🎙️ Big Deal: Side Hustle King: 3 Easy Businesses Anyone Can Start with Chris Koerner

🎙️ Big Deal: Side Hustle King: 3 Easy Businesses Anyone Can Start with Chris Koerner

Discovering Hidden Profit Opportunities in Everyday Businesses and The Mindset Required for Entrepreneurial Success

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In a world where entrepreneurship often seems reserved for venture-backed startups or those with specialized skills, Chris Koerner has built a career finding overlooked, hidden, and highly profitable small businesses that almost anyone can start. With 75 businesses under his belt and a knack for identifying opportunities others miss, Koerner has mastered the art of what he calls "sleeper businesses", cash-flowing, non-venture-backed companies that can be launched with minimal capital but generate substantial returns. Codie Sanchez sits down with the serial entrepreneur to extract his framework for finding, starting, and scaling these often-ignored business opportunities.

The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Action Over Analysis

Koerner's journey into entrepreneurship wasn't paved with privilege or connections. Growing up poor, he learned early that "constraints equal creativity" a principle that continues to guide his business approach today. This mindset, combined with what he calls an "insane bias for action," has been the foundation of his success across dozens of ventures.

As Koerner explains, "You can't have no money and pride. That doesn't work." This philosophy of humility combined with willingness to take action has enabled him to start businesses with minimal capital by finding creative solutions and asking for what he needs.

His entrepreneurial drive was forged during a two-year mission in Hungary where he faced rejection approximately 24,000 times while door-knocking. This experience, he says, taught him resilience: "I can freaking do anything. And I will. Like this is America. I can do whatever I want." This mindset of relentless action in the face of rejection has been instrumental in his business success.

The Three Most Underrated Side Hustles

When pressed to identify his top three most underrated side hustles that almost anyone can start, Koerner shared three businesses that exemplify his approach to finding overlooked opportunities:

1. Front Porch Decorating

Koerner discovered a woman named Heather who built a million-dollar business simply decorating porches with pumpkins. "She's making over a million dollars a year just buying wholesale pumpkins from someone that anyone could Google and find a wholesale pumpkin supplier. Buys them by the truckload and decorates them on porches."

The business model is elegant in its simplicity: purchase seasonal decorations at wholesale prices, install them on clients' porches, and charge premium rates (between $600-$1,300 per installation). The visual nature of the business makes it highly shareable on social media, creating a natural marketing channel.

What makes this business particularly attractive is its scalability beyond seasonal work. While Heather prefers to focus on fall decorations, the model can be adapted for other seasons and occasions. Koerner notes, "There are people that do this for Christmas decorations. I talked to a guy in Pennsylvania that does it for flower front porch flower decorations. He charges a few hundred a quarter and he'll swap out flowers every month."

2. Appliance Rental

For those willing to do physical work, Koerner shared the story of a man who built a six-figure business working just five hours a week renting appliances. "He goes on Facebook Marketplace and he buys washers and dryers or he'll get them for free because people give them away all the time. They're moving, their lease ends tomorrow. They got to get it out, right? And then he goes back to Facebook Marketplace and rents them out for $100 to $200 a month to people that live in apartments that have hookups that don't want to buy it because they're afraid it's going to break."

This business requires minimal startup capital. Just the ability to transport appliances and a system for managing rentals. The profit margins are substantial, and the demand is consistent from apartment dwellers who need appliances but don't want to commit to purchasing them.

3. HVAC Coil Cleaning

The third business Koerner highlighted addresses a specific pain point for HVAC companies. "HVAC companies, they have these service contracts, either commercial or residential, where they check in every six months, make sure everything is working. Part of that contract is they have to clean the coils on the outside of the units. That's just like a preventative maintenance, but that's a pain for them because you got to have water, you got to hook up water, you got to have chemicals, and it just doesn't go into their normal workflow."

By specializing in this specific task that HVAC companies dislike, entrepreneurs can build a steady business. Koerner shared the example of someone who built a $500,000-$600,000 per year business focusing solely on cleaning coils for grocery store HVAC units. "He says that he never loses a customer. It pays him I think it's like 500, 600,000 a year in this random rural area that you would never think this opportunity exists. And he's like this is my secret weapon. Like this is the and he's owned a bunch of businesses. He's like this is the best business I've ever had."

Finding Opportunities: Unbundling Business Pain Points

A recurring theme in Koerner's approach is identifying what businesses hate doing and creating a separate service around it. He calls this "unbundling" business pain points: "Find a business. Find the things that they hate doing. Unbundle that."

This approach led him to discover the stump grinding business opportunity. After researching tree trimming businesses, he found that many would happily outsource stump grinding if given the option. "We scraped every tree trimming business in Houston and I'm in Dallas and so I wanted like a sister city that was comparable and I hired a virtual assistant to call up every tree trimming business and say, 'Hey, who grinds your stumps? Do you own a stump grinder? Do you rent them?' theoretically, if you could ever outsource that entirely to a stump grinding business that only served tree trimming businesses, would you do it? If so, what would you pay?"

The results were impressive, with one person making $300,000 in his first year by focusing solely on providing stump grinding services to tree trimming businesses.

