel. This is not a sponsored segment by the I genuinely just love their product. And so I see that I can spend $500 and get 10% back. And I also, with our discount code. Sorry, guys, I swear there code iced or whatever it is. You guys can check it out on the screen. I was like, well, I could stack this with the credit card thing and I can get like a pretty sizable discount. I was going to go cancel the card. This was something that I kind of wanted already. And I got 10% stacked on top and I saved a lot of money because of it. So either way, this is something that people do not realize. If they were just to get 5% back on 10% of their spend like that could be a pretty large number. Yeah.

[Jack]

Hey everybody, this is Graham from the future and we did actually end up building this idea. So if you want to be a part of it and get early access and join the wait list, we'll have the information right here on screen or down below in the description. Would love to have you a part of it. We're really excited and you're the first to hear it right now. So with that said, thank you so much. We'll get back to the episode.

[Graham]

Now it's time to bring on the blooms at the Home Depot with Spring Garden deals. Find savings on hanging baskets and flowers to brighten your backyard or any space that needs instant color. Then get everything you need to plant and protect them with low prices guaranteed on soil and mulch. Dig into Spring garden deals for four days days at the Home Depot now through May 10th exclusion supply. See homedepot.com price match for details.

[Chris Kerner]

That's an amazing idea because I do credit card hacking and I think what you should add to that idea is upload your bank statement and it could tell you what cards to buy, like what cards to add to your stack and you could just use the affiliate links to put them onto those cards because is there an affiliate link that's more profitable than credit cards card that's pretty good.

[Graham]

I mean any sort of like fintech company affiliate link, like SoFi affiliate link. I know they pay.

[Chris Kerner]

It's like hey, you're spending five grand a month on Facebook ads. Mx was it Amex Gold? It gives four, four points back per dollar and then you send them the link for Amex Gold and you could charge a monthly fee on top of that. I think that's someone's going to do that. Like that's a no brainer. I think ideas are more valuable than they ever have been. I think even with AI, ideas are incredibly valuable. Valuable.

[Graham]

What would you say are the best AI tools that people should use? The lowest? Hanging fruit. If you're trying to build a business,

[Chris Kerner]

you need to be vibe coding apps.

[Graham]

What is vibe coding?

[Chris Kerner]

Using natural language just like we're using today to build an app. Hey, build me a credit card dashboard where I can do travel hacking all in one place and see when my cards expire. So I don't pay the renewal fee on cards. I'm not using, etc. One problem prompt to get one app. I mean if you think about it, colleges are teaching students today what AI can already do better.

[Jack]

So how do you recommend being on the right side of that curve?

[Chris Kerner]

Every new tool, every new update from the clause of the ChatGPTs, the Geminis of the world, you have to play around with, you have to get to know. Even if you don't like it, it's a non negotiable. It's like moving to America and refusing to learn English. That doesn't work. If you want to move to America to get a better life, you have to learn English. If you want to have a better life anywhere in the world, you have to learn English, period.

[Jack]

What's one of the biggest mistakes that beginners make before they even start with AI? Specifically just with starting any sort of business? It could be AI.

[Chris Kerner]

They think about what they learn in college, they try to be smart, they, they overthink it, they need to just do it. They need to just go out and fail in small ways and make small mistakes because they're going to learn a lot faster during the execution of things than in the learning of things.

[Jack]

And what qualities make the best business? Are there things that you look for 100%.

[Chris Kerner]

It comes down to high gross margin. It's very, very hard to overcome a business that does not have high gross profit margin. And then leadership. You put a good leader in a crappy business and you've got a good business. You can't sacrifice that.

[Graham]

How do you find good leaders?

[Chris Kerner]

I don't spend a lot of time in interviews and going back and forth and doing reference checks. I just look at this like a numbers game. I just tell everyone it's a 30 day test and don't be offended if it doesn't work out. Because in my experience, other people probably have different experiences. But in my experience there's no correlation between how much time I spend really digging into someone and the likelihood of them working out or not. Because the fact of the matter is some people show really really well. Some people interview really really well. And oftentimes there's an inverse correlation of those people and how they turn out. Out. They put their energy into showing well, but then they don't show up, they don't perform well.

[Jack]

And what do you notice from the people who don't perform well? Like are there any signs that you start to notice? Or like when they interview well, there's like a little tick or like they shuffled this way, like yeah, that's a red Flag.

[Chris Kerner]

I'm going to answer that a little differently. You will get your absolute best out of an employee the first week. And so if you're doubting or questioning a little bit that first week, almost certainly they're not gonna work out. You need to be completely surprised. Holy crap. This person's even better than I thought they were. They're doing even more than I thought they would. But if that first week, you're like, all right, this is good, but this is good. Okay, well, they're new. And you just start, like, making excuses for them because you want them to work out. Because your pride's on the line, right? You're the one that made that decision to hire them. It's almost certain that you'll end up firing them. So why not do it right then? And then just go on to the next person?

[Jack]

What about beyond that? Are there things that you see that are red flags for you not being

[Chris Kerner]

able to work well in ambiguity? I thrive in ambiguity. Most employees don't. They want to be told exactly what to do. And that's okay. In some of my relationships and roles outside of business, I have like, a boss. My wife is kind of my boss, and when she tells me exactly what to do, go to Home Depot, buy this thing, I don't have to think it's really nice, right? But if an employee in the interview process says they have, they can tolerate a high degree of ambiguity. And then in the first week, it's clear that they don't, that they're not taking the initiative to get creative and go to go find answers to their questions before coming to you, that's usually a tell that they're going to fail in other aspects as well.

[Jack]

And how do you keep people motivated to keep operating at their top?

[Chris Kerner]

Performance Cash incentives, the Netflix approach. They don't have these complicated bonus structures with RSUs that vest. They just pay their people a lot of money and they directly tie them to the outcome of the projects that they're working on. In my experience, that is the best way. Not sharing equity. Not like dangling a carrot for weeks and months and years on ends on end that may never pan out. Because most equity goes to zero. Zero. By definition, most equity goes to zero. But if they have a direct incentive, if their project is directly tied to more cash in their personal checking account, they're more likely to be successful. They need to see it then, not to just hope for some payout in the future.

