One of our customers was turning their three car garage into a workshop for their jewelry business. In the cold Idaho winter she needed some sort of heater to keep her tools and work area warm.

She had tried to enclose the work area with tarps and use a space heater inside, but the heater kept tripping the breaker. Our electrician went out and installed a fan powered heater that set her back about $2500. The problem was it still didn’t keep her workshop warm.

I ended up with an upset customer who felt like she was promised a warm garage, but got a drafty tarp workshop that was not at all comfortable to work in.

I was at a crossroads. We had already installed the heater so there was no way to return it, and the technician had already been paid so we were well over $1500 into cost of goods sold(COGS). Any profit in this job was already gone.

The way I saw it, we had 2 options:

1. Walk away with normal margin and an upset customer.

2. Make things right and install a heater that could take care of the whole job, and hopefully walk away with a happy customer.

I swallowed my pride and chose option 2.

The deal was a no brainer. She was getting an $8000 install for $5500.

We ran the gas line and installed the heater. The customer was happy and she didn’t even need the tarps for her workshop anymore.

Almost a year later I was reviewing invoices on New Year’s Eve. I came across a ticket from one of our plumbers that had a new water heater, water softener, whole home water filter, and a booster valve. Easily $8,000 of high margin productive work. The name rang a bell for me. It didn’t take any special discounts, no extra marketing, just a return customer coming back to a company that she trusted to do the right thing every time.

Doing the right thing often looks like a loss on paper, but can pay large dividends when customer trust is built.

Customers don’t just grow on trees. Each one should be treasured and taken care of so that the relationship grows and trust builds.

It’s always a good time to reflect on what is happening in life and think about what is happening and needs to change.

The question for me as a leader, is how do we harness that natural time for reflection across an organization of 50 people?

Every week we do a training with all of our field technicians and managers. I had all techs and managers come with 3 goals in mind.

1. A measurable goal for their professional career.

2. A measurable goal for their personal life.

3. A habit to develop this year.

Before the meeting I set up sheets of paper with markers and crayons spread out. Each person drew out their goals in a “mural”. As you can imagine, a bunch of 30-50 year old blue collar men were not that thrilled with the task.

But having them draw it out does a few things.

• Makes it memorable

• Gives a tangible representation to refer back through the year

• Is different than the traditional lecture style training

Afterwards we hung them all in the training room for all to see.

Here’s what it looked like:

A few goals that stuck out.

• Get closer to God

• Take the family on a cruise

• $3,550,000 in individual revenue

• 60 water softeners sold

For those of you who are curious, yes I participated too. My goals were:

• $13,500,000 in company revenue

• Run a 40 mile ultra marathon

• Shoot a bear(I’m a big time hunter)

• Read at night instead of watch TV

I thought this would be a fun way to get everyone thinking about there personal goals for the year.

Share your goals for the year in the comments sections!

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My Preferred Method for Setting Goals

Last year, I came across Jesse Itzler. He has a great framework for setting goals that I copied and it made for an excellent 2025!

He takes his goal setting method from a Japanese word: Misogi

From Psychology Today: “The Shinto ritual Misogi is translated into Western culture as an annual challenge, a tool for self-discovery. Once a year, do something so difficult there’s a fifty-fifty chance you might fail at it.”

Jesse Itzler challenges you to do 1 Misogi, regular adventures and awesome experiences, and one new habit each quarter. He sells a big calendar that you can hang in a place you work every day. At the beginning of the year you are intentional about the date of your Misogi and the experiences you have throughout the year. I didn’t buy his calendar but I bought a cheaper one on Amazon and it worked just as well. It cost me $7 and I hang it in my office so I can look at it every day.

What I love about this method is that you intentionally set aside times that cannot be filled by others. This is my time to do awesome things that I want to do. Here are some examples from 2025.

• My Misogi. Run a marathon. This defined my year and forced me to train hard all year long. I learned I could push through pain and go farther than I ever thought possible. 10/10 recommend.

• I intentionally planned cool experiences at the beginning of the year.

  • Snowmobiling through the wilderness of Island Park.

  • Archery elk hunting on the border of Idaho and Montana.

  • Backpacking trip to go fishing at remote lakes

  • Traveling across the country to Delaware with my family to spend time at the beach and with my wife’s grandparents.

  • Trade shows with my wife

My habits didn’t get worked on as much as I should have. I developed a good running habit but that’s about it. Definitely something to work on in 2026.

You’ll notice my goals for 2026 reflect this method.

• Misogi: 40 mile ultramarathon

• Experiences: Bear hunting, anniversary trip with my wife

• Q1 Habit: Reading(I’ll post my book list later)

I know these don’t relate a ton to business, but I have a firm belief.

How you do one thing is how you do everything.

You can’t run a marathon without that grit and determination bleeding into your business and career.

You can’t patiently hunt an animal without that attention to detail bleeding into your work.

If you aim for nothing you’ll hit it every time. - Zig Ziglar

If you want to learn more about this method of goal setting, check out this video where I got my inspiration.

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Tech companies pivoted entire business plans to focus on AI.

Gurus talked about “leveraging AI” like it was the key to all business success.

