He Turned $90 Into $50K by Mailing Ads⏐Ep. #291

Summary

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The Koerner Office, Ep. #291: He Turned $90 Into $50K With Paper Ads

Host: Chris Koerner
Guest: Josh ("Direct Mail Josh")
Date: April 14, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into an unusually simple yet powerful side hustle: turning a $90 start into $50,000 in just one year using shared direct mail postcards for local business advertising. Chris Koerner interviews Josh, a 25-year-old entrepreneur who created a thriving business that relies on Facebook groups, clever prospecting, and print marketing. The episode offers granular how-to steps, prospecting insights, pricing strategies, and discussions about scaling and ROI, making it a practical playbook for anyone interested in starting or growing a straightforward service business.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. From $90 to $50,000: The Business Model Explained

• Josh’s Approach:
  • Sells advertising space to local businesses on shared postcards.
  • Each postcard features only one business per category (e.g., one landscaper, one bakery).
  • Cards are printed on quality cardstock and mailed to thousands of local homeowners via USPS Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM).
  • No mailing lists are needed—just pick a ZIP code and mail routes.
• Startup Mentality:

  “I didn’t have an LLC for the first two cards… I was like, no, this time I’m not doing it. I’m just going to make sure I can actually make money before I go and spend money on doing all this stuff. And so it’s like I started this business for less than 100 bucks.” (Josh, 00:06)

2. Logistics & Economics of the Shared Postcard Business

• Cost Breakdown:
  • Mailing cost: ~$0.25 per home.
  • Printing cost for 10,000 cards: ~$2,300.
  • Total for 10,000 cards: ~$4,800–$5,000 (printing + postage).
• Revenue Model:
  • Each advertiser pays for their spot (pricing varies by ad space and market).
  • Fill the front of the card to break even; back of the card is pure profit.
  • Typical run: $9,000–$10,000 revenue per 10,000 mailers, $4,000–$5,000 profit.
• Quote:

  “For every $10,000 mailing, you’re hoping to profit between $4,000 and $5,000.” (Chris, 08:09)
  “Yep, that’s correct.” (Josh, 08:10)

3. Prospecting Tactics & Closing Deals

• Core Method: Facebook Groups
  • Main source of advertisers is local business and networking Facebook groups.
  • Posts are crafted to create urgency—“First come, first serve.”
  • 95% of deals are closed via Messenger DMs or text.
• Other Methods Mentioned:
  • Cold calling, emailing, observing business yard signs, in-person pitching.
• Quote:

  “I probably close 95% of my deals over messenger or text.” (Josh, 25:55)

4. Post Creation, Printing, and Mailing

• Material & Quality:
  • 14pt UV gloss, color both sides.
  • Samples are recommended to check quality.
  • Printers can ship direct to Josh or to the post office pre-bundled for EDDM.
• Design:
  • Uses Canva for design, offers ad creation and revisions as part of package.
  • Includes dynamic QR codes for each advertiser to track engagement.

5. Customer ROI, Success Stories, and Objections

• Typical Results:
  • Home services (landscapers, cleaners, plumbers) see strong results—one job often covers the ad cost.
  • Case study: Bakery offered free cookie—15–18 redemptions over three months, with additional purchases.
• Managing Expectations:

  “I can’t guarantee ROI… I am selling you exposure. You’re getting exposure for into your local community the cheapest way possible.” (Josh, 14:25)

• Follow-Up:
  • Chris suggests building formal case studies for better sales enablement.
  • Tracking QR scans and encouraging unique offers improves attribution.

6. Pricing Strategy

• General Guidelines:
  • Standard: 6–10 cents per home, depending on ad size and market.
  • Adjust pricing by test-filling cards; rapid sellout suggests prices may be too low.
• Quote:

  “You just kind of have to play around with pricing… Maybe you want to charge $700 and you can always go lower.” (Josh, 23:57)

7. Group Building as a Growth Hack

• Owning the Audience:
  • Chris suggests launching and growing your own Facebook groups for sustainable lead generation and audience control.
  • Josh confirms he started a group but hasn’t focused on scaling it yet.
• Scaling Ideas:
  • Layering with additional products/services (websites, digital, AI tools) as upsells.
  • Expanding into other cities—even remotely—with local research.

8. Numbers So Far: Revenue, Profit, and Best Months

• Performance After One Year:
  • Shared cards: $26k revenue, ~$11k net profit.
  • Solo cards: $13k revenue, ~$2–3k profit.
  • Total: ~$40k revenue, ~$15k profit, all starting from a $90 investment.
• Growth:
  • Best month: $5–6k revenue in summer.
  • Still mainly a side hustle, but scaling up with more time and focus.
• Quote:

  “You turned a $90 investment into $50,000 in a year on the side.” (Chris, 40:01)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Barriers and “Friction” in Marketing:

  “Sending an email, sending a text is free and frictionless. So I feel like just the fact that it costs money to send mail is the reason why it’s unregulated, right?” (Chris, 12:58)

• On Direct Mail’s Place in Modern Marketing:

  “Direct mail kind of died down. But it’s like, people say, yeah, direct mail doesn’t work well. It’s like your competitors are probably all thinking the same thing right now. Why don’t you go and own the mailbox?” (Josh, 10:41)

• On Prospecting via Facebook:

  “When I post, I will like my own post, and then I will comment. Comment or send me a DM if you’re interested...I have three comments and two likes. Everybody else who’s posted at that same time, well, my post is now going to get pushed above theirs...And there’s a very particular time you need to post—Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday between 6:45pm and about 7:15pm.” (Josh, 29:08–30:44)

• On Picking Card Quantities:

  “Why not a hundred thousand? Is it just, like—you just know your customers can’t afford a…$10,000 mailer?”
  “I think it’s just the printing, the way that they print them...5, 2500, 5, 10,000. Those are just good, solid numbers…Most towns are going to be 15, 20,000 people maybe… 2500 is a good entry.” (Chris & Josh, 42:07)

• On Scaling:

