Aug 28, 2025 · 1h 17m · bigdeal
Side Hustle King: 3 Easy Businesses Anyone Can Start | Chris Koerner
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Host Codie Sanchez interviews serial entrepreneur Chris Koerner to break down unconventional, high-margin side hustles and tactical business frameworks that generate substantial cash flow with little to no upfront capital. Through real-world case studies and personal venture stories, the episode reveals how to unbundle unglamorous services, navigate partnership challenges, and build profitable enterprises with extreme resourcefulness.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Codie holds 41.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Codie as informed peer 5.5 Guest teaching 4.1 Guest disagreement 1.1 Codie pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is Codie, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 21:25 Contrarian dismissal of low-margin complex businesses
Koerner adamantly warns listeners away from popular service sectors like house cleaning and logistics, dismissing them due to unforgiving non-binary outcomes.
Hardest push from Codie ▶ 55:30 Sanchez rejects the 'do not build angry' mindsetSanchez firmly pushes back against standard corporate advice about balance, arguing that righteous fury and spite are powerful fuels for building companies.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 34:00 Unbundling pet cremation logistics mechanicsKoerner educates Sanchez on the massive 92% gross margins in pet cremation and shows how purchasing a simple refrigerated van bypasses high capital equipment costs.
Codie holds their own ▶ 1:15:05 Sanchez on repositioning the distressed appraiserSanchez illustrates her operator expertise by detailing how she diagnosed a struggling home appraiser's commoditization problem and doubled his business by shifting to luxury clients.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Codie as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Codie pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Episode Hook and High-Yield Side Hustle Teasers | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Sanchez engages actively with Koerner's small-town pizza stand anecdote, breaking down unit economics and margin math while relating it to her own vending machine experiments. | |
| Launching B2B Stump Grinding and Subcontracted Tree Trimming | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Koerner explains how he unbundled B2B stump grinding via cold research and subcontractors, while Sanchez validates the approach with her own physical therapy business example. | |
| Breaking Down the Startup Formula and Partner Selection | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Koerner outlines his vetting criteria for young operators, and Sanchez contributes insights on portfolio management and cites Charlie Munger's wisdom on gratitude in partnerships. | |
| Liquidation Pallets and Evaluating Automated Marketplace Side Hustles | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Koerner details pallet liquidation and a porch pumpkin decorating business making $1M per year. Sanchez connects this to wealthy suburban demographics willing to spend heavily on convenience. | |
| Underrated Hustle #2: Facebook Marketplace Washer and Dryer Rentals | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Koerner highlights washer-dryer rentals and HVAC coil cleaning. Sanchez shares her experience buying and operating a remote podcast production studio to reinforce lifestyle sizing. | |
| Worst Businesses to Avoid: Logistics, Cleaning, and Custom Homes | 6 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Koerner warns against non-binary outcome businesses like 3PL and custom homes, and Sanchez notes how adequate pricing margin is required to absorb customer service friction. | |
| Contrarian Investing: Buying Profitable Small Businesses | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Koerner recounts launching an unauthorized Buc-ee's reselling website that became a multi-million-dollar venture, prompting Sanchez to share marketing strategies from her window cleaning portfolio company. | |
| Viral Offline Marketing Tactics and Overcoming Promotion Cringe | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Koerner suggests a direct-mail calendar campaign targeted by demographic data, and both discuss pushing past personal cringe to execute effective marketing. | |
| High-Margin Pet Cremation Logistics and Unbundling Opportunities | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Koerner walks through unbundling pet cremation logistics with refrigerated vans, and Sanchez shares a humorous personal anecdote about her family's cultural views on pet disposal. | |
| Mobile Home and RV Park Investing Economics | 6 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Koerner breaks down cash-on-cash returns in mobile home and RV parks and advises a barbell amenity strategy, while Sanchez reinforces why small-scale deals get overlooked by private equity. | |
| The Wild John McAfee Crypto Adventure and Meeting in Tennessee | 3 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Koerner narrates his pitch meeting and crypto project with John McAfee in Tennessee, while Sanchez listens and enjoys the eccentric details of the story. | |
| Identifying Founder Speed, 30-Day Trials, and Fueling Ambition | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | The pair discuss founder speed and 30-day employee trials, with Sanchez sharing an email from an old corporate rival to illustrate how spite can serve as fuel. | |
| Surviving Devastating Partnership Fallouts and Business Scams | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Koerner recounts getting cut out of a $50M term sheet deal at a Starbucks, and Sanchez reciprocates with a story of being defrauded by a former intelligence agency contact. | |
| Tactical Frameworks: The Ikigai Method and Regret Minimization | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Koerner details the Ikigai framework and Bezos's regret minimization concept for corporate employees looking to start side ventures without quitting immediately. | |
| Leveraging ADHD, Introversion, and Double-Downing on Superpowers | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Koerner reflects on managing diagnosed ADHD and leaning into ideation over operations, arguing that shiny object syndrome signals a lack of true product-market fit in existing projects. | |
| Door-to-Door Mission in Hungary and Overcoming 24,000 Rejections | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Koerner describes enduring 24,000 door-to-door rejections during his mission in Hungary, and Sanchez shares how repositioning an appraiser client toward luxury homes doubled his revenue. |
Statements from this episode (24)
Koerner: Rural pop-up pizza stand earns $700 daily at 80% margins
“And they're making 700 dollars a day, 80% margins. Selling pizzas from an oven that they bought at Home Depot.”
