In this episode of Owned and Operated, John and Jack explore the wild and unconventional world of lifestyle businesses—where personal passion meets profit.
From running an online Magic: The Gathering store to launching a ski wax brand, buying a marina, or even farming ants and mushrooms, the duo dives into how niche interests can evolve into sustainable, revenue-generating ventures. They discuss the lifestyle advantages of owning passion-driven businesses, the economics of niche markets, and how to balance multiple income streams while having fun doing it.
Whether you're curious about collectibles, concierge services, or the idea of turning hobbies into scalable side hustles, this episode is packed with insight, laughter, and unexpected ideas.
🔹 In This Episode, We Cover:
- Building a business around Magic: The Gathering
- Running a niche eCommerce store
- Monetizing hobbies like ant farming and mushroom cultivation
- Exploring the economics of ski wax and seasonal products
- What it takes to own and operate a marina
- Concierge services for high-end travel
- Revisiting Bitcoin mining and its business model
- How to align business with your lifestyle goals
🎧 Listen to more episodes & resources:
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👤 Hosted by:
John Wilson – https://x.com/wilsoncompanies
Jack Carr – https://x.com/thehvacjack
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223 Transcript
John Wilson: [00:00:00] I think what we're here to talk about is the weirdest ways to make money. I've been playing Magic the Gathering recently, nerd Alert, but I think collectibles is really interesting. You can create this high volume, high retail interest in a collectible item, but I found two online businesses. But it was like 750,000 in cash.
Just I was like, maybe, maybe
Jack Carr: lemme have not. I mean,
John Wilson: maybe
welcome back to Owned and Operated. It is 2 43 on a Wednesday and Papa just cracked a drink. No free promo. And I'm ready to rip.
Jack Carr: I'm not allowed to have any more of those. Our producer John m told me that. I'm gonna hurt myself. Yeah. Too myself. So today we're talking about raw dogging life right now. Raw dogging life.
That's a way, can we say that legally?
John Wilson: [00:01:00] Um, yeah.
Jack Carr: We're sorry it's been a long day.
John Wilson: Yeah. Well, I think, I think what we're here to talk about is the weirdest ways to make money, or you said lifestyle businesses.
Jack Carr: E either because they kind of go hand in hand. There's some weird ones that are like. They're weird, but they also like, it's because it gives you the lifestyle and we'll get there.
Okay. I like, I want you to go first. I think you should go first with the, the weird business that you told me about. Okay.
John Wilson: Okay. Okay. Alright. So like, one of the downsides, you know, this, I'm just explaining this to the lister, one of the downsides of being inquisitive. Mm-hmm. A cur, I'm curious. Mm-hmm.
Curious person. I like to do stuff. Mm-hmm. And acquisitions are fun. So, uh, I've been playing Magic The Gathering recently. I've put this on Twitter. Nerd, nerd, nerd. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I put this on Twitter. I don't care. Hey, if, if you wanna fly to [00:02:00] Ohio and play Magic the Gathering, like, let's fucking go. Let's go.
Well, I just, I just found out. Sam Preston from Service Scalers.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Plays. He plays magic.
John Wilson: He plays, yeah. I didn't know, like I, he, he texted me about it last night 'cause a friend of his saw me tweet about it and he is like, hold on, were you joking? I was like, hell no, dog. Like, are you joking?
Jack Carr: And no, we're gonna play some magic.
I love myself a good strategy board Game Settlers of Gaan. Oh, that's like, like the entry level, I'm saying literally.
John Wilson: That's literally like 1 0 1. I know. But then Magic was voted the most complicated. Tabletop game in the world.
Jack Carr: I don't disagree. I don't know anything about magic. All I'm saying was I'll go down some of those rabbit holes with you to like, Hey, let's play this strategy training game where you have to build stations all over the map and get power to 'em, and I'm all in.
That being said, being said on magic, I'm out. Yeah, that's too much. [00:03:00] So much. I don't
John Wilson: know what, you know, this is just like. Of all the plumbing company, hvac, you know, of all the owners that I know. Mm-hmm. I am the nerdiest and that has always been the case. Yeah. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't quite know what a Durham X is.