[Jack]

And where do you find people who work with you?

[Chris Kerner]

The best people I hire come from Personal references, friends of friends.

[Jack]

And what about working with friends?

[Chris Kerner]

It's high risk, high reward. Working with like a business partnership with a best friend. A 5050 partnership where you're both there in person, on site every day building the same thing. One of you doesn't have a side hustle or a job, you're all in. That can be the most magical, amazing thing ever. But the statistical chance of it working out is very slim because usually one of them has invested more money or more time, or one of them still has a job, or one of them is remote, the other one's on site. All of those variables mean that it's probably going to blow up at some point in the future.

[Jack]

What's the messiest situation you've seen from that?

[Chris Kerner]

A $50 million business that I was building that went to zero overnight when my two business partners just pushed me out.

[Graham]

How could they do that?

[Chris Kerner]

They started a new entity. The agreement that we had signed did not allow them to do that. But they had this big deal on the table with some investors and they said, they went to the investors and said, said, hey, there's not really enough room on the cap table here. So we got this, Chris is going to do something else. And so they just tore up that agreement, started a new business and told the investors to join him there.

[Graham]

Did you pursue it at all?

[Chris Kerner]

Like did I come after them? Yeah, yeah. And it all blew up. Everything blew up. Like the business we had, the business that they were starting, it all just went to zero.

[Jack]

So nobody won?

[Chris Kerner]

Nobody won.

[Graham]

Why couldn't you just remake that business?

[Chris Kerner]

I didn't want to. It was a capital intensive business. It's not something that I would have started on my own anyway. I joined up with two guys from the ground floor. One of them raised the money, I was the operator. And it's not something that I wanted to do by myself.

[Graham]

Why did you go after them to destroy it instead of just like ah, whatever.

[Chris Kerner]

Because I had invested 18 months of my full time focus in person, not remotely remote, tens of thousands of dollars. And the opportunity cost of everything I said no to over those 18 months was very high and we had not made a profit yet. And so this was a life changing deal for all of us. And I felt they had done, they had done wrongly.

[Graham]

Did they end up having to pay you anything for that? It was literally just they paid their

[Chris Kerner]

lawyers, I paid mine, and then you

[Graham]

just, it was like mutually assured destruction by the end the of it.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Where's that relationship today? Do you speak with Them a lot.

[Graham]

They're best friends.

[Chris Kerner]

Graham.

[Jack]

Yeah. We had them over for dinner last night.

[Chris Kerner]

One of them, I don't speak, I don't hold anything against him anymore. One of them I don't talk to because we weren't really friends in the first place, but I hold nothing against him. And the other one, we're still friends, honestly. Our families are still involved together. We live five minutes apart. I would not go into business with him again. I. Not knowing what I know now, but I mean, if you don't forgive someone, it'll eat you alive.

[Graham]

What did you not see in these partners?

[Chris Kerner]

I didn't vet them enough. I didn't know them well enough. It, I, I didn't do due diligence like I would with a spouse.

[Graham]

How would you have, would you have been able to find this out by doing more due diligence?

[Chris Kerner]

I think so, yeah.

[Jack]

What would you have seen?

[Chris Kerner]

When you're in a relationship, any relationship, business or otherwise, you see red flags or yellow flags, right? Even if it's with a potential spouse. And those flags do not turn into red flags unless it's in retrospect. Does that make sense? Because if you start dating someone and something they do is like a yellow flag, it's either just an imperfection or there's something seriously wrong there and you won't know until it's all played out. So I chose to overlook red flag after red flag things that he would say, stories about his past, and I overlooked them just like I would in a spouse. Right. But in aggregate, it adds up and you start to see patterns. And because of the fact that I was already months down the line in this business relationship, I just continually chose to overlook them until it was too late.

[Jack]

What about in a spouse? What qualities do you look for or recommend for entrepreneurs?

[Chris Kerner]

You need a spouse that A, has a reason to believe in you. They need something. So that needs to start with you. You need to give them a reason to believe in you. But B, you need a spouse that just keeps believing you, like, is truly there for you and knows that you're capable of doing it and supports you wholeheartedly. I have several friends that would make amazing entrepreneurs. But their spouse comes first and they should, and so they're not and they will never be entrepreneurs because the spouse either doesn't believe in them or, or is just too nervous about the outcome. Maybe they're just risk adverse.

[Jack]

Right?

[Chris Kerner]

I'm not talking about a bad person here, just someone who's more risk adverse than the husband.

[Jack]

Do you Think that sometimes, though, if a spouse does that, it's them feeling insecure and not wanting their partner to do well because they're afraid that they might leave them.

[Chris Kerner]

I think that could be the case. I wouldn't think that that's normally the case, but I think in some instances, yes,

[Graham]

if we punch out real quick to like, the average viewer out there that tunes in because they want to start a business. I'm curious, what would you say after listening to this is the very first thing they should do after this podcast or this clip? Of course, finish the podcast.

[Chris Kerner]

In the clip, they have to go find a customer.

[Graham]

So they have an idea. Or let's even start ground zero. They have no idea. So they want to do the copy strategy. Okay, so they're. They're going to find a successful business, someone they know, some, you know, neighbors, uncles, once removed, you know, dog owners. Whatever it is, is that person has a successful business, they want to copy it. They have an idea. Okay. And then the first thing they must do is come up with their own rendition of it. Or is it just the same?

[Chris Kerner]

No, exact same as closely as.

[Graham]

Okay, so you're going to do the exact same as closely as possible, and you're going to find a paying customer for that idea. And then what do you do? You know, let's. Knocking doors. Let's get hyper specific here. Are you putting out Facebook ads? How do you find. Find that first paying customer friend?

[Chris Kerner]

Can you give me like a hypothetical idea? Sure.

[Graham]

Let's say that the idea is a, you know, someone that sells a retractable dog leash thing. Like those things, you know, you push the button and it like goes in, goes out, and you want to be able to make your own. And you kind of know how to do that.

