Fresh Idea #14

Welcome to The Ramen Hustle, your weekly newsletter serving up hot, scrappy business ideas, helping you go from zero to side hustle. The only rule? Don’t just read it. Steal it.

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Every fall, neighbors pin gorgeous porches on Pinterest, then stare at an empty stoop when October rolls in. They want that warm welcome and holiday glow, yet it never quite happens. Life is busy, sizing is tricky, cords are messy, and it is surprisingly hard to turn a mood board into a front door that looks pulled together. Your service steps in as the friendly porch stylist who arrives with a plan, the exact pieces, and a tidy install that flips on at dusk like magic.

The Scrappy Solution: Be the porch stylist who does it all in one visit. You bring curated looks, set everything up in under an hour, snap photos, and return for takedown. You build a small library of mood boards pulled from Pinterest trends and your own test shots, then present two or three ready-to-install options per client. Homeowners choose a look. You handle sourcing, placement, safety, timers, and storage if they want it.

It starts with a five-minute text exchange. The homeowner sends a quick photo of their entry and a Pinterest link or two. You reply with two or three curated looks sized to their steps and railings. Names like Classic Harvest, Moody Modern, Winter Woodland keep the choice fun and clear.

On install day, you pull up with labeled bins, layer the doormat and runner, place planters, anchor tall accents, wire micro lights to a timer, and test everything at twilight. The whole visit takes about an hour. The homeowner gets an instant glow-up and a few styled photos for their family chat and socials. When the season ends you come back, pack it all down just as neatly, and either store it for them or hand over labeled bins.

Annual Recurring Flywheel: Offer an annual plan that locks in repeat bookings and makes inventory planning easy. Customers pick Halloween plus Christmas, then get first dibs on Spring Door and Summer Welcome later. Send a pre-season email with two fresh Pinterest-inspired looks and a reminder that priority slots go to annual plan members. Keep a small storage add-on so you can recharge the same look next year without the homeowner lifting a finger.

Founder Holly Eve bootstrapped Madame Lemy from about $10k in monthly sales to roughly $100k at its peak, a three-thousand percent climb from 2018 to 2021. After years of supply chain shocks and tariff-driven cost spikes as high as two hundred percent, she chose to close the brand, telling The New York Times the grind had taken a real toll on her mental health.

But that didn’t stop her from moving on to something bigger and better (for her). Now she is channeling that hard-won experience into consulting for small businesses and guest lecturing on entrepreneurship and mental health.

Success can mean knowing when to protect your mind and choose a new chapter. Let her pivot be your permission slip to redefine winning and keep building on your terms.

The Play: Pick a busy lot where cars sit for an hour or more and offer a fast interior refresh while people shop or eat. Think grocery centers, gyms, movie theaters, weekend markets, churches between services, or office parks on Saturdays. Print a clean vinyl banner with your name, price, and a big “While You Shop” line, add a sandwich board with QR codes for payment, and you instantly look official. Aim for ten “express detail” jobs at fifty dollars each to clear five hundred in a single day.

“Express Interior Detail - 30 minutes while you shop - $50”

Includes floor mats out and vacuumed, seats and carpets vacuumed, dash and console wiped, glass inside, light trash out, freshener, payment texted receipt. Upsells at checkout: pet hair add fifteen, kid snack clean fifteen, quick exterior spray and wipe twenty.

👉🏼 Next thing you know, you have a full-scale detailing business with customers all week long and a growing team of detailers.