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From Zero to Side Hustle
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Thinking about my Friday plans…
🏀 Steph Curry became an elite shooter by taking thousands of shots until the mechanics became automatic.
The part people notice is the three-pointer. The advantage was built in the repetition.
Most of the businesses we like work the same way. Same route, same customers, same job every Tuesday. The ones that win treat each loop as a chance to get a little better at it.
Let's eat.
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Check this out
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Free Workshop: Turn a Tiny Audience Into $10k/month
We’ve driven over $10M in revenue for our newsletter clients and are unpacking the plug-and-play system thousands of people are using to turn a small email list into $2k-$10k/month.
(…without needing to quit your job, without needing to get on camera, and without needing prior experience).
We’ll show you how to start a newsletter in <30 minutes, scale to 1,000 readers, and make your first $10,000 in revenue.
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Predator-Proof Coops at Bay Area Prices
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
Backyard chicken coops are small wooden henhouses with a fenced run, and homeowners pay builders to make them strong enough to keep out raccoons and rats. When U.S. eggs hit a record $6.23 a dozen in March 2025, a lot more people wanted hens.
Most don't want to build a coop. A cheap flat-pack kit won't stop a raccoon.
That's the gap: people want hens in the yard, and they don't want to find out what a raccoon can open.
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
Build and sell coops and runs, then sell everything around them. Mill Valley Chickens lists redwood coops from $775 to $3,500 and charges $175 for an hour-long design visit in Marin County.
The money comes from coops. But it grows from the extras: runs, site visits, cleanings and automatic doors.
►Leslie Citroen has run Mill Valley Chickens for 15 years. As egg prices climbed in early 2025, she told ABC7 business was up 50%, with buyers coming from San Diego, Oregon and Nevada. Custom predator-proof runs can cost up to $15,000.
Zooming out: a coop is furniture for a pet that makes breakfast. The same model fits any backyard hobby.
Think: rabbit hutches, duck houses, cat enclosures
🥢 The winners will sell the site visit first, then the add-ons: Mill Valley's automatic doors run $155 to $399. A paid design visit turns a browser into a buyer before you cut any wood.
🍜 The risk is licensing and disease. California caps unlicensed work at $1,000 with no permit, and bird flu had hit 1,550+ flocks by early 2025 (Daily Herald). Check your state's license rules before the first big quote.
You might also like ⇢ Seven Custom Coop Builders, From Amish Shops to Urban Designs
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What's your take?
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An HVAC Business That Was Smaller Than Its Books
Parker Mechanical was a heating and air-conditioning contractor in rural Lamar, Colo., paid by homeowners to install and repair furnaces and AC units.
The setup: Dan Burnside, a bank analyst with an MBA, spent seven months looking for a business to buy. This one showed $2.1 million in sales and about $800,000 a year in profit. He cashed out his 401(k) and sold his house to cover the down payment on an SBA loan, a bank loan the government partly guarantees.
The numbers: Price $2.1 million, with about $210,000 down. Roughly two years later he closed the business and filed for personal bankruptcy.
🧯 What actually killed it: Much of that profit couldn't legally be kept. The morning after closing, he learned about 15% of revenue came from plumbing work the company had no license to do. The old owner had also paid the crew cash bonuses off the books, and putting that pay on payroll ate more profit and angered the workers. Within two weeks the refrigeration tech, the seller's son, left to start a competitor.
He also hit the worst HVAC summer in 25 years and then a mild winter. The weather made things worse, but the deal was broken on day one.
Would it have worked if… he had matched every job type in the sales records to a license before closing.
If you're looking at buying a service business, ask for the license behind each kind of job in the invoices, and ask the crew how they get paid, before you sign.
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7 Estate, Garage Sale and Auction Buys, Resold
If you shop estate sales, garage sales or auctions, here are seven real buys that were later resold, with what the buyer paid and what each one went for.
Wine cart · the couple behind the My Money Wizard blog paid $1 at an estate sale and resold it in 2019 · $80
Prototype Nintendo PlayStation · Terry Diebold paid $75 at a bankruptcy auction; his family sold it in 2020 · $360,000
Honus Wagner baseball card · Wayne Gretzky and Bruce McNall paid $451,000 at a 1991 Sotheby's auction and resold it in 1995 · $500,000
18th-century card table · retired teacher Claire Wiegand-Beckmann paid $25 at a garage sale and sold it at Sotheby's in 1998 · $541,500
Apollo 11 moon-dust bag · lawyer Nancy Lee Carlson paid $995 at a 2015 U.S. Marshals auction and sold it at Sotheby's in 2017 · $1.8 million
Apollo 11 moonwalk videotapes · former NASA intern Gary George paid $217.77 at a 1976 government surplus auction; the tapes sold in 2019 · $1.82 million
1776 printed copy of the Declaration of Independence · Donald Scheer's Visual Equities paid $2.42 million at a 1991 Sotheby's auction and resold it in 2000 · $8.14 million
🍱 Pick of the litter: The wine cart. The other six took luck, decades or millions of dollars; this one cost $1. Go to one estate sale on its last day, buy one small piece of furniture for under $20, and list it on Facebook Marketplace before you buy a second.
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Enough talk. Go cook.
That's the plate. Reply and tell us what your neighborhood keeps in its backyards that you think someone should be building better. Forward this to the friend who has been "about to get chickens" for three years. See you tomorrow.
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