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

19:18Graham Stephan:And at what point do you decide to cut the idea? That maybe this is not working, and you just - 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, um, they have this thing called product market fit, which I'm sure you guys are familiar with.

19:53Um, and a normal business, let's call it a business or a business idea. It 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? Money. And they're chasing you. You can't even sleep because you're fulfilling orders, right? You just find the sweet spot in the market, the pricing, the offer.

20:28It'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.

20:58Keep 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 we need to get to the bottom of why that idea sounds interesting to us and then maybe spend a little bit of time just kind of exploring it a little bit.

21:17Graham Stephan:You probably get pitched so many ideas. What are some of the common ideas that you hear that are just a waste of time? A lot of times, the first thing that comes to mind for me is always like drop shipping or like Amazon FBA or like things like this that are so saturated. It's just not worth anybody's time. 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?

22:01If 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. And how do you test that idea to make sure there's enough demand? Facebook ads, Facebook groups, Facebook marketplace, meta ads, Instagram ads, short form video, Facebook posts.

22:36Graham Stephan: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? 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've 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.

23:08And by the end of a week, you're gonna have a really good idea if that idea is worth anything or not. How difficult is it to be decent at Facebook ads? It's not that difficult to be, okay at it. You watch a few YouTube videos, play around with it for a few hours, and you're probably where you need to be to post ads and start spending money and start seeing some signals that look promising or not.

23:32Graham Stephan: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. 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 your idea or money, financial situation. What do you think of the four hour work week?

24:03That book changed my life. Do you think it's possible?

24:06Graham Stephan:Absolutely. 100%. Have you seen it in real life? Someone working four hours a week and making that much money? Yeah. Like if I wanted to work four hours a week, I could and I would make really good money. But I, like, work is my passion. Like, I love working. You guys love working. It's fun to me. So I'll never retire. 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? A hundred percent. 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.

24:45So I look at that as the same principle. So if in-person is so successful, why do some of the biggest companies not demand in-person work? 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. So you demand all of your companies to be in-person? No, I don't. Because I'm not trying to build a world-beating company. Like, 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.

25:21I work from home. But you're saying if all of those employees were in the same place with you, then the businesses would be more successful. 100%.

25:28Graham Stephan:What's the biggest advantage that that gives you? Just being in person. 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. Taking care of your eyes shouldn't be a hassle. That's why Warby Parker is a one-stop shop for all your vision needs. Our prescription glasses and sunglasses are expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Stop by a nearby store or use our app to virtually try on frames and get personalized recommendations. Did we mention we offer eye exams and take vision insurance too?

26:04Graham Stephan:For everything you need to see, head to your nearest Warby Parker store or visit WarbyParker.com today. That's WarbyParker.com. and I just went down into your office to ask for the file, we'd probably start talking about something else. I'd go, 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 that is just a soapbox of mine. You cannot replicate that.

26:37I 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. Exactly. 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 can solve the problem right then and there.

27:03At what point would you say you became rich? My late 20s. And what caused that? 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 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.

27:42Was that the easiest business you ever started? Hmm, that's a good question. 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. 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. And why would you say you became rich then? Because we had a lot of free cash flow.

28:15I 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. Did that make you happier? What made me happy was showing to my wife that I could do it. It 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?

28:52But did you get her one? She doesn't want, today she doesn't want. But you didn't ball out at all? You're in your 20s making a ton of money? 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. Okay. And we eat, We're foodies, so we eat really well. But we don't like fancy cars and clothes and handbags or anything.

29:12Graham Stephan:How did you become known as the Side Hustle King? Probably by starting 80 side hustles, 80 businesses. Who gave you that name? Did you name yourself? No, I didn't. That was Ben Levy. 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 SideHustleKing.com. I just wanted to own the domain I don't know what I'll do with it But you wouldn't even consider what you do side hustles You'd say they're more No Businesses 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 Are there any true side hustles?

