August 1, 2025 • 31 mins
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HoldCo Bros are back! In this episode, Nik and I take on a simple but powerful challenge: how would you build a business worth $1 million in just six months? We each pitch our favorite ideas, from RV rentals and AI wrapper agencies to offshore staffing, buying up newsletters, and starting an AI automation agency with real clients and real money. Nik lays out his hero workflow strategy, and I break down how I spun up an AI-powered voice agent for a garage door company and closed a deal in under an hour.
Learn more about Nik here: http://linktr.ee/cofoundersnik
Share your ideas with us:
- Nik@cofounders.com
- Chris@cofounders.com
Enjoy!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I recorded my screen and I created an AI voice agent with
literally like 6 clicks. 57 minutes later I had a business
owner that said yes I want to pay for your service.
F me dude, Billy. How that dude's an animal.
He has no coding experience, buthe's spun up an agency now where
he's helping people build wrappers using Replit Lovable.
(00:20):
I think he's making like 60 grand a month.
You don't need money, you just need an Upwork account.
His whole business is saying heyI can use AI to save your
company money. He's 18 and he's crushing it.
He just uses, right. It's 6 figures from each
customer. Nick, I'm going to let you
choose. Do we want to talk about fastest
to 10 KA month in six months, fastest to $1,000,000 in the
(00:43):
bank in six months, fastest to $1,000,000 valuation revenue?
What do we want to do here? I'd say like the fastest to
$1,000,000 business in six months.
All right, number one idea. I love this idea eight years
ago. I love it just as much today.
I talked about this idea looselyon the pod before, but not much
in depth. So RV rentals, OK.
(01:06):
Most people don't understand that you can finance an RV for
20 to 30 years because it also counts as a home.
I'm not saying you should, I'm not saying it's a good idea.
But the interest rates are not crazy and it means that your
monthly payment is like 2 to $300.
But you're not not saying that? Make your own conclusions from
(01:27):
what I'm telling you. OK, but blank.
What do we always talk about? We talk about validating an idea
before spending a dime. You can validate this before
buying an RV. And so I distinctly remember
Nick as I was getting my MBA from TCU, not paying attention
at all during class. I distinctly remember sitting up
in the back of the classroom right in the middle, having
Google Sheets in one window and RV share in outdoorsy in
(01:50):
another. And I was just doing research,
trying to find out what types ofRV's in my local area, greater
DFW, were in the most demand. And I would run a search for
this weekend for a class CRV. And I'd run a search for a year
out for class CRV. And I'd put them in a
spreadsheet and I'd be able to know what the occupancy is for
any different type of RV at any given moment.
And that data screamed at me. Classy RV's, classy RV's.
(02:13):
And I even went so far as to e-mail the company and say,
here's what my data's showing me.
This is true. And they're like, how did you
learn this? That's absolutely true.
And So what did I do? I took action.
I bought a class CRV, traveled around with my family in it, and
then when I wasn't using it I rented it out.
And the unit economics on this is pretty dumb.
(02:33):
It's stupid in a good way. You can finance an RV like a
3540 thousand dollar class CRV which is a motorhome.
You got the motor in the front and the home in the back and
your payments going to be a couple 100 bucks and you could
rent it out for depending on themarket, like 200 to 500 a night.
So like literally your monthly payment is paid for on one or
(02:55):
two nights of renting it out andit scales.
The only downside is you need a place to park these.
But you can find lots, you can find storage facilities to park
them, and then you can meet yourcustomers at the storage
facility to hand them off. I love the business, I really
do. How do you get to $1,000,000 in
six months though? Because from what I remember,
you bought it, you started to rent it out and like 3 months in
(03:15):
you're like, this is annoying because you're like, because I
have to clean it and I have to turn it over, You know what I
mean? Like, yeah, it's like my, my
rental home analogy. You should never own a rental
home unless you're going to own like 1020, a hundred of them.
There's just no point if you're self managing it right, because
there's no scale to it. So I never got scale.
I had one at any given time, butif I had 10 or five, then I
(03:37):
could hire someone and I wouldn't have to deal with any
of that crap. I wouldn't have to take calls,
meet people, show them how to use it, etcetera.
So how do you scale this if you keep this thing rented out 50%
of the time. So that's call it 7000 a month
in top line revenue. They pay for the gas, they pay
extra for mileage. Your only cost is the payment
and repairs. And if they break something,
they have to pay for repairs. So let's say 5 KA month in
(04:00):
profit if you're still. Managing it.
In that income, no employees. Ten of those would be 50 KA
month. When we're trying to get to 25,
right? Because 25 was that number of
$300,000. So 5 RV's.
So 5 RV's that's not. Your other cost would be parking
it right because most people have Hoas, they don't have
enough space in in their yard and so you're looking at like
150 bucks a month per RV to store it.
(04:21):
So $1000 a month for five RV's and you can manage that
yourself. Let's say 10 RV's.
Can you finance all ten of those?
How hard would it be to get 10 RV's?
You can do it. You're probably not going to do
it with the same bank. You probably have to bounce
around banks. But if you're making your
payments, it's feasible. I had the best luck with credit
unions. You like, you probably could do
it. You probably have to like,
(04:42):
change banks, change names, change your identity, just.
Hop on the dark web, download the Onion browser.
You can do it. Make it happen, dude.
All right, no, but you can do it.
OK, I like that one. Here we go.
You ready for mine? Yep, gun to my head, I have to
make, you know, $1,000,000 in value in the next 6 months.
(05:03):
Do you know who Billy Howell is?Oh yeah, he was on the pod.
That dude's an animal. He has no coding, no experience
being technical, but he's spun up an agency now where he's
helping people build effectivelyrappers using Replit Lovable.
I think replit's his drug of choice, so to speak.
But he's developing software nowand he's created this company.
But because he put a bunch of time and effort and energy into
(05:25):
it, I think he's making like 60 grand a month.
I can't remember exactly what his, you know, economics are,
but like, he's doing well. So for me, what I would do, I
would do a 30 for 30 challenge, 30 wrappers in 30 days.
I would just give myself 30 daysto learn how to build in Replit
and that's it. It's like, so every day what I
would do is I would identify a problem or a pain point and I
(05:47):
would just build a wrapper around it.
Doesn't matter how good it is orhow bad it is, I would just
build a wrapper around it. And then at the end of 30 days,
I've got 30 wrappers worth of experience.
Some of them might even be good and maybe I can productize
those. But then I would really do the
research and the work of like, OK, what which of these wrappers
that I did had the coolest pain point?
And I would go hard in building out one or two of those and then
(06:11):
either placing it on the App Store or finding local
businesses with that pain point and selling into them as a SAS
product. I already know this is going to
be one of the best episodes we've ever recorded.
I'm just going to call it right now.
We're 11 minutes into this. That's a good one, Nick.
That's a good one. Episode 150.
By the way, Billy Howley interviewed him.
The thing is, I would bet most people listening to this
(06:32):
probably know like 60 to 80% as much as Billy.
Not to downplay anything he does.
You got to go out and find customers.
That's the hard, that's the realhard part.
You got to operationalize it, systematize it.
But like, he's not a coder. He has no coding background.
He's just messing around with these vibe coding apps more than
the average bear. Well, and the crazy thing, he
just had a LinkedIn post, I think it was or something on
(06:53):
Twitter where he live coded live, not vibe live coded an app
on stage at some conference and was like, it worked and he
created the automations for it, etcetera.
The thing that's I think specialabout Billy, or at least
different about Billy is all of us have built these and we've
gotten like 90% of the way thereand then the last 10% was like,
I don't know how to figure this out.
(07:15):
He actually put the time in and figured it out himself.
