In partnership with
|
From Zero to Side Hustle
|
Need I say more?
🚇 The Holland Tunnel opened on November 13, 1927, as the first long underwater tunnel built for cars. The challenge wasn't digging. It was keeping exhaust from choking drivers.
Engineers solved it with four ventilation buildings packed with giant fans, pushing fresh air in and pulling fumes out around the clock. Clifford Holland, the tunnel's namesake, died three years before it opened.
The ribbon cutting gets the attention. The fans keep it running.
Happy Friday the 13th.
|
|
|
Test that business idea this weekend
Skip the funding round and co-founder hunt
Describe the business, get the real product
Take payments from real customers immediately
Find out if your idea works in days
Keep going, or try the next one
Discount of $5 applies to first month of any paid plan. You need to sign up via this webpage in order to claim the discount. The discount applies to new and returning users without an active paid plan. Terms apply.
|
The Driveway Route That Comes Back Every Few Years
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
Asphalt driveways crack once sun and water get into them, and replacing a cracked one costs far more than protecting it.
Most homeowners know they should seal theirs. Nobody wants to spend a Saturday on their knees with a bucket of black goo.
That's the gap: every driveway needs it again in a few years, and most owners won't do it themselves.
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
Sealcoating means brushing or spraying a black liquid coating over the driveway so it doesn't crack. LawnStarter puts the national average at $305 a job. At about $250 a driveway, eight driveways is $2,000 of work in a day.
The business makes money one driveway at a time. But it grows from the list, because every driveway you seal comes due again.
►Andy Shamos started sealing driveways in southern Maine at 18 as a summer job and kept at it while he taught special education for five years. He went full-time in 2011. By 2016 his crews did 8 to 18 driveways a day and more than 800 jobs a summer, and he filled the early season with 10% off anything booked before July 4.
Zooming out: every driveway you seal is a booking you'll get again.
Think: subdivisions with ten-year-old driveways, churches, small apartment lots.
🥢The winners will build the call list. In Decatur, Illinois, a mother-and-daughter crew said almost 100% of their sales came from repeat customers or referrals.
🍜 The risk is the calendar and trust. Sealer won't dry in the cold, so northern crews get about six months of work. And police warn about door-to-door crews that take cash and vanish, so look local, insured and written down.
|
What's your take?
|
Pinewood Derby Wheels That Cost Five Times The Car
The Pinewood Derby is the Cub Scout race where kids carve a block of wood into a car and roll it down a ramp. The official kit, wheels included, costs $7.59.
Derby Dust sells a set of four lightened, polished wheels for $39.95. They're so thin they "flex when squeezed," and the shop warns that if your race bans reshaped wheels, don't buy them. It also sells titanium axles, the nails the wheels spin on, for $34.95, and an $89.95 tool for bending them just right.
🤯 And they're not the only one. Maximum Velocity has sold derby speed parts since 1999, and Pinewood Pro says its axles have been winning races for more than 20 years.
|
Don't Miss This
|
Free, private email that puts your privacy first
Proton Mail’s free plan keeps your inbox private and secure—no ads, no data mining. Built by privacy experts, it gives you real protection with no strings attached.
|
The Furniture Seller Who Buys From Resorts, Not Yard Sales
Most resellers shop where every other reseller shops: thrift racks, yard sales, the same auctions, bidding on one piece at a time. A Georgia furniture seller shows what happens when you find a seller who has to unload on a schedule.
What they uncovered: In 2004 Larry Walker, an advertising salesman in Savannah, was at a resort pool in Orlando when workers asked his family to move so they could swap out the chairs. The chairs looked almost new. A worker told him resorts replace their furniture on a regular cycle and sell the old pieces to liquidators, companies that buy everything a business is getting rid of at once. He quit the next Monday and opened Liquidation Station. By 2018 it sold about 100 tractor-trailer loads of used resort and time-share furniture a year through four Georgia stores.
The usual mistake (our read, not his) is fighting other resellers for single pieces. Walker went to a seller that has to empty whole rooms on a schedule and mostly wants it gone fast. In Washington state, National Hotel Liquidators grew the same way, clearing out hotels before a remodel.
What they learned: find the business that sells on a calendar. School districts replace desks, rental companies retire equipment, hotels remodel. When the 234-room Iowa City Sheraton was emptied, the public could buy pieces for $1 to $1,250.
The first buyer is not "people who want furniture." Walker sells in small towns like Metter and Claxton, to the family an hour from the nearest furniture store who needs a dresser this weekend.
|
8 Things (Not Clothes) That Sold More Last Year, By The Sites That Sold Them
World and ancient coins · old foreign and Roman coins, sold to collectors · $153.7M at Heritage Auctions in 2025, its best ever
U.S. coins · rare American coins · double-digit growth on eBay this spring
Comic books · old issues and hand-drawn pages · $216.2M at Heritage, up from $205M
Sports memorabilia · signed balls, game-worn jerseys · double-digit growth on eBay this spring
Cartoon animation cels · hand-painted sheets used to film old cartoons · $16.6M, Heritage's best year
Designer handbags · secondhand luxury bags · $12.9M, a Heritage record
Jewelry · secondhand gold and diamonds · up 259% on Whatnot, an app for selling on livestreams
Used electronics · phones and games sold on livestreams · up 444% on Whatnot.
|
Hungry yet?
|
Get on TV. Without the fees.
Here's how most TV platforms work: you hand over your budget, and before your ad ever airs, a chunk of it disappears into platform fees and markups.
Universal Ads skips all of that. No platform fees. No hidden markups. Just your brand buying TV directly on 20+ premium publishers like NBCUniversal, FOX, and Paramount. Fully self-serve.
No TV commercial yet? Our self-serve tools and creative partners can help you get one made fast.
New advertisers: use code UALAUNCH26 at sign-up and get $2,500 in matched ad credits when you spend $2,500. That's double the reach for your first TV campaign.
|
|
Enough talk. Go cook.
That's the plate. Reply and tell us the most you've ever spent on something for a kid's school or Scout project. Forward this to the friend who's always out in the driveway. See you Monday.
|