Someone said that in tweet. I think it's a type of truck. I motor played World of Warcraft for way too long. Mm-hmm. Uh, I'm into mad, like I'm in mad gathering. Fuck yeah. So, but like, I don't understand. I was a plumber.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: You know, so I, I really don't know what happened. Somewhere along the way, everybody got really into hunting and trucks and I was like, what about magic?
The gathering?
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Or like dungeon, you know, I did Dungeons and Dragon, a little d and d group for a couple years. That was super fun. I could see that I would do DD I've never done it, but yeah, I
Jack Carr: mean, I didn't like show up in a cape, but it was fun. Yeah. The idea [00:04:00] of it is fun. I've never done that. My, my nerdiness goes a different direction.
So for those of you don't know, I, well, my son and I, who's my son's five. Our thing right now is we go and find, especially right now in the season, we go and find queen ants and start up ant farms. Oh yeah. So we start up ant farms. I am an a, uh, avid, um, also mushroom grower like I have. Turkey tail, mushrooms, risi, mushrooms.
John Wilson: I, yeah.
Jack Carr: Yeah. All the lion's mane. Blue oyster. So like I cultivate and grow mushrooms on the side as well. So also nerdy. Just different. Different type,
John Wilson: different type,
Jack Carr: different type
John Wilson: D different folks, different jokes. But anyways, so that's probably why we get along. Yeah, sometimes. So I'm, I'm playing, playing magic with the boys.
The boys playing magic with the boys. So we've, so we like magic. What, what does it look like? Is it like having a few beers and just. Fuck. Yeah. Like hanging out, like literally I'll cook some brisket or some ribs. That's good. Like I have like five people over. We have like, I have drinks. Yeah. It's fun. Like it's a good time.
You just chill. But [00:05:00] uh, and like we've been doing, we're on like year five or six of us, pretty free, pretty, uh, frequent board game night.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: So like once a month. Sometimes we get outta the loop during like heavy busy seasons or something. Yeah. But we've been doing board games in this group for years, so then we're just like.
We got tired of like the ti, like board games. Mm-hmm. We kept replaying 'em. So it's like, all right, let's do something more complicated. So magic. Are you still running your referral program with spreadsheets and Venmo? Well, VUCA is gonna bring you referrals into the 21st century. It's a referral program on steroids.
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Business ways. Wow. [00:06:00] Let's relate. So, well, I'm, I'm gonna tag this in really quick. Almost. Almost. We are working on the whole senior leadership team. Almost the entire senior leadership team at this point has bought a magic deck.
Jack Carr: Oh
John Wilson: yeah. No,
Jack Carr: it's, oh. So if you want build culture at your company, get everyone highly invested in the game.
Magic together, Steve Scuba or magic.
John Wilson: There you go. Yeah, yeah. No, it's fun. So everyone that I play with, like these guys, they, they understand, uh, John. Mm-hmm. And, uh, John is a coldblooded capitalist. So anytime I, I do something, I'm always looking for, well, how can I make money off of this thing? Mm-hmm. Like, hold Cookoff is great.
Like, Hey, let's hold a conference skiing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It was amazing. So obviously I started checking out this new hobby match, the gathering, getting in, getting into it. It's a lot of fun and uh, yeah. You know, casually start looking for businesses that are for sale [00:07:00] related to magic, the gathering. Oh.
So we found a couple, uh, and they actually weren't that bad. So like, one of the ones that I was, I saw 'cause like what I didn't want. What I didn't want was like a store.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: You know, that I would've to like, you know, I didn't want a retail experience. That sounds like a nightmare. Um, but I did want, there's this whole like collectibles is a thing.
Yeah. That is a market. And there are a lot of collectibles in the, like car, like Pokemon car type thing. Like those things are worth freaking dollars. Mm-hmm. It's absolutely wild to me. And, I mean, I guess I'm a buyer of it, but like people are spending a ton of money.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: So, uh, yeah, just really interesting.
So I think collectibles in general are kind of like just an interesting asset class. How do you, how do you get into it? Some people collect cars, some people collect $2 million one time fucking Pokemon cards or Tarbucks cards or something. [00:08:00] Um. In that case, I'd probably prefer the car, just so you know, not that much into the magic stating my level of nerdiness I would take, I would still take the car.