Sanchez: Placed vending machines in multiple locations without paying rent
“Like we did this whole experiment with vending machines where we put vending machines in a bunch of different locations. And then we did videos about them and shared the numbers. And everybody was like, you left out the rent. I'm like, I didn't pay rent.”
Sanchez: 95% of Small Business Owners Will Reveal Revenue If Asked
“I would say it's like, 95% of the time they tell you. And why? Because they're proud of it. You know, like, if you're, if you've ever ran a business, and you know what it feels like to actually get somebody to pay you for your service, how hard it is. You want…”
Koerner's tree trimming company owns zero chainsaws and subcontracts all work
“And so we really, we didn't own a chainsaw. We still don't own a chainsaw. We just found subcontractors and subbed it all out to them.”
Dallas front porch pumpkin decorator generates over $1M annually
“We've since become friends and she's making over a million dollars a year.”
Koerner: Front porch pumpkin decorators charge $600 to $1,300 per job
“She charges between 613 hundred dollars to decorate a porch with pumpkins.”
Utah operator makes six figures renting out used washers and dryers
“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 re…”
Unbundling hated operational tasks is a strong service business strategy
“Find a business that does something, find the things that they hate doing and just kind of unbundle that.”
Koerner's 3PL business generated $400,000 in monthly revenue with zero profit
“I had a third party logistics business once and basically e-commerce brands would come to us and we would store their products in a warehouse, pick pack and ship them out for them. Right. We were doing 400,000 a month and not making any money.”
Koerner: Entrepreneurs should avoid low-ticket, high-complexity businesses
“If it's low ticket and complex, stay, stay away.”
Custom home building is not worth doing at $1M price points
“Like high ticket, but even at like a million dollar home, it's not worth it.”
Koerner's Buc-ee's resale venture did $200K month one, now makes millions
“We had a dozen news outlets write about us, and we went viral and did 200,000 dollars of sales in our first month, and we do millions of dollars a year now, five years later.”
Koerner: Pursue Projects Where the Worst-Case Outcome Is a Good Story
“I like doing things where like worst case is a good story. Cause most people don't have good stories, right?”
Pet cremation businesses can generate 92% gross margins
“I had a friend that worked in private equity and he had seen the inside of some deals, some pet cremation deals that looked really, really good. 92% gross margins.”
Koerner: The US has more puppies than children
“We have more puppies in the United States than children today. As of two years ago, like the line officially crossed more puppies than kids, right?”
Small RV and mobile home parks generate 30% to 60% cash-on-cash returns
“It's like 30 to 60% cash on cash returns.”
Private equity ignores RV parks under $3M, creating massive buyer opportunity
“Private equity doesn't care about a 100,000 or a million or a three million dollar part. So there's an opportunity there.”
Onsite wastewater treatment plants are major red flags for RV parks
“A lot of parks treat their own wastewater onsite. And that is like major red flag. You could get shut down by the government, like stay far away.”
RV park investing requires barbell approach: zero amenities or full amenities
“You don't want to be in the middle. If you buy a park with a pool and that's it, then your insurance is much higher. You need someone to be there and they're only there for the pool. You don't want a kid to drown, right? So you don't want to be in the messy mi…”
Koerner's free crypto project with John McAfee reached $30M market cap
“We started a cryptocurrency that we gave out for free and it reached a thirty million dollar market cap, and we built a community with 70,000 people in it.”
Koerner screens all hires with 30-day trials and explicitly predicts failure
“The only way I found is just 30 day trials for everyone. And just saying on day one, statistically speaking, this isn't going to work out. Nothing against you. You seem awesome or else we wouldn't even be doing this. I'm just looking at numbers, you know, 30%,…”
Sanchez: Being pissed off is the greatest fuel for building a business
“Everybody says, like, don't build angry. I'm like, wrong. Like, there's no greater fuel than being a little pissed off.”
Sanchez was defrauded of hundreds of thousands by an intelligence acquaintance
“It's only a couple 100,000 dollars that he defrauded us from”
Koerner faced roughly 24,000 in-person rejections knocking doors in Hungary
“After knocking doors in Eastern Europe in a foreign language for two years, and I added up how many times I got rejected loosely because we would knock on doors all day. Every day. And so if you add that up, like x doors per day, it's like 24,000 times. Reject…”