The Koerner Office: Business Ideas & Growth Advice

He shut down his business and started flipping garage sale items just to make rent.

Then discovered a crazy simple biz: Directory websites

In 2 years, he turned it into a portfolio of 6 sites with 90k+ monthly visitors.

Here’s exactly how:

1. He was broke and had to get creative so he started Googling things like “passive income” (we've all been there)

Then he came across the idea of niche directories.

Meanwhile on TikTok people were posting thrift hauls and getting millions of views.

All the comments were:

“Where is this?” “Any in PA?” So he built a directory of thrift stores.

Why did it work? Google Maps sucks for niche local queries.

Try searching “cool thrift stores near me” and you’ll see.

His directory solved that with curated results and now it ranks for ...thousands of keywords. His growth stack:

- Ahrefs to find low-difficulty keywords
- Reddit + TikTok for user-generated demand
- WordPress + Mediavine for display ads
- One $19 PDF he made in Canva that sells daily

Rinse and repeat. He now owns directories in:

- Thrift stores
- Plasma donation centers
- Liquidation stores
- Flea markets
- Dog parks

All are hands-off. All are profitable. Is it truly passive? Nothing is, but this is pretty dang close.

The playbook:

- Find a niche with local intent
- Make a better version of what exists
- Prioritize low competition, evergreen topics
- Use SEO + ads + simple products to monetize
- Scale with more sites

This isn’t a get rich quick scheme. It’s a quiet way to get to $3k/month without clients, calls, or chaos.

And the best part? Once it's built, it mostly runs itself.

I had Frey Chu himself share his screen and show me exactly how it's done. Watch full video on the top comment below!

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1 day ago | [YT] | 88

The Koerner Office: Business Ideas & Growth Advice

How to make $250 profit tomorrow in 2 steps.

I did it and it’s repeatable in most markets:

1. Go buy a pallet of sod for $226. It has x165 1x2 foot pieces

2. List them on FB Marketplace for $3 per piece. This is cheaper than Home Depot.

And don’t forget you’ll need to buy it from a sod place. I found 4 locations in DFW at this price. Here’s the receipt to prove it.

I didn’t do this to make money, I did it because I only needed a partial pallet for my job

And I knew I could break even on the whole project if I sold the surplus.

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1 week ago | [YT] | 69

The Koerner Office: Business Ideas & Growth Advice

AI Image Generation just had its iPhone moment.

Many are laughing at it, just like they laughed at the iPhone in 2007.

But 3 days ago, OpenAI launched a new Image Generation API, and it'll change everything.

Here are the biggest opportunities I see:

When ChatGPT first added images, it was fun but useless.

Cool demos. Not good enough for real businesses.

That changed 3 days ago. The new API is fast, CHEAP, accurate, and usable.

It just crossed from "toy" to "tool." And the biggest opportunity I see?

Ads. Ads are the perfect output for AI Image Generation.

Because ads make people money. And marketers want more volume at lower costs.

You can now create beautiful ad creative with almost no technical skill.

And sell it over and over again. Here's how:

Find an ad agency & look at their portfolio. Now go to the FB Ad library & find ads from that portfolio company

Add a sexy reference image ad (this this one below) to Sora & ask it to make a similar ad for that company.

Put the ads in G Drive Link & send to the agency for free


Do that over and over again until you have a paying customer.

You are still early. Maybe too early. The public has no idea how much this improved.

This is "early Facebook ads" or "first Shopify dropshippers" all over again.

12 months from now, it will be obvious & expensive.

The winners will move NOW. A few businesses you could start today:

- AI ad agency for ecom brands
- "AI Baby" apps (upload 2 photos)
- "Right Size Me" apps (weight loss visuals)
- Real estate staging apps (one-click furniture)
- Virtual try-on apps (haircuts, fashion)

Also I discussed this momentous shift for OpenAI with the guy who knows image gen best Jacob Posel.

It's shaping up to be my most popular pod ever. Links in the top comment below! Enjoy!


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1 week ago (edited) | [YT] | 90

The Koerner Office: Business Ideas & Growth Advice

Everyone is chasing the next big AI product.