It felt like every company was cramming AI into everything they could. Like seriously? Why does my refrigerator need AI?

Here are my perceptions on AI and how I use it as a non tech business operator.

AI is currently in an arms race

Tech companies that sell software to non tech companies are all rushing to push their AI products onto their customers. In some ways, whoever gets in first has the best chance of winning that customer over. In other ways, whoever is most integrated will win.

Here’s an example:

I get about 5-10 cold emails in my inbox every week pitching me on an AI receptionist. The concept is simple. All the employees are working and so no one is able to pick up the phone. An AI receptionist picks up and does it’s best to take care of the customer.

It’s a cool idea, and it’s a tool we actually use.

We tried Zyratalk first because they were the first one to get us to do a demo. We could use our Lennox Co-op points to help pay for it. The only problem was they didn’t integrate well with our CRM(Jobber) so it was pretty handicapped.

I did a demo for Redcar which had a big focus on outbound strategy. I didn’t feel like it was significantly different from Zyratalk other than their outbound features. I’m skeptical about AI for outbound. Maybe I’ll write a follow up post on that next. So we didn’t move forward with that one either.

We ended up deciding that the best tool to use was Jobber’s very own AI receptionist. It reads our schedule and allows customers to book available times. It performs very similarly to Zyratalk and Redcar. In fact I would say they are identical and I wouldn’t be able to tell which is which.

Other AI tools I use

LLM(Language learning model) - Chat GPT

I primarily use Chat GPT mostly because it’s the first LLM that came out but it’s just a force of habit to go there. Even though Google Gemini is right in my browser it’s just my habit to use Chat GPT. I probably should use Gemini but I don’t think it really matters.

I mainly use it to generate ideas for trainings, look up quotes for me, or build complicated excel formulas. Here are a few prompts I’ve used in the past:

• “In "Website Visitors" I have first and last names in columns B and C. In "Jobber Invoices" I have both first and last names in column b. Write a formula that returns me a numeric value of how many last names appear in both sheets”

  • Result: =SUM(--ISNUMBER(MATCH(C2:C1000,TEXTAFTER(’Jobber Invoices’!B2:B1000,” “,-1),0)))

I would have spent hours slaving over this formula to try and figure it out, and ChatGPT gave it to me in seconds. Pretty cool.

• “Give a definition for a transactional salesperson.”

  • Result: A transactional salesperson is someone who focuses primarily on making individual sales rather than building long-term relationships with customers. Their approach is usually centered around closing the deal quickly, often emphasizing price, product features, and promotions over customer needs or deeper value.

I’ll have it give me definitions like this to help me brainstorm for trainings or coaching technicians.

I never have ChatGPT do my writing for me. It feels very cold and impersonal. That’s why you should subscribe to The Steel Road.

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Peakzi

We signed up for Peakzi to basically do SEO but for AI LLMs. To be honest it is hard to tell if it is working. I regularly ask ChatGPT questions where it should recommend our business but it never does.

Peakzi has a bunch of other tools that we never use and I would expect we cancel it soon.

AI tools I want to use but haven’t had the time

Jobber AI Toolbox

Supposedly I can just tell Jobber to create a quote or an invoice for a certain customer and it will automatically do it. I haven’t played with it too much but it sounds like a cool idea.

Bluon

In the HVAC industry we spend a ton of time consulting manuals and referencing manufacturer information. Apparently Bluon will make an AI that you can ask questions to and it pulls data from all the manuals to look up the answer. I could see this saving a ton of technician time in the field, but I haven’t had a chance to mess with it yet.

While we pride ourselves on being in a “non-tech” industry, AI and technology really can help us to more efficient and productive. I won’t spend a ton of time referencing AI in future newsletters because I think it’s way overblown and over talked about. However, it is worth talking about every once in a while because it really can be useful.

Let me know what AI tools you use down below.

Leave a comment

Dave Ramsey says all the time is that you have to come up with what you want people to do, then repeat it over and over again. By the time you are sick of saying it, they are just barely starting to hear it.

Boy oh boy is that true.

Here are some areas I have found myself repeating myself over and over again.

• Financing

  • We offer fast, easy, 0% interest financing up to 60 months. You’d think that would be a no brainer for the guys to bring up in the field right? Nope, it took months and months to get this program underway.

• Detailed notes and signed documents

  • In a complicated trade with lots of nuance correctly documenting notes is hugely important. We deal with potentially dangerous equipment. Notes are a big part of making sure we cross our “I”s and dot our “T”s.

When you don’t pay attention to these things, it’s human nature to just sliiiiiiiiiiiiiide back to the path of least resistance. Techs will just do the bare minimum to get by, and that results in sloppy books, bad tickets, and no profit.

Fighting that urge to just take the easy way out is a constant battle, and I find myself being a broken record pushing for things to be done the right way every time.

If it feels like you are a broken record in your business. Good. That’s the way it should be.

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Keep it simple stupid(KISS)

One decision that we made that simplified things for our technicians was to incentivize credit card payments from customers. We used to offer a discount if a customer paid with cash or check. Typically a credit card costs us about 3% of the total transactions.

