Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

There's a massive underground economy for IG meme pages. I just did a deep dive.

It was triggered by a DM trying to sell me 8 IG accounts for $100k. I just HAD to pepper him with questions

I'm not a buyer, but I'm curious. Here's what I learned about his biz & the industry:

The biz:

- $79k YTD revenue, almost all profit.

- 8 accounts with 1.4m followers combined

- Account sizes range from 92k to 416k

- The content is all startup inspiration, self-improvement and hustle culture type stuff.

- 58% of followers are in the US

- Their charge for sponsored posts ranges from $50 to $1,700 depending on the duration, # of accounts used and content type.

- 100% of all sales are inbound in the IG DMs. He said the business could grow a ton if he started doing outbound, which would mostly be DMing companies behind other sponsored posts. Something a VA could do.

- Monthly revenue ebbs and flows based on inbound volume, from $3k to $15k, but the pages are all growing.

- The seller pays 35% of all revenue to a kid in Canada to run the accounts for him. This is his only cost, and he said he could outsource to a VA to take 10-15% or hourly instead.

- They don't produce original content, but just repurpose from elsewhere.

- His typical customers are eCommerce sites, other meme pages and course sellers

- These accounts were all aggregated over the last 18 months by reaching out to page owners and making offers.

The guy is in his early 20s and wanting the money to grow his other company.

The industry: My interest in this industry was first piqued when I heard a story on ep #19 of My First Million about a dude that stood on stage at a conference and made a random word go viral on X right on the spot, with meme pages.

This guy, Steve Bartlett, had employed the same playbook as the guy in my DMs

- accumulated a ton of meme accounts and then used them all to market things concurrently to college students.

Almost Friday, the company that owns accounts like Entrapranure and @litcapital does the same thing, except their content is super high quality.

Almost Friday has many millions of followers across all platforms and several different accounts, and they monetize with merch, events, original music, podcast ads and sponsored posts.

What started as mere meme pages ended up raising millions in VC and employing dozens.

Anyway, I found this whole industry fascinating. If I were 20 again I can see myself following the same playbook.

I'm happy to intro you to the seller of these pages. He's a good dude.

Thanks for reading! Sorry if this sent you down another rabbit hole and your boss is about to fire you as a result.

1 day ago | [YT] | 90

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

Did you know this business will easily do a few thousand bucks a day with only one truck?

I can't stop thinking about the trash bin cleaning biz.

I know a guy that runs one and learned everything I could.

Here's exactly how I'd growth hack this biz to 6 figures/year profit:

Why do I love this biz?

- Everyone has trash bins

- not going anywhere. They're all gross!

- Very young industry, low market penetration

- Just need 1 truck & some hustle

- Post Covid world = many germaphobes

- Housing density getting tighter

- Viral marketing potential (more on that later)

These trucks are $40k+, but it's a hard asset. You can take out a loan.

If a bank won't, ask a family member.

Already have a truck? Even better, because you can buy a much cheaper trash bin cleaning trailer instead.

Use SearchTempest to search Craigslist nationwide to find one used. Great site!

Or buy this established biz in Phoenix w/ seller financing:

Marketing is the funnest part. I'd take a page from the Ice Cream truck's book.

Get a loudspeaker installed & learn the trash collection schedules in most dense neighborhoods.

Around 3-8 PM go clean bins for free, blasting tunes What music? So Fresh & So Clean by Outkast, of course!

Why 3-8pm? All the kids are coming home from school & parents home from work.

The bins have already been emptied but not brought back in yet.

The family is in a good mood!

Your marginal cost to clean these bins for free is near $0 + your time.

ONLY play this same song, every time, like Pavlov's dog.

Spend a month working for free & tape a flier right on the lip of the bin so it waves in the wind when they open it

The flier should be catchy with great copy, like suggesting their bin is now so clean you could eat cereal out of it

Tape a plastic spoon to the lid to reinforce the cereal joke. Reference the song on your flier, that's your brand now.

The whole 'hood' will soon know it & associate it with you.

Use a few different flier versions w/ different QR codes to A/B test which offer works best.

Join the neighborhood FB and Nextdoor groups and ask for feedback about your service.

You'll do this AFTER cleaning. And you're not in the FB groups to sell, but to solicit feedback.

Not selling directly is the best sales tool there is.

Make your site dead simple to sign up. Offer discounts for more frequent service. You're on the street anyway!

Don't ask them to opt in to a free cleaning, YOU'RE opting them in. I guarantee by the end of your route you'll already have a handful of customers.

There are neighborhoods with thousands of homes. 1 truck & route can do 150-200+ homes/day. That's upwards to $3,000 per day in revenue per truck.

You can be huge before needing a 2nd truck.

Your cost is gas, water, maintenance & some chemicals. High margin. People will come out to ask questions. Is this a service the trash company provides? They'll wonder.

Speaking of that, that's your next growth hack: White label your service to smaller, existing trash companies that have no interest in in cleaning.

Immediately tap into their distribution network & give them a cut. Pick a couple areas and don't move on to the next until you've hit what you consider to be saturation.

Once saturated, either move to a new area or offer more services to existing customers.