But there’s one tool quietly turning weekend builders into full-time founders.

(And it’s not what you think.)

Here’s how people are building real businesses with it:

You don’t need a SaaS idea.
You don’t need a big team.
You don’t even need to know how to code.

All you need is one repeatable workflow people already pay for.

Like this:

One guy built a tool that watches your competitors' ads.

Every Friday, it sends you a PDF breakdown of what they’re running, what’s working, and where they’re spending money.

He charges $300 a month for it.

Another person built a local lead scraper.

It checks every new Zillow listing in a market.
Flags the underpriced ones.
Writes a custom message.
Sends it straight to the buyer’s inbox.

Built in one afternoon. Now makes $1,500 a month.

None of this requires software engineers.

You just need to know what people hate doing, and automate it step-by-step.

Every time someone saves 10 hours, they’ll gladly pay you.

This isn’t just some agency idea either.

It works for people who want to run solo.

It works for people who want to build software.

It works for anyone who understands a real-world problem and can write a checklist.

So what’s the tool?

It’s like Zapier, but rebuilt for the AI world.

Drag and drop blocks. Add OpenAI, Claude, or Gemini. Click run. You’re live.

It’s called Gumloop and you can use it to:

- Enrich leads
- Scrape the web
- Build SEO pages
- Watch YouTube videos and summarize them
- Auto-respond to emails
- Trigger text alerts
- Build your own product from scratch

The smartest people I know are quietly building agencies and apps on top of this.

Some are getting paid to do it for others.

Some are selling one flow for thousands.

And most of them are doing it solo.

If you missed the Zapier wave
If you missed the Airtable wave
If you missed the no-code wave
This is your 2nd chance

Even better? I just interviewed the founder for a behind the scenes look.

What are people building, how are they building it and how are they making money?

Watch full video on the link in the top comment below! Enjoy!

Follow me ‪@thekoerneroffice‬ ​⁠for more cool stuff like this!

1 week ago | [YT] | 114

The Koerner Office: Business Ideas & Growth Advice

Want to make more money? Let others make more money than you.

That’s how my friend sold $15 million in watches to just one buyer.

Here’s how he did it:

Most people get upset when someone resells their product for more money. They feel like they messed up.

But Shannon didn’t think that way. He thought, “If my buyer makes money, he’ll keep coming back.”

Shannon had the deal and the supplier.

But he didn’t want the stress of selling to end customers, so he sold in bulk to someone else, and let that guy do the work.

One man even flew across the country just to meet him.

Shannon laid out the whole inventory on a table and said:

“I can get more of these every week. You just have to sell them.”

That meeting turned into a $15 million partnership.

Shannon’s rule?

Don’t push.
Don’t beg.
Just make it easy for the buyer to win.

And when they win big, they’ll tell other people about you too.

The lesson?

You don’t always need to “win” the deal.

If the product moves and you’re making money, great.

Let the buyer feel like they got the better deal.

That’s how you stay in the game a long time.

So Shannon Jean is the friend I referenced and he shares his wisdom (and this watch story) on the podcast found on the links in the top comment below!

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1 week ago | [YT] | 39

The Koerner Office: Business Ideas & Growth Advice

You don’t need to code. You need to sell.

My buddy built a custom app for an auto mechanic with AI. It took 30 minutes.

No coding. No templates. Just a prompt. Then he charged $50/month.

He’s doing this over and over. Here’s how:

You've heard of vibe coding. Well, this is it.

Talk to an AI tool like Replit, Cursor, or V0…

And it builds the app for you.

You don’t even need to know what a “stack” is. You just need to know what problem you’re solving, and who will pay for it.

His first client was a mechanic who needed a place for techs to log how many cars they saw per day.

The “solution” he thought he needed was Airtable + Softr = $250/month

Billy built him a custom AI-powered web app in a day, and charged $50/month.

Once you learn the tools (Replit, Bolt, Lovable, V0):

You don’t build software, you build businesses.