We found ourselves spending enormous amounts of time chasing down lost checks, looking for cash, and auditing all the invoices to make sure they were paid.

With a credit card it is all done instantly. No need to come back to the office. No need to keep track of a piece of paper. Just instant transaction and deposit to the bank account with Jobber.

Simple is best. The less steps there are to follow, the more team buy in you’ll get and better execution.

We’ve found it is well worth the 3%.

Want to start a business but don’t have any ideas?

Look no further.

We’ve covered dozens of business ideas on this newsletter.

If you don’t like mine. Check out Chris Koerner. He’s my favorite idea guy because he doesn’t downplay the hard work it will take to be successful. He still churns out tons of great ideas that are creative and fun.

Beware the influencers who are selling courses and masterminds. A simple rule I live by is:

“If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.”

I have multiple friends who lost thousands of dollars to this scam from 2020-2023 in Utah.

I no longer invest in crypto, memecoins, or NFTs. My focus is better spent on making this business as profitable as possible.

That’s all for today. Happy New Year!

I can’t believe there are thousands of people still subscribed to this email newsletter. It has been well over a year since an article was posted.

There have been some major changes in my life that have prevented me from posting as much, but I’m committed to working on this newsletter and providing bigger and better content than ever before. So let’s dive in!

Where has The Steel Road been for the last 18 months?

Frankly, it’s been on the back-burner for a while.

To explain why, you need to know a little more about the author of The Steel Road.

My name is Matt Bidstrup. I’m 27 years old. I started this newsletter as a side project in 2022 while selling genealogy research. It started as a conglomeration of business ideas, funky airbnb strategies, and general business advice I could scrape together.

To be honest, I stopped writing this newsletter because I felt like I ran out of valuable things to say. My content was just getting recycled and I kept throwing out more and more outlandish ideas that I knew was just surface level.

So what did I do? I stopped.

Also I had a baby so I got very little sleep.

Now I feel like I have valuable stuff to say.

Lucky you. You should probably subscribe if you haven’t already.

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For the past 18 months, I have taken on a significant leadership role in a Home Services business that does over 8 figures in revenue(that’s over $10,000,000).

I won’t get into a ton of detail today, but it wouldn’t be that hard to find out the specific company(peep my LinkedIn).

So get ready, throughout 2026 there will be a lot of stories about success, failure, the grind, and the joys of running a small business.

If you don’t like this new direction of The Steel Road. Tough. Don’t read it.

Today’s Lesson

Running a business is hard. There are so many people out there that make it sound so easy. My LinkedIn, X, and Facebook are filled with “business gurus” who way over simplify the process. You know who they are, Codie Sanchez, Alex Hormozi, Grant Cardone. “Buy my course and I’ll teach you financial freedom.” Give me a break.

Real business success comes from 3 areas:

1. Hard work

   1. Since taking on this new role I have consistently worked 50-60 hour weeks. I take phone calls at all hours of the day. I’ll do anything to get a solid deal to generate revenue.

2. Thick skin

   1. Not everyone agrees with my ideas. It takes serious guts and courage to push for what you believe is best. But lasting change comes from bucking the status quo.

3. Grit

   1. Sometimes I wish I had a job where I could punch in, punch out, and forget about work at the end of the day. I would be lying to you if I said I never thought about quitting. But when you push through a tough day, do everything you can to make that customer happy and walk out with a $20,000 check, there isn’t much better of a feeling.

Some resources I have actually found helpful

I bashed on a few people who I believe deserve to be bashed on. These are some of the business influencers who have helped me learn the skills I need to be successful.

None of these are sponsored, this is genuine real world content that I am not compensated for.

• Dave Ramsey’s Entreleadership Podcast

  • Whether you agree with his financial advice or not, Dave Ramsey is one heck of a businessman. He took his business from a card table in his living room to a 300 million dollar company. His advice is gold.

• Chris Hoffman on X

  • Chris posts valuable insight into my world(another hint to help you find what company I’m working at). I’ve copied multiple of his ideas and strategies over the past 18 months.

• Jobber

  • We made the switch to Jobber this year, and that has taught me a lot about the value of a good software. I will be sharing lots of future stories and notes about my favorite features in new posts.

I hope you enjoy this new direction of The Steel Road. If you do, be a friend and tell a friend!

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See you next time!

-Matt Bidstrup

Not what you expected? It’s true, you feel like a real adult when you buy your first washer and dryer.

We faced a conundrum. There were tons of options available between Home Depot, Costco, and used ones on Facebook Marketplace. A big problem was delivery. I would have needed to rent a trailer to pull behind my SUV for most used ones, and even Costco wasn’t willing to deliver. It seemed like we were going to have to pay the high price tag of Home Depot if we didn’t want to deal with delivery.

But then, we found the perfect option. We stumbled across a couple in our city who sold, delivered, and installed used washers and dryers for a fraction of the cost of other places. We checked them out, and with the warranty they offered it was a no brainer.

Here’s how it breaks down:

We bought our set for $300, including delivery and set up. The guy who delivered it told me they do 5-8 per day.

Call it $1,500 in revenue every day, 20 days per month. That’s $30,000 in monthly revenue.