You and I have never done that. We like we've hired people to
finish. I've.
Finished. Yeah.
I, I was going to say, like I, I've been saying for months,
like that last mile is really hard.
It's gotten a lot easier and I've finished two projects now
and I was actually surprised like how much better the
experience has gotten. So.
(07:35):
But is it still the hardest part?
Is the last mile still the hardest part?
Oh yeah. OK.
But that's what I think is special about him is he's like,
OK, I figured this out and now he's doing it for other people.
He's built an agency around building it for other people.
Interesting. That's a good one.
I like that. Thank you.
You could spend 30 days learning, 30 days building, 30
days marketing, just running tests for those 30.
(07:56):
I would do it 30 days building and then 30 days learning and
then 30 days marketing. I just feel like you're only
going to learn how to do it by building and then you can be
doing research after of like, OK, which industries do I want
to focus on? That's me because I'm in the
analysis by yeah, paralysis by analysis type.
So it's like I just got to get going.
Otherwise, I'm just going to be like, well, did I optimize this
(08:17):
plan the best and should I do this first or should I do the
second? Maybe for you it's it's the
other way but that. I'm the guy that contradicts
himself because on this podcast a week or two ago I used an
analogy of learning Hungarian inthe MTC, feeling like an expert,
going to Hungary with you as my trainer, not knowing any
Hungarian but actually learning it really fast while I was
(08:38):
failing on the job. Right, so I absolutely agree
with you. Learn by building what did.
Your trainer do to make you learn Hungarian so fast.
Well, I don't talk about it. Trial by fire Pissed pissed me
off all the time. All right, moving on.
You got to keep me in a good mood.
I think you're going to like this idea.
(08:59):
So I think that you and I collectively have like 13
friends that own offshore staffing agencies.
Yes, it's ridiculous. In the staffing world, you got 2
models. You can hold their hand and
provide someone and manage them over time and mark up their
rate. Call it 100%.
You're paying a virtual assistant in the Philippines
$1200 a month. You're charging your client
(09:21):
$2500 a month. You're managing payroll and all
that. That's good because it's
recurring. It's just more hand holding.
You got to do work upfront to find them and then you got to do
work less work on going to manage them.
The other model is to find someone awesome, place them for
35% of their first year salary, am I right?
Which is nice because you get paid up front and you wash your
hands of it. It's kind of like the grandma
(09:43):
that takes the grandkids and says, all right, take them back,
right? You just get your money, you get
to move on. But it's not recurring, OK.
I think that that model has beena thing for five plus years.
I think it's going to be a thingfor the next 5 to 10 plus years.
I think it literally can be as simple as going to Upwork,
finding them on Upwork, hopping on a Zoom with them, vetting
(10:05):
them, qualifying them, seeing how well they're trained on AII.
Think that's a non negotiable here.
They have to be AI native AI trained, even if it's just GBT
and then placing them. So now how do you do this
quickly? I think you just start sliding
into the DMS of hiring managers at big companies that need to
hire 10 to 100 people overseas, and you charge 20 to 35% of
(10:28):
their first year's salary. And so you place enough people,
you get to that number pretty quickly.
Yeah. OK, so it's like the two, the
two models in staffing are head hunting.
So it's like recruiting, placing, getting a fee and then
there's staffing, which you're actually managing it.
You're saying to do the head hunting.
Yeah, go find people in place so.
There won't be a recurring aspect to it, but that's OK.
(10:50):
Well, that's the thing. If I'm trying to make $1,000,000
in six months, I don't care about recurring.
I care about right now. So that's absolutely where I
would focus. I would probably piggyback.
I would like try to find somebody who I knew that had a
good network and be like, hey, can I just can I just hire
somebody for you to at least getstarted, test it out and then
obviously do a really good job and sell into them.
Maybe find like a small businessowner that's already selling
(11:12):
like software or something to hiring managers and he just has
like a big CRM of hiring managers and he's like, listen
dude, I have a $4000 ticket product.
That's the average 30% salary for my average placement.
I'm going to give you 1020% of that for everyone.
You refer 4 to $800 checks just for making introductions.
And if they place 10 people, I'll give you a $4000 check.
(11:34):
OK, building on that, you know what else I would do?
Don't reinvent the wheel, just copy what's already working.
It's annoying. OK, I know it's annoying, but
how many times have you been looking for someone to fill a
role or you post for a job and somebody applies to it and they
apply to it and it's not really them, It's like Ava or it's an
agency. It's like, oh, I can fill this
for you with my agency, right? I would probably do that.
(11:56):
I would probably either post. No, I wouldn't post that I'm
looking for a job. I would go and apply to a bunch
of jobs and I could probably automate that application
process. And yeah, I'm going to get a lot
of people who are pissed off about it.
And just be an agency. I'd just be, hey, oh, you're
looking for that? Yep.
I got somebody for you. And then you do the work on the
back end to go find them and fill it.
Yeah. Dude, I've said it a million
(12:16):
times and I'll say it another million times.
There's a lot of money to be made by just sitting on either
Facebook Marketplace or Upwork all day, every day and just
hunting for deals and opportunities either as an
Upwork freelancer or an Upwork employer.
There's just so many ideas coming across the feed and
business ideas and like, there'sjust a lot of money to be made.
(12:39):
And I do think that you have to have a special personality type.
Like I don't think I would do well sitting on Facebook
Marketplace all day every day. I think you would because you're
a hustler, you know what I mean?I'm more of like, oh, is this a
good deal? Let me pencil it out really
quick. Well, I guess it's kind of a
good deal. But actually if you look at the,
I just, I think too much. Whereas somebody like you is
like, cool, I can buy it for five and sell it for seven.
I'll do that all day 5757. And I just think that's an
(13:03):
important caveat to think about.Yeah, I just think that's,
that's an AI proof business. You don't need skills.
You just know how to talk to people.
You don't need money. You just need an Upwork account.
You need to slide into people's DMS on LinkedIn.
And if you can make a relationship someone that you
may already know today, that's, I mean, how many people that we
know on a, on a daily basis are like, I have something to sell
(13:24):
to people on LinkedIn, right? Yeah, too many piggyback.
All right, I got 1. You ready?
All right, so my #3 idea, gun tomy head, have to make $1,000,000
in six months. You're going to like this one is
a hyper niche AI audit and savings agency that focuses on
(13:44):
large corporations. I've had two conversations in
the last week with two differentlarge corporations, both of them
in the nine figures approaching,you know, billion dollar
evaluation. One of them spent every single
month as they onboarded new employees, they had to enter a
profile for them in their CRM and there was nobody internally
who would enter the profile, so they would send it to their help
(14:05):
desk. They're so big.
They had so many employees. I want you to guess how much
money they were spending a monthcreating new profiles for new
employees. I have.
No idea. Thousands 10s of thousands 20.
$1000 a month, $20,000 a month, just creating new profiles for
new employees. And they were super stoked
'cause they're like, we just figured out an automation for
this and starting next month we're going to be saving like 17
(14:28):
grand a month because now it just ties in with their HR
system, creates a profile and it's done right.
You're like, where's? That 3 grain going well.
They they explained it for purposes of this story also just
20,000 they save $20,000 a month.
But I'm like dude, Brian right there quarter of $1,000,000 a
year off of 1 automation nuts. Talk to another company, a
(14:49):
friend of mine, she works in benefits and she was like,
there's no system that our company has that reconciles our
benefits. And I was like, what do you mean
like health insurance? She's like, no, no, no, not even
health insurance, medical, dental and vision, OK.
Every single month we get a billfrom those insurance providers
and we, the, the employer have to pay that, OK.
And then we have to take it out of the employee's checks.