30:01Like something that can't scale? Yeah I don't think so I mean a lemonade stand can scale anything use golf balls can scale because we have the internet like we have unlimited distribution what did you crave so much to continue working in business and to get started in business in the first place like what did you feel like you were missing in your life 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 it's very middle class if not lower middle class. I was below middle class.

30:37My close friend was, um, my close friend and my boss, my wrestling partner's dad, uh, 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 them 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.

31:14And so I just, I wanted to grab that myself and fix it myself. But did you have an abundance or scarcity mentality around money? Cause it seems like you have an abundance mentality. Like you can make money wherever Money is everywhere. 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. Have you noticed that most of the successful entrepreneurs have an abundance mentality towards money or a scarcity one? A thousand percent abundance. So what do you think is so important about an abundance mentality for an entrepreneur?

31:47And also, if you have a scarcity mentality, what is the advantages that can come with that? I don't know if I can think of any. I mean honestly

31:56Graham Stephan:Maybe being a little conservative on things being tight with the budget Maybe not over expanding not over indulging There's got to be a few things That's true 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 do you think the abundance mentality is so important for people that are growing in business. 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?

32:37The 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 there, which is 50 times bigger than they thought the entire market was. So to me, that stat right there is the abundance mentality, right?

33:17When 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. I think I might've seen that on Twitter. You probably did. Yeah. Everywhere. Yeah. 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.

33:53You're like, no, no, no, I don't want people to copy me. But they don't realize it doesn't work like that.

33:58Graham Stephan:Yeah. The Christmas lights is another huge opportunity. Like we pay, I think it's like 800 bucks 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. It's a lot. It's a lot of money for a seasonal business. 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.

34:37Graham Stephan: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. 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 nine to five, like that's what I need, a side hustle. And that's what they get from that term.

35:13Then 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.

35:21Graham Stephan:How many people are just better off, though, working harder at the job they currently have instead of doing side hustles or side businesses? 80 to 90 % of people, maybe. Yeah. The worst part about losing your wallet is not even the cards. It's the next three hours of your life calling banks, canceling everything, and trying to remember what was in it. And I've honestly been through that way too many times. 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. Magback's 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.

36:02So I was just at Coachella, and it would have been an absolute nightmare to lose my wallet, and knowing that I lose my things all the time, I had to make sure that I had my Magback smart

36:10Graham Stephan:wallet with me. It holds up to nine cards and cash, snaps magnetically to your phone, and is super slim. It's really nice because I hate when 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. The MagBack wallet also charges wirelessly. It's made of premium leather, doubles as a kickstand, and is compatible with QI wireless chargers so you don't sacrifice any MagSafe capabilities. capabilities. And in addition to wallets, Magback offers minimalistic phone cases, multi-chargers, wireless chargers, Tesla rim cases, and key tags.

36:42Graham Stephan:Seriously, guys, if you're anything like me and you lose stuff all the time, I could not recommend this wallet more. Obviously, it doesn't stick like that, but it's very sticky, holds all the cards you need it to, super sleek. I genuinely recommend it. The link is down below in the description. Use our code for a discount. And honestly, this is just one of those things that once you get it, you wonder how you live life without it. Seriously, don't wait until you lose your wallet to get this. Now is the time while you still know where your wallet is, and I've used this on more occasions than I care to admit.

37:10Graham Stephan:So again, check out the link down below in the description. Get one for yourself. Enjoy. Thank you so much. Now let's get back to the episode. At what point should you decide to quit your job to pursue your side hustle? 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.

37:48I just need a 15-second video that leads to an instant form. That is the winning combo for my industry and my local market, right? I'm going to let Facebook decide who to show it to, but it's got to be a vertical video. It's got to 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 cost me 60, but my average job size is 700. I'm still very profitable.

38:20I 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.

38:38Graham Stephan: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 stable enough to rely on, then at that point, I think it might be worth it. 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 ,000 a month and your job is making$10 ,000. I just think it's harder to get there. In a perfect world, that is superior. Yeah.

39:13Graham Stephan: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? 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 is doing. That's where we should start. Like, start with an idea that you already have.