I would take the car. Yeah. Um, but I think collectibles is really interesting. Mm-hmm. And, uh, so it, it's kind of attractive because you have this, like you can create this high volume, high retail interest in a collectible item. Mm-hmm. Which is gonna have high margins. So I started looking at a few of these businesses.
There was some of the retail shops not interested in those. Uh, but I found two, uh, like online businesses that were just interesting. One was on quiet light brokerage, which I've looked at for years and just never pulled a deal off of. Um, and like, I'm not gonna go too deep 'cause I, yeah, think I'm under nda, but like.
I think they were asking like 2 million bucks for it. I'll just give like the highlights of what we saw on the website. It's like 2 million bucks. [00:09:00] I feel like it did eight to 900 in sales, but it was like 750,000 in cash
Jack Carr: flow. Just like crazy margins. Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah. And I like, I saw P and Ls, like that was the cash flow.
Yeah. Like that was really it. And I was like, fuck me. Like that. Maybe. Maybe. I mean, maybe business owner maybe. Uh. Ultimately decided to like, you know, cool it on that boo.
Jack Carr: But that would've been fun. That would've been fun. That would've been fun. And see, but that's my point. Like weird, but also lifestyle, like Oh yeah.
Like the minute that you buy that business, you know, you'd be messing with it because it's so cool. Totally.
John Wilson: It's a funny business. Yeah. Like it, it was like two contractors and it was, uh, so my, sometimes I, I look at my like, current life now and. I'm sure people have opinions on like what I, how I should be spending my time.
But like I, 10 years ago, I really wanted [00:10:00] to run a content business like 20 13, 20 11. I was like avidly learning and reading all these blogs and like trying to figure out how to build a business and make more money and you know, I was a young adult, so just trying to figure it out. So, uh, back then I was like obsessed with this idea of a content business.
And it's kind of funny now 'cause we've built one
Jack Carr: Yeah. But
John Wilson: like 10 years later. Yeah. Very unrelated to what I thought it was gonna be. But I've wanted to do a content business mm-hmm. For over a decade. Um, and the magic, the this magic the gathering thing was kind of funny 'cause that's what it was. It was like a, it was what I would've planned on building a decade ago when I was thinking about this business type.
Um, it was heavily ad driven, heavily traffic driven. Mm-hmm. Uh, so like tons of cash flow, big name. So like, if you're in that sphere, I think you'd know the name. I didn't, 'cause I'm not that deep into magic yet, but I will soon be. And um, [00:11:00] but it, it was a fun way to make a million bucks, I thought. Yeah. Like, I was like, yeah, that'd be hilarious.
Jack Carr: And the cool part too is like, if you really did enjoy magic that much, it's something that. I think that you would enjoy every day as you went to work. It makes work a lot easier.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: Um, especially when it's even exceeding that much need to go to work.
John Wilson: You know, there, there's an argument some of these businesses, like the revenue to headcount are so, is insane.
Yeah, it is insane. Like I've, I've brought up my friend, uh, Matt, uh, Paulson and he runs Market Beat and. That's a 50 or $60 million business. Mm-hmm. It's like 20 people or 25 people. Like it is insane. Yeah. It's 3 million bucks ahead. That's crazy. That is crazy. So like you said, show up to work and I'm like, I actually don't think this magic thing, I don't think anybody has to show up to work.
There's not like much to do.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Just set, keep it going. Keep the train on the tracks pretty much. Yeah. I think
John Wilson: leverage of [00:12:00] audience is really
Jack Carr: interesting. Mm-hmm. I mean, you can see it at an extreme for like Craigslist. Like Craigslist was in, in San Francisco back, uh, quite a few years ago, was doing something crazy.
It was one of the largest companies and they have their OG website with I think it was something crazy. 15 people working there.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. Billion dollars with 15.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Like wildly successful with such.
John Wilson: And I think that's sort of coming around again. Like more and more ai, like you just need mm-hmm. Less to launch.