(15:11):
Like, all right, so what's the problem?
She's like, it's always wrong. We might not have taken the
right amount out of the employee's check or the
insurance company might have billed us for an employee that
we terminated 2 months ago. She's like, I just found
somebody who's been on for 12 months.
Another friend of mine, just like a quick aside, is an
accountant and he's like, yeah, I just found somebody who was
fired 12 months ago that still had access to their credit card,
right? So there's just, there's a lot
(15:32):
of these inefficiencies and thatfriend of mine who's in
benefits, it's like $5000 a month that they find.
And they they've been doing thisfor seven years.
They just started actually auditing it.
So I know 5000 doesn't sound like a lot, $60,000 a year as a
full time employee, but I think that if you have a specialized
skill set, let's say you're an accountant, let's say you work
(15:53):
in payroll, let's say you are anIT and you understand a specific
and you know the pain points in large organizations.
I would create just very clean and clear, plug and play.
I will help you with this audit and automation process to show
you how much you're spending andlosing and how much I can save
(16:13):
you by implementing this process.
And then I would target people in that niche industry by just
sending them my calculator just to have them see what it is.
And that's what I would do. I would, I would target large
corporations because I need to get big clients in order to get
to that like $1,000,000 run rate.
Are you? Charging a percentage of what
you save them, That's what I. Would propose.
(16:33):
So there's like there's like twooptions I would propose like pay
50% of what I save you in the first year you pay me and then
everything else after that you keep.
I think companies get squeamish at that, which is kind of
annoying. Then what I would do is I would
probably just price it out to effectively get to that same
number, but not tell them that that's what I'm doing.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
Pete customers, they want to know like what they're paying
(16:56):
every month. So if your savings fluctuates,
they don't want to get hit with this huge bill, even if it's a
net win for them, right? So something predictable that
they can wrap their mind around is usually the better pricing
model. I have a guy I know a guy, Ben
Benoit. He's Swiss, OK, 18 years old.
His whole business is sliding into DMS of executives at
(17:17):
Fortune 100 companies in Switzerland and saying like,
hey, I can use AI to save your company money.
If I can't, I will donate $1000 to the charity of your choice.
When can I come talk to you? He does not hop on Zooms with
people. This is what he's doing.
And he's 18 and he's crushing it.
And he doesn't have like corporate experience.
He doesn't like know traditionally what corporations
struggle with. He just uses ChatGPT right?
(17:39):
And he goes and he only pitches in person and he has like a
something like a 30 or 60 somewhere in there percent close
rate and it's 6 figures worth ofvalue from each customer.
He's just saving him money with AI.
That's insane he's in. Person, he's there and he's
young and they like him and so, yeah, there's absolutely a
market for that. All right, well.
(17:59):
That was my idea #3 what do you got next?
I love. The diversity of these ideas,
there's really no pattern to them.
So I like this one. Are you ready?
Yeah. OK, there's a lot of newsletters
out there, right? Newsletters are becoming more
and more popular. You've got Sub Stack, Beehive,
all, all of the newsletter companies.
Kit, Most newsletter operators statistically will burn out,
(18:21):
usually sooner rather than later, just like most podcasters
burn out. It's hard to create content over
a long period of time. We've launched A newsletter that
we burned out on. OK, we get it.
But what happens when you have anewsletter operator that's
burned out? He's completely moved on from
it. Maybe it's only been a month, a
week, a year and then someone emails them one day and says I
want to buy your newsletter. They could pay basically
(18:43):
whatever they want because thosethose emails are gone in their
head. I don't remember where or when,
but I recently talked to a guy that that this is this was his
whole strategy. He would just buy up dormant
newsletters in the same kind of niche and just aggregate them,
throw them all together and thenhe could sell ads for these
newsletters at scale. They were all free, no paid
newsletters, all based on ACPM basis.
(19:05):
So my idea is come in and buy small newsletters, like we're
talking 3 to 30,000 subscribers each in the same general niche.
Maybe they're AI newsletters, finance newsletters, business
marketing, sports, entertainment, doesn't matter.
You can find them by going to beehive, by going to Kit, by
going to Subsec, where they like, they have public
(19:27):
directories of all these newsletters, especially if you
want to like do a boost, you cango see, oh, I want to, I want to
exchange recommendations with this guy.
They're all publicly listed. Just go start clicking into
them. You could use chat GPD agent
operator, you could use Manas perplexity Comet for this to
automate it, to say, I want you to make a spreadsheet of every
single newsletter that has not sent an e-mail in at least a
(19:49):
month, at least a month. Boom.
And then you just start reachingout and say, listen, today I can
give you $0.10 per subscriber. But if XY or Z happen, I'll give
you a dollar per subscriber at acertain point in the future.
So you can either. Aggregate all these together.
You can start finding sponsors, or you can just start emailing
(20:10):
all of them together, Reach somescale and then sell all.
You're just rolling up tiny newsletters in the same niche.
You could just sell it six months later.
OK, give. Us an idea of what the UNI
economics are for newsletters just so people understand so.
Newsletter ads are sold on ACPM basis.
Cost per mil cost per thousand. People that open it not on the
list but people that open the newsletter.
(20:31):
So if I have a 10,000 subscribernewsletter, I have a 50% open
rate. That's 5000 eyeballs 5000 people
on my newsletter every week. Let's say if it's a weekly
newsletter, a good decent like aconservative CPM is $30 per 1000
views. So that's 5 * 30 a $150.00.
So that means you can make 150 bucks every time you hit send on
(20:54):
that newsletter. Let's say it's.
Weekly. Every week.
So $600 a month? Yep.
Oh, I'm that gave me another idea.
Thank you. That doesn't include affiliate
links or 1% of those people opting into a $10 a month paid
newsletter with extra features. So that's the opportunity is an
ad sales. But here's a bigger opportunity.
Nick, Are you ready? I just thought I was on the fly.
I have an. Idea that I'm it could be the
(21:16):
same thing. It could.
Be the same thing, We'll say it on three. 123 you.
Aggregate a bunch of weekly newsletters, whether they're
dormant or active, and you turn them into daily newsletters and
your revenue goes from X per week to 5X per week.
Does that make sense? Yeah.
Totally makes sense it. Doesn't scale perfectly, you
(21:37):
still have to find the sub sponsors who agreed to it.
You know, maybe you can charge $50 CPM if it's daily and only
30 if it's weekly because there's more scale.
But net of net, that's another opportunity, dude.
So here's the idea that I was thinking of.
What if you targeted a vertical home services or a city and
you're like, I'm just going to reach out to every dormant
(21:58):
newsletter in that vertical or city or demographic or whatever.
You're offering pennies on the dollar.
So you're just, you're just getting subscribers that are
being added to your list. And then on the back end, you
partner with an existing agency.So it's like you're, it's almost
like you're playing a broker andyou partner with an existing
marketing agency and you're like, Hey, I'll sell you this
massive list of people that are exactly in your space and the
(22:19):
the perfect type of ideal customer.
And I walk away because in your model, I've got to then run the
newsletter. I'm not saying it's hard, it's
just there's more. Operations to actually like do
work, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
In this model, it's like, no, you just buy up the list and
then you just sell the leads. So you're probably getting a
lower value, but you could probably do a lot more volume if
(22:40):
you're just very specific on where you're targeting.
Yeah. So you might need more money to
do this than others unless you sell or finance them or you
create a creative structure deals.
But I think that's very possiblewith these because it's there's
not like an established multiplefor a newsletter, especially if
someone's already written it offin their mind.
It's like, sure, just take it. And if it turns into something,
(23:02):
give me something, you know? Oh, that's.
Interesting. If it turns into something,
yeah, you can buy it on contingency.
