Blue-Collar Slab Hustle

Written by Shane Parrish and reMarkable, this workbook helps you pause and reflect. Rather than add pressure, it relieves it, bringing clarity to what truly matters.


A simple reset for January. A thoughtful way to review your year.

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🔥 FRESH IDEA

A driveway that sinks two inches can turn into a $5,000 problem the moment a buyer’s inspector or an angry neighbor points at it.

The customer isn’t buying concrete. They’re buying a fast fix for an obvious hazard. Instead of ripping out a slab, you drill a few small holes, inject expanding material underneath, and lift it back to level in a few hours. No demolition. No waiting days for new concrete to cure. The before-and-after is dramatic, which makes this one of the rare local services that markets itself.

The best proof is watching operators who’ve scaled it. In The $10 Million Success Story of Leveled Concrete, the owner breaks down how the business grew into a serious operation by turning slab lifting into a repeatable system and stacking jobs like a route business. Another concrete lifting breakdown walks through the math behind hitting $680K/year when you keep a calendar full and keep your average tickets consistent. These are not “one giant project” businesses. They win with volume, scheduling discipline, and simple sales.

Pricing makes the model work. Homeowners already expect poly lifting to land in the “hundreds to low thousands” range, depending on square footage and access. Angi pegs polyurethane lifting at $5 to $25 per square foot, and A-1 Concrete Leveling lists typical service totals from $875 to $8,100+, depending on the job size and method.

The Ramen Hustle first step: Google “concrete lifting” in your city, count the real competitors, then drive older neighborhoods and list 25 obvious sink spots. Quote five. Put a yard sign up on every job. Your next customer will come from the last slab you lifted.

▶ SMART PLAY

Your consulting business doesn’t hit a ceiling because you aren’t good. It hits a ceiling because you can’t clone yourself.

Workshops are the clean escape hatch. You package one repeatable outcome, teach it to a room, and get paid 10–30x for the same expertise you’ve been delivering on calls. This isn’t a theory. High-end workshops sell for real money. A breakdown of an Acquisition.com event lists $5,000 per seat with roughly ~100 attendees in the room, which is how a “single workshop” becomes serious revenue fast. On the smaller end, cohort-style educators show the same leverage: one facilitator shared they sold $250,000+ in course tickets by running a tight, repeatable program instead of 1:1 delivery.

To run it, you don’t need fancy infrastructure. List your workshop on Eventbrite when you want built-in discovery and easy ticketing. Use Lu.ma when your audience is more professional and the page needs to feel premium before they even click “register”.

The practical move: stop selling “consulting.” Sell one outcome. One room. One day. Record it. Then rerun it monthly until it becomes predictable revenue.

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❌ FAST FACT

The first year kills businesses because the bill shows up before the skill does.

Month one feels exciting. Month six feels confusing. Year one is where the real pressure hits: inconsistent leads, messy delivery, refunds, and the slow realization that “working hard” does not automatically equal profit. That’s why the first 12 months are the danger zone, and it’s not just vibes.

But the takeaway isn’t doom. It’s direction. Businesses usually fail for reasons that are fixable: running out of cash, weak market demand, and lack of differentiation. Fundera’s breakdown is blunt about the patterns, especially cash flow and market need being repeat offenders.

The underrated move is using support systems early instead of waiting until things are on fire. Survive year one by reducing complexity. One offer. One customer type. One delivery system. If you stay alive long enough to learn, the math improves.

🗡 COMPETITIVE EDGE

If you can write one great answer, you can earn clicks for years without touching it again.

Quora works because it sits right in the path of high-intent searches. People Google questions. Quora ranks. Your answer becomes the thing that gets read when someone is actively trying to solve a problem. That’s why this strategy is a slow burn that compounds.

Here’s the cheat sheet that actually works:

Step 1: Pick one niche.
Don’t answer everything. Own one topic.

Step 2: Only answer questions that already rank.
Ahrefs breaks down how Quora pages show up in Google and how answers can keep pulling traffic long after you post them.

Step 3: Write the “final boss” answer.
Neil Patel’s playbook is simple: structure matters, clarity matters, and aggressive promotion kills trust.

Step 4: Link once, naturally, to a helpful asset you own.
Your goal is “help first, click second.”

Step 5: Repeat weekly.
Quora even positions itself as a platform to “grow traffic” because the content stays discoverable over time..

Quick test: answer 3 questions this week that your ideal customer would Google at 11pm. One great answer can quietly become your best salesperson.