  “You could get into contact, use the shared postcard as a way to get into touch with these business owners. You establish a connection with them, trust they get on your card, and then you upsell, you know, Facebook marketing services…Google SEO, Facebook marketing, and then a spot on our shared postcard.” (Josh, 43:47)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:06 | Startup Story: Why Josh started small & skipped over-registering and branding at first.
• 01:46 | Business Model: Overview of the shared postcard advertising approach.
• 03:14 | Filling the Card: Matching advertisers to selected mail routes.
• 04:02 | The Economics: $0.25–$0.40 per mailer, all-in costs, ad pricing.
• 08:09 | Unit Economics & Revenue: How each card’s economics work out to profit.
• 10:28 | Recurring Revenue: Repeat vs. one-off mailings.
• 12:58 | Why Direct Mail Is Legal & Effective: Regulatory quirks and advantages.
• 14:25 | ROI for Advertisers: Case studies, successes, and expectation management.
• 25:55 | Closing 95% via DMs: How Josh closes most deals without calls.
• 29:06 | Facebook Group Prospecting 'Sauce': Algorithm gamification, engineering social proof, and best posting times.
• 34:20 | Revenue Numbers: Josh’s one-year financial recap.
• 40:01 | $90 into $50K: Confirmation of headline success.
• 43:47 | Scaling & Upsell Opportunities: Using the entry point to expand horizontally.
• 44:53 | Where to Find Josh: Social handles and community links.

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Takeaways & Actionable Insights

• Direct mail is not just alive—it’s a blue ocean for those willing to hustle locally.
• Start with “sales first” (before business formation, logos, etc.).
• Facebook group prospecting, clever post timing, and friction-free communication are huge force-multipliers.
• Business can be started for “lunch money” and scaled to mid-five figures on the side.
• Layering print marketing with digital or AI tools opens up big upsell and scaling potential.

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Where to Find the Guest

• Community: "Make Money With Direct Mail" on school.com
• Instagram/TikTok: @directmailjosh
• YouTube: Direct Mail Josh or Make Money With Direct Mail (exact handle may vary)

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[This episode is a must-listen for marketers, side hustlers, and service business operators seeking a detailed playbook for local lead generation—even on a shoestring budget.]

Transcript

[A]

You turned a $90 investment into $50,000 in a year on the side.

[B]

Yeah. Yep.

[A]

Jeez.

[B]

I didn't have an LLC for the first two cards that I sent out. I always just would get caught up, you know, worrying about making sure the website looks good and the, the logo and all this. And I was like, no, this time I'm not doing it. I'm just going to make sure I can actually make money before I, yeah, I go and spend money on doing all this stuff. And so it's like I started this business for less than 100 bucks. This is kind of snowballed into something that I wasn't really expecting a year ago. I just wanted some extra money and now it's turning, turning into this full time, this full time thing.

[A]

We built a multi million dollar business with five or six pieces of direct mail to a few thousand.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

And it works. So, yeah, all that to say like, you should dog food it, right? You should eat your own dog food and use your product to find more services for your product. So I just came across a 25 year old on Instagram doing something wild. He turned 90 bucks into 50 grand in one year from his phone. He's never cold called. He's never ran an ad, he's never even hopped on a Zoom. He closes 95% of his deals in Facebook messenger, of all places. And one plumber even paid him $1,100 after five texts. No skills, no experience, no employees. He pockets about half of everything he collects as profit. And at the end of this, he's going to show me how to acquire as many customers as you'd ever want. And even more interestingly, he's going to show me this weird Facebook trick that he uses to make plumbers and other local business owners DM him first. This isn't an AI business or a sweaty startup, but whether you want to do this on the side or full time, you're going to love it. Please enjoy.

[B]

Oh. What I do is I sell advertising space to local businesses in my area on shared postcards like this. Here's one that I did. So I, you know, fill it front and back. You know, here's another one that I did. And so I fill up the ad space with local businesses. I only allow one business per category on the card, so I'm not going to put two landscapers against each other so they get full exposure for whatever services that they want to offer and then I will send it out to the local area. So this, this card right here went out to 10,000 homeowners in the city right next to me. And so I got businesses that service that area or were in that area. And then the way that I send it out is by using the USPS Every Door Direct Mail tool. So I don't need a mailing list or names to send these cards out.

[A]

And I'm, I'm just thinking, I'm trying to compare it to like something different like a newsletter. And a newsletter is like a two sided marketplace. You need to, you need the supply of the email addresses which you gotta go out and find paid ads, organic, you know, one by one by one. And then you need the demand from the advertisers which is usually in the newsletter business the harder part. Yeah, but you're over here saying like I've got a marketplace but I only need to fill half of it because I can legally thanks to the US post service eddm, every door direct mail, I can mail anyone in the world that I want to mail for 40 cents or whatever. Right? Yeah, I just need to find the advertisers for the postcard. Is that accurate?

[B]

Yeah. So I pick the area, I'll go on to the USPS Every Door direct mail tool and I'll type in the zip code that I want to target. And usually I'll sort by higher income just because they're mostly single family homes. Because you don't want to, you don't get a bunch of home service businesses like a landscaper, a roofer and then send your card out to condos and apartments. You're just going to be wasting those people's money. And so pick the area and then I match the advertisers to that area and so I'll sort my income and then, and then I, I have a break even point. Right. So it's like I gotta fill the front half of my card to cover printing and postage. It's 25 cents per home to send out a card.

[A]

And then that's, sorry, that's for, that's to like buy the data or for the stamp to that home.

[B]

So this right here is the Adisha. Every card looks exactly the same. And so the cards will come printed with the indicia and so it's 25 cents per mail piece. And so if you buy, you know, if you buy 10,000 mail pieces, it's 2500 in postage. And then printing 10,000 of these cards right here, which this is like a, a 14 point, so it's a thicker like card stock type paper is a little bit nicer quality stands out in the mail. That's going to run you about $2,300 for 10,000 of those cards shipped printed to your house. So your, your cost is like about 4, 800 bucks. And to fill the front of the cards, because I'll sell. This is a 3 by 4 inch space here and then a double space. So I sold 600. 600, 600, 600. And then 9.99. And then I have some half ones on here that I sold for 350. And so basically you need to fill the front of your card and then everything. Yeah. To break even and everything after that is profit. So I'll just post on Facebook in Facebook groups, you know, your local business networking groups or contracting groups. And I'll just say like, hey, you know, I'm putting together a shared postcard. It's going out to thousands of homes in, you know, whatever area I'm sending it to. I only feature one business per category. So it's first come, first serve. And then the business owners will comment below and, and then we'll take it to the DMs and they'll purchase or ask questions. And so we'll go from there. So that's one of my favorite prospecting methods, is just posting groups.