All of this they ran out of their garage. No website, just advertising on good old Facebook Marketplace. She managed the listings and responded to messages, he fixed up units and did the deliveries. That is what we call the American Dream.

Of course, it can’t all be sunshine and rainbows. There have to be costs in acquiring the units to sell, parts for repairs, gas, maintenance, etc.

He told me that his brother worked for a moving company that sold most of the units to him. Generally they were just older units that the previous owners were selling in order to upgrade. Sometimes he finds units for free or cheap on Facebook Marketplace that he can fix up and sell.

So it’s not pure profit, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s clearing $15,000 in take home pay each month. Not bad for a home business.

Now you may be thinking, “That sounds like a lot of work.” No duh it is. This isn’t the get rich quick newsletter. This is The Steel Road, where we talk about how to start a non tech business.

Some better questions or concerns would be:

How can I learn the skills necessary to build this business?

Find a local repair shop, I guarantee they are hiring appliance repair technicians. You know what, I’ll put my money where my mouth is.

Oh look, here we go. I was right.

Yes, $12 an hour is peanuts, but it’s a short term play. Get in, learn, show some smarts, and you’ll rack up some quick promotions and experience. You can even start your business on the side. Once you have some momentum, quit the $12 an hour job and get after it.

How do I scale this into a multimillion dollar business?

The blueprint is already laid out. I guarantee in your town there is an appliance exchange that rakes in the dough.

Appliance Exchange of Utah

Expand into refrigerators, stoves, dishwashers, and even offer service. Hire your own technicians and keep scaling. Get your finances right with our partner Quickbooks. Eventually you’ll have an incredible asset worth millions of dollars.

*Offer is valid until July 31st 2024. Click here to redeem

Yes this business will be a grind. But let me tell you something. All businesses are a grind. Even this newsletter. So if you liked this post, help us out in one of these ways:

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Until next time!

The business is called 80 Chicken Sandwiches. It’s a very literal name lol.

Every Saturday and Sunday, this guy makes 80 chicken sandwiches and serves them fresh out of the fryer with a bunch of fries.

Here’s a post from his Instagram to show you how it works:

Consequently we showed up right at noon when they opened and waited in line for 20 minutes to get our sandwiches. Was it worth it?

Of course it was!

Look how giant it is:

Here’s why this business is so great:

In a city where everyone is going after money from tourists, the first come first serve insider info model has gone viral for the locals. It’s an “underground” restaurant. A true local spot, and naturally this makes all the tourists want it even more.

The owner/operator has his thumb directly on the pulse of the business. He handles all of the interaction with customers, he gets all the feedback, all the tips, everything goes directly to him.

He’s just a dude making chicken and printing money.

How much does he actually make though?

We paid $17 per sandwich. At 160 sandwiches per weekend, that’s $2,720.

It’s hard to know what his profit margins are, but I did some digging and found this food truck operator running at 34% profit. Let’s bring it down a little and assume 25% margins.

At $2,720 per week, and 52 weeks per year, he’s pulling in $141,440 in gross revenue. Which boils down to $35,360 per year in profit.

That may not seem like that much, but remember. We are talking about only two days a week that he is working.

Not bad for a weekend side hustle.

There are all sorts of opportunities to scale this thing if he wants to.

Franchising

More locations

More business days

But chances are, he works a normal job too and this is his way to be an entrepreneur and fund a better lifestyle. And if you are in that boat too, that is awesome and a completely valid business.

Now let’s go out and get after it!

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We’ve covered some of the struggles of more traditional side hustles that you can do on your own platform in other posts.

One of the reasons we don’t like things like Turo, AirBNB, or any platform based business is the lack of control. You want to have complete control over your business without the risk of being deplatformed and having significant revenue streams taken away.

That’s why we like trailer rentals.

That’s right, big boxes of steel and wood being pulled around on wheels behind a big old truck. You can easily spin up a business using less capital than car sharing on Turo with a lot more upside.

Less initial investment

For $3,000 you can get a trailer that rents at $40 per day That’s only 75 days rented to get your investment back and generate profit from there!

Now sure, there will always be things to figure out.

What about insurance?

These fees can be easily passed on to the customer. They’re used to paying little add on fees for things like that. Go find a local insurance broker who can help you work out a deal.

What about flat tires and other maintenance?

Take a security deposit with every rental. If the customer doesn’t take care of your trailer you can draw from that and make sure you get paid.

What if I don’t have a truck to pull a trailer?

You can advertise them as self pull. Provide a hitch and let people come and pick it up to tow away for their projects.

How do I get customers?

There are so many ways that are 100% free to get started. Post on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and your local classifieds. As you get more sophisticated build a website, Facebook page, Yelp, and all that other fun stuff.

I don’t have a place to store a trailer. How can I park one at my apartment?

Use Neighbor to rent driveways and parking spaces to store it when it isn’t being rented. Better yet, find a neighborhood with some big lots and go knock some doors. Offer people $30 a month to let you use their RV pad.

Before long, you’ll be like this guy. With tens of thousands of dollars worth of trailers ready to be rented and generating thousands of dollars in monthly revenue.

