The Exchanges

Q doing any door to door sales. Like, have you made a killing and just, you know, Warren Buffett has said this before. He goes, the secret to winning is low comp is, is, is weak competition, right? Like he's not looking to prove that he's a genius at the hardest games. He's looking for very weak competition where he can simply be competent and he can just do best practices.

A Oh, dude. Like, It is so true. We see it on Twitter all the time. Like, just go, go find a business with the fax machine to compete against him. Like, yes, that actually works. I, we own a tree trimming business, and a big bottleneck for us is stump grinding. So we thought, I thought, man, there needs to be a business That's just stump grinding, but B to B. Not stump grinding that goes through homeowners, but only the ones that goes through, uh, the other tree trimming companies. Cause we own a tree trimming company and we could see it from the inside. So I had a thesis. I hired a virtual assistant and today I would just use an AI voice agent. And I took the city of Houston and I scraped every single tree trimming business in Houston. There was about a thousand. And I had this virtual assistant call every single one and notate. Did they answer? Did the number work? If they did answer, say, do you grind stumps? If yes, then would you ever outsource that? If yes, then how much would you pay? So I spent like 200 dollars getting this research.

AI assessment note: “we own a tree trimming business, and a big bottleneck for us is stump grinding.”

Q said that this driving range in New Zealand pays out 10,000 dollars if you hit a hole in one. It's a 111 yards away. You get this, like, plaque if you hit the hole in one, and, um, so what, what is the business here? They basically, they, it's like a carnival game. They charge you a little bit to try to hit a hole in one. Is that it?

A Yeah, it's kind of like, think of like unbundling a carnival. It's, the business is math. They're just using math, right? And here's the math. The, the average amateur golfer, and I don't golf, I hate golf, um, has a one in 25,000 chance of getting a hole in one on a par three, which this is, okay? And, and so this company in New Zealand, it's right off the road on this lake, um, they have announced multiple times that they pay out on average once every two weeks. So I can use math. Uh, to say, all right, these guys, and I know how much they sell balls for. It's like, 40 bucks for 25 balls or something. Uh, and they have a sensor in the hole, and they have divers go get the balls every couple weeks.

AI assessment note: “the business is math. They're just using math, right? And here's the math.”

Q Oh, ok, gotcha. But, by the way, give us the headline, because, you know, we're talking about this title, so we haven't mentioned how well it's done. Can you give us some numbers that give us an idea of, like, the success of this?

A I mean, I'll tell you what the headline literally was, and it was like, Texas man makes 200 grand in his first 30 days reselling Bucky's goods online. That was it. And so, Texas Monthly reached out to me, they're the biggest Texas news publication, and they were like, we love this, we're gonna make this a feature story, give me everything you can. So we talked, we talked, we talked, and then later that afternoon, they're like, Chris, good news, uh, Bucky's in-house counsel would love to chat. And I'm like, what's good about that? Like I'm dead. I'm dead in the water. And so I was like, okay, you, you told Bucky's great. I'm glad you were able to get ahold of them. So I get on the phone with him and he's like, listen, we actually don't mind what you're doing. Uh, I don't like the name beaver snacks. We're a beaver. It's kind of confusing. I don't like that your colors are yellow. We're kind of yellow. Uh, change the name, put a disclaimer in your logo. That is persist throughout the whole website. Put a disclaimer on every product page and you have our blessing. Like we're not going to sign anything, but we're not going to come after you. Like we will support you. And so we did, we made those changes and then they linked to us.

AI assessment note: “Texas man makes 200 grand in his first 30 days reselling Bucky's goods online.”

Q going to do this as a publicity stunt. Maybe they'll partner with me. Maybe this will work. I don't know. Maybe it'll just be a good story and I'll get sued out of existence. Like what are some of the beliefs that you have? We talked about one at the front, which is like, Focus is overrated. Talk about that one and then give me some of your other ones.

A Yeah, I think focus is overrated because compounding doesn't care. Like the, the principle of compounding does not care if we're working on one thing or a dozen things. As long as we stay in the game, whatever that game is for us and keep going, compounding is just going to keep going with us, right? So if you're curious about something, like, let's say you're, you've got a side hustle and it's going well and you're like, what about this, this side hustle? Test it. Like answer that question. Now, if you have a side hustle and it's like you're not sleeping because you're just cashing all these checks and customers are beating down your door, you're not going to be thinking about, oh, what about this shiny object? Like you've got product market fit. That's a signal, right? So just chase the signals, chase the curiosities, because you're going to learn something over here that you're able to apply over here that no one else has ever thought of because they weren't doing these seven other things like you were. So net of net, I, like, if I, gun to my head, I think you will be more wealthy if you do one thing, but you're more likely to be miserable and not have an enjoyable life.

AI assessment note: “I think focus is overrated because compounding doesn't care.”

Q Do you want nuts or no nuts on the banana?

A But I had to know. And then to make matters worse, I pull out my phone and make a video about how anyone could copy them. So I'm a great guy. But, uh, I don't remember the exact numbers. Steal your banana. This one little shop that's like, 300 square feet is doing like, seven million a year in frozen bananas? Like, and what's the margin on an eight dollar banana with chocolate and peanuts? And so I just thought, like, why isn't this, like, Why isn't this a thing? I didn't go to Balboa Island for the bananas. Once I was there, I, I got them. But there are Balboa Islands all over the world, and most of them have no banana stand. Like, so it's, this idea isn't just about banana stand. It's about taking something really unique and novel. Maybe it's like the old Western timey photo booths that you see in Pigeon Forge. Maybe it's like, um, funnel cake, or like the mini donuts that you see in Gatlinburg. Like, take something like that. And just test it. I'm not saying it's going to work, but you could test it very, very cheaply in other tourist markets or in non-tourist markets.

AI assessment note: “This one little shop that's like, 300 square feet is doing like, seven million”