[A]

Okay, let me, let me summarize because I'm like, I'm about to get manic here in a minute. About to get manic. So you don't need to like, you know, lick a bunch of envelopes and ship them out and have these days where you do, you don't do any of that. You find a printing company and there's tons of them. And then you find the U.S. postal Service and you say after you get your advertisers, your sponsors, you throw them all together, right. You design them, you put them in Canva or whatever, you drag them around to make them all fit. You send them to the printing company. You say, I need 10,000 of these. And then here's the address. And you probably give them like the US Postal Service address, I imagine.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Are you getting like a sample from them first just to make sure it doesn't look bad?

[B]

I have a printer that I've been printing through. He does a great job. So I already know that, that printing. He does a great job printing. But if you know. But there's plenty of other places. But I do recommend people go and try to get a sample from them first because. Right. You don't want to have 10,000 cards show up to your house or 5,000 cards. And they look like garbage. Yeah. And so, you know, a 14 point UV gloss card with color of both sides is typically, you know, a good quality card with plenty of color on there. And so I would just make sure that you know the kind of paper quality that you want. But that is just like good, like standard quality right there. So these printing companies, you can either get them printed and sent to your house. So I have these, this run of 10,000 cards sent to my house, this run of 10,000 cards sent to my house. And they will come pre bundled. Well, you need to get them pre bundled into hundreds for the USPS to actually accept them.

[A]

So you can get a sample or you can just, you can have them shipped directly to you. Because from what I understand USPS has like, they have like different distribution hubs. You've got like a post office, but then you have like a distribution hub. DFW might have one or two, Salt Lake might have one, etc. So you can take it yourself, but you have to label it correctly. I used to have a direct mail business. So like, and it was a pain. It was, it was like a pain to get it all set up, but once you get it set up, it's gravy anyway. So if you, once you're set up and you're confident with the quality you're getting from a vendor, theoretically you, you could just say they can send you the PDF. You're like, yep, looks good, ship it to the post office. They ship it to the post office, it goes out and then you're done. And the unit economics are you spend about $5,000 some time in aggregating these sponsors, mostly from Facebook groups. And then if you fill it out front and back, then you make about 9,000 to $10,000 revenue. So for every $10,000 mailing, you're hoping to profit between 4 and $5,000. Is that accurate?

[B]

Yes, that's correct.

[A]

And you don't really have any costs, you don't really need employees, at least until you're at scale because you're not doing the printing, you're not doing the shipping. You're just connecting pieces, sending emails, sending stripe links. Pay your invoice 400 bucks for this landscaping service, 350 for the orthodontist onward and so forth, right?

[B]

Yep, that's correct.

[A]

How recurring is your business? How often do people want to do another and another and another mailing?

[B]

So yeah, that's a great question. So typically there are two different car types, I guess in this industry that you can put together. So this is something called a 9 by 12 card. It's 9 by 12 inches. It typically goes out to 5, 10,000 or 5 or 10,000 local homeowners. The ads are going to be, you know, a little bit more premium, a little more customized, where something like this is a 6 by 11 inch card. We call this a community card and it will go out to 2,500 homeowners. And this, it's a better card for, you know, a local bakery, a restaurant, these, these lower ticket businesses that just want to offer a coupon to their local community because they're like a brick and mortar store. So I ran this one for three months. So I had them sign up for a three month run. Whereas these ones, they, they just ran one time. But I do have some repeats that carry over into the next cards. So I will always reach out to the, the previous advertisers. I'll say like, hey, you know, I'm putting together another card. It's going out to, you know, 5,000 homes and you know, a city that's right next to the one I just sent my card out. Would you like to take a landscaping spot before I reach out to other landscapers? And really depends on how you set up. You can set it up to run monthly or you can set up to run once and just get these businesses the exposure to direct marketing and to a local community. And you can, you know. Yeah.

[A]

So you said the small ones are 6 by 11?

[B]

Yeah, 6 by 11 inches.

[A]

And when you say a three month run, are you sending the same thing three times, once a month for three months?

[B]

Yes, I'll send the, the same card. This one that I send out at three months, I send it to three, I mean, different routes each month to kind of test different offers. But I'm going to put together another one that's going to go to the same routes, the same offers to get the same exposure. So I'm just, it's fun to test and try different things and see how different parts of the local community respond to the advertisers.

[A]

Yeah, because if I'm a restaurant, I want repeated exposure. Right. Like I want to be on top of mind once a month for X number of months. Why is that different for a landscaping business? Why would they not want a monthly run as well?

[B]

I mean, that's a great question. And it, it just comes down to the particular landscaper and think, you know, a landscaper should, a plumber should. I think the, you know, direct mail, especially utilizing the eddm Tool is very. It used to be, you know, direct mail used to be a big thing, and then once digital came along, direct mail kind of died down. But it's like, people say, yeah, direct mail doesn't work well. It's like your competitors are probably all thinking the same thing right now. Why don't you go and. And own the mailbox? Like, you can still run digital. It's not here to replace digital. It's not better, it's not worse. It's just another tool in your toolbox to. To utilize. And something like a shared postcard is just a great introduction into that world of direct mail.

[A]

Yeah. Here's what I think is wild. Like, there's so much regulation around emailing. Like the can spam Act of 2004 or whatever. You cannot just, like, send emails to someone soliciting something unless they opt in. Cool. Got it. Text message marketing is, like, super regulated, which I get. Who doesn't hate getting a. A spam text out of nowhere. Right? Interrupting. Yeah, I get it. I hate it. There's a $5,000 fine per text sentence. Right. Which is crazy. But when it comes to forcing someone to. I have a 200 foot, like, gap between my front door and my mailbox. 200ft. When it comes to forcing a human to walk up to 200ft to their mailbox, risk getting hit by a car, in my case, to check the mail, there's. That's totally fair game. Anyone can mail anything they want to anyone on the planet.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Yeah, it's wild.