Thanks for reading The Steel Road. Whenever you are ready, here are a few ways we can work together.

1. Fill out this 2-minute survey. This helps us write better content.

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You may wonder where the posts have been for the past 6 months, and what we’ve been working on since then. We’ll get to that, I promise.

Let me tell you why I came back though. Even though I wasn’t actively writing The Steel Road, almost every single day I would get notifications of new subscribers, comments, and people sharing my posts. Eventually it just built up so much and I had to come back.

And that brings me to what I’ve been working on in the meantime. I’ve been helping grow a business that provides texting services for small to medium sized businesses. We provide two way texting through the business number, reputation management(Google and Facebook reviews), better lead generation through the website, and taking payments faster and more efficiently.

I wanted to share a few lessons I have learned in the last 6 months:

1. Cold Calling still works.

   

   Far and away the biggest and most important lesson I learned. I’m still kind of shocked that it works this well, but every day I pick up the phone and make 60-100 calls to random strangers who own and work at dealerships. It’s still crazy to me that they actually pick up the phone and listen to me, let alone make an appointment and purchase our product.

   I have it down to a science, in 60 calls I’ll set 2-3 appointments. Out of every 4 appointments, 1-2 people will sign up, at a price point of about $4,000 per year.

2. Keep it simple.

   Our product isn’t necessarily new or particularly inventive, in fact there are multiple other competitors who are very similar, but an aggressive sales cycle and quick implementation works wonders.

3. It’s hard to work well, but it’s easy to work hard.

   I’m not the smoothest or cleanest salesman, but I have seen many talented people come and go because they aren’t willing to put in the work. Working hard covers a lot of gaps in performance.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned the name of the product we are building. That’s because I don’t want this to feel like an ad. If you are interested in learning more, feel free to use this form and I’ll contact you to talk to you about signing up with our friends and family discount.

We’ll be back with some more business ideas this week. If you want a refresher on some of our top businesses we’ve discussed in the past, check out this post!

If you have any requests for specific types of content, I’m all ears! Feel free to drop a comment or send me a message and I’ll be sure to take that into account.

Leave a comment

Bye for now. Keep your eyes peeled for a post later this week!

-Matt Bidstrup

When you see a business idea do you see all the ways you could make it work? Or do you see all the ways that it would never work?

One of our readers sent us this picture of a young hustler who is definitely the first type of person.

Don’t give us your excuses on why you can’t start a non-tech business. Just start!

Here is your Friday selection of curated content to help you be a better entrepreneur:

How to take a pressure washing business from $0 -$100k a year.

Building a business piggybacking off Instagram and Influencer culture.

A sneak peak into some of next week’s content.

Thanks for reading The Steel Road. Whenever you are ready, here are a few ways we can work together.

1. Fill out this 2-minute survey. This helps us write better content.

2. Build your own newsletter with The Steel Road Writes. Use our expertise to help you write persuasive copy for your business.

3. Share The Steel Road with your referral link to earn exclusive content.

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There are people who will make a million dollars at age 20 and travel the world posting all over social media. There are also people who start a business at age 60 and make just enough to cover a comfortable retirement.

One of the traps novice entrepreneurs fall into is comparing themselves to other “successful” entrepreneurs. It’s very easy to look at another founder that is 5 years ahead of you and think you are failing miserably.

It’s important to have mentors and friends that can teach you valuable lessons(we hope this newsletter is one of those resources), but you can’t get too caught up in trying to copy these people exactly.

Here’s a good example from Phil Knight, the founder of Nike.

When Phil started Blue Ribbon(the precursor to Nike) he struggled to get the business off the ground. During the first few years he worked multiple full time jobs alongside his business in order to pay his own bills.

He looked around and saw other classmates from his MBA program at Stanford who were having enormous success. Knight even says everything his arch rival “touched turned to gold.”

But he didn’t quit. Even with all the struggles like cash flow shortages, supply chain issues, and dishonesty from his manufacturers he kept plowing through. His dad kept saying he was “jackassing around with shoes”.

We won’t spoil the book for you, but Knight turned out okay.

The lesson is, don’t get caught up comparing yourself to others. Work on being you.

Learn from others, but don’t obsess with what they tell you. Use their experience and wisdom, but remember that you are on your own journey and should do what you think is best.

These days Nike may not seem like a non-tech business, but it sure started out as one. I mean it was built in the 1960s, so how techy can it be?

Phil Knight started out in his parents basement, and traveled to local track meets to sell shoes. He would fly to Japan to meet with suppliers and convince them to give him the rights to sell under the Blue Ribbon brand.

If you haven’t read Shoe Dog, we highly recommend it.

Read it here.

Thanks for reading The Steel Road. Whenever you are ready, here are a few ways we can work together.

1. Fill out this 2-minute survey. This helps us write better content.

2. Build your own newsletter with The Steel Road Writes. Use our expertise to help you write persuasive copy for your business.

3. Share The Steel Road with your referral link to earn exclusive content.

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But there’s always that one kid in the school that ruins it for everyone. They have lice and everyone goes into quarantine. Parents have to be called, families have to be inspected, and it’s no fun for anyone.