[Chris Kerner]

So you probably heard that they're doing really well. I'm imagining, right. Like, not only is someone doing that, but they, you know, they just kind of let it slip that things are going really well. I would go to Alibaba or Aliexpress and try to source something that looks very similar. And then I would go to the Meta Ads library where Facebook will show you exactly what ads are running on their platform. And I would try to find their ads and how are they performing. Which ad has been running the longest? On Meta Ads library, you can fill filter by how long an ad has been running. So let's say they have 12 ads running. One of them started in October, the rest started in January. I would go to the one in October, and then I would say, okay, they're using this product source from Alibaba. It costs about $4. They're selling it for $25. They're using this Facebook ad to sell them. I would then spend some time learning Facebook ads well enough to do that. If they had a video ad, I would use a video ad. If they had a title that, you know, referenced the affordability of the product, I would reference the affordability of the product. What I would not do is copy paste. I would not copy the transcript of the video, I would not copy the title exactly. I would not copy the colors, the branding, the logo. I would do. I would make it my own. But not so much to where I would like drastically change something strategic about it like the price point or.

[Graham]

But that just kind of sounds like drop shipping. Like you're able to just copy a drop shipping store.

[Chris Kerner]

Well, in the case of that specific idea. Yeah.

[Graham]

So let's, let's, let's hone in on something else. Like some sort of service based job. Like you mentioned, pressure washing. We could do that. Mobile detailing, you know, mobile mechanic.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Graham]

Let's say you want to. A big one I'm seeing online right now is people become quote unquote contractors and they find a bunch of subcontractors and then they take a spread between what they bid and what they end up paying their subcontractor. So let's say something like that.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, they call that drop servicing. Okay, Right. Same principle. So let's say I had a friend that was doing drop servicing for gutter cleaning business and I can see on thumbtack, which is a platform for getting home service leads, that he's listed there and on Angie's list and on HomeAdvisor he's listed there. I would go list there as well. I can see his price points are. Let's say it's $150 an hour. I would be right in that ballpark. I can see that he's targeting 30 to 50 year old moms in certain neighborhoods. I would target similar neighborhoods, not his neighborhoods, but neighborhoods in my area that meet a very similar demographic. The distribution strategy and the pricing offer is everything aside from that, like the name of the business, the URL, it doesn't really matter as much.

[Jack]

And how important is it that you enjoy what you're doing?

[Chris Kerner]

It's very important that you do that long term because no one wants a miserable life. But if you focus on passion and enjoyment from the outset, you probably won't find anything that you like like. So the, the Ikigai principle is a Venn diagram of find what you love, find what gives you energy, find what people will pay you for and find what there's a demand for. Wherever that overlaps the most is where you should be. But if you don't love it yet, like, feel free to sacrifice that one in the beginning.

[Jack]

What's a business idea that sounds really boring but works really well?

[Chris Kerner]

AI consulting is exploding right now. There are 800,000 management consultants in the United States right now know and I think in five to 10 years there's going to be at least 800,000 AI consultants. Someone that just takes time on their own to learn these $30 a month tools and implements them into small to large businesses. That's kind of boring, but people pay a lot of money so what does

[Graham]

that look like to implement it into small to large businesses?

[Chris Kerner]

So that would look like, let's just say practically speaking my air conditioning goes out and I the guy comes over. It's a one man shop. Most air conditioning business owners are one man shops. It's the owner and we start talking as he's fixing my unit. How long you been in business? 35 years. Awesome. Like, are you doing anything with AI? No. I've heard about ChatGPT. Okay, well what happens when you get a lead? Well, someone calls my phone. What happens if they call your phone at 9pm? Well, I'm not answering 9pm I'm watching Netflix with my wife. Okay, well have you heard of AI voice agents? No. Is that like a call center? No, it's like with a few clicks you can have AI answer your phone. 80% of people don't know it's AI and it works 24 7. It costs almost nothing. And they'll just take the person's information and say, hey, thank you so much. We'll call you at 9:30am tomorrow. You integrate it with your calendar and you don't lose a $3,000 job. But you don't have to answer the phone during Netflix either. And that will blow their minds that that technology is possible, that the delay on the phone is very, very short. It sounds reasonable, real, and people legitimately don't know it's AI. And if you tell them, they don't care because they just want their problem answered. And if AI can do that and they're not just getting a voicemail, they would prefer that to a voicemail.

[Graham]

This episode is in partnership with Airbnb. So Graham and I just wrapped up a trip. We were in Austin for a few days. We filmed episodes with Togi Chris Camillo and Caleb Hammer. And honestly, every time we're on the road, we're staying at homes on Airbnb. It's just become the default.

[Jack]

And here's the thing most people don't think about. When you're the one traveling, your place back home is just sitting there empty. And that's a real missed opportunity.

[Graham]

Whether you're gone for a long weekend or a few weeks, you can list your space on Airbnb and let it work for you while you're away.

[Jack]

If you've ever thought about hosting but weren't sure how to manage everything from the road, Airbnb now has the co host network. You can connect with a vetted local co host who has real hosting experience and can take care of the day to day for you.

[Graham]

A co host can manage reservations, handle guest communication, and even provide on site support so you don't have to think about it while you're traveling.

[Jack]

So instead of your home sitting empty, you could be generating some extra cash. Whether that helps you cover the next trip, your flights, or just goes to where something that you've been putting off at home.

[Graham]

I actually listed a spare room in my house on Airbnb and I was genuinely so surprised. How easy it was to set up, how seamless the entire process was, and it actually made me some pretty good money. I would actually recommend this to anyone out there that wants to make a little extra cash on the side. It's honestly phenomenal. If you're thinking about hosting but want some help getting started, find a co [e-mail] host really quick.

[Jack]

When Jack and I started the Iced Coffee Hour, we had to figure out everything ourselves. From the best cameras to use, the best editing equipment, how to grow on social media. Every day was a new challenge. That's why if you're building something yourself, you totally get it. And that's also why our sponsor, Shopify makes so much sense.

[Graham]

Shopify is basically an all in one business partner. They power millions of businesses worldwide, from major brands like Mattel and Gymshark to entrepreneurs who are just getting started. And here's something crazy. If you think you haven't used Shopify, I am willing to bet you that you're wrong. Because if you've shopped in the United States, there's a really good chance it was actually on a Shopify store. Because they power about 10% of all American e commerce.