[B]

And it's funny that you. You mentioned something like that, because I do. Like, like I said, I post a lot of social media videos about this, and I will get people that were just like, stop filling up my trash bins. Like, you're sending crap to my house. Like, or you're terrible. Like, people just hate on me for no reason. Like, is it really. Is it really that hard to just, like, toss it in the recycling bin? Like, like genuinely? And then I always say, like. But did you see something like this with local businesses? Like, how many times is this getting sent to your house? Because I guarantee you it's not getting sent to your house very often or at all.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you're just confused. Like, go. Go complain to, like, Discover or Wells Fargo. You know, I get those things all the time in the mail. So. Yeah, I just think it's funny.

[A]

I think I just realized why it's legal. It reminds me of the bot problem that Twitter's had since day one. They have so many Bots and for a while they threw around the of like any new Twitter user had to have their card on file, which is crazy, right? Could you imagine Facebook or Instagram needing your credit card? Even if they didn't charge it, like they would have no users. That's so much friction. But it was so frictionless and easy for bots to create and multiply and multiply on Twitter that like Twitter just could not stop it. They had no idea how many users were real and how many were bots because it was free and frictionless. Sending an email, sending a text is free and frictionless. So I feel like just the fact that it costs money to send mail is the reason why it's unregulated, right? It's anyone can send anything they want because you got to have money to do it. You know, that's kind of besides the point. But yeah, I'm sure that like you hear a lot from your sponsors. Like let's say I'm a landscaping business. I just need one sale to make this work, right? I just need one sale out of 10,000. And you're like, absolutely, yeah, that's it. Sign here.

[B]

Yep. Yeah.

[A]

What Tell me about some of the ROI that your sponsors have seen from this. Because I would imagine it's all across the board. You probably have people that are like, didn't hear a thing, not even a phone call. And they maybe did, maybe didn't, but they're not attributing it, they're not using a different phone number, whatever. And then you other people are like, dude, I got a thirteen thousand dollar concrete repair job from this. You know, this is amazing.

[B]

Yeah, so that's a great question. That is actually one of the most common questions or objections that I get when I do this. What is going to be my roi? And so I'll tell you what I tell them, which is I like, I can't guarantee roi. I don't promise it. Like I am selling you exposure. Like you're getting exposure for into your local community the cheapest way possible. Except unless you go and hang up door hangers yourself to 10,000 homes, but then you're paying with your time, which is the most expensive. And so I can't guarantee exposure because one, you know, the business type might not be something that homeowners might want. So I can't control that to the offer on the ad. So I help these businesses try to come up with a good offer, but some just don't want to put an offer, they put weak offers. So I let Them know, the stronger the offer, typically the better the results you're going to see. And then three, just probably the most important, which is the system set up to actually keep track of leads. So I provide free dynamic QR code with every single ad. So I design all of the ads for free for the businesses. It's part of the purchase price. And I'll throw a dynamic QR code on there for them to keep track of scans so I can see what kind of ads do better in the ads with the better offers. And the more simple ads typically have seen more scans. But like, even then I can't control if somebody calls your number instead of scans a QR code because, you know, an elderly, elderly person just might call you for their landscaping services. Well, if you don't have a unique offer tied into that ad, well, you're going to have no idea how or where that person came from. And so that being said, when it does, that being said, some businesses have seen, like you said, more results while others have not seen, you know, anything. So I had a bakery on my cards and drop the cards off. And the offer right here I have it is free sweet pocket pie and or cookie. No purchase necessary.

[A]

Bakery here.

[B]

This one is grapefruit and thyme.

[A]

Oh, okay. I love shout Out Bakery.

[B]

So that's a great offer. Who doesn't want a free cookie? And it's going to 2,500 homes near her bakery. Well, dropped it off at the post office. The post office then distributed the cards the very next day. Well, she had four people walk in, redeemed the offer and then bought. They all bought additional items, all four of them.

[A]

And then the day that they'd landed.

[B]

Exactly. And so she texted me. She's like, I'm super, like, I'm so happy that you got on my. I got on your car because, you know, I had four people walk in and they bought additional things. Like now you're.

[A]

Dude, a free, A free cookie to a Utahn is like crack to a crackhead, dude.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

That is like the best offer in the world.

[B]

So I'm like, now if what you bake and what you make is good and these people are satisfied, well, now they're going to tell their neighbors, they're going to tell their friends. It's like your roi, you know, like you're, you're still making money from this campaign. You just don't really know it. And then I had a carpet cleaning guy, he, we sent it out in May. He got a call in September for some, you know to come clean carpets. So that was a little bit probably more delayed than he would have liked. And then I had a junk removal business that started getting a bunch of calls. Now I, I asked him if like, where did you convert any? He never filled me in on that. And then let's see. Look at these, dude.

[A]

If I were you, I would make like a very sophisticated process about maniacally getting follow up from your sponsors on how it's gone every week, every day. Because that's going to be your best sales tool ever.

[B]

Like, yeah.

[A]

Those case studies in the Facebook groups will sell more than you ever can.

[B]

Yeah, I need to, I need to be. Because I'm very tedious when it comes to following up when they're interested. But then after they send it out, just like, oh, hey, how'd it go? Like, what kind of results? Like did you bring in what you thought it was going to bring in? Like, and they never, some just like never fill me in on it. And you're right, I do need to do that. I need to be more. Be just as, you know, tedious with my father after. Yeah.

[A]

In the case of the bakery, like for the first day, do you know how it looked like over the next two or three weeks?