Mm-hmm. But yeah, I think that's kind of fun. And I always, I always liked this, uh, I was a big longtime reader of, um, financial samurai.com. I don't actually know if it's still going. I haven't read it in a while. I haven't read it in a while. That was like an eight, nine year reader of that. And uh, that was a long time reader of a guy named Joshua Kennon and yeah, just like really big fan of the content business.
Yeah. So I guess I got there.
Jack Carr: Very cool. So the weird one slash lifestyle one that I'm bringing to the table today is, uh, ski wax business. Oh, shit. [00:13:00] So all they did was they were a mom and pop shop out of, I wanna say it was Northern Virginia that. All they sold was ski wax, and they sold a patented sharpening kit, like a self sharpening kit.
So you could take your own skis, sharpen the edges all by yourself. You didn't need to take it into a shop. So in the way that they did it, and the way that it was designed for sharpening was that it was highly customizable, so you could change the angle of the edge and everything like that. But the cool part was that.
A hundred percent lifestyle. Like when I asked about marketing, they said, Hey, we do a little bit of e-commerce and by a little minute it's like $2 million a year in revenue of e-commerce. And then they just go around to ski towns and they go skiing and they meet with pros. And I was like, oh my gosh, this would be the best business to own.
It was right as I found Rapid, so I know it was over three years ago. So NDAs gone. They've probably already sold. Um Oh, so this was on the market? This was on [00:14:00] the market.
John Wilson: What was total revenue?
Jack Carr: 2 million.
John Wilson: Okay.
Jack Carr: So it was like 2.4 in revenue, 2.3 in revenue. They wanted 1.8, I wanna say 1.7 if I remember correctly.
And it was four people and they sold ski wax, like that's the bottom line. That's hilarious. And the way they sold ski wax as they went skiing. Yeah. In different communities. They showcased and demoed it at mountains. They sold it at mountain resorts. But like it really like, that was never the driver. It was all word of mouth.
And it was all word of mouth. Because the specific wax too is like racing wax. Like it was really high quality fast wax. So they were a premium product. They didn't need to do much other than a few demos per year. But they had fun. They just went skiing and, and demoed the unit. Like I couldn't imagine having my write-offs being just, Hey, I flew out to, yeah, I had to go ski.
I had to go to Aspen, to Tahoe to do a real quick, oh, I had to go down to Taos and uh, which by the way, how
John Wilson: have we not skied together? I do think we need to talk. Yeah.
Jack Carr: [00:15:00] If I showed you a picture of my wall, I have eight pairs of skis that lined up on my wall in like a shrine like thing. Yeah. Because I love skiing.
Yeah. Like love it. It's amazing. That's one of the reasons I married my wife. Yeah. Is I, I go in skiing, I took her skiing with me. Yeah. She kept up. Yeah. And I was like, whoa, she's really good at skiing. She's also from Lake Tahoe. Yeah. Yeah. So I was hoping to get some of that. I can live in Lake ta the rest of my life in Ski.
But yeah, either way, she doesn't listen to this podcast, so we're good. Yeah, yeah.
John Wilson: We're safe. We're safe.
Jack Carr: But, um, she would've loved that business too. That would've been fun. Yeah. So there was a, there I think you posted, uh, commented on it too. Uh, R Christian R. Posted the other day about the, the 120 5K position to run a home service business in Breckenridge called Colorado.
Yeah. I was like, oh my gosh, man. Vibe was, I'll take it. I mean, I, I, I might, I'm gonna, I'm gonna need to ski for, I might need to like 12 to four every day. I'm gonna be a really bad owner because I just won't be there for Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fridays, yeah. Ever. Yeah. Probably [00:16:00] not even Friday. Probably more like Wednesdays.
'cause the mountain be empty. Yeah. But still not for every storm. Well, I,
John Wilson: I'll be, I'll be, uh. Content creating from nine to 12, and then skiing from 12 to four.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: I will be a great leader via text.
Jack Carr: Yes. On the chairlifts every day.
John Wilson: Yeah,
Jack Carr: man. That, that's like, that would be one of my dreams. So that was, that was one of the really cool ones that I am sad to this day that I passed up.