[Jack]

What's really great about Shopify is that they give you access to a complete design studio with hundreds of ready to use templates to build a beautiful online store that perfectly matches your brand. There's no coding needed and their AI tools even help you write product descriptions and enhance your product photos.

[Graham]

Shopify also makes marketing extremely simple with easy to use email and social media campaigns help you connect with customers wherever they are. And on top of that, I kid you not, they manage everything from inventory to shipping and returns so you can avoid all of the complicated stuff that you do not want to do deal with.

[Jack]

So start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing all you got to do to get started is sign up today for a $1 a month trial period when you go to shopify.comich again, that is shopify.comich shopify.comich the link is also down

[Graham]

below in the description. Thank you so much to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. How do you manage all of these things? I imagine your time is pretty scarce if you have, you know, 10 companies right now that you're part in or running or somewhat of an executive in. How do you divide up your time? Do you have an assistant?

[Chris Kerner]

So I have two assistants and I have a chief of staff that is kind of like the CEO for me for all of my things and he's awesome and he just manages all kinds of initiatives. And then at every business I have an operating partner that runs the business and they'll meet with me, they'll talk to me periodically to talk strategy and whatnot, put out fires. But generally speaking, I just have a lot of equity partners, partners in these businesses that do a really good job.

[Graham]

At what point in your life was it worth it to hire an assistant?

[Chris Kerner]

Not until a few years ago.

[Graham]

And what made you decide that it was that it made sense then?

[Chris Kerner]

Because I was spending too much of my time on stupid things, just low, low value emails, things that didn't require much of my skills or expertise.

[Graham]

Just to free up your time to do other things.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Jack]

What's a common side hustle that you think is not worth it?

[Chris Kerner]

Cutting laws? Lawns. If you're going to go outside and push a lawnmower around, then do something that's much higher ticket, something that's worth thousands of dollars like tree trimming or pressure washing. But lawn mowing I think is just, it's a waste of it's $40 to mow a lawn and you could spend the same time washing a window and get $400.

[Jack]

And what do you say to the people who say that they don't have the time?

[Chris Kerner]

Everyone has the time. I have four kids. I had all four of my kids in my 20s. I've run multiple businesses at a time since I, I am active in my church. There's, there's always time. If they say I don't have time, I say, show me your screen time on your iPhone. Let's look at that real quick. Let's break it down.

[Jack]

Is that where you think people are wasting the most amount of time?

[Chris Kerner]

A hundred percent. Everyone has time, period.

[Graham]

So then what's the limiting factor? Is it just like motivation? Is it energy? Is it hunger?

[Chris Kerner]

They're not desperate enough. Like they don't want it enough. If they want enough, they would do it.

[Jack]

So is being brave broke a mindset problem?

[Chris Kerner]

Mindset and skills are everything. They don't have the skills or they don't think they have the skills. They're not connecting the skills. Let's say with a, let's say they want to start a pressure washing business and they enjoy it. They do it themselves and they enjoy it. But they're like, where do I even go? Where do I find a customer? And then an hour later they're on Facebook Marketplace selling their old Xbox. Where do I go? It's like, you have the skills. Use Facebook Marketplace. Right. Or then they go on Instagram and they post a couple reels about their food or whatever. That skill. You can use that to sell pressure washing. They're not connecting the skills with the ideas. So we need to just sit down on paper and write down everything we do. We need to audit our time in a day. I spent this time scrolling reels, this time scrolling tiktoks this time working this time going to the bathroom this time listing on Facebook Marketplace. And then we need to, after a week, we need to look back at everything we've done and see if we can tie our business idea to one of those things, something that we already do or already know how to, to do.

[Graham]

Is there a way that you can improve hunger?

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah. Like how can you develop that?

[Graham]

Yeah, because some people want something 35% and let's say it takes 80% hunger to actually cross that line. To, to take action and make something happen. But if you're at 35%, you're still just constantly at like low grade dissatisfaction with your life because you have this like, kind of thing just always talking to you in the back of your brain saying, hey, you could do more. But also you're like, well, you know, I don't really want to try hard to do more. And it's like you're dissatisfied, you're not happy, necessarily. You could be happier if they wanted to want it more, which I imagine. I know it's a weird thing to say. A lot of people probably feel that way. How can you do that?

[Chris Kerner]

The pain of what people think about you needs to be lesser than the pain of being broke. Because I do think that's the number one thing. What do people think about me when I do this thing? They need to keep care less about that than they care about being broke or vice versa, however it goes. But I think in a situation like that, I think most people are at that stage where they want to do something, but their job is just good enough. The worst situation we can be in is when our job is just good enough to cover our bills. If they were to get a 50% cut, then that could be the best thing that ever happened to them. Or if they were to be fired, that could be the best thing that ever happened to them. Or if they could get a 300% promotion, that could be the best thing that ever happened to them. But like you said, to be in that, like, just enough paycheck to paycheck, that's the worst because it's just enough for us to get by and for us to not be hungry enough. So I don't want to go on the record and suggest that everyone quits their job. But sometimes when the boats are burned for us, we talk about the metaphor of burning your boats. Not looking back, no plan B. When that choice is taken from us, it can be the best thing that ever happens to us.

[Jack]

How much do you think, though, that's the situation that they're in versus that's just who they are as a person.

[Chris Kerner]

Like, even if they were to get fired, in that case, they would just

[Jack]

seek out the same thing.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah. How do you fix human nature?

[Jack]

How much of that do you think people are just born like that?

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, well, I don't think I was born like that. I think that my mission gave that to me. I think if you were to work in a call center doing outbound, miserable, cold calls for some diet pill, I think that could develop the same skill. I think if we really want a tactical answer to give people, they need to go do sales and just know you're not gonna like it. Like, the person that really likes sales is just a freak. They exist, of course, and they're very wealthy, but it's not normal. Go do sales outbound.