Every CRM you hate?
Every spreadsheet you duct-taped together?
Every Google Doc that breaks?

Those are products waiting to happen.

Want to do this yourself? Here’s the play: Pick a boring business & ask them what system frustrates them:

- Build an MVP in Replit or V0
- Show a demo
- Charge $30–$300/month
- Repeat with another client

This works.

Bonus move?

- Take that same app you built…
- Change the branding
- Tweak the copy

…and sell it to 10 more people in that niche.

Small businesses don’t want options. They want simple, fast, done-for-you.

If you can sell you don’t need to write code.

AI will build what you describe.

Your job is to describe it clearly and ask someone to pay for it. That’s it.

The guy in this story is Billy Howell. He came on my podcast to outline his exact process. Links in the top comment below! Enjoy!

1 week ago | [YT] | 108

The Koerner Office: Business Ideas & Growth Advice

How to get an influencer to promote your product… without asking.

1. Use their name.
2. Build the product.
3. Sell it.
4. Venmo them 10%.

No email. No contract. No permission. Playbook below:

1/ Let’s say you create a digital product, a $29 eBook. Build it with ChatGPT and a few Bromozi YouTube video transcripts

“How to Get Shredded in 30 Days”

You slap this on the cover: "Based on the methods of Alex Hormozi"

You never say he wrote it. You’re just giving credit.

2/ You run Facebook ads to a Shopify store. It sells.

Now here’s the fun part:

Every time you make a sale, you Venmo him 10% of it.

No message. Just: “Appreciate the inspiration.”

3/ Eventually… he notices.
And if the money is real, he’ll do one of three things:

1. Promote it
2. Ask to formalize it
3. Tell you to stop

2 of those 3 outcomes = win.
And even the third one gets you a conversation.

4/ You don’t need a Hormozi-level name for this to work.
6k IG influencers have 1m+ followers. Also:

Micro-influencers
Niche YouTubers
TikTok coaches

Pick someone with an audience but no product. You build the product for them and give them a cut they never asked for.

5/ Most people won’t try this because they’re scared of rejection.

But you’re not even asking. You’re just shipping.

That’s the difference between ideas that make money
and ideas that never launch.

6/ And yes, if they ask you to stop, you stop. Most won’t.

You’re doing something they didn’t have time for. You’re making them money.

And you’re giving them leverage they didn’t even ask for.

(BTW, 0% chance Bromozi ever promotes your eBook, but the principle is the same)

7/ This is the move:

Be bold
Be respectful
Be early
Ship fast
Split profits
Don't ask permission

That’s how you get attention. That’s how you win.

We talk about this exact strategy in 145 & permissionless marketing in 144. Link below!

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 69

The Koerner Office: Business Ideas & Growth Advice

I knew nothing about fixing iPhones when I opened an iPhone repair store in college.

($2,400/month 5 year lease with a personal guarantee.)

When a customer bought in a broken phone I'd use YouTube to learn how to fix it while they waited out front.

My tuition for such reckless behavior was 4 broken iPhones that I replaced for about $2,800 total, plus a few gray hairs.

After a couple months I was an expert.

A smart, rational person would spend months learning the ins and outs of phone repair before ever opening.

I saw that time as tens of thousands of dollars worth of lost profits. More importantly, the longer you take to start the higher the likelihood of you ever launching.

Time = friction and friction = inaction.

Impatience is a superpower.

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2 weeks ago | [YT] | 46

The Koerner Office: Business Ideas & Growth Advice

People are flipping $5K into $50K by doing something you’ve never even considered.

They’re not building apps, trading stocks or selling courses.

They’re buying liquidated inventory for pennies and reselling it. Here’s the full, specific, 12-step playbook:

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2 weeks ago | [YT] | 68

The Koerner Office: Business Ideas & Growth Advice

I'm hearing there's almost no hangar space for private planes in Texas right now.

Most waiting lists are 20-50+ people long.

Who's gonna go buy or build one? Seems like a cool biz.

What guy doesn't want a metal building to tinker around in?

Follow me The Koerner Office if you found this interesting!

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 24