[B]

Um, so I know cause I, I had a couple extras that I gave to like my, one of my, my wife's friends. And so she went in and she redeemed it and I think over the course of the three month run. So I think she paid a total of $350 for that entire three month run. I think she said she had 15 to 18 people total come in.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And redeem that coupon. And I don't, I don't know if they bought additional items and so but I do know that at least four or five people came in, they used the coupon, they bought stuff. You know, now they, now they know if you know if what you make is what she makes is good or not. So now they can, they'll probably share it with their friends, their neighbors. It'll be kind of that, that go to spot.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And like I kind of said earlier, a lot of these, A lot of these businesses don't really understand kind of like the, the exposure aspect of something like that. Like maybe month two wasn't as good or month three wasn't as good as month one, but when you did have people come in from it and you don't know how much they're going to spend over the course of the next year or two or however long Your bakery is there because, like, one time I got Slim Chickens a coupon in the mail for Slim Chickens. And I never heard of them, but they had a good offer. I went and redeemed it, and I probably paid for that entire mailing campaign myself over the last, you know, the course of three years, because I got the exposure to their business and I redeemed their coupon. And so that's why I try to tell businesses, like, at the end, like, you are getting exposure. I sell exposures like it's a mini billboard that's going into people's mailboxes. Right.

[A]

Well, they say that, you know, 50% of marketing works, but you don't know what 50%. And I mean, transparently, there's probably some clients, some industries. Whether the offer is good or not, it's just not a great fit. Not every marketing channel is a great fit for every business. Have you seen any industries that this works particularly well for?

[B]

Yeah, home. Home service. Home service industries work really well because, you know, like, home cleaners. Right. Everybody. Whether you live an apartment or a $10 million house, you know, sometimes you want your home cleaned.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then if you send it to the right area, landscapers do well. Or just a lawn care guy. So if you. They only specialize in lawn care. And then I have a. Like a dog, a yard scooping services, junk haulers, carpet cleaning, window cleaning, plumbers, permanent holiday lighting. That's a huge thing in Utah real estate. So we ran. I ran an ad like, what is your home worth? Scan to find out instantly. That got a lot of scans, you know, to get people into an email list or. Or whatever he wanted to do with that.

[A]

How did you land on pricing for this?

[B]

So there's like a whole kind of, like, there's a. There's a group of people that do this just kind of all across the nation. And I was able to connect with a guy in Ogden, so about an hour and a half away from me. And so he was kind of able to show me the ropes, like, okay, like, how to. How to take it to the post office, like, how to bundle everything and get everything ready to go. And we walk through pricing. And so I kind of just took his pricing and changed it. But typically for a larger car, like 10,000 homes, you don't really want to be charging more than 10 cents per home for a typical, like, average space. In an average space, there's going to be 16 spaces on a car, typically. So you don't want to make sure that one of those 16 spaces like this is more than going to be more than 10 cents. So, you know, 6 cents per home for this space and this one's going to be 10 cents per home because it's a double space. You're getting, you're getting double the exposure. And so yeah, you just kind of play around with pricing. Some areas you can charge more. Right. If you're in like Southern California, people are just typically used to paying more. So you can, you could charge $800 for one of those spaces. Whereas, like, if you're in a smaller town at the Midwest, $600 might be too expensive. You might want to charge, you know, 450 or 500 for one of those, you know, average spaces. And so you just, you kind of go ahead, you just kind of, you just play around with pricing and you know, like, if you fill your card up in, in two days. Right. Well, maybe you, maybe you charge is too low. Yeah. And if you, it takes you forever to fill up your card, you know, maybe, maybe you're not doing the outreach, enough outreach. Maybe you're not really helping them see the value or maybe you're charging, maybe you're charging too much. And so obviously if like I want to make $20,000 on one of these cards and send it out to 5,000 people, well, that's just going to be unrealistic because, yeah, just the value doesn't justify the price that you're charging. So you want to make sure, like, okay, like 600 bucks they get 3 by 4 inch space. I'm designing the ad for them for free, give them free revision. So if they hate the ad, I'm going to redesign the entire ad. I'll help them create a good offer. They don't really know where to start. And I provide a dynamic QR code for them so they don't have to go pay 20 bucks a month for software or anything like that. So I keep track of the scans for them. And so I try to, you know, give them lots of value on the back end. So it's like you're not going to have to worry about thing. And so yeah, pricing, you just kind of have to play around with it. Right. You might, you know, if somebody's listening, wants to try this, like maybe you want to charge $700 and you can always go lower.

[A]

So you're looking at like 5 to 10 cents per home, depending on the size of the ad.

[B]

Yeah. Whereas like the smaller cards like this, like you could charge $250 for a 2.7 by 2.5 inch space, send it out to 2500 homes, that's 10 cents a home. You can even charge $300 and that comes out to what, 12 cents per home. But the, the barrier of entry to get on that card is much lower. And so what I have found is that most of businesses really just long as the reach is 2500 homes or more like in the thousands, they only are concerned with the price. Right. And so like yeah, the, you could have a way better deal and pay 6 cents to be on my 10,000 card or you could pay 12 cents to be on my 2500 run card. And for them they'll probably go on the 2500 card run because it's a, you know, they're not spending as much to get on that card. Where some people, you know, like this space right here, I messaged this plumber, found him posting in a bunch of groups and I, this is my first card that I ever did. And I was in the back of my truck, my dad's truck, coming back from California from a wedding and I just shot him a message and he said, yeah, I'm interested in the details. Sent over the details, sent him the mock of, the mock up of my card, where it's going, how it all works. And I was charging eleven hundred dollars to that space. He said, I'll do the eleven hundred dollar space, send them the invoice. And it was paid and it took like five messages to sell that. So like some people, when they get it, they like they get it.

[A]

They just get it and they'll just,

[B]

it's like it does most of the heavy lifting for you instantly.

[A]

Well, especially if they're already like hustling for, for customers and Facebook groups like they're hungry. Yeah, they're actively marketing. Like those are the people you want to close. You don't want to try to convince someone to start marketing their business. It's just not going to work.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What, how many of these sales do you close like via DM or text? And then how many do you have to get on a call with, with?

[B]

I probably close 95% of my deals over messenger or text.

[A]

Wow. So I haven't hopped on the call.