Almost. Like a seller finance deal.
Yeah, I. Can't pay you right now, but
I'll give you X percentage of whatever the cash flows are to
come in. Yeah.
What do they have to? Lose.
I'm going to start to monetize that.
I'm going to go out, hustle and find sponsors.
I'll give you $0.50 on the dollar of every sponsor I find.
(23:24):
And you're going to, you're going to be a subscriber.
You're going to see if there aresponsors in there.
You don't have to, you know, keep me honest, can you?
Target on like buzz sprout, not buzz sprout beehive and kit.
By industry. Just by.
Industry, not by geography, I. I think it depends on the
platform, certainly by industry and size.
I don't know about geography. That's going to be harder.
(23:45):
OK, that's interesting. I.
Especially love industries whereyou can find your sponsors in
your newsletter. Like if it were marketing
newsletter, there's probably executives in there that would
like to sponsor the newsletter. Whereas if you had like an art
or an entertainment newsletter, that'd be harder to just e-mail
everyone and say anyone want to sponsor this?
You know I like. That one.
That would be a really cool one because I, I, I would bet that
(24:06):
those asset values are still undervalued compared to other
lists. Like we already know that
marketing like the CPMS are, there's an arbitrage there in
the ability to reach individuals.
So like, why would the assets not also be undervalued?
Amen. I'm sorry.
Did. I just say arbitrage, huh?
Hello. Call me later, Gordon Gekko.
(24:27):
All right, here's my gun to headnumber two.
Favorite idea to make $1,000,000in six months?
We've talked about this a numberof times.
Small businesses are overwhelmed.
They don't really know what to do with AI, but they want
results, right? They, they don't care about like
dashboards. So #3 I would start an AI
automation agency and I would focus on very specific plug and
(24:52):
play automations. All right, here's the deal.
There are so many different workflows that small businesses
might have. So what I would do is I would do
some research and I would just pick one.
But Nick, how would you do the research?
Well, I'm glad you asked. I go through the paid method and
what I do is the first thing is that I want to find it if
there's pain, clear operational cost, or stress.
(25:16):
The second is access. I'm going to ask myself, who
could I actually reach out to that's going to give me access
to go and do this, right? Like where can I get in and just
start tinkering #3 infrastructure.
Do they already use digital tools?
Hopefully they do, but hopefullythey don't use them too much.
That's like this, like Goldilocks zone that most people
are in. And then the next one is dollar
savings, right? Like I want to see real savings.
(25:38):
But basically you're looking forhero work flows.
And these are what hero work flows are.
They're high impact and they're low complexity, but they feel
like freaking magic. So they save time, they capture
missed revenue, they're easy to explain, they're fast to install
and there's like a clear before and after when.
So here's like an example automating missed call, follow
(25:59):
up texts for any, any home services company and you recover
15% of leads. And so you identify this, how
you identify these work flows islike, is it where is anything
falling through the cracks? You talk to people, high
friction manual tasks, anytime that anybody's like entering
things split into the computer. And again, anything that you can
build real automations around, that's the business that I would
(26:21):
launch and that's how I would do.
Oh. OK, 100% we haven't talked about
this yet. Goes to the listeners like perk
up in their seat when they say that we haven't talked about
this dude yesterday, yesterday, I'm like, all right, I got to
make a YouTube video. Got to make a YouTube video.
I, I put it on my calendar, got to do it.
What should I do? I'm going to make an AI
automation agency and I'm going to live stream it.
(26:42):
Not live stream it, but I'm going to just record my screen
and just record all of it, OK? OK, so this is what?
This is what I did yeah. I'm going to publish it like
today on YouTube. I don't know, but it might be
out by the time this comes up. Maybe not.
Here's what I did Went and logged into my high level
account. I clicked on AI Employee, which
is a new feature they have and and I recorded my screen and I
(27:02):
created an AI voice agent with literally like 6 clicks.
OK, in like 3 minutes and six clicks, I create an AI on high
level on high level. So yeah.
And it was for a garage door repair business and I just used
Chacha PT to make a a knowledge base that said, you know, you
are a 24/7 answering service fora garage door repair company
(27:24):
because I chose that industry because it's higher ticket 500
to $3000 per job. And it's something that might
get after hours calls. You're trying to go somewhere at
10:00 PM, garage won't open. You need help.
OK, Yep. I thought like plumbing, HVAC,
electrical, those are kind of saturated with private equity.
They might already have stuff like this.
Whereas no one's looking at garage doors so.
(27:44):
That's so funny, after hours calls was like one of the main
things that I've picked after talking to many entrepreneurs.
Really. Yeah, yeah, because I just.
Kind of guessed at that one. It's a.
It's a. Great one, because what happens
to those calls? What happens to those leads who
follows up with them if they don't get an answer right, then
they're going to call the next guy, right?
Like it's a no brainer. Yeah, it's also.
Something that the vast majorityof business owners aren't doing.
(28:05):
They're not picking up their phone after hours or ever.
I scraped every garage door repair company in DFWI texted
them and I I showed my watch at the start of the video and it
was 941 in the morning and by 1038, ten 3857 minutes later I
had a business owner that said yes I wanna pay for your
(28:25):
service. Oh my.
That's gonna be 7. Minutes later, Chris, that's
gonna be a good. Video I'm so pissed I'm so
pissed and excited happy for youknow what I mean?
It's like that mix of jealousy and happiness.
I. Randomized the spreadsheet to
prove there's no like audience plants you know?
There was no prep involved I've seen.
You do it before. Like that's The thing is I've
seen you do this multiple times where you're like, yeah, I'll do
(28:47):
this right now. And within an hour you're
getting people to reach out to you.
That's a freaking amazing video.And I'm freaking pissed that I'm
not at can I? Can you just like I'm sorry.
And thank you. I'm Nick.
Yes, Nick is. That good?
Oh, in. That video, we'll put it in.
We'll add it to post. We'll add it to Post.
I had a guy on my podcast, Nickonomics, who was the founder
(29:09):
and CEO of Think dot AITHYNK dotAI.
That's the one thing that they've focused on 1st is after
hours and it's all AI and they're actually having
conversations with people and itand they'll say it straight up
like they're not hiding from it.But there's so much business
that's missed when you don't have somebody picking up the
phone after hours. There's so much business that's
(29:30):
missed and they don't even know it.
And it's not like there's a highcost to it.
Yeah, you can't afford a full time employee after hours to
answer the phone, but you can definitely pay $100 a month and
have AI available at any moment or pay.
Per lead, that's what I put in the.
Text is like. Only pay me once you get a lead
that closes, that closes. So it was a good offer, dude.
(29:51):
Episode 133, I interviewed a guythat raised venture capital and
launched an AI call service for small businesses and he's doing
well. He's doing really, really well.
But like he went and raised venture capital.
It's like a full thing. But what's crazy to me is like a
year later, you can do that on ahigh level with like a few
clicks. I'm not saying it's as good or
(30:12):
as customized as his, right. I don't want to disrespect his
business, but it's just become so much easier.
I love how. We're to the point where, you
know, we've both done 200 episodes on our podcasts
individually and we're both like, I know dude.
So episode 173, I was talking tothis guy seriously.
So episode 121 at time stamp 45.42.
You're just like, we just keep getting more and more specific.
(30:33):
So anyways, to wrap up my idea, this is the hero.
This is the hero AI formula. I would pick 3 niches.
I'd build out one hero workflow per niche, right?
If this is not a custom workflow, this is just like plug
and play because we're trying togo to the masses.
I'd reach out to a lot of owners.
I'd close clients and free charge 3000 for a setup, have a
(30:55):
monthly retainer and then maybe we do some upsells in there.