39:47At that point, do whatever you can do to find a paying customer as soon as possible. Or a free and 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 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

40:21Graham Stephan:customers fast as possible 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 humility um and gratitude it sounds generic but it's not having the humility to 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. See, 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.

41:10Graham Stephan:Would it be better, though, just ask, perfect, if you like the idea, would you pay me for it? How do you get honest feedback? 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. Is there a popular piece of advice that you hear very often that's shared that you think is total garbage? Don't share your ideas because people will copy them. That's total garbage. We should share ideas with everyone. What if we share an idea here on the podcast, though, and we have all these listeners?

41:45Is that a bad idea or do you think that's fine? All I do is share ideas. That's all I do. Because Graham and I, we have an idea.

41:51Graham Stephan: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. 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 100 ,000 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.

42:27And 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 overlaps. 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 um 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 you want to explain your idea yeah so the idea is and this already exists, but I think we could do our own rendition.

43:09We could probably do it better. Uh, 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 or ring credit, make sure that you spend your cozy earth credit, whatever it is. Um, 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. 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 all have different expiration dates for a bunch of companies that you're unlikely to spend money at as a user.

43:50If it was a little bit more curated of a list of like, hey, you know, like I noticed you spent money here, you can get 10 % if you just want to check out then. And so it's kind of just like 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 and the amex page is so convoluted

44:12Graham Stephan: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 uh 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 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 it, but that's 100 bucks. I didn't do a Resi credit. That was 100 bucks. I actually didn't even do a hotel credit one time, which was$300 with the Amex Platinum.

44:44In 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 way. 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. What is it? Code iced? Code iced or whatever it is. You guys can check it out on the screen.

45:15I was like, well, I can 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.

45:37Graham Stephan:Hey everybody, this is Graham from the future and we did actually end up building this idea. So if you wanna 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 now. 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 card?

46:16That's pretty good. I mean, any sort of like fintech company affiliate link, like SoFi affiliate link, I know they pay a lot. It's like, hey, you're spending five grand a month on Facebook ads. MX, was it MX Gold? It gives 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. 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.

46:50You need to be vibe coding apps. What is vibe coding? 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 prompt to get one app. I mean, if you think about it, colleges are teaching students today what AI can already do better.

47:13Graham Stephan:So how do you recommend being on the right side of that curve? Every new tool, every new update from the Claws, the ChatGPTs, the Gemini's 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. Like 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 AI, period. What's one of the biggest mistakes the beginners make before they even start? With AI specifically?

47:43Graham Stephan:Just with starting any sort of business. It could be AI. They think about what they learn in college. They try to be smart. 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. And what qualities make the best business? Are there things that you look for? 100%. 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.

48:22You can't sacrifice that. How do you find good leaders? I don't spend a lot of time in interviews and like 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.

48:56And oftentimes there's an inverse correlation of those people and how they turn out. They put their energy into showing well, but then they don't show up. They don't perform well.

49:06Graham Stephan: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, that's like a little tick or like they shuffled this way. Like, that's a red flag. 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 going to 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.

49:43But 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.

50:01Graham Stephan:What about beyond that? Are there things that you see that are red flags for you? Not being 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 um 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 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.

50:48And how do you keep people motivated to keep operating at their top performance? Cash incentives. The Netflix approach. They don't have these complicated bonus structures with RSUs. 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 end that may never pan out. Because most equity goes to 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.

51:31They need to see it then, not to just hope for some payout in the future. And where do you find people who work with you? The best people I hire come from personal references. Friends of friends. And what about working with friends? It's high risk, high reward. Working with like a business partnership with a best friend, a 50-50 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 is 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.

52:13All of those variables means that it's probably going to blow up at some point in the future.

52:19Graham Stephan:What's the messiest situation you've seen from that? A$50 million business that I was building that went to zero overnight when my two business partners just pushed me out. Why? How could they do that? 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 um they went to the investors and 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 did you pursue it at all like did i come after them yeah yeah and it all blew up everything blew up.