[Graham]

What I always attribute it to, when I was like, 18 and I was super super, super hungry. Like, I. I really wanted to pursue business, be an entrepreneur, make some money. I always thought that I had a high capacity. I'm like, okay. Like, I know if I put my mind to something, then I can achieve a good amount, but the reality of my life was not exhibiting that. And so I was like, okay, like, I'm either delusional or I just haven't hit my stride yet. And so that was enough motivation for me. Like, okay, like, I need to hit this capacity. Even though at the time when I first reached out to Graham, when I was trying all these different side businesses, there were a few random ones that I tried. Drop shipping, you can name it. I've tried every single one of them. I was kind of in a place where I was relatively comfortable. Like, I was like the. The outer layer of my life would suggest I was living well. Like, I was living at my parents, I was going to community college, getting great grades, I was working at a restaurant, you know, making enough money to get by and buy some things I wanted because I had no room rent. So, like, my life by most means was, was pretty good. It was just the fact that there was like a big difference between where I thought I should be and where, you know, I thought that I was at.

[Chris Kerner]

Why did you think you had that capacity? Why did you have that confidence in

[Graham]

yourself if you, I mean, this is kind of a, maybe a poor answer to the question, but I think if you have a high capacity, you kind of know you do.

[Chris Kerner]

Did you grow up around people with money or sort of?

[Graham]

Like, I would say that when I grew up, I. I thought actually that we were like, like a low middle income just because we never went on any trips. We lived super, super below our means. Like, I had, you know, six cars by the time I was like 22, because it just kept breaking down. We had to sell them. So I thought we were low middle, but like, turns out we're like, you know, upper middle class. I would say by the time I moved out, we also grew up in a really old home, like a 60 year old home. So I would. There were some distant relatives that were successful and I was like, okay, I want to be like them, you know, I want to be like the successful people in the family.

[Chris Kerner]

You saw it was possible.

[Graham]

I saw it was possible. Yeah. Like, my, My uncle had a really nice car.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Graham]

And I was like, okay. Like it's always the uncle had a nice. I want to get, I want to get this nice car, you know, because, you know, my parents were Driving old cars or, you know, the car that, you know, first car I got was, you know, blown out speakers and just horrible cars. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chris Kerner]

I think people need to spend more time around people with money. We're spending time around people that are like us and so we're going to end up like people like us, people that we spend time with. But you and I both like middle class, lower middle class. We saw wealth, we saw that it was possible.

[Jack]

Do you worry that your kids though, are going to grow up in an environment where they don't need to be as hungry as you did?

[Chris Kerner]

I worry about it every day.

[Graham]

Day.

[Chris Kerner]

And I don't know what to do about it. Do I go, you know, move to Compton so they can appreciate it?

[Graham]

The answer is yes.

[Chris Kerner]

Like, seriously, what, what do you do about. It's something we think about regularly. We do service opportunities. Like around Christmas we go like, you know, homeless shelters. Like, I try to get them engaged and like do things for other people.

[Jack]

It seems like the only thing that I've noticed that works consistently from everyone that we've had on the podcast with kids is that they integrate the kids in their business and they have the kids working. Work.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Jack]

Especially anything sales related. But. But in the business itself.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Jack]

So not so much chores, but it's like, hey, you're coming to work with me today and you're going to talk to these customers and you're going to get a sale.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Jack]

And then tying that to some sort of reward that they get.

[Chris Kerner]

My kids all do little businesses. We have a farmer's market nearby. They'll sell s', mores, they'll sell cookies, they'll sell. My daughter sells custom hats. So. And then they do chores at home, like hard chores. Chores. But I'm not really good lately about bringing them to work with me because I work on a MacBook, you know, like, if I had like a physical hands on thing, it'd be easier. And I did when they were younger, but it wasn't until then between 9 and 15.

[Jack]

See, but the 15 year old could come and listen in on the podcast.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Jack]

And then you could say, hey, 15 year old, come up here. You're going to be talking about what it's like to grow up with me as a father.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, that is.

[Jack]

And then have him or her start practicing speaking.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, that's a good point. Because I see, I see the lack of confidence in some of my kids sometimes and I wish I could just give it to them.

[Jack]

How much do you make from coming on a podcast? Like this. Is there any sort of like trickle down effect that you could attribute?

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, it depends. It depends on the podcast. I've never. It certainly brings like more followers and subscribers. Newsletter subscribers. My newsletter subscribers are watching worth like six to eight dollars each.

[Graham]

That's a lot.

[Chris Kerner]

So that could. Yeah, If I got 500 subscribers from it, it'd be thousands of dollars. But it's more of just like a halo effect.

[Jack]

And what's the benefit you hope to get from that halo effect of just more eyeballs on you?

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, I get asked that a lot. Like what's your goal? Like, what are you working towards? And I just want progress. Like, I just want growth, whatever that looks like. I, I don't set. I'm not good at set.

[Graham]

How do you measure growth though? Is it just like money in, money out?

[Chris Kerner]

Just like number of newsletter subscribers, number of followers, number of YouTube subscribers and financial. Yeah, like more profit one year than the year before. I'm just not good at setting goals.

[Graham]

Will there ever be a time where you're like, okay, like, I'm pretty comfortable with where I'm at.

[Chris Kerner]

I think at a certain point within five years I'm just going to get off the Internet entirely.

[Graham]

And what will dictate, you know that?

[Chris Kerner]

What?

[Graham]

Where is that line?

[Chris Kerner]

I don't know. I don't know where that is. It's just something I think about every day. Chasing metrics and refreshing YouTube studio and all that. You guys know. Are you happy with it? I enjoy making content. I look at every video like a new business, right. A new initiative. I do enjoy it, but it comes with a trade off. There are no solutions, only trade off.

[Jack]

See, I relate to that, but the only thing I relate to the most is I can't turn my mind off. It's constantly going, going. And so the only way I could zone out honestly is either watching a movie I'm really into at a movie theater because otherwise I have my phone and I get distracted, or getting a massage. Oddly enough, only two times I could actually zone out and just be present same. Otherwise it's all like, what's the next video? And I just posted this morning. But the first thing through my mind is how is it performing? And then what's the next one? How do I follow this up?

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, but I mean that's, that's also life. Like, that's the growth and progress is everything. Like we're all, we're meant to work, we're built to work. There's no retirement.

