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From Zero to Side Hustle
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The reaction you expect when you close the deal
🧩 Ernő Rubik built a teaching tool. The world got a billion-dollar puzzle.
That’s the gap we look for in business: what you make isn’t always what customers buy. Pay attention to how they use it, what they value, and what they’ll pay for.
The real opportunity may be hiding in their version of your idea.
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You are sitting on $100k to $2 million of data
OpenAI, Micro1 and Anthropic have paid out billions of dollars to partner with companies on their operational data. It's creating a new revenue stream for businesses over 20 people and pays anywhere from $100k - $2 million a pop.
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The Inspector Exam Course
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
On big construction jobs, building codes require a certified special inspector to check things like rebar (the steel bars inside concrete) before it's poured. To get certified, inspectors pass a 90-question, 3½-hour exam from the International Code Council.
Inspectors want to pass the first time. They don't want to spend weekends digging through code books with no idea what the test focuses on.
That's the gap: the exam is required, and the study material is scattered.
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
Turn what you know from work into an online course for one exam, sold for a one-time price. Competitors charge $299 to $449 for the same concrete inspector exam.
The course makes money from individual inspectors. But it grows when firms buy seats for their whole team.
►Gabriel Kramer, a special inspector in Eagle Mountain, Utah, built his first course over nine months of weekends, about 10 hours a week, and paid a programmer $2,200 for the website. It made $4,865 in its first year. He raised the price from $99 to $449, added more exams, and by 2018 SI Certs was bringing in about $45,000 a month.
Zooming out: the exam is the market. Every licensed trade has a test that people dread studying for.
Think: electricians, home inspectors, truck drivers, real estate agents.
🥢 The winners will be the ones who sell to the employer, not just the inspector. SI Certs sells inspection firms 10 seats for $3,490. One firm's training budget is worth dozens of single buyers.
🍜 The risk is credibility and upkeep. You need to have done the job, and codes change, so the course has to be updated. It also starts slow: under $5,000 in year one.
You might also like ⇢ Mike Holt Hated His Electrical Exam Prep, So He Built A Publisher
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What's your take?
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Four Businesses That Run On A Cricut
A Cricut is a desktop machine, like a printer, that cuts letters and shapes out of sticky vinyl. Just under 5.9 million people actively use one, and Cricut sells a refurbished model for $129.
What you can build with it:
Wedding mirror signs · "Welcome to our wedding" lettering for a mirror at the venue · $29.99 to $99.99
Shop window lettering · store hours and logos for main-street shops · $29.99 to $99.99
Boat names · vinyl letters for the back of a boat · $2 to $5 a letter
Truck door lettering · a business name on a work truck, the same job a sign shop charges for · from $250
🥄 The best one: shop window lettering. Every main street has stores with faded hours on the door, and you can walk in and show the owner a sample.
Cut one set of hours for a friend's shop, take a photo, and show it to five other shop owners on the same street before you buy any more vinyl..
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Don't Miss This
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TLDR AI is a free daily email curated by Anthropic and ex-Google engineers: the new tools worth trying and the research worth understanding, summarized for 1.1M+ readers.
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Enough talk. Go cook.
That's the plate. Reply and tell us which exam you passed at work that everyone dreads. Forward this to the coworker who always helps people study. See you tomorrow.
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