53:02Like the business we had, the business that they were starting, it all just went to zero. So nobody won. Nobody won. Why couldn't you just remake that business? 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. Why did you go after them to destroy it Instead of just like, ah, whatever. Because I had invested 18 months of my full-time focus. In person, not remote. Tens of thousands of dollars.

53:40And 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 wrongly. Did they end up having to pay you anything for that? It was literally just... They paid their lawyers, I paid mine. And then you just, it was like mutually assured destruction by the end of it. Yeah. Where's that relationship today? Do you speak with them at all?

54:08Graham Stephan:They're best friends, Grant. Yeah, we had them over for dinner last night. One of them, I don't speak, I don't hold anything against them anymore. One of them I don't talk to because we weren't really friends in the first place, but I hold nothing against them. And the other one, we're still friends, honestly. He, yeah, our families are still involved together. We live five minutes apart. I would not go into business with him again. I'm not knowing what I know now. But I mean, if you don't forgive someone, it'll eat you alive. What did you not see in these partners? I didn't vet them enough. I didn't know them well enough.

54:43I didn't do due diligence like I would with a spouse. Would you have been able to find this out by doing more due diligence? I think so, yeah. What would you have seen? 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.

55:22So 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 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

55:44Graham Stephan:it was too late what about in a spouse what qualities do you look for or recommend for entrepreneurs? 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 is just too nervous about the outcome.

56:25Maybe they're just risk adverse, right? I'm not talking about a bad person here. Just someone who's more risk adverse than the husband.

56:31Graham Stephan: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? I think that could be the case. I wouldn't think that that's normally the case, but I think in some instances, yes. If we punch out real quick, 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 in the clip. They have to go find a customer.

57:05So they have an idea or let's even start ground zero. They have no ideas. 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 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 no exact same as closely as 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 that first paying customer friend can you give me like a hypothetical idea sure let's say that the idea is a uh you know someone that sells a retractable dog leash thing like those things you know you push the button and it like goes and goes out and you want to be able to make your own and you kind of know how to do that.

58:06So 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 filter by how long an ad has been running. So let's say they have 12 ads running.

58:40One 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 sourced 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 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.

59:14I would not copy the colors, the branding, the logo. I would make it my own, but not so much to where I would drastically change something strategic about it, like the price point. But that just kind of sounds like dropshipping. Like you're able to just copy a dropshipping store. Well, in the case of that specific idea. So 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. Yeah. 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 subcontractors.

59:56So let's say something like that. 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.

1:00:37The distribution strategy and the pricing slash offer is everything. Aside from that, like the name of the business, the URL, it doesn't really matter as much. And how important is it that you enjoy what you're doing? 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. So 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.

1:01:15But if you don't love it yet, feel free to sacrifice that one in the beginning. What's a business idea that sounds really boring but works really well? AI consulting is exploding right now. There are 800 ,000 management consultants in the United States right now. 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 that look like to implement it into small to large businesses?

1:01:50So that would look like, let's just say, practically speaking, my air conditioning goes out. And 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 just start talking as he's fixing my unit. How long have 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 9 p.m. Well, I'm not answering 9 p.m. I'm watching Netflix with my wife. Okay, well, have you heard of AI voice agents?

1:02:25No, 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 seven. 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 30 a.m. 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 real. And people legitimately don't know it's AI.

1:03:00And 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. 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.

1:03:22Graham Stephan: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. 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. 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. A co-host can manage reservations, handle guest communication, and even provide onsite support so you don't have to think about it while you're traveling.

1:03:54So instead of your home sitting empty,

1:03:55Graham Stephan:you could be generating some extra cash, whether that helps you cover the next trip, your flights, or just goes towards something that you've been putting off at home. 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-host at airbnb.com slash host.

1:04:23Graham Stephan:And really quick, 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. 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.

1:05:01Graham Stephan: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. 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 deal with.

1:05:31Graham Stephan: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.com slash ICH. Again, that is shopify.com slash ICH, shopify.com slash ICH. The link is also down 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 partnered in or running or some, what if it, executive in. How do you divide up your time?