[Graham]

So what would you say is the question that a viewer needs to ask themselves right now to make progress.

[Chris Kerner]

Am I willing to go and where is Pterodelph? I'm right here. Don't miss the return return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. So what's next? I feel liberated. We're gonna take this city back in an all new season. Now streaming only on Disney plus.

[Graham]

They're hunting us.

[Chris Kerner]

It's time we started hunting them. I can work with them.

[Jack]

This should be tons of fun.

[Chris Kerner]

Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again now streaming only on Disney plus. Get rejected enough times. Times so I can achieve my goals. Am I willing to do what it takes to embarrass myself and to experience failure in order to achieve my goals? Or am I not there yet and

[Graham]

they need to be honest with themselves and answer it truthfully and then hopefully come to a positive conclusion?

[Chris Kerner]

Yes.

[Graham]

So we've drafted up a list of businesses and we want you to assign them in a tier. List list, if you wouldn't mind.

[Chris Kerner]

Oh, yeah.

[Graham]

So right here we have a tier list of a bunch of different business ideas. If you can just rank them from S all the way down to the bottom. So if someone has an idea and they're watching right now, you can see, is it a good idea? Is it a bad idea? Should I pursue it? Should I not?

[Chris Kerner]

All right, first one is AI implementation that we're going to start with an S tier because it's very approachable. Anyone with you don't even need any money because you can use free trials for all of these AI tools. Cool. Everyone knows business owners, so 10% of all adults are a business owner. So you can say, hey, I learned how to Vicode this app. I use Zapier to learn how to connect these two tools. Do you mind if I try it with you for free? That can scale. You can charge thousands of dollars upfront and then hundreds of dollars up ongoing every month for each and every customer you acquire. So it just becomes a numbers game. That is one of my favorite ideas right now. ATMs second, I'm going to put that as a B tier. So I love ideas that are approachable because I want to remove friction to the most amount of people to starting the business. ATMs you have to purchase. There's not really a way around that. You could buy them on a credit card. You could borrow money to do it, but they do cost thousands of dollars. I think the trends for us becoming a more cashless society are going up. I think it's going to Take a lot longer than we think. I think we're going to be giving out $100 bills in a decade. Right. I don't think it's going away overnight. But generally speaking, I like to start businesses that ride a ton of tidal wave. I just want to have an easier time AI implementation that is a tidal wave. We would all agree ATMs are not riding a tidal wave right now. This business is highly dependent on the location. I'm actually going to move it down to a C. Okay, never mind. It's highly dependent on a location. So if we want to learn what type of location will do best with an atm, we're probably going to need to try like five locations, which would require either a lot of time to move that ATM around around or a lot of money to buy five $3,000 ATMs. But that said, if you can get this to scale, that can be a quite passive passive income business. Right? Which, you know, I don't just throw that, that term around. Car detailing, that's going to be, that's going to be a tier because it's so approachable. It can scale. It's not easy to scale. I hate the question, can it scale? Right. I hear that all can that scale? Everything can scale. The right question is how hard is that to scale? Right. And how much money will it take to scale it? This is harder to scale, but it's very easy to start. You could go to O'Reilly, you could buy a bucket of stuff, you could start car detailing, you could make $100 an hour on your first day. Next one content creation. That's gonna be D. It's gonna be D tier. There is survivorship bias, right. The only people we see in our feed are successful content creators because that's who the algorithm shows us. So it seems much more approachable than it actually is. Now I truly believe that, like you can crack the algorithm, you can figure out how to do short form video. I think short form video is one of the greatest, greatest, most innovative things ever invented. You could definitely argue it's harmful. I'm not saying it's not, but it's, it's just brilliant how it works, right? But it is very, very hard to, to crack the code as a content creator because you need quality and consistency over a long period of time and very few people are willing to do that. And once you do that, the chance of you actually making money on that is very small. So that's a D. Couch flipping, I'm going to call that. Oh, man. I really like couch flipping. So what I don't like about it is there is some level of friction here because you need a trailer either to buy one or rent one. And you need a hitch. You need a car with a hitch or a truck with a hitch. So there's some friction there. But this is a business that could be 100% ran on Facebook Marketplace. You find your couches to buy on Facebook Marketplace. You find them to sell on Facebook Marketplace. And it's a very good business and it can scale day trading. Oh, man, that's gotta be f. Back to survivorship bias. The only people we see out in public that are successful at day trading are the people selling courses on day trading. And therefore their incentives are not aligned with the buyer of that course. Right. The chance of someone being successful in day trading is very low and the chance of them losing money is very, very high. It's an asymmetric bet in the wrong direction. Dog walking. I'm going to say C tier because it's harder to acquire customers in the dog walking business. I like that it's recurring, but it's hard to acquire customers and it's, it might be one of the hardest to scale out of all of these. Yeah. Because how many dogs can you walk at once? And then how profitable can you be if you hire someone out to walk those dogs for you? I like to look for businesses that have a binary outcome. Simple business. Right. Like my tree trimming business is very simple. We, we show up, we cut the tree, we get a five star review, we get paid. Whereas a house cleaning business, you show up. Are they home? Does the door code work? Did they leave a hair on the toilet seat? There's a thousand things that could go wrong. The cleaner doesn't show up, the cleaner arrives drunk. It's just a very hard business. And I've had a cleaning business as well.

[Jack]

And they've arrived drunk.

[Chris Kerner]

Oh, yeah. Because they're all subcontractors. They're 1099. I've seen it all. So dog walking is not my thing. Favorite. Because there's, there's a lot of things that could go wrong. Yeah. And it's just the upside is not very high. Okay. Door dash, Uber eats. I'm going to call that a B. I'll be our first B tier. I love how approachable it is, but it's a lot more wear on the tear on the vehicle than people would think. People certainly more than they would like to think. It's a very, it's, it's a low Ceiling. Right. It's hard to make six figures a year of profit like true profit when considering all of your costs in Door Dash or Uber Eats. I think the bigger opportunity in that business is to buy and rent out cars to people that drive and deliver for Turo. Couldn't kind of. But there's a whole business, the whole industry is called, is called Cars for doordash. Like that's the name of the industry really, because doordash is the only ride sharing company that does not carry care what the cars look like. They don't need to care. You're just delivering food, you're not taking anyone on rides. So their liability requirements are lower and the car like year and cosmetic requirements are lower. So there's a whole industry of people that go buy $5,000 Hondas and rent them out for $400 a week to people that drive for doordash and so they make their money back in three to six months and it's pure profit. I after that. Not saying it's easy. There's liabilities, there's. You're working with people that speak different languages. There's a lot of crazy things that happen in that industry. But I like that side of it better than me going out and delivering food for doordash.