Except for the lice inspector of course. They may not have fun, but they should be making good money.

Here’s why this is such a great business:

1. Sticky contracts. If you get in and do a good job, schools will retain your services for years and years. My school only used one photographer the entire 6 years I was there.

2. Great referrals. When you find a kid with lice, their whole family needs to be checked. Stay busy with schools and you’ll always have business flowing in from the families of children you find with lice.

3. Other revenue streams. You don’t just have to stick to lice. Schools also do testing for vision and language skills. It’s possible to build a one stop shop for schools to handle all of their needs with just one vendor.

4. The marketing plan is very straightforward. Get in front of as many school principals as possible, listen to their needs, understand their frustrations with current providers, and tell them why their business is a great solution.

5. Upsells all over the place. There’s some sweet commission to be made by recommending lice removal products or clinics.

Think about the possible revenue breakout:

1 full day at a school performing testing = $1,000

5 days per month in schools = $5,000

10 days per month handling referrals = $5,000

Just like that you have a business generating $10,000 per month.

Once you’ve proved the idea and are ready to scale, you can start refining your business.

• Add on franchises for additional revenue

• Automate tedious processes like review collections

• Get your financials in order with a legit P&L

• Focus on the customer, do things to make it easy for them to be in business with you

• Add on additional revenue streams through business stacking

Then it’s a rocket ship all the way to the moon. 🚀

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The question is, do you have your boat in water that is rising?

It’s no question that the electric vehicle market is a rising tide. With the rise of Tesla and every major car manufacturer developing electric models, this industry is growing fast and changing like crazy.

EVs are pretty technical pieces of machinery, so why are we talking about them on a non-tech newsletter?

Because charging them isn’t. Specifically charging them on the go.

You see, there is a mobile charging company in Las Vegas that had a video go very viral.

We’re talking 4 million views.

All this company does is put a diesel generator in the back of a small truck like a Ford Ranger, and helps stranded electric vehicles to get enough power to get to a charging station.

Because this is such a new industry, things like SEO and local authority will be so easy to get. There’s almost no competition.

Here’s the startup cost breakdown:

$5,000 for a small truck

$2,000 for a generator

$500 for insurance and misc. fees

$7,500 total

All you have to do is charge $200 per call, mark up your fuel costs 100%, and you’ll make a killing.

If it costs you $4 per gallon of diesel fuel, and you charge $8 per gallon of fuel used, here’s your revenue breakout.

20 calls per month, 5 gallons each.

$4,000 in trip charges, $800 in revenue from fuel.

After just a couple months you can break even and make some serious profit.

After you’ve proven out the idea and gotten traction, move on to bigger and better things.

• Automate tedious processes like review collections

• Get your financials in order with a legit P&L

• Focus on the customer, do things to make it easy for them to be in business with you

• Add on additional revenue streams through business stacking

And then you are off to the races!

Thanks for reading The Steel Road. Whenever you are ready, here are a few ways we can work together.

1. Fill out this 2-minute survey. This helps us write better content.

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Friday Links:

A Texas Business Broker gives 30 business ideas for 2023

A poem about a wise old owl

Advice on growing a junk removal business

Understanding the economics of weather control

Start a furniture flipping business and make $100 an hour

Thanks for reading The Steel Road. Whenever you are ready, here are a few ways we can work together.

1. Fill out this 2-minute survey. This helps us write better content.

2. Build your own newsletter with The Steel Road Writes. Use our expertise to help you write persuasive copy for your business.

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It is your last chance to try the Quickbooks Self Employed for 6 months at only $1. You read that right. Only $1 a month for the next 6 months.

You don’t need an expensive CFO to tell you the financial state of your company. Just use Quickbooks to generate P&Ls, track expenses and mileage, and all that other good stuff.

Get your next 6 months for only $1 using our exclusive link!

Try it now!

When you are starting a business, it can be daunting to acquire customers. We’ve talked a lot about acquiring customers for free or relatively low advertising spends a lot here on The Steel Road, but eventually you’ll have to run paid ads.

But how does that work? You aren’t a marketer, you are a non-tech entrepreneur.

Well, let us introduce you to the business owner’s best friend. The Meta Ad Library.

It’s a beautiful thing. Every company that has ever run an ad using a Meta platform has their ad catalogued and stored on this library. If you are stumped and can’t come up with creative ideas for your campaign, all you have to do is find a similar company to yours and see what they are doing.

If you have a carpet cleaning company, you may want to take a look at Stanley Steemer’s campaign.

If you are starting a golf simulator business, it would be a good idea to see what other simulators in your area are doing.

You may say it feels like copying someone else’s business. But you are not. Unless they have a patent or trademark they have no legal ownership over the words they use.

You will copy others, they will copy you, and that’s just how business works. No one has ownership over an “idea”.

Building a business is all bout using others’ ideas, improving them, and executing to perfection.

Consider this excerpt from How to Get Rich, by Felix Dennis.

I have lost count of the number of men and women who have approached me with their “great idea,” as if this, in and of itself, was their passport to instant wealth. The idea is not a passport. At most, it is the means of obtaining one. In some instances, a fixation on a great idea can prove hazardous, distracting your attention from the perils and pitfalls you will inevitably encounter on the narrow road.

