Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

Just overheard this conversation at a conference:

“We bought a manufacturing business from a guy that never did sales. No website, no sales team, nothing. His only focus was delivering his products on time and he did that for 30 years.”

That’s sales. Sales takes many forms.

Note: This is not the business they bought. Just a picture from bizbuysell

1 hour ago | [YT] | 8

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

Spend $5k to send your teenager on a humanitarian trip overseas.

Go into debt if you have to.

(100% serious)

21 hours ago | [YT] | 73

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

This is the most brutal, cutthroat & merciless place in the world to launch a local business.

If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

Customers? Insanely price sensitive

Competitors? Top 1% in the world for grit, work ethic & sales acumen.

No thank you! Too hard.

2 days ago | [YT] | 134

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

5 offline businesses anyone can start that make $10,000 in either a year, a month, a week, or a day.

Real examples of real people solving real problems.

Here's the breakdown:

$10K in a year:
Rugs. Brandon's 15-year-old kid bought 115 Costco-return rugs for $1,500 and just bought himself a Toyota 4Runner with the cash.

$10K in a month:
Mini mini golf. A guy in Dallas builds portable mini golf holes out of 2x4s and rents them out at $300 a hole per day for weddings and parties.

$10K in a week:
International art flipping. Brandon's sister-in-law bought 14 paintings in Ireland for $50 each. Selling them in Utah for $400.

$10K in a day:
Temporary fence rental. Brandons friend started this with zero construction experience and sold the company 18 months later for $600,000.

In this episode Brandon:

- Walks through the temp fence numbers that hit $600K in 18 months

- Tells me how his kid turned $1,500 in rugs into a 4Runner

- Shows me a cornhole mini golf course at an Arkansas RV park I'm pretty sure I'm copying

- Breaks down how to retroactively pay for your vacation by flipping art from the country you visited

- Gives me his playbook for getting your kid to start their first business

There is SO much juice here. My head hurts after this one.

5 days ago | [YT] | 64

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

Everyone says you should buy the best tools.

No one mentions how often the “best” tools are just as bad as the cheap ones.

I had a $100 Ryobi polesaw for ages. I know I know, sue me. It worked great.

Swapped it for an $800 Milwaukee pole saw. Been nothing but problems.

And before you say “it’s bEcAuSe it’s eLeCtrIc!!”

No, the battery life and power are both insane.

The stupid bar and chain is terrible. I’m forever adjusting it. Always stuck. Too tight. Too loose. Been using chainsaws for 20 years. This is the worst I’ve ever used.

Taking it back to Home Depot after less than 2 months. Not about to throw good money after bad and start swapping parts.

They couldn’t even bother to cover the oil tank.

My Echo 18” is great.

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6 days ago | [YT] | 69

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

There's a 15 year old that makes thousands of dollars finding and selling rare ants to people in Discord groups.

I am interviewing him tomorrow.

What should I ask him?

Below is an email he sent me:

"I’ve been into antkeeping for about a year and a half more seriously, even though I messed around with it years ago when I was younger. In the last six months, I started selling a lot six months ago, mostly through people I already knew in the hobby since it’s a pretty close-knit community.

Last week I went out to West Texas hunting for rare ants and ended up selling around $5,000 worth through Discord. The ants that really sell are usually the harder-to-find species, especially if they have cool colors, get really big, or are polygenous, meaning they can have multiple queens in one colony.

The antkeeping hobby is small but growing so the supply is low. There’s demand which drives the prices. I have about a thousand ants I can show when you come out."

1 week ago | [YT] | 150

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

Getting BIG news outlets to feature you for free is both easy & simple. I promise.

The WSJ basically begs you to email them in every single article.

They need to write about cool stuff. You need people to read about your cool stuff.

I've gotten myself into major outlets a dozen times over the last decade using this exact 3-step system:

1. Scrape the writer's email (VA on Upwork will sell you a full list for $20 or just use AI)

2. Tell them why you're interesting in under 3 sentences

3. Follow up relentlessly

Use Lemlist, Mixmax, or Instantly. send 200/day. Make it funny.

If you don't get hits it means your "thing" isn't interesting or unique enough for the size of the outlet you're emailing.

The Tucson Afternoon Business Journal for Industrial Redhead Boomer Business Owners might care, though.

I promise this system works. I've been doing it myself successfully for over a decade. Now you know how in only 177 words.

Would love your follow: ‪@thekoerneroffice‬

1 week ago | [YT] | 100

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

This stranger showed up on my doorstep.

My team found him on FB marketplace and I wanted to interview him about his lemonade stand business, but I learned something even cooler!

(BTW his lemonade stand biz did $200k PROFIT in its first year. 32 ounces. 3 ingredients. $8/cup.)

But the cooler thing I learned was that he made $12k PROFIT in 2 days selling frozen, chocolate covered bananas.

Where'd he get the idea to do that? From MY video!

That was an unexpected surprise.

All because I noticed a long line at a banana stand on Balboa Island and posted about it.

2 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 531

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

Stop trying to “lock in” and start asking yourself “am I working on the right thing?”

Distraction is neither a feature nor a bug.

It’s a signal.

When you’re working on something…

1. You truly love and
2. Pays well

…you won’t get distracted.

Opportunity cost is expensive.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 104

Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast

Fun fact: There are only 2 equine incinerators in the state of Texas!

And TX has more horses than any other state!

What did we do about it?
We submitted an LOI for a pet crematory.

Unfortunately that LOI didnt work out.

But

We pivoted.

We realized that not enough businesses were ranking for those services, so there was an opportunity.

We built out a programmatic SEO site and with very little effort, it's generating daily leads.

I'm not the most technical, but the site works because the supply/demand gap exists.

This is proof that even without advanced SEO, a good niche with unmet demand can do really well.

We aren't horsing around here.

Take that, neighsayers.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 112