[Graham]

Interesting.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah. Facebook Marketplace. I'm going to put this as S tier, believe it or not, because that could be so many different things. I love just clearing my cache in a browser, opening Facebook marketplace and seeing what it shows me.

[Jack]

That's what I like doing too. I probably spend an hour a day on Facebook Marketplace just browsing and looking.

[Chris Kerner]

That's so interesting. Yeah, you'll see like a converted school bus. It's just a great playground to generate business ideas. Garage sales, I'm going to put now. Do you mean like flipping items from garage sale? Yeah.

[Graham]

Gary Vee, Garage sale hunting.

[Chris Kerner]

I'm gonna put that at C because it's just like I don't like businesses that I can't just like grab ahold of and scale it if I wanted to. There are only so many garage sales, you don't know what they will have. Whereas with like Facebook Marketplace I could buy as many things as I wanted. I could scale that with just a few more clicks and a few more dollars. But with garage sales it's wholly dependent on there's a lot of luck involved. Am I going to find like a first edition Charizard here or is it going to be just a bunch of crappy mirrors and dressers? I just don't like that about it. It's harder to scale and there's. There's less upside. But I do like the fact that anyone could go do it with a hundred bucks. I do like how approachable it is. I kind of want to put it. I'm going to move it to B. I'm talking myself into it a little bit. I do love Gary Vee, too. So online two tutoring. I'm gonna put that at an A tier because there are so many marketplaces that will find customers for you. Upwork. You can just post your services and tutor people and you can make 30 to $300 an hour. It's also great for a local area if you can just find one parent to. So this isn't online, but let's just call it tutoring. If you can find one parent to pay you to tutor their kid and you don't totally screw it up, you'll probably have 10 parents within a year. So I really like that business because it doesn't cost anything, and I think there's a lot of demand for that. That's not going anywhere. Onlyfans. That's gonna be an easy F for me because of the fact that I am a very Christian and I think is pretty damaging and pretty terrible. And I personally would not start anything in, like, an illicit category, be it gambling, vaping, anything. Panhandling. Okay, so you know what? This might surprise people, but I'm going to put that at B. At a B. Now, let me. Let me clarify. Are you. Is this just like begging for money?

[Graham]

Yes.

[Chris Kerner]

Yes.

[Jack]

I've seen these YouTube videos where people are reportedly making 60 to $100,000 a year. And they're adding up with hidden cameras, like, how much they're making in donations. And then they confront the people afterwards of like, hey, you know, you've made X amount this this year so far, but you're not reporting any of it. And you're, you know, driving into a Ferrari.

[Graham]

Yeah.

[Chris Kerner]

Interesting.

[Jack]

Living in a really nice house and like all this sort of stuff. But they, like, dress down.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah.

[Jack]

To panhandle.

[Graham]

Yeah, I saw the one where the person was panhandling as someone who is in a wheelchair. Wheelchair or something. And then they, like, got out and just walked away.

[Chris Kerner]

Okay, so if it weren't for the ethical concerns, this would be an S or an A for me because of the skills that it can build. Because we've talked a lot about humility today and doing hard things and getting rejected over and over, and that sounds a lot like serving a mission. Right. I Never asked for money, but I was asking for time, which is like money of strangers. And it's very awkward. It's just awkward. And so I love the skills that this build, that this builds. But I don't suggest that people do it unethically or lie about who they are. But if it's like, hey, can you give me $10 so I can go start a business? I would give that person $10. And I applaud that.

[Graham]

Don't do that.

[Chris Kerner]

Grain. Print on demand. I'm gonna put it c. I think that there's a world where people can make really good money at this. But I look at it like content creation. There's a lot of luck involved, and you need to be fairly sophisticated at testing thousands, if not tens of thousands of patterns and designs and logos. I know a guy that does this very well on Etsy, and he AI tools just to. Every morning, he'll scrape everything that's selling a lot of. On Etsy, let's say it's a mug with like a cute slogan on it about a puppy. He would just copy that and he would just start selling them on his own Etsy page. So there's a world where you can be successful at this. But I think it's very much. It's kind of like the MLM world where 1% of people are successful and 99% of people are still just like, struggling, trying to make it. Um, so I don't like that about it. Real estate agent. I'm gonna put that at an A tier because of the fact that you will acquire so many different skills in the pursuit of this. You, you have, like, legally, you have to learn about real estate. You've gotta learn how contracts are structured. My wife is a commercial real estate agent. She used to be a residential real estate agent. I've been in this space a lot. I think it's an asymmetric bet. You're spending tens of hours and 1500 bucks to become licensed. Once you're licensed, there's tons of brokerages that would love to have you under them because it really cost them nothing. And depending on what market you're in, you can make tens of thousands of dollars for five to 15 hours of work. This also is like a power law game. You know, 5% of agents sell 95% of homes. But I think it's very formulaic to get in that 5% percent.

[Jack]

Yep.

[Chris Kerner]

It's just, it's, it's. You can get there. Whereas with something like Print on Demand, it's not formulaic. It's. There's a lot of luck and virality and, and sophisticated skills involved, but that can scale like, it's great money. It's a great thing that you can do on the side, but you could also make it entirely replace your income. Shorts editing. I like this a lot, actually. I'm gonna make that an A tier because so there's a lot of, you know, AI tools that will edit shorts for you. We probably know about a lot of them where you just upload a long form video.

[Jack]

Opus clips.

[Chris Kerner]

Opus, yes, and I've used opus.