But that that I think that business would get me to
$1,000,000. Do you smell that neck?
No, I. I didn't kind of smell kind.
Of smells like a lead magnet. Do we need to link to that in
the show notes? That hero, Yeah.
Oh, do we? I don't know.
Huh. All right.
What do? You think?
Please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on
the Kerner office.
I recorded my screen and I created an AI voice agent with
literally like 6 clicks. 57 minutes later I had a business
owner that said yes I want to pay for your service.
F me dude, Billy. How that dude's an animal.
He has no coding experience, buthe's spun up an agency now where
he's helping people build wrappers using Replit Lovable.
(00:20):
I think he's making like 60 grand a month.
You don't need money, you just need an Upwork account.
His whole business is saying heyI can use AI to save your
company money. He's 18 and he's crushing it.
He just uses, right. It's 6 figures from each
customer. Nick, I'm going to let you
choose. Do we want to talk about fastest
to 10 KA month in six months, fastest to $1,000,000 in the
(00:43):
bank in six months, fastest to $1,000,000 valuation revenue?
What do we want to do here? I'd say like the fastest to
$1,000,000 business in six months.
All right, number one idea. I love this idea eight years
ago. I love it just as much today.
I talked about this idea looselyon the pod before, but not much
in depth. So RV rentals, OK.
(01:06):
Most people don't understand that you can finance an RV for
20 to 30 years because it also counts as a home.
I'm not saying you should, I'm not saying it's a good idea.
But the interest rates are not crazy and it means that your
monthly payment is like 2 to $300.
But you're not not saying that? Make your own conclusions from
(01:27):
what I'm telling you. OK, but blank.
What do we always talk about? We talk about validating an idea
before spending a dime. You can validate this before
buying an RV. And so I distinctly remember
Nick as I was getting my MBA from TCU, not paying attention
at all during class. I distinctly remember sitting up
in the back of the classroom right in the middle, having
Google Sheets in one window and RV share in outdoorsy in
(01:50):
another. And I was just doing research,
trying to find out what types ofRV's in my local area, greater
DFW, were in the most demand. And I would run a search for
this weekend for a class CRV. And I'd run a search for a year
out for class CRV. And I'd put them in a
spreadsheet and I'd be able to know what the occupancy is for
any different type of RV at any given moment.
And that data screamed at me. Classy RV's, classy RV's.
(02:13):
And I even went so far as to e-mail the company and say,
here's what my data's showing me.
This is true. And they're like, how did you
learn this? That's absolutely true.
And So what did I do? I took action.
I bought a class CRV, traveled around with my family in it, and
then when I wasn't using it I rented it out.
And the unit economics on this is pretty dumb.
(02:33):
It's stupid in a good way. You can finance an RV like a
3540 thousand dollar class CRV which is a motorhome.
You got the motor in the front and the home in the back and
your payments going to be a couple 100 bucks and you could
rent it out for depending on themarket, like 200 to 500 a night.
So like literally your monthly payment is paid for on one or
(02:55):
two nights of renting it out andit scales.
The only downside is you need a place to park these.
But you can find lots, you can find storage facilities to park
them, and then you can meet yourcustomers at the storage
facility to hand them off. I love the business, I really
do. How do you get to $1,000,000 in
six months though? Because from what I remember,
you bought it, you started to rent it out and like 3 months in
(03:15):
you're like, this is annoying because you're like, because I
have to clean it and I have to turn it over, You know what I
mean? Like, yeah, it's like my, my
rental home analogy. You should never own a rental
home unless you're going to own like 1020, a hundred of them.
There's just no point if you're self managing it right, because
there's no scale to it. So I never got scale.
I had one at any given time, butif I had 10 or five, then I
(03:37):
could hire someone and I wouldn't have to deal with any
of that crap. I wouldn't have to take calls,
meet people, show them how to use it, etcetera.
So how do you scale this if you keep this thing rented out 50%
of the time. So that's call it 7000 a month
in top line revenue. They pay for the gas, they pay
extra for mileage. Your only cost is the payment
and repairs. And if they break something,
they have to pay for repairs. So let's say 5 KA month in
(04:00):
profit if you're still. Managing it.
In that income, no employees. Ten of those would be 50 KA
month. When we're trying to get to 25,
right? Because 25 was that number of
$300,000. So 5 RV's.
So 5 RV's that's not. Your other cost would be parking
it right because most people have Hoas, they don't have
enough space in in their yard and so you're looking at like
150 bucks a month per RV to store it.
(04:21):
So $1000 a month for five RV's and you can manage that
yourself. Let's say 10 RV's.
Can you finance all ten of those?
How hard would it be to get 10 RV's?
You can do it. You're probably not going to do
it with the same bank. You probably have to bounce
around banks. But if you're making your
payments, it's feasible. I had the best luck with credit
unions. You like, you probably could do
it. You probably have to like,
(04:42):
change banks, change names, change your identity, just.
Hop on the dark web, download the Onion browser.
You can do it. Make it happen, dude.
All right, no, but you can do it.
OK, I like that one. Here we go.
You ready for mine? Yep, gun to my head, I have to
make, you know, $1,000,000 in value in the next 6 months.
(05:03):
Do you know who Billy Howell is?Oh yeah, he was on the pod.
That dude's an animal. He has no coding, no experience
being technical, but he's spun up an agency now where he's
helping people build effectivelyrappers using Replit Lovable.
I think replit's his drug of choice, so to speak.
But he's developing software nowand he's created this company.
But because he put a bunch of time and effort and energy into
(05:25):
it, I think he's making like 60 grand a month.
I can't remember exactly what his, you know, economics are,
but like, he's doing well. So for me, what I would do, I
would do a 30 for 30 challenge, 30 wrappers in 30 days.
I would just give myself 30 daysto learn how to build in Replit
and that's it. It's like, so every day what I
would do is I would identify a problem or a pain point and I
(05:47):
would just build a wrapper around it.
Doesn't matter how good it is orhow bad it is, I would just
build a wrapper around it. And then at the end of 30 days,
I've got 30 wrappers worth of experience.
Some of them might even be good and maybe I can productize
those. But then I would really do the
research and the work of like, OK, what which of these wrappers
that I did had the coolest pain point?
And I would go hard in building out one or two of those and then
(06:11):
either placing it on the App Store or finding local
businesses with that pain point and selling into them as a SAS
product. I already know this is going to
be one of the best episodes we've ever recorded.
I'm just going to call it right now.
We're 11 minutes into this. That's a good one, Nick.
That's a good one. Episode 150.
By the way, Billy Howley interviewed him.
The thing is, I would bet most people listening to this
(06:32):
probably know like 60 to 80% as much as Billy.
Not to downplay anything he does.
You got to go out and find customers.
That's the hard, that's the realhard part.
You got to operationalize it, systematize it.
But like, he's not a coder. He has no coding background.
He's just messing around with these vibe coding apps more than
the average bear. Well, and the crazy thing, he
just had a LinkedIn post, I think it was or something on
(06:53):
Twitter where he live coded live, not vibe live coded an app
on stage at some conference and was like, it worked and he
created the automations for it, etcetera.
The thing that's I think specialabout Billy, or at least
different about Billy is all of us have built these and we've
gotten like 90% of the way thereand then the last 10% was like,
I don't know how to figure this out.
(07:15):
He actually put the time in and figured it out himself.
You and I have never done that. We like we've hired people to
finish. I've.
Finished. Yeah.
I, I was going to say, like I, I've been saying for months,
like that last mile is really hard.
It's gotten a lot easier and I've finished two projects now
and I was actually surprised like how much better the
experience has gotten. So.
(07:35):
But is it still the hardest part?