1:06:09Do you have an assistant? 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 in these businesses that do a really good job. At what point in your life was it worth it to hire an assistant? Not until a few years ago. And what made you decide that it made sense then?

1:06:44Because I was spending too much of my time on stupid things. Just low value emails. Things that didn't require much of my skills or expertise. Just to free up your time to do other things?

1:06:56Graham Stephan:Yeah. What's a common side hustle that you think is not worth it? Cutting lawns. if you're going to go outside and 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 forty dollars to mow a lawn and you can spend the same time washing a window and get four hundred dollars and what do you say to the people who say that they don't have the time everyone has the time like i have i have four kids i had all four of my kids in my 20s. I've run multiple businesses at a time since I was 21.

1:07:32I am active in my church. 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.

1:07:43Graham Stephan:Is that where you think people are wasting the most amount of time? 100%. Everyone has time, period. So then what's the limiting factor? Is it just like motivation? Is it energy? Is it hunger? they're not desperate enough. Like they don't want it enough. If they want enough, they would do it. So is being broke a mindset problem? 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 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?

1:08:15Where 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. You're just 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 up Facebook Marketplace.

1:08:49And 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 do. Is there a way that you can improve hunger? Yeah. Like, how can you develop that? Yeah. Because some people want something 35%. And let's say it takes 80 % hunger to actually cross that line 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 that hard to do more and it's like you're dissatisfied.

1:09:32You'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? 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 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.

1:10:10The 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 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.

1:10:55When that choice is taken from us, it can be the best thing that ever happens to us.

1:10:59Graham Stephan:How much do you think that's the situation that they're in versus that's just who they are as a person? like even if they were to get fired in that yeah they would just seek out the same thing yeah i how do you fix human nature how much of that do you think people are just born like that yeah well i don't think i was born like that i think that my mission gave that to me um 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.

1:11:36And just know you're not going to 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. What I always attributed to when I was like 18 and I was super, super, super hungry, like 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 I put my mind to something that 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.

1:12:12And so that was enough motivation for me to be 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 dropshipping. 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 uh 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 rent um 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 Why did you think you had that capacity?

1:12:58Why did you have that confidence in 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. Did you grow up around people with money or? Sort of. Like I would say that when I grew up, I thought actually that we were 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 uh 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 you saw it was possible i saw it was possible yeah like my uh my uncle had a really nice car yeah i was like okay like it's always the uncle yeah i want to 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.

1:14:03Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 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.

1:14:18Graham Stephan:We saw that it was possible. 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? I worry about it every day. And I don't know what to do about it. Do I go, you know, move to Compton so they can appreciate it? The answer is yes. Like, seriously, what do you do about it? 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. 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 work.

1:14:57Graham Stephan:Yeah. Especially anything sales related, but in the business itself. Yeah. 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. Yeah. And then tying that to some sort of reward that they get. 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. Um, 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.

1:15:33And I did when they were younger, but it wasn't radical then. Between nine and 15.

1:15:37Graham Stephan:See, but the 15 year old could come and listen in on the podcast. Yeah. 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. Yeah, that is true. And then have him or her start practicing speaking. Yeah, that's a good point. Because I see the lack of confidence in some of my kids sometimes, and I wish I could just give it to them. 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? Yeah, it depends. It depends on the podcast. I've never—it certainly brings like more followers and subscribers, newsletter subscribers.

1:16:16My newsletter subscribers are worth like$6 to$8 each.

1:16:20Graham Stephan:That's a lot. 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. And what's the benefit you hope to get from that halo effect of just more eyeballs on you? 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 don't set, I'm not good at setting goals. How do you measure growth though? Is it just like money in, money out? Just like number of newsletter subscribers, number of followers, number of YouTube subscribers, and financial.

1:16:53Yeah, like more profit one year than the year before. I'm just not good at setting goals. Will there ever be a time where you're like, okay, like I'm pretty comfortable with where I'm at? I think at a certain point within five years, I'm just going to get off the internet entirely. And what will dictate, you know, where is that line? 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.

1:17:26I do enjoy it, but it comes with a trade-off. There are no solutions, only trade-offs.