Annual:
Pressure washing
Gutter cleaning
Window washing
Etc

"What if it fails?"
Who cares? You learned, you had fun, and can just resell the stupid truck.

"You're oversimplifying."
Yep, and you're making excuses.

This is an asymmetrical bet. If you lose you lose small. If you win you win big.

We own a home services biz. It's not rocket science. I'm not speaking from theory here.

Get in with the HOAs and you're golden.

Grow to a 2nd, 3rd, 4th truck. Hire a guy to run the route. We're gonna see these trucks everywhere over the next 10 years.

You'll regret never trying, but you won't regret giving it a shot. (Speaking from experience)

Would love a follow ‪@thekoerneroffice‬ if you like nerdy small biz content.

3 days ago | [YT] | 181

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

What exactly is stopping you from:

- Buying silt fencing supplies from Lowe's

- Finding & calling developers by looking up recent permits issued

- Offering to do their next job for free

- Capturing the rest of their business at $3/linear foot

- Reusing the supplies as much as you can

- Buying supplies for less from a regional distributor once you hit scale to boost margins

In short, what's stopping you from starting a business with almost no cost or downside?

If your pride is stopping you, then you either aren't broke enough or don't want to own a business that badly.

If your wallet is stopping you then borrow a couple hundred from a friend and rent a truck for a day.

If your know-how is stopping you then re-read everything above and go watch a few YT videos.

The opportunities are all around us.

Your biggest competitors aren't local LLCs, they're your excuses.

4 days ago | [YT] | 164

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

"What books do you recommend?" is the 3rd most common question I'm asked.

And people hate my answer.

Truthfully: I don't think I've read a whole book in over a decade (aside from scriptures).

Reading the 4 Hour Workweek at age 24 gave me enough drive and ideas to never have time to ever read another book.

Instead of taking action, we set goals.
Instead of taking action, we research.
Instead of taking action, we plan.
Instead of taking action, we read books.

None of those 4 things lead to progress, and progress is everything.

Yes, lots of very smart people read a ton. Warren Buffet does, and he is both happy AND wealthy!

Books either bore me, or I just get too excited to implement things I read that I don't have time to keep reading.

4 days ago | [YT] | 118

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

Imagine you own 630 gorgeous acres in E. Utah valued at $160k, what do you do with it?

Backstory:
98 years ago my great grandpa bought this land for $10k.ò

The hope was to get wealthy from the shale & crude oil onsite. That never happened.

That land is still owned by 70 shareholders in my extended family.

3,2,1 go!

1 week ago (edited) | [YT] | 88

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

I've had an idea for over a decade that I couldn't get out of my head and onto paper...until today.

Stick with me for a second, because this is a bit different than what you're used to from me.

My wife and I just launched a podcast/YouTube channel that explores exactly how Christian parents raised their (now grown) kids in the faith.

We sit down with parents we want to learn from personally anyway, so we thought "Why not publish these conversations for the world to hear?"

It's not high level theory and fluff, but specific questions like,

"When did you get your kids a phone?"

"What is the toughest thing you dealt with as parents?"

"How often did you read your scriptures?"

"What were some of your biggest parenting regrets or mistakes?"

"Do you regret being too strict, or not strict enough, and why?"

The podcast is called How'd You Do It? It just went live today on all platforms.

We have 4 more episodes that we've recorded with dear friends that we'll be releasing in January.

No parent is perfect, and kids will stray from the faith no matter what we do, but there are still things we can learn from each other.

The first 5 episodes are with LDS parents, but we'll be interviewing members of other Christian faiths as well.

Check it out here: youtube.com/@howdyoudoitpodcast

1 week ago (edited) | [YT] | 965

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

If you own a home service biz in any of these verticals, I’d start thinking seriously about adding more critical service lines.

The next recession will not be kind, especially if you rely on paid ads for most leads:

- Epoxy flooring
- Pressure washing
- Window washing or replacement
- Outdoor living
- Pool install and maintenance
- Gutter guards (scam)
- Home theatre install
- Solar panel install

These are all nice to haves. I know of some epoxy flooring guys that went from $0 - $5m FAST, all with meta ads.

Either Meta OR a recession will wipe those out in a heartbeat.

There’s so much opportunity in home services, and 500+ verticals.

Pick one that has longevity, not sex appeal.

1 week ago | [YT] | 115

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

Top Golf has nothing on this.

This might be the coolest business idea i've seen in a while!

The business:

People play rounds of golf inside their favorite stadiums.

For $80!

They are slammed with demand. I'm working on getting the owner on my podcast to pick his brain.

Swap out golf with anything else & you've got even more business ideas here.

I have a headache thinking about the possibilities.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 85

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

The most creative way to acquire new customers for any niche is this:

Start or acquire FB Groups and collect emails from new members

Here's how, in 1 step:

Make this one of the required questions to join

Then use the app linked below to automate the transfer of those emails to Google Sheets.

IDK of another app that can do this.

That's it.

Any questions? Happy to help.

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 68

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

If I get this question pop up in my DMs 1 more time I'm going to log off the internet forever:

"I'm having trouble finding good mentors."

YOU DON'T NEED A MENTOR!!! Go act. Go fail. Go make stuff happen.

That's the best mentor you'll ever find. I PROMISE YOU.

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 158