If you never have a single great idea in your life, but become skilled in executing the great ideas of others, you can succeed beyond your wildest dreams. They do not have to be your ideas, execution is all. When confronted with a great idea, your reaction should be to scrupulously analyze its commercial potential in the context of your own ability to transform that potential into triumph.

Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does.

Execution > Ideas

Thanks for reading The Steel Road. Whenever you are ready, here are a few ways we can work together.

1. Fill out this 2-minute survey. This helps us write better content.

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Businesses involving cars can be total cash cows. Think about it, every time you get in your car you are likely planning to spend money. Going to the store, a nice restaurant, or filling up the tank with gas means you’ll be forking over $20 at minimum.

In the United States alone there are 290 million cars. That’s a pretty good market.

One of the best businesses you can start is a mobile detailing business. This is an innovative business that is only growing over the last twenty years.

But here at The Steel Road we have a rule.

Don’t start an inch deep and a mile wide, start an inch wide and go a mile deep. You can expand after you have a really strong foothold.

So how can you do this with mobile car detailing?

You’re going to start with just one thing.

Headlight restoration.

There’s your niche. Get really good at that one thing, then expand your business using the cash flow.

Restoring headlights is super easy. All it takes is a little kit, some elbow grease and sanding to make the headlight look new.

How much would people pay in your local market to have their headlights looking brand new?

Learn how to restore headlights here.

Here’s how to get started:

Pick a good name and set up a simple landing page with Carrd. It’s simple and easy to use, and best of all it’s cheap. Use our exclusive referral link to give it a try for free!

Set up a google my business page.

Ask a few friends if you can fix their headlights for free. This will give you some practice and they’ll give you a great review.

Now that you are all set up with a few reviews and a decent web site, go to Canva and make some eye catching flyers promoting a $25 headlight restoration. Print 500 copies.

Head over to your local Target on a Saturday afternoon. It’s going to be bumping.

Now the amateur move would be to just leave these flyers on people’s windshields. This is fine, but you’ll get way more business by approaching people as they head into the store.

Offer to restore their headlights while they are in the store for only $25. Give them a money back guarantee if they aren’t satisfied.

Here’s what the numbers look like in your first weekend:

Supplies: $50

Flyers: $100

Business insurance: $75

Website: $20

All in your costs are $245.

At $25 each, if you can get 20 restorations in the Target parking lot you’ll generate $500 in revenue.

If you pass out flyers on the rest of the cars and repeat the process you’ll be in good shape to start cash flowing $200 a day easily.

And in case you forgot, $200 a day X 20 days per week is $4,000 a month.

From there you are off to the races. Once you have some traction refine your pricing model.

It’s up to you how to scale from here.

• Automate tedious processes like review collections

• Get your financials in order with a legit P&L

• Focus on the customer, do things to make it easy for them to be in business with you

• Add on mobile car detailing

• Start doing simple body work like paint and dent repair

Thanks for reading The Steel Road. Whenever you are ready, here are a few ways we can work together.

1. Fill out this 2-minute survey. This helps us write better content.

2. Build your own newsletter with The Steel Road Writes. Use our expertise to help you write persuasive copy for your business.

3. Share The Steel Road with your referral link to earn exclusive content.

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Neil Koch is an agronomist with G&K Concepts, and has used his skills to build a successful farm on his own property. But the best part is he does cool projects and films them for YouTube videos.

• Building a giant pond in his backyard

• Tapping a well to fill the pond

• Hauling all the dirt with huge dump trucks

• Building a large pole barn

• Processing as much firewood as possible in 8 hours

If you like non-tech businesses we guarantee you’ll like his videos.

Other links:

11 low competition business ideas from the founder of Maid This.

Taking your cold outreach to the next level.

How to use KPIs to grow your business.

Thanks for reading The Steel Road. Whenever you are ready, here are a few ways we can work together.

1. Fill out this 2-minute survey. This helps us write better content.

2. Build your own newsletter with The Steel Road Writes. Use our expertise to help you write persuasive copy for your business.

3. Share The Steel Road with your referral link to earn exclusive content.

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Every business needs a web site. If you disagree then get back into your time machine and travel back to 1985 boomer.

Web design is very complicated and it takes a ton of training to build a site from scratch. Most non-tech business owners just don’t have time for that.

That’s why we love Carrd.

It’s cheap, it’s easy to use, and will help you get your simple landing page up in minutes. You can customize your site however you like, or use templates to save time and build a solid MVP.

Use our exclusive referral link to give it a try for free!

Try Carrd

There is an interesting trend on social media these days of non tech business owners chasing likes and views in order to grow their business.

Just search on tiktok “mowing a lawn for free” and you’ll see tons of videos where a guy goes up to the door of a completely overgrown house and asks if he can tidy it up for free.

Some of the work they do is actually very impressive, and it makes for a very satisfying time lapse.

But why do they spend this time working for free when they could easily charge $100 for the same service?

Let’s look closer at an example.

Spencer B. started SB Mowing when he was in high school and steadily grew his business to make thousands of dollars a month. You could say he doesn’t need the views from his social media accounts because he already has a successful business, and that would be true.