[B]

No, I sold, I sold this space to a guy over the phone, but because this real estate guy referred him to me, so he's already like a warm lead in, you know, 10 minutes and he bought the thousand dollar space for me. But yeah, most of the, most of these people, they come from my Facebook post. In fact, this card Every single business on this card, except for two of them, came from posting in Facebook groups. So I actually, you know, I did do outreach for it, like via email. But. But most of the people that took the spot, they came, they saw my post and then, you know, 30 or 40 businesses would comment and I would just kind of sit there and kind of whittle them down a little bit and, and get people and get spaces sold.

[A]

Are you able to share your screen and show a post what one of your posts looks like?

[B]

Let's see, let me, let me get it pulled up here.

[A]

And for those listening, we'll describe what, what we're seeing here.

[B]

Okay, so here's one I posted April 1st.

[A]

Can you zoom in a little bit?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, perfect.

[B]

So I'm putting together a little co op of local businesses as a way to work together to reduce crazy marketing costs. Postcard will be sent to thousands of high income homes in Draper featuring respected local businesses who serve that area. I don't allow competition. One from each industry. So it's first come, first serve.

[A]

Oh, first come, first serve. That's a solid way to end the post.

[B]

Yeah. And then people go in and you know, PM sent, they sent like this person right here. I just actually sold a $497 space to them yesterday over messenger. And so, yeah, I just reach out to every single one of these businesses. Some of them, some of them just won't be a great fit. Like you were saying, like they have, you know, an e commerce business and I, I'll feature. I featured a few e commerce businesses before, but typically I'm like your kind of business. Like, yeah, sure, you could send it and you're getting exposure but like you need to probably spend more time doing organic and Facebook, running Facebook ads. I will turn away businesses or like I get some B2B type businesses and I'm just like, look, this is going to homeowners. I can still share the details with you if you want. But like, I don't think this would probably be the best fit or the best use of your money. So some of these businesses like, were B2B businesses and I just kind of, I've just turned them away. But yeah, it's just one of my posts. Here's another one from March 18, same post. I kind of post the same thing. I don't, I will say that I don't spam it. I post once a week in these groups.

[A]

Okay, how many different groups are you posting in?

[B]

I. So I, I've posted 10 at a time. Just because Facebook allows 10 total, but there are two that just, like, do really well.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So I, sometimes I, I will post just in those two groups and spend time in those two groups where sometimes I'll post the other ones and like, maybe one of those groups will get. Will get a comment because there's a very. There's a very particular method that I like to do that I kind of discovered. So I'm kind of giving this. The sauce here.

[A]

That's what this podcast is here for.

[B]

Perfect. So, so when I post, I will like my own post, and then I will comment. Comment or send me a DM if you're interested. So that my Facebook post gets a like and then a comment right away. And then I will take my business account, my business page, so Purple Mountain Advertising, excited for this one. And I will comment with that. I will like my posts and then I will go back into my personal account and I will, you know, reply to myself. So now I have proof.

[A]

It's social proof. You're engineering your own social proof.

[B]

Yeah. So I have. I have three comments and two likes. And so everybody else who's posted at that same time, well, my post is now going to get pushed above theirs and get put onto more feeds because it's. Facebook's going to start recommending it as something that is, you know, worth viewing, I guess. And. And there's a very particular time you need to post at, which I have found is Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday between 6:45pm and about 7:15pm people will post at 10am or 12am like I do custom websites. Well, the people that you're trying to serve are at work. They're not looking at Facebook. So by the time they get back from work, they check Facebook. Well, guess what? Your post is clear down in the feed. They're never going to see it. But I post at 6:45, 7ish. Dinner's over. They're kind of sitting down. They're scrolling Facebook. Boom. My post is there. It's short and sweet. So I believe this part right here that says first come, first serve. Or maybe just the first serve part will be cut off. Um, but you don't want to have a super long post.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That requires people to click see More because people are lazy. They're not going to click see More. You're just adding another point of friction. Exactly. And so this post is short enough where they can get the idea and they'll comment. I mean, they do have to click see More. I think Facebook, I swear, Facebook shortened It a couple characters because I swear, you know, before it, it showed the entire post, but it still works great. And so yeah, I'll post in these groups, you know, once a week. I've posted twice before, but I don't want to come across as just spamming. But these, but these groups are a great way to actually find businesses as well. And that's how I was able to sell that plumber on that eleven hundred dollar spot. Because he was posting in these groups, I was like, well he's already open to getting his business name out there and he's spending this time posting. So I'm just going to, you know, pitch it to him. And so I've made, you know, a fair amount of money just by being in Facebook groups. My local business Facebook groups.

[A]

What. What types of groups do you have the most success in? Is it like the business networking groups that we're seeing here or is it the like the local city groups like you know, residents of American Fork, you know, Salt Lake City, neighbors, et cetera.

[B]

Business ones. I cause the, the neighborhood ones, they. A lot of people are very. They don't like the advertisements as much and so it is harder kind of. Yeah. Or they'll. It takes forever to get approved. And so I like these business networking groups because they get approved almost instantly or they don't have any. They don't have to get admin approval. But I'll typically stay out of the groups that just like that are. You don't have to like really answer where you're from. And then you go into the group and it's just like a bunch of just like crazy stuff in there. You're like, what is this group? Like who's moderating this? I won't post in those. But like this Utah Business networking one, they rarely get like these spammy posts. Like it's a bunch of people that are actually trying to yeah. Network with each other. And so I like Utah Business networking and there's another like Utah Business networking page that those two. I've seen the most, the most results from.

[A]

I mean, Josh, you know what you got to do, right? You need to start your own Facebook group. This is much easier. Unless you already have. Have you. Do you have.

[B]

I do have one. Utah County Business Networking.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I haven't really put, I haven't put much work into actually growing it, but I do have one.

[A]

People would be shocked at how organically you can get people to join your group by literally just creating it, filling out the info and waiting. No paid ads, no Marketing, just waiting. And you know, you'll go a week and you won't have anyone. Then you'll get two people, then you'll get seven the next week, then you'll get 20 then. And like, like, they'll just start coming and you post like, welcome, new members. Like, we've all seen how it works in Facebook groups. You could do this with 10 different groups at the same time, like Utah H Vac owners, Utah Home Service businesses, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you could have like this network of Facebook groups to where you own the audience. Like, you can approve every post. We did this for our Texas snacks, our Buc ee's business.

