Saw a post today about a girl being a “pet psychic” who is apparently super successful. Wondered what other examples are out there.
You must log in or register to comment.
Bet on weight loss
Pinspiration, a crafting studio franchise company where people of all ages can come make do-it-yourself crafts together in a fun, inspiring setting. The total initial investment necessary to begin operation of a Pinspiration business ranges from $110,900 to $229,500. This includes an Initial Franchise Fee of $33,000 that must be paid to franchisor or its affiliates. Most qualified candidates have approximately $30,000-40,000 in cash available and the ability to borrow or finance the remainder. Some choose to partner with friends or family.
I’m constantly amazed at the quantity and size of storage unit businesses that people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars per month for to store their crap… Just mind boggling.
Middle class abundance & pack rats that can’t let go make storage lucrative.
I tried to buy one of these businesses during the early part of the pandemic. Would have been a slam dunk.
Its so insane. My bil rents on for like 350 a month to store his xmas decorations. He could literally just buy 3600 dollars of new stuff each year
I live in a condo in the middle of Los Angeles and work in construction. I pay $225/mo for a 5’x10’ to store all my tools. So annoying. At least it’s tax deductible.
Hey, I just saw “The Killer” on Netflix… I bet you “paint” lots of “houses”. Stay cool!
Selling everything and telling my corporate storage place that increased rent 300% over 2 years to get bent was the best feeling in life
You’re an outlier. That’s still expensive af but your tools make you money. Wouldn’t consider that “storing crap.” But damn that’s overpriced for where I am, by a huge amount.
About the same around here (ontario canada, a hour from toronto)
Any they’re going up everywhere. A good chunk of a mall that’s been here for decades was just converted to one from a Target that failed.
Dont forget that once you start and end your day at the storage shed, all your vehicle mileage in between is deductible. Keep good records.
Do the numbers. I’ve been trying like heck for months to build a storage lot for boats and rvs. Right spot they print money with minimal work.
My dad did some consulting work for one of these back in the 90s. Said “I’m in the wrong business” and started investing in them. He’s done great.
I’m the third generation running my family business and have heard that at one point my grandfather seriously considered pivoting to self storage. This would have been the very early 80’s. Man, I really wish he would have. We are a society of consumers that has taken to hoarding with an economy that loves housing booms and busts. I keep thinking that it’s too late to get into it as there are storage facilities just everywhere, but idk, maybe not.
I used to think so too but now as an adult with lots of experience I absolutely understand why storage is so needed.
Those places print money, as long as they own the land. The numbers are great and the overhead is almost zero.
Not anymore
Can you, elaborate? I know 2 guys who own storage facilities and they can’t spend the money fast enough. They only need to rent about 10 units (out of 100-200 units on site) to cover the cost of labor to have people working there, the insurance is low (because insurance doesn’t cover anything and the buildings are metal and cinder blocks), maintenance is low (again, cuz metal buildings) so every remaining unit rented is money straight into their pockets. As long as some other dumbass doesn’t build one across the street then they’re set for life.
Sure. They are overpriced.
You used to be able to buy these at 10 caps (10% per year return), and then increase their profitability to 20%+ or even 50%+ if it was in bad shape. Along the way, debt prices went lower and the asset values grew so refinancing or selling for a huge gain was pretty common. These are typically the stories you hear. Gurus get clients by convincing people this is still possible.
Today, everybody is aware of this asset class, so the entry price might be a 2 or 3 cap, and you’ll do a lot of work to get it up to a 6 or 7 cap in a great scenario. Don’t believe me? Ask a broker for some pricing and this is what you’ll see. Those aren’t the exciting returns of years past. Most people buying today at these super high prices are institutionalized. They capture value by putting 100 units into a bucket of 10,000 units that they can sell off to PE shops at a premium (these typically have a $10M min). They can buy for a 1 cap and still make a ton with this model, although if they don’t know how to operate they have their own troubles.
Btw, this same concept has played out in multifamily, mobile home parks, self storage, HVAC companies (not totally yet with these), car washes, etc…. There are a variety of factors that go into it, but if you had to boil it down to a single affect, it’s essentially just price discovery.
I personally believe that this is the most important piece in analyzing businesses. Just because a business is extremely stable, doesn’t mean that it can’t be extremely risky if you overpay. Stability + spread over costs are what makes businesses stable.
Guy I work with had 8 units at one point. I said dude you are insane. Over 10 years you spent $100,000 to store $10,000 worth of shit.
