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👋 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.
👉🏼 Cup noodles in the dorm, billion-dollar dreams on the whiteboard.
In today’s episode:
🚘 Compete with the DMV - and win
♟ Build the next micro monopoly
🧑🏻💻 The $70k/year app idea
🏡 That one time when Obama helped to launch Airbnb
THE FRESH IDEA
Rank-and-Rent “Smog Test Only” Websites
California has more vehicles on the road than any other state, and most gasoline cars 1976 and newer must pass a Smog Check every two years. Drivers don’t go to the DMV for this—they visit licensed smog stations, often inside local auto shops. That steady, deadline-driven demand is perfect for a simple lead-gen machine.
🚦 The Play: Build super-focused websites that rank for high-intent searches like “smog check near me,” “STAR smog test [city],” and “smog test only [ZIP].” Make each site about one micro-area or neighborhood, not a whole metro. Your offer is simple: book a same-day, test-only appointment with transparent pricing and fast turnaround. You route the calls and form fills to a local automobile shop and charge a flat monthly fee or a per-lead rate.
🚙 Why it Works: Smog checks are recurring, mandatory, and time-sensitive. Consumers want the closest, fastest option with a clear price and hours. Many shops are great at testing but weak at local SEO and landing pages. You become their always-on top-of-Google pipeline.
Monetization: Start with a flat rent of $750–$1,500 per month per site, or $20–$40 per qualified call. As volume proves out, offer exclusivity for a premium. Replicate across nearby ZIPs and cities. One operator can manage 10–30 sites because content, structure, and tracking are templatized. 💰
Ramen First Step: Pick one mid-size city without dominant players. Buy a geo domain, spin up a one-pager on Webflow or WordPress, add a tracked phone number, and create a Google Business Profile with strong photos and services. Run $10–$20/day in branded and “near me” search ads for 2–3 weeks to prime the pump while your SEO marinates.
👉🏼 Once calls hit 20–40 per month, walk into three local stations and offer exclusivity to the first one who says yes. Repeat city by city.
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INVEST LIKE BUFFETT
7 Actionable Ways to Achieve a Comfortable Retirement
Your dream retirement isn’t going to fund itself—that’s what your portfolio is for.
When generating income for a comfortable retirement, there are countless options to weigh. Muni bonds, dividends, REITs, Master Limited Partnerships—each comes with risk and oppor-tunity.
The Definitive Guide to Retirement Income from Fisher investments shows you ways you can position your portfolio to help you maintain or improve your lifestyle in retirement.
It also highlights common mistakes, such as tax mistakes, that can make a substantial differ-ence as you plan your well-deserved future.
MICRO-MONOPOLY
Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses
A micro-monopoly is when one person becomes the go-to in a very small niche. You pick a super specific topic, format, platform, and location—and serve it so well that people don’t even compare options. Staying narrow lets you charge more, run simple repeatable systems, and keep costs low. 🎯
The pattern we see across solo seven-figure businesses is consistent: focused offer, clear buyer, and reliable distribution. The result is real revenue without hiring a team.
Examples:
Stacy Berman is a fitness trainer who grew her year-round outdoor fitness Bootcamp to $1,000,000 ARR.
Allen Walton worked in retail and e-commerce. He grew SpyGuy to 7 figures.
Xue Zhaofeng is an economist who launched a course on economics that brought $8,000,000+ in sales.
Pick your niche. Combine a specific audience with a specific problem and a single content or product format. Think “AI compliance newsletter for hospitals in California,” “B2B podcast edits for fintech demo clips,” or “job board for traveling NICU nurses.” Small markets are fine if the problem is painful and budgets exist.
The leverage stack. Ship fast with no-code and AI. Productize delivery so scope and outcomes are fixed. Build distribution you control: newsletter, search, or partnerships. Add simple automations for onboarding, billing, and fulfillment. Time saved becomes margin. ⚙️
Value ladder. Start with an entry product that proves value, then ascend: guide → template → subscription → premium guidance. Each rung deepens trust and raises average revenue per customer.
Starter checklist:
Define a razor-specific ICP and problem.
Validate with 5–10 paid pilots.
Productize the winning service.
Build one distribution engine and post weekly.
Add a subscription or retainer once demand is steady. 🚀
Keep it tiny, keep it focused, and keep stacking leverage. That’s how one person becomes the default choice—and turns a small corner of the internet into a very big business.
WIN STREAK
Reddit is full of inspiration. Here’s a recent find 👇🏽
“Last year I built this app.
I just wanted to solve a problem that I kept running into daily. I was building projects with ChatGPT but it kept forgetting context and I had to explain the same things over and over.
So I built a simple memory which made building projects with AI a lot smoother. This was was quite new at the time. I launched the app in a founder community on X and they really liked it. Many people had the same problem I did and they came with great feedback for how to make the app better.
I made a few more updates and fast forward to today, I just reached $70k ytd revenue with the app. I honestly never thought it would go this far but it really shows how problems that genuinely frustrate you are worth solving.
So build a solution to that thing that frustrates you. You never know how far you can get in a year.”
STARTUP CRUNCH
The wild fundraising hack that helped Airbnb survive before it was Airbnb!
🫏 In 2008, the founders were broke, the site was stuck, and credit cards were maxed. So they leaned into the U.S. election news cycle and created limited-edition breakfast cereal: Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s. They designed real boxes, wrote witty copy, sourced cheap bulk cereal, and hand-assembled units in their apartment. Boxes sold for about $40 each as “collector’s editions.” The result: roughly $30,000 in revenue—enough to pay off debt, keep the lights on, and buy time to iterate on the product.
🇺🇸 Why it worked: They hijacked cultural momentum. The DNC and election dominated headlines, so the cereals became a talking piece that landed press and inbound interest. It also showed investors something numbers alone couldn’t: resourcefulness and taste. Paul Graham famously cited the cereal stunt as proof these founders would “figure it out,” which helped them get into Y Combinator (Winter 2009).
When money is tight, signal scrappiness. Ride a trend, ship a simple collectible, and turn attention into cash and credibility.
Are you thinking outside the box? 🤔
AN APP WITH SOUL 🎶
Learn Piano Through the Music You Love
flowkey is the all-in-one piano app for players of any level. Start from scratch with step-by-step interactive courses or dive into the sheet music library. With over 1000 songs across all genres, you’ll always find something you love to play.
QUICK SIPS
📚 Must-Read: These Small-Business Owners Are Putting AI to Good Use
📈 Trending Story: Six-figure salaries no longer deliver financial stability
💬 Founders Story: A chicken-finger LA stand now worth $1 billion