[B]

I heard about that.

[A]

Bucky's fans, Buc ee's lovers, we bought them from other owners. We started them. They have hundreds of thousands of members. So when we have a new sale or a new coupon code or holiday, we just post and it gets shown to everyone. So that's a beautiful thing.

[B]

Yeah, it's awesome.

[A]

How much can you. Well, sorry, let me, let me stick to this, to what we're talking about here. What. What have been your numbers so far? How long have you been doing this? And what have been your revenue and sales numbers so far? Or revenue and profit numbers so far?

[B]

Do you want me to still share my screen?

[A]

No, you don't have to.

[B]

Okay. So I have it written down here. So just these shared cards in the last. So I started it in April about this time last year as a side hustle, you know, I wanted to. I was really inspired about Airbnb story, whether they had to. They created those, like cereal boxes to fund Airbnb. So I was like, oh, man. Because I had a E commerce brand that I was trying to grow and put money into paid ads. It's like instead of setting up, I'm just going to start another business. And so I started last April. My revenue has been about 26k just to the shared cards, profit K. And then net profit would be probably about 11k. And so that's the shared cards. And then I've done solo cards for businesses. So just where it's just only their business. My margins aren't as great, but it takes. It's not. It's the effort. It's not as much. So solo cards, I've done about 13k in revenue. And then net profit's been about 2 or 3k of net profit there. So.

[A]

So like 40 grand in revenue so far. 15 profit, give or take. Yep. What has been your best month ever and what have Your recent months been

[B]

so I would say probably last summer, probably did I put together a card. It took me about a month and a half to put the entire thing together. And so probably I probably did 5, probably 5 or 6k in that month of revenue just by posting in those Facebook groups.

[A]

Have you found other reliable ways of finding customers sponsors?

[B]

Yeah, so that's just one of the methods, obviously. Cold calling. I've sold, you know, sold a space or two over cold calling. Emailing is not my favorite. I know a lot of people could just absolutely crush it with email. I just still, you know, it's just, I don't know, I feel like emails get lost.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But driving around town, seeing yard signs, you know, those people, it's like, it's a gold mine people because they're, they're already open to the idea of physically advertising to the local community.

[A]

Oh, I see yard signs advertising businesses.

[B]

Yeah. So it's like, oh, our washing. Give them a, give them a call, give them a text. That's how I sold my very first spot was a junk removal guy. I was just like, hey, I'm putting. Yeah. He's like, yeah, like, you know, he didn't really trust me, which I totally get it. You're getting a text out of the blue. And so we met up in person and we, we were able to, you know, awk and stuff. But yeah, emailing, cold calling, Facebook, driving around town, walking into businesses. You can just, you know, kind of set up a route, be, be mindful of, you know, busy hours and stuff. But I like to kind of do it digitally.

[A]

How important is it that you're local to the area that you're sending these mailers in?

[B]

Hmm, that's a good question. I would say, because you could do this, you could do this anywhere. I mean, you could be anywhere in the world and prospect any city within the United States and just use a, like a full service printing option. But being local gives you a benefit of knowing the area. Right. So like I'm doing a city right now. I'm prospecting a city that is, you know, 25 minutes north of me.

[A]

Yeah. So I mean, honestly, you could reference local things in any city just using ChatGPT or Claude. Yeah.

[B]

And it's like I, I tell people, like, oh, like just get on Google Maps, Google Earth, just kind of do a virtual drive through, just kind of see like what the town is like, what kind of vibe are you getting from this, this town? Get at least get familiar somewhat with the town. You know, look up like you said, you know, ask ChatGPT. It could give you a hundred facts about the town that you're, you're about to prospect. But it just might be a little bit harder just because you're not like a local local. Somebody's like, hey, let's meet up. It's like, oh man, I'm actually in New York. Well, why are you prospecting a city in Oklahoma?

[A]

Right.

[B]

But, but I think like if you hop on a zoom with them, I think you could easily sell spots anywhere, man.

[A]

If I were you, I would test to get new customers. I would scrape a bunch of businesses in a specific industry and then send them a mailer that says like your ad here, your ad here, like your plumbing ad here, your landscaping ad here. And then you could, inside the, like your ad here box, you could put like a case study like Lehigh, Utah plumber saw 300x ROI on his. And you could just send them to plumbers, you know, or to landscapers.

[B]

That's a, that's a great idea. I have been, I haven't ever thought of that, but I have been thinking about actually starting to put money in ads. Cause I haven't spent a cent.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

On actually like running ads to get more clients. It's all been organic for me.

[A]

Oh, that's awesome.

[B]

And so I've been. But I was like, okay, you know, maybe I'm, I'm starting to take this from a side hustle into more of a full time gig. And so now I've been kind of like, I've been setting up my business like properly. Like, I didn't, I didn't have an LLC for the first two cards that I sent out.

[A]

That's fine.

[B]

I just was like, you know, like I need to, I've started like I've done or started other businesses. I'm kind of like, you know, kind of like you, but on the beginning side of the journey where it's like you just feel like you want to dip your hands into everything, everything you come across like, I have to do that or I want to do that or I got to try. And I always just would get caught up worrying about making sure the website looks good and the, the logo and all this. And I was like, no, this time I'm not doing it. I'm just going to make sure I can actually make money before I, yeah, I go and spend money on doing all this stuff. And so it's like my, you know, I started this business for less than probably like 100 bucks maybe. I mean, I bought I bought like two, two guides to kind of give me the right directions. They weren't as fleshed out as I would have liked, but, you know, kind of help me point me in the right direction. But if I didn't have those, it would have like. You could start this for free if you really wanted to, but it's up to you.

[A]

You turned a, a 90 investment into $50,000 in a year on, on the side.

[B]

Yeah. Yep.

[A]

Jeez.

[B]

Basically.

