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BigDeal by Codie SanchezSide Hustle King: 3 Easy Businesses Anyone Can Start | Chris Koerner
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WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Chris Koerner Shares Overlooked Side Hustles, Failures, and Entrepreneur Habits
- Koerner describes overlooked cash-flowing businesses such as a roadside pizza stand, business-to-business stump grinding, porch pumpkin decorating, washer and dryer rentals, and HVAC coil cleaning.
- He says his best ideas come from asking business owners direct questions, finding what they hate doing and unbundling it, and starting with small constraints instead of big capital.
- He names binary-outcome simplicity as his main filter and says third-party logistics, house cleaning, and custom home building failed it for him, since too many things can go wrong without enough margin.
- Stories including the Buc-ee's merchandise venture, a pet cremation logistics business, RV parks, and a crypto project with John McAfee show his habit of doing things where the worst case is a good story.
- He and Sanchez discuss entrepreneurial traits: bias for action, humility, gratitude, using spite as fuel, and recovering from betrayal, such as a partner squeeze-out over a $50 million deal.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasMost people will tell you their revenue if you ask
Koerner and Sanchez say business owners usually share their numbers, about 95% of the time by Sanchez's estimate, because they are proud of what they built, so curiosity paired with immediate asking is a research tool.
Find what businesses hate doing and unbundle it
Stump grinding for tree trimmers, coil cleaning for HVAC companies, and puppy transport for cremation facilities all take a painful task off an existing business's plate, which gives the new business a ready customer.
Prefer businesses with binary outcomes
Koerner says tree removal either happens or it doesn't, while logistics, house cleaning, and custom home building have countless ways to go wrong. Sanchez adds that you need enough margin to absorb mistakes.
Constraints drive creativity
Koerner grew up poor and never got VC funding, so he subcontracts tree work and plays middleman in cremation instead of buying equipment. He says you can't have no money and pride.
Look for humility, gratitude, and an entrepreneurial gene in partners
Koerner says he can predict success when someone relentlessly pursues him and shows those three traits. His 23-year-old operating partner with no industry experience helped build a half-million-dollar-a-year tree business.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesI like doing things where, like, worst case is a good story.
— Chris Koerner
But there's a whole world on the other side of cringe.
— Chris Koerner
Find a business that does something, find the things that they hate doing, and just kind of unbundle that, right?
— Chris Koerner
You really gotta get in the weeds so you can recognize the weeds before you get out of the weeds, right?
— Chris Koerner
I always like to say constraints equal creativity.
— Chris Koerner
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SPEAKERS
Chris Koerner
guestEntrepreneur known for building and teaching “side hustle” and small-business ideas, especially practical service and local businesses.
Codie Sanchez
hostFounder and host of BigDeal, an investor and entrepreneur focused on buying and building small businesses.
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