Is the last mile still the hardest part?
Oh yeah. OK.
But that's what I think is special about him is he's like,
OK, I figured this out and now he's doing it for other people.
He's built an agency around building it for other people.
Interesting. That's a good one.
I like that. Thank you.
You could spend 30 days learning, 30 days building, 30
days marketing, just running tests for those 30.
(07:56):
I would do it 30 days building and then 30 days learning and
then 30 days marketing. I just feel like you're only
going to learn how to do it by building and then you can be
doing research after of like, OK, which industries do I want
to focus on? That's me because I'm in the
analysis by yeah, paralysis by analysis type.
So it's like I just got to get going.
Otherwise, I'm just going to be like, well, did I optimize this
(08:17):
plan the best and should I do this first or should I do the
second? Maybe for you it's it's the
other way but that. I'm the guy that contradicts
himself because on this podcast a week or two ago I used an
analogy of learning Hungarian inthe MTC, feeling like an expert,
going to Hungary with you as my trainer, not knowing any
Hungarian but actually learning it really fast while I was
(08:38):
failing on the job. Right, so I absolutely agree
with you. Learn by building what did.
Your trainer do to make you learn Hungarian so fast.
Well, I don't talk about it. Trial by fire Pissed pissed me
off all the time. All right, moving on.
You got to keep me in a good mood.
I think you're going to like this idea.
(08:59):
So I think that you and I collectively have like 13
friends that own offshore staffing agencies.
Yes, it's ridiculous. In the staffing world, you got 2
models. You can hold their hand and
provide someone and manage them over time and mark up their
rate. Call it 100%.
You're paying a virtual assistant in the Philippines
$1200 a month. You're charging your client
(09:21):
$2500 a month. You're managing payroll and all
that. That's good because it's
recurring. It's just more hand holding.
You got to do work upfront to find them and then you got to do
work less work on going to manage them.
The other model is to find someone awesome, place them for
35% of their first year salary, am I right?
Which is nice because you get paid up front and you wash your
hands of it. It's kind of like the grandma
(09:43):
that takes the grandkids and says, all right, take them back,
right? You just get your money, you get
to move on. But it's not recurring, OK.
I think that that model has beena thing for five plus years.
I think it's going to be a thingfor the next 5 to 10 plus years.
I think it literally can be as simple as going to Upwork,
finding them on Upwork, hopping on a Zoom with them, vetting
(10:05):
them, qualifying them, seeing how well they're trained on AII.
Think that's a non negotiable here.
They have to be AI native AI trained, even if it's just GBT
and then placing them. So now how do you do this
quickly? I think you just start sliding
into the DMS of hiring managers at big companies that need to
hire 10 to 100 people overseas, and you charge 20 to 35% of
(10:28):
their first year's salary. And so you place enough people,
you get to that number pretty quickly.
Yeah. OK, so it's like the two, the
two models in staffing are head hunting.
So it's like recruiting, placing, getting a fee and then
there's staffing, which you're actually managing it.
You're saying to do the head hunting.
Yeah, go find people in place so.
There won't be a recurring aspect to it, but that's OK.
(10:50):
Well, that's the thing. If I'm trying to make $1,000,000
in six months, I don't care about recurring.
I care about right now. So that's absolutely where I
would focus. I would probably piggyback.
I would like try to find somebody who I knew that had a
good network and be like, hey, can I just can I just hire
somebody for you to at least getstarted, test it out and then
obviously do a really good job and sell into them.
Maybe find like a small businessowner that's already selling
(11:12):
like software or something to hiring managers and he just has
like a big CRM of hiring managers and he's like, listen
dude, I have a $4000 ticket product.
That's the average 30% salary for my average placement.
I'm going to give you 1020% of that for everyone.
You refer 4 to $800 checks just for making introductions.
And if they place 10 people, I'll give you a $4000 check.
(11:34):
OK, building on that, you know what else I would do?
Don't reinvent the wheel, just copy what's already working.
It's annoying. OK, I know it's annoying, but
how many times have you been looking for someone to fill a
role or you post for a job and somebody applies to it and they
apply to it and it's not really them, It's like Ava or it's an
agency. It's like, oh, I can fill this
for you with my agency, right? I would probably do that.
(11:56):
I would probably either post. No, I wouldn't post that I'm
looking for a job. I would go and apply to a bunch
of jobs and I could probably automate that application
process. And yeah, I'm going to get a lot
of people who are pissed off about it.
And just be an agency. I'd just be, hey, oh, you're
looking for that? Yep.
I got somebody for you. And then you do the work on the
back end to go find them and fill it.
Yeah. Dude, I've said it a million
(12:16):
times and I'll say it another million times.
There's a lot of money to be made by just sitting on either
Facebook Marketplace or Upwork all day, every day and just
hunting for deals and opportunities either as an
Upwork freelancer or an Upwork employer.
There's just so many ideas coming across the feed and
business ideas and like, there'sjust a lot of money to be made.
(12:39):
And I do think that you have to have a special personality type.
Like I don't think I would do well sitting on Facebook
Marketplace all day every day. I think you would because you're
a hustler, you know what I mean?I'm more of like, oh, is this a
good deal? Let me pencil it out really
quick. Well, I guess it's kind of a
good deal. But actually if you look at the,
I just, I think too much. Whereas somebody like you is
like, cool, I can buy it for five and sell it for seven.
I'll do that all day 5757. And I just think that's an
(13:03):
important caveat to think about.Yeah, I just think that's,
that's an AI proof business. You don't need skills.
You just know how to talk to people.
You don't need money. You just need an Upwork account.
You need to slide into people's DMS on LinkedIn.
And if you can make a relationship someone that you
may already know today, that's, I mean, how many people that we
know on a, on a daily basis are like, I have something to sell
(13:24):
to people on LinkedIn, right? Yeah, too many piggyback.
All right, I got 1. You ready?
All right, so my #3 idea, gun tomy head, have to make $1,000,000
in six months. You're going to like this one is
a hyper niche AI audit and savings agency that focuses on
(13:44):
large corporations. I've had two conversations in
the last week with two differentlarge corporations, both of them
in the nine figures approaching,you know, billion dollar
evaluation. One of them spent every single
month as they onboarded new employees, they had to enter a
profile for them in their CRM and there was nobody internally
who would enter the profile, so they would send it to their help
(14:05):
desk. They're so big.
They had so many employees. I want you to guess how much
money they were spending a monthcreating new profiles for new
employees. I have.
No idea. Thousands 10s of thousands 20.
$1000 a month, $20,000 a month, just creating new profiles for
new employees. And they were super stoked
'cause they're like, we just figured out an automation for
this and starting next month we're going to be saving like 17
(14:28):
grand a month because now it just ties in with their HR
system, creates a profile and it's done right.
You're like, where's? That 3 grain going well.
They they explained it for purposes of this story also just
20,000 they save $20,000 a month.
But I'm like dude, Brian right there quarter of $1,000,000 a
year off of 1 automation nuts. Talk to another company, a
(14:49):
friend of mine, she works in benefits and she was like,
there's no system that our company has that reconciles our
benefits. And I was like, what do you mean
like health insurance? She's like, no, no, no, not even
health insurance, medical, dental and vision, OK.
Every single month we get a billfrom those insurance providers
and we, the, the employer have to pay that, OK.
And then we have to take it out of the employee's checks.
(15:11):
Like, all right, so what's the problem?
She's like, it's always wrong. We might not have taken the
right amount out of the employee's check or the
insurance company might have billed us for an employee that
we terminated 2 months ago. She's like, I just found
somebody who's been on for 12 months.