1:17:31Graham Stephan: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. 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 massage oddly enough it's 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 yeah but i mean that's that's also life like that's the growth and progress is everything like We're meant to work.

1:18:12We're built to work. There's no retirement. So what would you say is the question that a viewer needs to ask themselves right now to make progress? Am I willing to go and get rejected enough 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 they need to be honest with themselves and answer it truthfully and then hopefully come to a positive conclusion. Yes. So we've drafted up a list of businesses and we want you to assign them in a tier list if you wouldn't mind. Oh yeah. So right here we have a tier list of a bunch of different business ideas.

1:18:57If 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? All right. First one is AI implementation. 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. Everyone knows business owners. So 10 % of all adults are a business owner. So you can say, hey, I learned how to ViCo this app. I use Zapier to learn how to connect these two tools.

1:19:29Do you mind if I try it with you for free? That can scale. You can charge thousands of dollars up front 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.

1:20:04I 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 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, if you don't mind. is highly dependent on a location. So if we wanna learn what type of location we'll do best with an ATM, we're probably gonna need to try like five locations, which would require either a lot of time to move that ATM around, or a lot of money to buy five$3 ,000 ATMs.

1:20:50But that said, if you can get this to scale, that can be a quite passive income business, right? Which you know, I don't just throw that term around. Car detailing, that's gonna 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 a lot. 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 can go to O 'Reilly, you could buy a bucket of stuff. You could start card detailing.

1:21:28You can make a hundred dollars an hour on your first day. Next one, content creation. That's going to be D. It's going to 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 of things ever invented. You could definitely argue it's harmful. I'm not saying it's not.

1:21:59But it's just brilliant how it works, right? But it is very, very hard 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.

1:22:38So 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 hmm I'm going to say C tier because it's harder to acquire customers in the dog walking business.

1:23:31I like that it's recurring, but it's hard to acquire customers. And 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 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 is that 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 like it's just a very hard business and I've done I've had a cleaning business as well.

1:24:15And they've arrived drunk? Oh, yeah. Because they're all subcontractors. They're 1099. I've seen it all. So dog walking is not my favorite because there's a lot of things that could go wrong. Yeah. And it's just the upside is not very high. DoorDash 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 vehicle than people would think. People, certainly more than they would like to think. It's a very, 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 DoorDash or Uber Eats.

1:24:58I think the bigger opportunity in that business is to buy and rent out cars to people that drive and deliver fruit. A tarot? Kind of, but there's a whole business. The whole industry is called Cars for DoorDash. Like that's the name of the industry. Because DoorDash is the only ride sharing company that does not 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, you know, 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.

1:25:38And so they make their money back in three to six months and it's pure profit after that. Not saying it's easy. There's liabilities. 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. Interesting. Yeah. Facebook Marketplace. um i'm gonna put this as s tier believe it or not because that could be so many different things i love just clearing my cash in a browser opening facebook marketplace and seeing what it shows me

1:26:15Graham Stephan:that's what i like doing too i probably spend an hour a day on facebook marketplace just browsing and looking so interesting yeah you'll see like a converted school bus like it's just a great playground to generate business ideas yeah uh garage sales i'm gonna put at now do you mean like flipping items yeah the garage sale hunting i'm gonna put that at c because it's just like i don't like businesses that i can't just like grab a hold of and scale it if i wanted to there are only so many garage sales you don't know what they will have uh Whereas with like Facebook Marketplace, I could buy as many things as I wanted.

1:26:56I 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 gonna find like a first edition Charizard here or is it gonna 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 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 V too. So online tutoring, um, I'm going to put that at an A tier because there are so many marketplaces that will find customers for you.

1:27:36Upwork, um, you can just post your services and, and tutor people and you can make 30 to$300 an hour. Um, 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 going to be an easy F for me because of the fact that I am a very Christian and I think...

1:28:17is 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 clarify. Are you, is this just like begging for money? Yes.