[A]

What, what else have you been doing to pay the bills?

[B]

So, you know, found out that my wife was pregnant in October and I was like, okay, like I need to actually kind of start thinking about maybe getting more set up, more established a little bit. And so I just started posting videos on social media about it and it did a lot better than I expected. At the beginning I was like, wow, okay. Which is how your, one of your employees found me. But that's posted on social media has brought in a person who wanted to do a solo card. And then I have a financial service guy that he actually put in an order for 10,000 cards today that I will be getting sent off to the printers here after this. And so it's been really, it's been a really interesting journey. This is kind of snowballed into something that, you know, I wasn't really expecting A year ago. I just wanted some extra money to, to put into one of my e commerce businesses and and now it's turning, turning into this full time, this full time thing with awesome. My community's awesome and there's a lot of great members in there and I have a lot of fun doing that and making these videos.

[A]

Where did you get this idea from?

[B]

So I saw it on, I saw it on TikTok. It came at the perfect time and I think the TikTok had like 3 likes or 5 likes and a comment. And I was like, wait a minute. Cause I was looking for a business, I just wasn't sure what I was going to get started in. And I was like, wait, this is something that seems super doable where I don't have to, probably don't have to spend, you know, tons and tons and tons of time trying to make a dollar. And it's not like affiliate marketing or drop shipping or, you know, TikTok shopping. I'm not saying those don't work. They work. But that's just something I just wasn't interested in. And so yeah, I saw it and I gave it a try and I was able to connect, like I said with that. The guy who's doing this? An hour and a half north of me, and he's able to show me the ropes. So it's been. It's been a really fun journey so far.

[A]

My last question. Why. How did you land on 10,000 mailers or 2500? Like, why not a hundred thousand? Is it just, like. You just know your customers can't afford a. You know what I'm saying? Like a $10,000 mailer or a $5,000 mailer?

[B]

I think it's just the printing, the way that they print them. They print like, you know, and you can print 7000 or print 8000, but, you know, 5, 2500, 5, 10,000. Those are just good, solid numbers. And I think the way that they print them and cut them, and I think it's just like the most, like, cost effective. You could do 7,000, you can do 11,000, 15, 13, whatever. But if you go on to, like, printing sites, it's like, you know, they have like 1002-003004-00500, and it's like 2500. I think 3000. Let's get 5000. 10,000. 15, 20, 25. So I think they. They start to branch out by fives. And so, you know, 10,000 is a pretty big size, you know, because most towns are going to be, you know, 15, 20,000 people maybe. So, you know, so 2500 is a good entry. You know, smaller car. Typically you have to charge as much per space of cost. And so you can sell a, you know, card like this, you know, in a day or two or three days, if you just sit down and prospect and then something like a 5 or 10,000 card might take you a little bit longer, but they're all great. And it's a. It's a fantastic. It's a fantastic business to run, especially if you were looking for a side hustle to start. I think it's one of the best ones out there.

[A]

How much do you think you could scale this business?

[B]

I think that I think you could really scale it to start doing other. So you can, like, you could do other prints, marketing materials. So if you want to do business cards and kind of go that direction. But I think, like, with these AI tools, like AI agents, websites, you know, you could. So you could get into contact, use the shared postcard as a way to get into touch with these business owners. You establish a connection with them, trust they get on your card and then you upsell, you know, Facebook marketing services, or you have Facebook, you know, like, for a package deal, you Get Google SEO, Facebook, Facebook marketing, and then a spot on our shared postcard. Or you could say, we'll build out. You, we'll build you out a website. Cause there's a lot of businesses that I get in touch with that just simply don't have websites. So it's like, you know, they want to be on the card. I'm like, well, we need somewhere to lead them to. It's like we could build out a website on the back end and we could bundle it together. And so I think that's the way to do it is kind of. This is just kind of a foot. Yeah. Like you're, you're getting, you're kind of getting paid to, to get the leads, essentially.

[A]

So I think that's it. Josh, this is incredible. Where can we find you and your

[B]

community so you can go on to school? And it is make money with direct mail. Instagram and TikTok is direct mail, Josh. And then I think on YouTube it's erect mail. Josh too. Or it's make money with direct mail. I, I don't, I can't remember if I had switched those.

[A]

So yeah, I remembered what I was going to say. I was going to tell a story. I 12 years ago I moved to Dallas from Huntsville, Alabama and I moved here to expand my business. At the time I was selling wholesale iPhone parts to iPhone repair stores. And the whole thesis for moving to Dallas was I realized in Alabama I was able to acquire customers much more easily if they were within a natural one day shipping radius of us. The problem is that Huntsville, Alabama is only within one day shipping radius of like Atlanta, Birmingham, Nashville, not like huge, huge cities. And so once I realized that and you know, the lifetime value of our customer was tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, I talked to my wife and we looked at a map and I just started typing in zip codes on like the FedEx one day shipping calculator, you know, tool. And I realized if I lived in Dallas, I could ship to tens of millions of people overnight, but with ground shipping. So I could ship to San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Shreveport. What else was it like Bentonville and all that. This huge, huge area. Tens of millions of people. And so we moved and my whole launch strategy for acquiring customers, which were local retail businesses, iPhone repair shops, was direct mail for whatever reason. Yeah, so I got, I got these four by six postcards printed. I got like six sets of them that all kind of went in order and every week we would mail them out. So I scraped every single repair shop. I had this, you know, spreadsheet of like 3,000 of them or whatever and every single week we would mail out a mailer and slowly, you know, our traffic started coming and we got $1,000 order, $10,000 order, $500 order and like for two or $3,000 worth of direct mail it could have been more, I don't know. Yeah, low thousands of dollars worth of direct mail. We built a multimillion dollar business just from Dallas with five or six pieces of direct mail to a few thousand.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

And it works.

[B]

So yeah.

[A]

All that to say like you should dog food it, right? You should eat your own dog food and use your product to find more services for your product. Yeah, I think it'll work.

[B]

Yeah, of course.

[A]

Josh, thank you for your time. This has been great.

[B]

Yes, thank you for having me. It's been awesome to talk to you.