Well, there’s business storage too. Like I used to work field jobs. Offices don’t have room for field gear in the winter, my employers used to rent out really big storage units. Additionally you have seasonal sports programs and nonprofit organizations with annual events needing places to put things.
I do conventions in a city across the country once or twice a year. Shipping the display, chair, signage etc back & forth is super expensive. Lots of people just buy cheap tables & chairs & a rug at Ikea then give it away or throw it in the trash at the end. So wasteful!
I pooled together with a few other vendors to rent a storage locker for our booth display. It stays out there now.
Storage can be awesome as well if you desire to have more toys without locking into purchasing a much larger property. Storage space is flexible space so if the boat is no longer interesting, can sell the boat, cancel storage and not have any ongoing expenses.
We have 2 year round spaces 12x30 and an additional seasonal indoor spot for a 39’ RV. All in it costs about $2500 a year. Not ‘cheap’ but worth it for this situation.The seasonal spot is a large pole shed and the guy gets 110-120 units in there at an average of $400 each. good cash flow if you have the space.
Not just people, corporations need massive storage facilities.
That’s all that’s being built in my North Atlanta suburb. They’re building 3 of them at 1 intersection, and there’s a 4th 2/10ths of a mile away.
A family friend got in early. He was always very blue collar but he hand built a bunch of storage units decades ago and is now a multi millionaire from them
Thought about this recently. They are popping up exponentially in brisbane Aus. I think people that are working but cant get approved are essentially forced to store their stuff and live out of their car. Worked with multiple people who were days from being homeless, its just hard to find a place with 50 plus applicants on each. One guy got a place by paying 2 years of rent up front. Its insane, most of the homless still work a full time job.
Seen about 10 storage facilities go up in the last year. Likely alot more have and others have had huge upgrades.
That Death water company. I don’t get it.
It’s so good though man. The place it occupies in the market is genius. Normal sparkling water is pretty bland, but people dig it cause it’s got some flavor with 0 calories and no crappy artificial sweetener.
Liquid Death is sparkling water, with like 3g of sugar, and has loads more flavor and only 20 calories. Much closer to a soda without the guilt, so it appeals to the sparkling water crowd and has a shot to appeal to folks that don’t like traditional sparkling water.
Regular and Sparkling Liquid Death have no sugar or calories. It’s actually just high quality spring water, not filtered crap.
It’s very good water, from a TDS standpoint.
“I find you TDS”
This was my thought as well. So dumb it’s actually genius.
I actually prefer the taste of the can to the plastic bottle 😂 over priced though for what you get.
I love seltzer, their product is good
Liquid death took an anti marketing strategy, and the idea behind the name is death to plastic pollution. Gimmicky but no different than the 20 different container based water marketing brands that have popped up in the past decade
Here’s a pretty cool video with the founder talking about the origins of the company: https://youtu.be/iXjhNZlqexs
Thera also an hour long version for anyone interested : https://youtu.be/e1vsjJblKmc
Liquid Death. Awesome product and genius idea. Taking a different spin on water delivery.
Reverse psychology?
There’s a Christmas store near me that has been open for years.
I went to a full-time Christmas store in Banff, Alberta, Canada this past July. It was lovely.
And they’re always full. Completely slammed. I do not understand it.
There’s one in OKC that has been around for decades and does very well.
Yeah no, we love those stores. There’s dozens of us!
But the smell!
Oddly there’s one in Michigan but it’s not in the town of Christmas Mi
I love going to Bronners!
Great childhood memories of Bronners
That place is traumatic this time of year.
There’s a Christmas shop in one of most touristy, wealthy areas of my state. Their store is so posh and warm and inviting. They only carry high end decorations and the whole interior is made of custom woodwork, like walking into a fancy British cottage. It smells really nice too. I love it there. :) Can’t imagine one of these shops surviving if it doesn’t look rich though.
OBX has a hammock store. Been there a long time. It’s freaking rope with two pieces of wood for $100.
The pottery in Williamsburg VA was started a long time ago. Guy went to Mexico bought pottery from the factory. Marked it up X10 made huge bank. Think it’s closed now.
A breakfast cereal shop that sells bowls of cereal for around $10 depending on the kind of cereal you choose… can be more
There was one where I used to live in Hawaii. Was still open when I left and I’d always see people there.
One locally was called Cereal Killer. It lasted about 2 years.
This is incorrect, they are still open with 4 locations.
