The Secret to Making Millions: “Boring” Businesses
Making hundreds of millions of dollars is not complicated in fact I would argue it’s as simple as finding a boring business that you’re willing to commit to. i’m David i’m CEO of Filterby an air filter company that makes $22 million a month. every day I’m flooded with hundreds of boring businesses to invest in and a few I’ve been willing to write million-doll checks to. in just a few minutes you’ll understand the most important concepts and business models to make billions off of boring businesses.
Part 1: Property-Oriented Businesses (Passive Income Potential)
There are two basic types of cash flow businesses I want to focus on property oriented businesses and service-based businesses. i want to start by focusing on property businesses. these are appealing because people think of them as an easy way to make passive income. let’s look at my three favorites.
The ATM Machine Business
This first business can make anywhere from $1,000 to $100,000 per month and only takes a few hours to operate. in some cases people have turned $2,000 investments in this business into millions paul Alex. a retired San Francisco police officer started his ATM business in 2018 to supplement his income. he purchased his first ATM for $2,100 and installed it in a nail salon. that single machine generated him $500 of profit per month. encouraged by the results he gradually expanded his operation and started installing ATMs in other locations. by 2021 Paul owned over 30 ATMs nationwide. his ATM business was generating over $10,000 a month in profit which allowed him to retire from his police job. today his company ATM Together earns over $8 million a year and helps others to start their own ATM businesses. so what was so smart about how Paul started this business? well first of all he didn’t go all in on the beginning. he still kept his day job. he had a specific opportunity locally within nail salon where he knew the owners and then when he did expand he didn’t do it all at once. he did it slowly. he went from one to two two to four and gradually expanded his ATM footprint. the key in the ATM business is location and maintenance of your ATM machines. if you don’t have money in the ATM machines for people to be able to take out your ATM machine is not going to be making any money. if your machine breaks or is not functional for whatever reason it’s not going to be making any money and you’re going to be responsible for fixing it. so making sure you understand how you’re going to build the infrastructure to be able to maintain your ATM machine and also to be able to continue to negotiate to keep your ATM machines in the right places these are going to be the keys to being successful in this type of business.
Laundromats
I can’t write an article about cash flow businesses without mentioning laundromats. according to an industry publication there’s a 95% success rate in laundromats almost double the national average of a 50% success rate for most businesses. so what makes laundromats appealing? well everybody is in search of that elusive passive income and at least on the surface laundromats look just like that you find a good location you put in some machines people put in money wash their laundry you go you collect those machines or you collect those credit card swipes and your work is done. you pay for the building pay for the water you pay for the detergent whatever the inputs for laundry would be and then you can set it and you can forget it. but it’s really important to understand here that in business and in life if if it sounds too good to be true it often times is. laundry mats can be a great investment but remember you’re still going to be responsible for the maintenance of all those machines for actually collecting that money making sure that you have a safe clean environment consistently and most importantly have the right location because people are not going to choose you if it’s not convenient and not in the right area. laundromats can be great profitable cash flow businesses and a great entry point for people to get started but if you want to scale it in my experience it takes more capital than people often times realize and that’s one downside of laundromats from my perspective.
Secret Weapon of GoogleGemini
Part 2: Service-Based Businesses (The Path to Scaling)
Those businesses we just talked about are generally good for making thousands but if you want to make millions or billions I actually don’t think property businesses are the best way to scale. services businesses however cost less to start and have more upside if you do it right.
HVAC and Trade Services
If you skip college and go to trade school I genuinely believe this business may be one of the smartest ways to become a millionaire. so a few years ago I decided to do this playbook. i had already built our air filter business into a decent size but I really saw the opportunity in the service-based business and just how big service-based businesses can be. so I decided to partner with a friend that I met back at Goldman Sachs to go out and start our own service-based business in the HVAC space. we call it filter by HVAC solutions. the beauty about the service business is very capital light what it does take is knowledge and systems to be able to go out and scale it. that’s why if I were starting out and I didn’t have money what I would do is go to trade school and really learn the HVAC industry maybe even go out and work for a successful HVAC business for a while before getting started. so if you have the knowledge and the ability to offer a good highquality service at a fair price you’re going to be able to find a business model that scales. so how do you get started in something like this? you follow my exact playbook. you start locally you start building in one small community become the best build your systems around that one specific community and then you slowly start to expand it out from there. social media and the ability to reach local communities at scale has completely changed the game and what I found is most local businesses are still not really utilizing it in the ways that matter. they’re still spending millions of dollars on outdated marketing tactics like billboards and radio all of these types of things when the reality is the attention has moved. the things that the younger demographics are looking for from these services has also changed and so if you’re able to tap into that you can ultimately find a scalable business.