Businesses to Avoid: The Complexity Trap

Just as important as knowing which businesses to start is understanding which ones to avoid. Koerner identifies three types of businesses he would "never touch with a 10-ft pole":

1. Third-Party Logistics (3PL)

Koerner's experience with a 3PL business was miserable despite generating $400,000 in monthly revenue. "We were doing 400,000 a month and not making any money. It was a miserable business because it did not have binary outcomes." The complexity of managing inventory, shipping, and customer expectations created endless opportunities for things to go wrong.

2. House Cleaning

While seemingly simple, house cleaning businesses suffer from what Koerner calls "non-binary outcomes." "It was just a lot of ways to screw up. It was I guess same thing. Yeah. Like it there's a hair. You left a hair on the floor. Or you scuffed the baseboard." The low ticket price combined with high potential for customer complaints makes this business model particularly challenging.

3. Custom Home Building

Koerner's experience with custom home building taught him that unless you're working at the high end (multiple millions of dollars), the business isn't worth the headaches. "On one hand, you have a homeowner that's putting their life savings in something that they're going to live in forever. These were nice homes. And on our side, we had permit issues, weather issues, subcontractor issues, insurance issues, so many things that could go wrong."

The key insight here is that margin affords the ability to handle mistakes. In lower-priced custom homes, there simply isn't enough margin to absorb the inevitable problems that arise.

The Art of the Start: From Idea to Action

For those looking to start their first business, Koerner recommends a practical approach. First, determine which bucket you're in: "Am I someone that already knows I love entrepreneurship? I've made my first dollar for myself. I've tasted it. I love it. Or am I someone that loves the idea of entrepreneurship?"

For beginners, he suggests starting small: "Start what you know and then test it." This might mean selling items around your house on Facebook Marketplace to see how the process feels. For those already employed, he recommends looking at the eeky guy principle, a Venn diagram of what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you could charge for.

Koerner is a strong proponent of what he calls "habit stacking", pairing the habit of identifying business opportunities with immediately taking action to explore them. "I pair the habit of getting the question with the habit of answering it. And then that kind of trains me to act, to have a bias for action."

Partnership Lessons: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

With 15 business partners across his various ventures, Koerner has learned valuable lessons about entrepreneurship partnerships. He shares a particularly painful story about being pushed out of a $50 million deal by his partners: "I get a text. It's like, 'Hey, meet me at Starbucks.' And, um, I just like I just saw the text and nothing. I had no red flags. Like, there were no signs that this was about to happen, right? But I saw that text and I was like, I don't feel good about this."

This experience taught him the importance of careful partner selection and the reality that even close relationships can be tested by business pressures. His advice is to be selective about partners and to expect that breakups might happen, planning accordingly.

However, not all partnership stories are negative. Koerner's tree trimming business, which now generates half a million dollars annually, was started with a young college graduate named James who demonstrated the qualities Koerner looks for: "I like to look for humility, um, gratitude, someone who's like, I'm just so grateful for this opportunity and some sort of an entrepreneurial gene, right? Because I don't want to make them entrepreneurial. They have to have that. If they have those three things, then it's almost 100% certain they'll be successful."

The Keeper Test: Knowing When to Hold or Fold

One of the most valuable frameworks Koerner has adopted is what he calls the "Keeper Test" a simple but powerful way to evaluate employees and business relationships. The test asks: "Which of my people, if they told me they're leaving for a similar job at another company, would I fight hard to keep?"

This straightforward question cuts through complexity and forces clarity about who truly adds value to the organization. For those who wouldn't be fought for, Koerner advocates for a clean break, often with generous severance packages.

This approach extends to his view of company culture. Unlike many who refer to their companies as "family," Koerner prefers the "team" analogy: "On a team, underperformance is just unacceptable. A sports team can sign, trade, or release players as it sees fit to construct the best possible roster to help it win."

The Power of Rejection: Building Resilience

Koerner's experience with rejection. Particularly during his mission in Hungary, shaped his entrepreneurial resilience. He estimates he was rejected approximately 24,000 times over two years of door-knocking, converting just 11 people. This experience taught him that rejection isn't personal and that persistence pays off.

This resilience has served him well in business, where he's faced numerous setbacks and failures. His advice to entrepreneurs is to embrace rejection as data rather than taking it personally: "I added up how many times I got rejected. It's like 24,000 times." This mindset has enabled him to keep going where others might have given up.

Conclusion: The Entrepreneurial Path Less Traveled

Chris Koerner's approach to entrepreneurship represents a refreshing alternative to the venture-backed startup narrative. By focusing on small, overlooked businesses that solve real problems, he's built a portfolio of ventures that generate substantial cash flow with minimal capital requirements.

His success stems from three key principles:

For aspiring entrepreneurs, Koerner's story demonstrates that you don't need a revolutionary idea or substantial capital to build a successful business. You simply need to identify a real problem, create a simple solution, and be willing to do the work that others won't.

As Koerner reminds us, the path to entrepreneurial success isn't always glamorous, but it's accessible to those willing to look for opportunities where others see obstacles and to take action where others hesitate.

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