[Jack]

Yeah, they're great.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, it is great. But with like, with a lot of things AI in AI, it's not gonna be better than a human for years, in my opinion. And. And because of the fact that short form algorithms are so good, I think there's a lot of demand for good shorts editors. And if you are in a more developed country and you don't want to learn these skills yourself, you can go to upwork. You can find people in the Philippines or anywhere overseas that will do them very cheaply and you can just subcontract out the work. So you could be a shorts editor without actually having the skills. So I really like that business. Solar sales. I'm going to put that as a. Because it's sales and it's door to door and it's hard and it's high ticket and you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars in three months of knocking doors. And you'll learn resilience, you'll learn rejection, you'll learn sales. I think it's an excellent business. Cool. That's not going anywhere. Somali. I'm so glad I didn't read these ahead of time. Somali daycare fraud.

[Jack]

Remove the word fraud.

[Chris Kerner]

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[Jack]

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[Chris Kerner]

Listeners of this show will get a

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

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[Jack]

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[Chris Kerner]

This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs Experience.

[Jack]

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[Chris Kerner]

Minnesota specifically, call it daycare and I'm going to put it as a C. Okay. Because of the fact that you could, like, you could grow virally, organically just by like, like the pendulum right. Right now. The pendulum right here is every daycare in Minnesota is a fraud and going the opposite direction and having like all kinds of proof that you're not a fraud. You do like profiles on the kids and you show like the watercolors on the websites. Like you could. There are so many viral opportunities to grow that business where you would have so much more demand than you could ever take care of. Therefore, you could charge much more than any other competitor creditor. So.

[Jack]

And you get money from the government, which is great.

[Chris Kerner]

I guess you could, couldn't you? Like, would the government be willing to pay money to someone who's legitimate, though? That's the question.

[Jack]

No, I don't know. There's other ancillary businesses you could run off at too, like, you know, transportation.

[Chris Kerner]

Yeah, there you go. There you go. So I'm going to make that a B actually, if you remove the word fraud. Okay, we're not talking about fraud here, but there's a very, very short window of time where you could make a lot of money being a legitimate daycare in Minnesota right now. And you don't shoot. Maybe you even just have a lead gen service for daycares where vetted daycares. Right. You go out, you knock on their doors and you do what Nick did and you find out like independently verified daycares and then you just become a lead gen service.

[Jack]

That would be a great short. Having someone go up to the daycare and be like, yeah, come on in.

[Chris Kerner]

Surely you've heard about.

[Jack]

Yeah, exactly.

[Chris Kerner]

I like that a lot. Uber Lyft. So I just got to put that in the same tier as Door Dash and Uber Eats. Because I see. I think you could make. I'll go, I'll go one up because I, I do think you could scale that a little better. Maybe the, the cars for Door Dash idea is kind of more in that category where you could just have a fleet service and you could, you could just have a fleet of cars or like I, I would even put Turo in there. I think you can be successful in Turo if you have a very unique offering. But if you have like A Camry. It's very, very hard. Vending machines. So I'm going to put this as a B because it's above ATMs because you can buy vending machines cheaper than ATMs in a lot of cases. And it's easier to find a place to put a vending machine than it is to find a place to put an atm. I think there's more demand for Doritos and Gatorades than for getting cash on the spot. Yeah, I just like a little more than ATMs because it's more approachable. You don't have the liability of large sums of money of cash, but it's like it's a power law game. If you place 20 machines, 15 of them will make one or 200 bucks a month and five will make 800 to 1200amonth. It's just a hard time finding where to put those five. Window washing. I'm going to put this as, as an A because like solar sales, it teaches you great skills. You can be in business for 20 bucks and you learn people skills, you learn rejection and you can make six figures a year doing it.

[Graham]

Chris, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. As someone who has a very well balanced life, being a successful entrepreneur, a business owner, what you is you problem solve. I'm sure you've problem solved many different aspects of your life. If you're to give a piece of well rounded advice to the viewer right now, what would it be?

[Chris Kerner]

It would be to just do things. Don't focus on the outcome, just do things that are unconventional. If for nothing else for the story or for doing something that was unconventional, we just laid my grandmother to rest and she was a great example of just doing things. At one time at a funeral, they asked her to say the closing prayer and she wanted to pay tribute to my cousin more than that. And so for weeks she practiced singing this song. And before she said the prayer, she just started singing into the microphone. Everyone's like, what? What is grandma doing? She's going off the rails. But she didn't care, she just did it. And one time we were in New York driving and we got up to these toll booths and she didn't have any cash. We had no way of getting in this toll booth. This was like in the late 90s. And she got out and she started knocking on windows of the cars in front of us in line asking for cash. And she didn't think anything of it, she wasn't embarrassed and she just did it. She just made it happen. She always just made it happen. And there's a phrase out there. I don't know if Sam Altman started or what, but it's you can just do things and people should just do things. Like if they have a question about, like, what if this, what if I tried? Like, just do it. Just test it. Just try it. Assuming that the risk isn't too great, you will just have a much more rich and rewarding life and you'll have stories, you'll be interesting. Like good things will happen to you. You will be. You will have a lot of surface for luck if you just go out there and chase your curiosities. I love that. That's great.

[Jack]

Well, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. We'll link to all of your information down below in the description. Thank you.

[Graham]

Thank you guys for watching. As always, we would not be here without you. So we deeply, deeply, deeply appreciate every single one of you. Isn't that right, buddy?

[Jack]

Especially if you like and subscribe.

[Graham]

Especially if you like and subscribe and comment and follow us on Instagram and do all. Do everything, basically become a a member. Thank you guys for watching. Till next time, thanks for coming on.

[Chris Kerner]

Thank you.

[Jack]

Hey, by the way, if you enjoyed this episode and you want early access to our next episodes, as well as bonus content that's uncensored without any ads, feel free to join as a channel member. And next week's episode is absolutely crazy. It's with Nico the Watch Guy. It's seriously one of my favorite podcasts that we have filmed in a very long time. So if you want early access to that, feel free to join as a channel member. Helps us out tremendously. Hope you enjoy it. Thanks so much. And until next time,

[Chris Kerner]

You can't reason with the sun. Trust us, we've tried. This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's Omnishade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your [e-mail] to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome, Columbia. Engineered for whatever.