We had 2 in London. Anti-austerity protesters put a brick through the front window of one of them [It was in Brick Lane, a super-gentrified formerly poorer area of the city] but it was lockdown that finally did them in.
There’s one in Vegas but I feel like that’s the only place a cereal restaurant could work
Local as well. Did they go under? I thought it was odd but I never went in due to allergies and wondered if they were still making it
It just closed randomly. I always meant to stop in but never made it.
This is why they closed.
They were on shark tank.
I just saw one of these in Vegas.
I was there two weeks ago for SEMA and saw at least two of them. I didn’t go in but I thought it was a weird thing as I passed by and was really surprised at how many people were in them.
Do they make a spectacle of pouring the cereal and milk into the bowl, or do they just slap in the cereal and milk in 2 seconds?
Because if they juggled bowls that were lit on fire while juggling them and were able to pour the cereal and milk in the bowl as they were juggling all 3, that would be worth it. Once, anyways.
There was one of these in my town that also had vintage arcade machines
I was in another group maybe 6 months ago or someone was asking if that would be a workable idea.
I think it could work in a developing country, selling bowls of hard to get American cereal
Mikes Cereal Shack
Mike’s Cereal Shack. I’m thinking we’ll have every variety they carry in the store?
Hilarious how breakfast diners are so profitable and they literally choose the least profitable breakfast item to serve exclusively.
Why try to get people to pay you to pour cereal and milk into a bowl when people happily pay for eggs, pancakes, bacon, hash browns, and all the combinations you can make with these items.
We had one too. The only plus to it was that it had such a variety of cereal. It didn’t last long though.
How do you know that it didn’t last long
I can’t cook and I am gonna open a business. Mike’s Cereal Shack.
There was a place like this that opened up across the street from my college. I LOVE cereal (even more back then) and I went in twice. I think they tried to bill it similar to a coffee shop, where students could come in and work while enjoying the goods.
As a person who owns one of these, I resent this. lol, it’s more complicated than just cereal alone.
Any Instagram “coach” especially business coaches who literally have no business
Scamming is a business
No lie I saw a business coach for coaching businesses.
There is a whole, multi-million dollar industry, revolving around coaches teaching other people how to become coaches in order to teach other people how to become coaches.
I’m not even joking.
I wouldn’t have believed you - except that I’ve seen exactly the same thing in the permaculture world. People pay incredible sums for teachers lineage with their Permaculture Design Courses, in those courses people pay to learn farming ideas that only work with massive amounts of labour, and usually the courses involve giving a heap of free labour to the teachers project.
It happens in endless industries.
I once met a guy in his 20’s at an event, dressed in summer clothes in the middle of a brutally cold winter at night for some reason, who told me within the space of 15 minutes he was both a “life coach” who taught other life coaches to that he was collecting unemployment benefit.
I’m not sure what type of life experience he had to share but I wasn’t interested in hearing it.
You know, I feel like “life-coach” is such a nice idea in theory. There’s so many people who would just love help getting their shit together or need help working through their unskillful behaviour. It just sounds so intuitively useful, but I don’t think I’ve ever met a life-coach who gave any real value to their clients, and they all just strike me as so pretentious and miserable.
Maybe it’s actually work that should be done piecemeal from a range of different people, usually for free - friends, parents, therapists, peers, partners, workplace mentors etc.
I guess the problem is the absurdly broad scope and the commercialisation of something that is so personal and lifelong.
Why do you think “life-coaching” attracts the people it does?
Failed at selling real estate
Kids just graduated high school
Takes 1, 4 hour class and is a life coach
Any job “coach” seems ridiculous to me. If you can do it that well, then what the heck are you doing coaching?
There are many legitimate coaches. If you had success but no longer want to work as much in the field. Or if you want to make more money, you can coach. Plus it’s rewarding helping others, plus you get paid for it.
I can coach.
Good coaches are in demand. Football coaches, baseball coaches.
I like coaching. Teaching. Why can’t I do something I actually love to do?
For sports coaching, you don’t even have to be good at the game - Bill Walsh led the San Francisco 49ers to a bunch of Superbowl victories in the 1980s, and he sucked at playing football, for example. Just because you can’t do it well, doesn’t mean one can’t coach/teach well, and actually have valuable information.
Being able to teach is a completely different skill than doing it.
There is a need for coaches, otherwise that word wouldn’t even exist.
We all have had great teachers, and shit teachers. Some coaches are shit, some good.
And of course, the coach has to know the material and how to apply it.