1:28:43Graham Stephan:I've seen these YouTube videos where people are reportedly making$60 ,000 to$100 ,000 a year. And they're adding up with hidden cameras how much they're making in donations. And then they confront the people afterwards of like, hey, you've made X amount this year so far, but you're not reporting any of it. And you're driving into a Ferrari. Interesting. Living in a really nice house and all this sort of stuff. But they dress down to panhandle. 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.

1:29:18Okay. 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. Cause 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 ten dollars so i can go start a business i would give that person ten dollars um and i applaud that don't do that great um print on demand i'm gonna put at 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 it's there's a lot of luck involved and you need 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 uses 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 um 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 one percent 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 got to learn how contracts are structured my wife is a commercial real estate agent.

1:31:06She 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 1 ,500 bucks to become licensed. Once you're licensed, there's tons of brokerages that would love to have you under them because it really costs 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 % yeah 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 uh replace your income shorts editing um i like this a lot actually i 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 opus clips opus yes and i've used opus yeah they're great yeah it is great um but with like with a lot of things ai in AI, it's not going to be better than a human for years, in my opinion.

1:32:32And 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're 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.

1:33:11You'll learn rejection. You'll learn sales. I think it's an excellent business. That's not going anywhere. I'm so glad I didn't read these ahead of time. Somali daycare fraud. Remove the word fraud. So you know what? Remove the word fraud. This podcast is sponsored by IQ Bar. I've got good news and bad news. Here's the bad news. Most protein bars are packed with sugar and unpronounceable ingredients. The good news? There's a better option. I'm Will and I created IQ Bar plant protein bars to empower doers like you with clean, delicious, low sugar brain and body fuel. IQ Bars are packed with 12 grams of protein, brain nutrients like magnesium and lion's mane, and zero weird stuff.

1:33:58And right now, you can get 20 % off all IQ Bar products, plus free shipping. Try our delicious IQ Bar sampler pack with 7 plant protein bars, 4 hydration mixes, and 4 enhanced coffee sticks. Clean ingredients, amazing taste, and you'll love how you feel. Refuel smarter, hydrate harder, caffeinate larger with IQ Bar. Go to eatIQBar.com and enter code BAR20 to get 20 % off all IQBar products plus free shipping. Again, go to eatIQBar.com and enter code BAR20. Daycare. And. In 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?

1:34:47Right 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. And you get money from the government, which is great. I guess you could, couldn't you? Like, would the government be willing to pay money to someone who's legitimate, though?

1:35:20That's the question.

1:35:21Graham Stephan:No, I don't know. There's other ancillary businesses you could run off that, too, like, you know, transportation. 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 know, shoot, maybe you just have a lead gen service for daycares. We're vetted daycares, right? You go out, you knock on their doors, and you do what Nick did, and you find out independently verified daycares, and then you just become a lead gen service.

1:35:54Graham Stephan:That would be a great short, having someone go up to the daycare and be like, yeah, come on in. Surely you've heard about. Yeah, exactly. I like that a lot. Uber Lyft. so I just got to put that in the same tier as DoorDash and Uber Eats um 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 DoorDash idea is kind of more in that category sure where you could just have a fleet service um and you could you could just have a fleet of cars or like I would even put Turo in there. I think you can be successful in Turo if you have a very unique offering.

1:36:36But 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 1200 a month.

1:37:27It's just a hard time finding where to put those five. window washing I'm gonna 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 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 do 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?

1:38:07It would be to just do things. Don't focus on the outcome. Just do things that are unconventional if for nothing else for this 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.

1:38:39She 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 CM 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 try it?

1:39:11Like, just do it, just test it, just try it. Assuming that the risk isn't too great. Um, 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 area for luck if you just go out there and chase your curiosities. I love that. That's great.

1:39:32Graham Stephan:Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. We'll link to all of your information down below in the description. Thank you. 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? Especially if you like and subscribe. Especially if you like and subscribe and comment and follow us on Instagram and do everything, basically. Become a member. Thank you guys for watching. Until next time. Thank you for coming on. Thank you. 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.

1:40:11Graham Stephan: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.