Another friend of mine, just like a quick aside, is an
accountant and he's like, yeah, I just found somebody who was
fired 12 months ago that still had access to their credit card,
right? So there's just, there's a lot
(15:32):
of these inefficiencies and thatfriend of mine who's in
benefits, it's like $5000 a month that they find.
And they they've been doing thisfor seven years.
They just started actually auditing it.
So I know 5000 doesn't sound like a lot, $60,000 a year as a
full time employee, but I think that if you have a specialized
skill set, let's say you're an accountant, let's say you work
(15:53):
in payroll, let's say you are anIT and you understand a specific
and you know the pain points in large organizations.
I would create just very clean and clear, plug and play.
I will help you with this audit and automation process to show
you how much you're spending andlosing and how much I can save
(16:13):
you by implementing this process.
And then I would target people in that niche industry by just
sending them my calculator just to have them see what it is.
And that's what I would do. I would, I would target large
corporations because I need to get big clients in order to get
to that like $1,000,000 run rate.
Are you? Charging a percentage of what
you save them, That's what I. Would propose.
(16:33):
So there's like there's like twooptions I would propose like pay
50% of what I save you in the first year you pay me and then
everything else after that you keep.
I think companies get squeamish at that, which is kind of
annoying. Then what I would do is I would
probably just price it out to effectively get to that same
number, but not tell them that that's what I'm doing.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
Pete customers, they want to know like what they're paying
(16:56):
every month. So if your savings fluctuates,
they don't want to get hit with this huge bill, even if it's a
net win for them, right? So something predictable that
they can wrap their mind around is usually the better pricing
model. I have a guy I know a guy, Ben
Benoit. He's Swiss, OK, 18 years old.
His whole business is sliding into DMS of executives at
(17:17):
Fortune 100 companies in Switzerland and saying like,
hey, I can use AI to save your company money.
If I can't, I will donate $1000 to the charity of your choice.
When can I come talk to you? He does not hop on Zooms with
people. This is what he's doing.
And he's 18 and he's crushing it.
And he doesn't have like corporate experience.
He doesn't like know traditionally what corporations
struggle with. He just uses ChatGPT right?
(17:39):
And he goes and he only pitches in person and he has like a
something like a 30 or 60 somewhere in there percent close
rate and it's 6 figures worth ofvalue from each customer.
He's just saving him money with AI.
That's insane he's in. Person, he's there and he's
young and they like him and so, yeah, there's absolutely a
market for that. All right, well.
(17:59):
That was my idea #3 what do you got next?
I love. The diversity of these ideas,
there's really no pattern to them.
So I like this one. Are you ready?
Yeah. OK, there's a lot of newsletters
out there, right? Newsletters are becoming more
and more popular. You've got Sub Stack, Beehive,
all, all of the newsletter companies.
Kit, Most newsletter operators statistically will burn out,
(18:21):
usually sooner rather than later, just like most podcasters
burn out. It's hard to create content over
a long period of time. We've launched A newsletter that
we burned out on. OK, we get it.
But what happens when you have anewsletter operator that's
burned out? He's completely moved on from
it. Maybe it's only been a month, a
week, a year and then someone emails them one day and says I
want to buy your newsletter. They could pay basically
(18:43):
whatever they want because thosethose emails are gone in their
head. I don't remember where or when,
but I recently talked to a guy that that this is this was his
whole strategy. He would just buy up dormant
newsletters in the same kind of niche and just aggregate them,
throw them all together and thenhe could sell ads for these
newsletters at scale. They were all free, no paid
newsletters, all based on ACPM basis.
(19:05):
So my idea is come in and buy small newsletters, like we're
talking 3 to 30,000 subscribers each in the same general niche.
Maybe they're AI newsletters, finance newsletters, business
marketing, sports, entertainment, doesn't matter.
You can find them by going to beehive, by going to Kit, by
going to Subsec, where they like, they have public
(19:27):
directories of all these newsletters, especially if you
want to like do a boost, you cango see, oh, I want to, I want to
exchange recommendations with this guy.
They're all publicly listed. Just go start clicking into
them. You could use chat GPD agent
operator, you could use Manas perplexity Comet for this to
automate it, to say, I want you to make a spreadsheet of every
single newsletter that has not sent an e-mail in at least a
(19:49):
month, at least a month. Boom.
And then you just start reachingout and say, listen, today I can
give you $0.10 per subscriber. But if XY or Z happen, I'll give
you a dollar per subscriber at acertain point in the future.
So you can either. Aggregate all these together.
You can start finding sponsors, or you can just start emailing
(20:10):
all of them together, Reach somescale and then sell all.
You're just rolling up tiny newsletters in the same niche.
You could just sell it six months later.
OK, give. Us an idea of what the UNI
economics are for newsletters just so people understand so.
Newsletter ads are sold on ACPM basis.
Cost per mil cost per thousand. People that open it not on the
list but people that open the newsletter.
(20:31):
So if I have a 10,000 subscribernewsletter, I have a 50% open
rate. That's 5000 eyeballs 5000 people
on my newsletter every week. Let's say if it's a weekly
newsletter, a good decent like aconservative CPM is $30 per 1000
views. So that's 5 * 30 a $150.00.
So that means you can make 150 bucks every time you hit send on
(20:54):
that newsletter. Let's say it's.
Weekly. Every week.
So $600 a month? Yep.
Oh, I'm that gave me another idea.
Thank you. That doesn't include affiliate
links or 1% of those people opting into a $10 a month paid
newsletter with extra features. So that's the opportunity is an
ad sales. But here's a bigger opportunity.
Nick, Are you ready? I just thought I was on the fly.
I have an. Idea that I'm it could be the
(21:16):
same thing. It could.
Be the same thing, We'll say it on three. 123 you.
Aggregate a bunch of weekly newsletters, whether they're
dormant or active, and you turn them into daily newsletters and
your revenue goes from X per week to 5X per week.
Does that make sense? Yeah.
Totally makes sense it. Doesn't scale perfectly, you
(21:37):
still have to find the sub sponsors who agreed to it.
You know, maybe you can charge $50 CPM if it's daily and only
30 if it's weekly because there's more scale.
But net of net, that's another opportunity, dude.
So here's the idea that I was thinking of.
What if you targeted a vertical home services or a city and
you're like, I'm just going to reach out to every dormant
(21:58):
newsletter in that vertical or city or demographic or whatever.
You're offering pennies on the dollar.
So you're just, you're just getting subscribers that are
being added to your list. And then on the back end, you
partner with an existing agency.So it's like you're, it's almost
like you're playing a broker andyou partner with an existing
marketing agency and you're like, Hey, I'll sell you this
massive list of people that are exactly in your space and the
(22:19):
the perfect type of ideal customer.
And I walk away because in your model, I've got to then run the
newsletter. I'm not saying it's hard, it's
just there's more. Operations to actually like do
work, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
In this model, it's like, no, you just buy up the list and
then you just sell the leads. So you're probably getting a
lower value, but you could probably do a lot more volume if
(22:40):
you're just very specific on where you're targeting.
Yeah. So you might need more money to
do this than others unless you sell or finance them or you
create a creative structure deals.
But I think that's very possiblewith these because it's there's
not like an established multiplefor a newsletter, especially if
someone's already written it offin their mind.
It's like, sure, just take it. And if it turns into something,
(23:02):
give me something, you know? Oh, that's.
Interesting. If it turns into something,
yeah, you can buy it on contingency.
Almost. Like a seller finance deal.
Yeah, I. Can't pay you right now, but
I'll give you X percentage of whatever the cash flows are to
come in. Yeah.
What do they have to? Lose.
I'm going to start to monetize that.
I'm going to go out, hustle and find sponsors.
I'll give you $0.50 on the dollar of every sponsor I find.