I could explain more, but I think you take my point.
And to repeat, I AM making a distinction between people who don’t understand and know the material, vs people who do understand the subject matter and are not just regurgitating what others say, and actually can think and synthesize and formulate and systematize and write interestingly and all that.
I’ve been paid to coach, some stay with me for years. They are NOT stupid people that I coach. They pay me. They get value.
I think there are legit coaches who have acheived success in whatever field and then realise they are better skilled at the teaching aspect AND (and this is the big one) can make more money coaching the 100s / 1000s / millions / whatever of people out there who want to learn the skill than they can by just doing the skill / business themselves.
Think about it, if you do the skill / business / whatever yourself you’re limited to your own resources, time, money, team etc but if you then document your knowledge and skills into a course or membership etc you just have to create that once then can sell it infinitely without having to constantly put all the work back into it, so it does kinda make sense in some instances.
I’ve said for years that when I retire, I’m becoming a “get out of my life coach” and call it Shiny Spine Coaching. I’ll help folks get rid of relationships that don’t serve them anymore.
Any job “coach” seems ridiculous to me
So just any coach in any domain?
Coaching and guiding someone is a different skillset then leading and running a business. They’re basically a mentor/consultant for hire
If you can do it that well, then what the heck are you doing coaching?
This is crazy. We all do what we are best at or enjoy the most in one way or anothrr
Maybe they could run a business, 50 hours a week, but they’d prefer to help 5 businesses 6 hours a week each?
They may have a skillset where they can effectively produce the most marginal value in those fewer hours with each business. In that case it makes sense to repeat that multiple times rather than spending all your time immersed in one project
I have a Facebook “friend” that does this and I’m so confused by what she does. It seems like an MLM where people who are also “coaches” just buy other coach’s classes, but I don’t think anyone on the outside is buying they’re doing.
Oh that 100% exists. They are basically earning a referral fee, but there are all types of wild structures, you dream it and it’s being done. Many people are even giving the “successful coaches” an ownership or profit interest in their company in return for their “help”.
Their business is selling their “course” to the suckers who don’t realize with just a bit of effort they can find better & completely free information online. Heck their “customers” can build the exact same, likely much better, “course” themselves with ChatGPT & a day of effort.
Now the real trick is getting enough suckers so you can start buying real estate, or other income producing assets, then turn around and create courses on how to become a millionaire buying real estate. Now you have two income streams, selling "courses and real estate. And then start using your “success” to lead some real estate syndications to put a minimal amount of your capital at risk to maximum you return potential, utilizing advantageous profit splits, leverage & other suckers money to bump your return, not to mention the sweet sweet fees you earn.
To be fair - time is money. For some, spending 6 hours on a course and then get to it is worth more than trying to piece together 50 hours of content.
How much is your course?
There’s always something free available now, or with a countdown timer to make up pretend obsolescence, that way I have your info. Now it’s time for the upsell. Once you spend the first $1 I’ve got my hook set, it’s all about reeling you in for the upsell. It’s the same formula across the board.
Even if you were willing to pay $10k for my “course”, and sadly there are many more expensive than that, I wouldn’t take your money. I would rather find some free resources and point you in the right direction than waste any time creating a “course” or taking advantage of people.
You just described Kyle Goldie to a T, lol
He is in my Facebook feed all the time.
Most are faking their success.
I’m a Reddit Coach- AMA*! (*Actual AMA session requires a fee)
Omg I know a guy like this. He’s trying his best to appear a perfect good citizen on the outside. But his “business” is scammy and he cheats on his wife🤷♀️
Catering trucks
Why am I gettin downvoted for catering trucks? I own a catering truck you sillies
Social media companies that post everyday but with no likes, no comments, no engagement and ultimately no increase in sales.
There are ton of these agencies printing money because of the ignorance of their customers.
Gumball machines. When I worked at Hollywood Video we had one of the big globe top ones with a clear base with a spiral ramp in it. A guy would come to take the quarters out and replace the gumballs, and he was always the happiest person about it. I was a miserable cunt to everyone because I hated my job, so I wanted to know his secret. It turns out the dude had no high school diploma or formal training in business, but he was a millionaire in the early 2000s on gumballs. He would drive down to a Mexico and get his gumballs for pennies and then turn around and flip them for 50c each to kids renting movies.
Regular trips to Mexico with a cash business also sounds like the job description of a drug dealer
What kind of gumballs were those? Special flavors?