But an entrepreneur is an entrepreneur. They keep pushing and going for more and are never satisfied. And that’s a good thing.

This newsletter is generally for first time or novice entrepreneurs. That’s why we talk about non tech businesses because those are the easiest to start and get your first few wins. But after a while you’ll start to look for other levels and ways to play the game.

Spencer has won the first level with his profitable mowing business, and is moving on to the next level by growing a media company.

This is actually a very common trend. There are some fairly big names who have done the exact same thing.

• Nick Huber

• Codie Sanchez

• Shawn Gorham

Does going viral a few times help the actual business? Most likely. But 99% of those viral views are not going to be in his service area and aren’t going to actually be able to hire him.

SB Mowing is actually missing out on a ton of business by not having a nice web site for customers to find actual details about hiring them to mow their lawn. It would be a huge SEO boost if all these TikToks and YouTube videos pointed back to their site. Plus they could add an “as seen on TikTok” sticker like they used to do for infomercials.

If you are starting a non tech business, it should not be your first move to start making TikToks. Focus on the sound techniques we’ve discussed day in and day out here on The Steel Road. Then once you have some traction, by all means try and go viral.

Thanks for reading The Steel Road. Whenever you are ready, here are a few ways we can work together.

1. Fill out this 2-minute survey. This helps us write better content.

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In just the camping industry alone, revenue is expected to push 22 billion dollars in 2023. Any time there is an industry this size there will be great opportunities for a small business to profit.

There are a lot of things you can do to make money off camping enthusiasts. If you live near a thoroughfare to the mountains, set up shop with a big pile of wood on a Friday afternoon to sell to campers.

That’s a pretty specific set up though, and is generally hard to replicate if you don’t live in the right place. Instead, let’s go a little more technical.

These days everyone wants to work remotely, whether it’s from their home office or a beach in Hawaii. But the possibilities are growing more and more. What if you could play video games online from a remote mountaintop? Or stream your zoom meeting while on a houseboat in Lake Powell?

With Starlink all of those things are possible. Anywhere there is a stretch of open sky you can have all the internet you need.

The problem is, a Starlink set up is expensive. $500 for the initial hardware costs, and $150 a month after that.

For the occasional traveler it’s just not worth it to buy one. But there is a growing trade of entrepreneurs that buy the device and cover the monthly fees by offering rentals for $20-$45 a day.

Here’s how the math works out:

$500 startup cost, $150 a month.

$30 a day rental.

5 days rented to cover your monthly cost, and 16 extra days rented to get your startup cost back.

If you rent it out every single weekend(9 days), then you will make your money back in 4 months.

How to get rentals

In our local market, if you do a general google search for “starlink rentals”, there are 2 companies that rank organically.

This one that is actually really solid.

https://borrowstarlink.com/

And this one that seems really sketchy.

https://satellitephonestore.com/catalog/rent/satellite-terminals/starlink-rentals

It would be insanely easy to set up a site and start competing for these organic search visitors. All you would need is a $10 domain from Google Domains, build a site on Carrd, write some basic content about your business and you will likely rank number 3 or better.

After you’ve gone this route, create Facebook Marketplace listings and post ads on your local craigslist. This is where all the rentals are coming from for most people right now. Direct all that traffic to your site to boost your SEO.

Then you are off to the races. With some cash flow you can start buying accessories to offer add ons for your customers.

It’s up to you how to scale it at that point.

• Rent a campervan and equip it with Starlink

• Automate tedious processes like review collections

• Get your financials in order

• Focus on the customer, do things to make it easy for them to be in business with you

Thanks for reading The Steel Road. Whenever you are ready, here are a few ways we can work together.

1. Fill out this 2-minute survey. This helps us write better content.

2. Build your own newsletter with The Steel Road Writes. Use our expertise to help you write persuasive copy for your business.

3. Share The Steel Road with your referral link to earn exclusive content.

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We’ve been sending emails on a cadence of 3 times per week, generally Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, with our Thursday edition being “Thinker Thursday”.

It has had a great run, but we think it’s time to change things up to give you some fresher and cleaner content.

With that in mind, we’ll be adjusting our cadence to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Monday and Wednesday will be the same emails that you know and love, generally an idea or a strategy that is important for running a non-tech business. Then our Friday email will be a selection of curated content that will help you to be a better entrepreneur.

Here’s your first look!

How the CEO of a home services company boosts morale of his technicians (link)

”Everybody wants to be taken somewhere. If we don’t tell people where we’re taking them, they’ll engage another brand.” -Donald Miller, Building a StoryBrand

The Steel Road’s guide to understanding public company terms (link)

How a “meat and potatoes entrepreneur” thinks about personal investing (link)

Advice from a multi millionaire on the business he would start if he was 25 years old again (link)

Thanks for reading The Steel Road. Whenever you are ready, here are a few ways we can work together.

1. Fill out this 2-minute survey. This helps us write better content.

2. Build your own newsletter with The Steel Road Writes. Use our expertise to help you write persuasive copy for your business.

3. Share The Steel Road with your referral link to earn exclusive content.

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