Emergency Tow Truck Services
The hard part about service businesses is that they can be easy to start but that means they can be hard to stand out. that’s why I love this next business so much. i’ll never forget when I first came back to Tallaladega Alabama to start what is now filter by. i was looking around at the local industry and you know what there wasn’t much but one of the richest guys in town local unassuming country guy that probably didn’t graduate the eighth grade but he was extremely successful. and you know what business he was in emergency tow truck services. if your car stalled on the side of the interstate he was the guy that you called that would come and tow you to get you out of harm’s way. but this guy was even smarter. he realized that the real money was when the 18-wheelers had a problem and they needed to be towed. if you had an 18-wheeler that went down on this long stretch of I20 he was basically the only person in the area that had the equipment needed to be able to get your truck towed quickly and best of all it was high margin business and he could basically name his price. the beauty about this business is you don’t have to start big you just have to start in one truck one service area. you buy the truck start advertising and you’re in business. if you want to scale your business you scale the number of trucks in the service area that you have. obviously the downside here of course is you’ve got to have the equipment you’ve got to maintain your trucks and you’ve got to have qualified drivers that are rated to be able to go out and do it. not easy but overcomeable and certainly can be scalable.
Professional Claude SkillsWaste Management
Not enough people are talking about the fact that there’s an $80 billion boring business that you could start today. patrick Dovigi a hockey player from Ontario Canada started GFL or Green for Life in 2007. he began by managing several small Ontario waste management companies then aggressively expanded by making more than 100 acquisitions. his big break came in 2011 when GFL won a Toronto trash collection contract beating out much larger competitors. under his leadership GFL grew from a small local business to a multi-billion dollar empire now serving customers across Canada and the US with over 20,000 employees. today GFL is publicly traded and recognized as one of the top waste management companies in North America. so why is waste management so great? well it’s a huge market it’s something that basically every home or business needs. they need their trash picked up. is trash collection an easy business? no there are environmental concerns there are lots of large players already in the market. so how would I get started if I wanted to get into this? well I would study my local market and find what is my local service missing and the answer may be very different depending on the community. maybe you do your research and find hey they’re only picking up one day a week but I know that there’s enough demand for you know doing it two days a week or doing it on a different day of the week. maybe that’s your opportunity. i don’t know but my guess is if you study it closely enough you may find an angle that you’re going to be able to exploit. that little angle might become your gateway to a multi-billion dollar business if you play your cards right.
Part 3: The Boring Business Cash Flow Checklist
If you’re committed to changing your life make sure your business follows my cash flow checklist. if you do it could save you from making mistakes that could cost you thousands.
Step 1: Keep Your Costs Low and Start Lean
The first step to running a boring business has absolutely nothing to do with how much you make but how much you spend. a few years ago I met a guy named John at a small conference that I was attending. john owns a window cleaning business. what tools did he need in order to do that? he had invested in a squeegee a bucket and some soap and he started cleaning windows for a bank. today John runs a business doing $10 million of revenue at 40% net margins meaning he’s clearing $4 million a year in a window cleaning business. this is an example of a perfect boring business. one of the values of starting lean and by doing the processes yourself is later on when you actually want to scale that business and start to build the systems then because you’ve worked in the business and you know the pain points of that business you’re able to come up with systems that solve those pain points. that’s one of the secrets for me early on when I was building filterby. we now have a thousand employees but there is not a job in any of our factories or in any of our processes that I have not personally done.
Step 2: Validate the Model Before Investing Heavily
People will tell you stories about businesses that take months to get their first sale but the truth is most successful businesses have models to get up and running fast. i had customers before I started our air filter factory. how do you do that? well I actually started out by drop shipping very low margin made almost no money early days doing that but I was doing that to keep my risk low in order to prove out my business model. only after I was convinced I had a system that was going to repeatably get me new customers consistently did I take the leap and actually invest the money in the manufacturing process to make those filters. if you take that approach then it’s way lower risk. maybe it takes you a couple more months to get to market because you’re delaying yourself a little bit but it keeps your risk effectively zero. you can do this in any type of a business if you’re just a little bit creative. if you have a service think about creating a landing page running some Google ads to it and seeing how many people will click to buy. then maybe you find somebody else to actually deliver that service for them if that’s what it takes once you sell it but you validated the idea and you know whether or not you have a system that is going to get consistent business for whatever it is you’re looking to build. and that’s exactly what you need to do in validating your boring business early on.
Step 3: Dominate Your Local Market First
Even though you need to watch your cost and be plug-and-play you still need to be able to compete. if you follow my third step in the checklist you’ll instantly be able to. when Domino’s started in the 1960s it focused on just one college town Michigan. the founders learned exactly what local students wanted fast affordable pizza delivered right to their door. they tailored their menu hours and delivery processes to fit the needs of their local community. this hyperlocal focus allowed Domino’s to perfect its delivery model and customer service before it expanded. the lessons learned from serving one neighborhood became the foundation for building a global franchise even today. Domino’s are run by local operators who know their neighborhoods which helps them to stay competitive and responsive to local taste. i love this example because it highlights just how important it is to be local when building a cash flow business. oftentimes a mistake I see people make is they try to expand too quickly. focus is the key to success. if you spread your resources too thin early on you’re going to lose focus and ultimately are going to fail. you’re way better off focusing on a narrower customer segment whether that be a super local community or a specific avatar for a customer base and really focus on your systems before you expand.