In the late 90s, I worked for an amusement company that had operated since the 1960s and had just opened their final boss status family fun center in my neighborhood. Got to know the family really well, was a keyholding manager etc.
A lot of their business was machines on location, video games/pinball, jukeboxes, pool tables. Got to know not only the history, but the real ins and outs of the business. Redemption was the real bread and butter of the center. The value of a ticket from a redemption game was $0.01 at retail. The items were bought from wholesalers and generally marked up 3x, candy much higher. If you wanted to save your tickets for that really cool beer stein that was 6,000, to us, that meant $60 but was bought for about $15. The average game paid out 4.3 tickets per game or about $0.009 in redemption power.
My buddy from high school didn’t know what to do with himself when he didn’t have the grades to get into college, he took the $1000 his parents gave him for college and bought a used vending machine and fixed it up… the last time I talked to him he owned like 40 of them and made a killing basically running to cosco every day, and ordering replacement parts for the odd vandalized machine…
I’m still wondering how many gumballs you’d need to flip to be making that kind of money. Was he traveling over the border with a semitrailer of gum?
All he did was collect money all day long. He had a whole network of gumball machines at every Hollywood Video, Blockbuster, and a lot of theaters. He just played his niche hard. He obviously had employees.
The gum ball entrepreneurs were the real victims of the streaming revolution.
I mean… think about it. Let’s say your cost per gumball is 5 cents and you sell them for 50 cents. So 45 cents gross rev. For every 1000 you sell it’s $450. Get 20 of those going and it’s $9k/week or a bit over $450k/year.
You probably need a decent number of machines, and it probably takes a bit to get there - but I’d imagine each machine only needs to be collected once every few weeks. Own 500 machines, collect 20 a day, maybe $100 in each machine collected… suddenly you’re pulling in $10K/week on fucking penny gumballs.
You’d have to pay the location something. Why would a store owner let you take up floor space for free?
They pay rent for the space.
Not totally dumb but just weird to me. Mattress By Appointment. The fact that they’re typically in retail shopping centers but they’re “by appointment” so they’re always closed. Paying rent in an retail space to be closed the majority of the time seems odd. But the profit margins must be decent enough to support the business model.
They only close a few months per year to become halloween stores, only to become matress stores again.
They are paying rent on a big billboard and sending a salesmen to an “appointment” with you. This means they don’t have to pay sales people to be there all day and it puts a lot of pressure on the buyer since they are in a one on one meeting with the sales person. Those kind of mental games actually work or they wouldn’t be used.
My neighbor makes millions selling fresh water and brine to oil and gas companies. He works maybe 4 hours a week if that and has a few part time employees.
Interesting.
Rent a bf/gf/family business in Japan.
Rent a fatso in Japan.
Peak Fiction
The girl who sold her farts so much that she had to change her diet to keep up with production, ultimately leading her to have permanent digestive issues that forces her to retire from the fart slinging business. Stephanie Matto.
All she needed was some employees
She could have easily hire couple of dudes to fart in a jar. Who gonna know who farted in the jar
she’s now selling her sweat. #SweatEquity https://youtu.be/mYluNEeD9_g?si=eif90ZLMoaXwrXDx
She should have just raised her prices.
Some people really don’t know how to delegate. Seems like a few “ass”istants could have helped her keep the business growing.
Not very business savvy. You need to hire people if you want to scale production.
Reminds me of the janitors at some zoo who made money selling exotic animal poop. Elephants, rhinos, koalas, ostrich…. They made tons of money. The zoo found out and sued them.
What for ??
They claimed the poo was zoo property and they had no right to sell it. Tried to sue for all the money they made. I don’t remember who won.
It’s pretty dangerous. It’s a biohazard
So if you fart into a jar and close it up and ship it somewhere, when the person opens it they can actually still smell the fart ??
For an extra charge, I imagine one of those little tabs on the lid, like in musical birthday cards; when it’s opened, an actual recording of the enclosed fart being ripped reverberates out of the jar
True story. When I was little I farted into this small empty candy container, closed it, and then gave to my sister and told her to open and smell it. She did and made the funniest face 😆
Just knowing that at various points in time, there were mail trucks unknowingly carrying jars of someone’s ass rip has me dying lmfao
How did I not know about this?
Even worse, how didn’t I think of it.
I think the litmus test for this is if you could have an only fans page you could sell your farts. Otherwise there is no market for your flatulence.
You nailed it!
My son said “well, you’re not an attractive woman. No one wants your farts.”
shoe cleaning