(23:24):
And you're going to, you're going to be a subscriber.
You're going to see if there aresponsors in there.
You don't have to, you know, keep me honest, can you?
Target on like buzz sprout, not buzz sprout beehive and kit.
By industry. Just by.
Industry, not by geography, I. I think it depends on the
platform, certainly by industry and size.
I don't know about geography. That's going to be harder.
(23:45):
OK, that's interesting. I.
Especially love industries whereyou can find your sponsors in
your newsletter. Like if it were marketing
newsletter, there's probably executives in there that would
like to sponsor the newsletter. Whereas if you had like an art
or an entertainment newsletter, that'd be harder to just e-mail
everyone and say anyone want to sponsor this?
You know I like. That one.
That would be a really cool one because I, I, I would bet that
(24:06):
those asset values are still undervalued compared to other
lists. Like we already know that
marketing like the CPMS are, there's an arbitrage there in
the ability to reach individuals.
So like, why would the assets not also be undervalued?
Amen. I'm sorry.
Did. I just say arbitrage, huh?
Hello. Call me later, Gordon Gekko.
(24:27):
All right, here's my gun to headnumber two.
Favorite idea to make $1,000,000in six months?
We've talked about this a numberof times.
Small businesses are overwhelmed.
They don't really know what to do with AI, but they want
results, right? They, they don't care about like
dashboards. So #3 I would start an AI
automation agency and I would focus on very specific plug and
(24:52):
play automations. All right, here's the deal.
There are so many different workflows that small businesses
might have. So what I would do is I would do
some research and I would just pick one.
But Nick, how would you do the research?
Well, I'm glad you asked. I go through the paid method and
what I do is the first thing is that I want to find it if
there's pain, clear operational cost, or stress.
(25:16):
The second is access. I'm going to ask myself, who
could I actually reach out to that's going to give me access
to go and do this, right? Like where can I get in and just
start tinkering #3 infrastructure.
Do they already use digital tools?
Hopefully they do, but hopefullythey don't use them too much.
That's like this, like Goldilocks zone that most people
are in. And then the next one is dollar
savings, right? Like I want to see real savings.
(25:38):
But basically you're looking forhero work flows.
And these are what hero work flows are.
They're high impact and they're low complexity, but they feel
like freaking magic. So they save time, they capture
missed revenue, they're easy to explain, they're fast to install
and there's like a clear before and after when.
So here's like an example automating missed call, follow
(25:59):
up texts for any, any home services company and you recover
15% of leads. And so you identify this, how
you identify these work flows islike, is it where is anything
falling through the cracks? You talk to people, high
friction manual tasks, anytime that anybody's like entering
things split into the computer. And again, anything that you can
build real automations around, that's the business that I would
(26:21):
launch and that's how I would do.
Oh. OK, 100% we haven't talked about
this yet. Goes to the listeners like perk
up in their seat when they say that we haven't talked about
this dude yesterday, yesterday, I'm like, all right, I got to
make a YouTube video. Got to make a YouTube video.
I, I put it on my calendar, got to do it.
What should I do? I'm going to make an AI
automation agency and I'm going to live stream it.
(26:42):
Not live stream it, but I'm going to just record my screen
and just record all of it, OK? OK, so this is what?
This is what I did yeah. I'm going to publish it like
today on YouTube. I don't know, but it might be
out by the time this comes up. Maybe not.
Here's what I did Went and logged into my high level
account. I clicked on AI Employee, which
is a new feature they have and and I recorded my screen and I
(27:02):
created an AI voice agent with literally like 6 clicks.
OK, in like 3 minutes and six clicks, I create an AI on high
level on high level. So yeah.
And it was for a garage door repair business and I just used
Chacha PT to make a a knowledge base that said, you know, you
are a 24/7 answering service fora garage door repair company
(27:24):
because I chose that industry because it's higher ticket 500
to $3000 per job. And it's something that might
get after hours calls. You're trying to go somewhere at
10:00 PM, garage won't open. You need help.
OK, Yep. I thought like plumbing, HVAC,
electrical, those are kind of saturated with private equity.
They might already have stuff like this.
Whereas no one's looking at garage doors so.
(27:44):
That's so funny, after hours calls was like one of the main
things that I've picked after talking to many entrepreneurs.
Really. Yeah, yeah, because I just.
Kind of guessed at that one. It's a.
It's a. Great one, because what happens
to those calls? What happens to those leads who
follows up with them if they don't get an answer right, then
they're going to call the next guy, right?
Like it's a no brainer. Yeah, it's also.
Something that the vast majorityof business owners aren't doing.
(28:05):
They're not picking up their phone after hours or ever.
I scraped every garage door repair company in DFWI texted
them and I I showed my watch at the start of the video and it
was 941 in the morning and by 1038, ten 3857 minutes later I
had a business owner that said yes I wanna pay for your
(28:25):
service. Oh my.
That's gonna be 7. Minutes later, Chris, that's
gonna be a good. Video I'm so pissed I'm so
pissed and excited happy for youknow what I mean?
It's like that mix of jealousy and happiness.
I. Randomized the spreadsheet to
prove there's no like audience plants you know?
There was no prep involved I've seen.
You do it before. Like that's The thing is I've
seen you do this multiple times where you're like, yeah, I'll do
(28:47):
this right now. And within an hour you're
getting people to reach out to you.
That's a freaking amazing video.And I'm freaking pissed that I'm
not at can I? Can you just like I'm sorry.
And thank you. I'm Nick.
Yes, Nick is. That good?
Oh, in. That video, we'll put it in.
We'll add it to post. We'll add it to Post.
I had a guy on my podcast, Nickonomics, who was the founder
(29:09):
and CEO of Think dot AITHYNK dotAI.
That's the one thing that they've focused on 1st is after
hours and it's all AI and they're actually having
conversations with people and itand they'll say it straight up
like they're not hiding from it.But there's so much business
that's missed when you don't have somebody picking up the
phone after hours. There's so much business that's
(29:30):
missed and they don't even know it.
And it's not like there's a highcost to it.
Yeah, you can't afford a full time employee after hours to
answer the phone, but you can definitely pay $100 a month and
have AI available at any moment or pay.
Per lead, that's what I put in the.
Text is like. Only pay me once you get a lead
that closes, that closes. So it was a good offer, dude.
(29:51):
Episode 133, I interviewed a guythat raised venture capital and
launched an AI call service for small businesses and he's doing
well. He's doing really, really well.
But like he went and raised venture capital.
It's like a full thing. But what's crazy to me is like a
year later, you can do that on ahigh level with like a few
clicks. I'm not saying it's as good or
(30:12):
as customized as his, right. I don't want to disrespect his
business, but it's just become so much easier.
I love how. We're to the point where, you
know, we've both done 200 episodes on our podcasts
individually and we're both like, I know dude.
So episode 173, I was talking tothis guy seriously.
So episode 121 at time stamp 45.42.
You're just like, we just keep getting more and more specific.
(30:33):
So anyways, to wrap up my idea, this is the hero.
This is the hero AI formula. I would pick 3 niches.
I'd build out one hero workflow per niche, right?
If this is not a custom workflow, this is just like plug
and play because we're trying togo to the masses.
I'd reach out to a lot of owners.
I'd close clients and free charge 3000 for a setup, have a
(30:55):
monthly retainer and then maybe we do some upsells in there.
But that that I think that business would get me to
$1,000,000. Do you smell that neck?
No, I. I didn't kind of smell kind.
Of smells like a lead magnet. Do we need to link to that in
the show notes? That hero, Yeah.
Oh, do we? I don't know.
Huh. All right.
What do? You think?
Please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on
the Kerner office.
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