Um, just because I, I got like decently far in the process. Like, I gotta see, oh really? I got to see p and ls and stuff. Okay. But at the end of the day, I just, I couldn't be myself to be an e-commerce owner. Yeah, it's just, it's not my style. I didn't know anything about e-commerce, like when I bought an HVAC business.
Like I know how to like fix things. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how to do e-commerce.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: I mean that, and I came out of a business that failed, failed with e-commerce, the e-commerce winery. It's like I knew some stuff, but not like you couldn't rip it. I don't think I could rip it. It would be purely for fun.
And like with an SBA loan, fun is [00:17:00] not necessarily the greatest, uh, factor in choosing it. So that's one of my favorite. The only other favorite that I, we ran into, and we talked about it a long time ago, was a, the power Generations. No. Oh, that, those ones are cool too. Yeah. Oh, I
John Wilson: forgot about that. Those were good power generators and, well, I brought up you had that like unique asset brokerage.
Mm-hmm. I brought that up to somebody as like an idea.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: So I have a friend. Um, he, I don't know that this is lifestyle, it's just like niche as hell. Yeah. So this guy, so my friend is working with this other guy, so like, you know, two, two parts away and there's all this, uh, I don't remember the grant, but there's this federal grant that gives you research money specifically tied mm-hmm.
To the EIN of a business. So like you might get $10 million to go research this one thing, and then maybe the business goes under, the [00:18:00] project dies out, or they run outta funding or whatever. But they created ip, a lot of ip, and that IP is tied to that grant, which is tied to that EIN. So this guy is selling off the IP and the EIN attached to this very specific federal research grant.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: Which just seemed like wildly niche. I have no idea what his commission is. I feel like he could be like 20 or 30. He's like the only one. Yeah, like he run, he, it is similar to that website. We, we like ran through that website. He like sells these generators. It's like, it's like 10 of 'em in the us.
Yep. He's the only dude selling 'em, it's the same shit.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: Like if somebody's got IP to sell that they got from this grant, they go to this guy. If they wanna buy really cheap IP that somebody did all the research on, they go to this guy. It
Jack Carr: was funny. Yeah. That's really neat. 'cause that, that was the interesting part about that series was, don't get me wrong, I love power generation and, and especially small, private.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: Uh, water turbine. Especially power generation. Very highly specific, weird niche. You wanna [00:19:00] talk about a passive business? There's your one and only semi passive business that really just kinda let the water continue to go. Yeah. Almost too passive. 'cause you have no control over if it rains or not.
Well, there's like beside the point.
John Wilson: Yeah. There's, I at Capital camp, like three years ago, there was a, a speaker that bought, um, YouTube channels mm-hmm. But didn't create any more revenue. Like didn't, didn't create any more content. So I don't, I don't remember. There's like a decay on YouTube videos. So like you put a video out on YouTube and it's gonna continue like driving views over mm-hmm.
Some x amount of time because of search volume or whatever. So it had some out so that that was passive as hell. 'cause they bought a content business that has all the benefits of content. I origin, like consistency shows up. You can add affiliates, you can do all that stuff. They never had to create content.
Yeah. So they just bought these things at like a discount. So like someone stopped creating a year ago, sold the channel off, and they just like held onto it. So maybe it's like [00:20:00] 50,000 subs and they made a million dollars over the course of two years and they bought it for $200,000. Same with the, that was passive.
Or
Jack Carr: the people that do that do that with music, they buy the rights to Yeah,
John Wilson: yeah, yeah. Little songs, yeah. Royalties.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And then just the royalty from it, and then they let it. Go. I looked at that. They try to sell it to
John Wilson: people. Looked, I've, I've looked at that over the years and like, I, I obviously don't understand how to value royalties.
Uh, but there it's like kind of a liquid market.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Like there's a lot of websites out there to just go buy royalties on. Mm-hmm. You know, before, uh, before this is like good and bad, but before Wilson like blew up and became like, uh, like. Yeah, I was able to get a like, sort of like all these like rabbit hole bullshit things.
Jack Carr: Typical owner.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: It's a grass is greener. Oh, I'm interested in something else. Yeah. Anything to distract you from what you actually should be doing. Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah. It, it is, it is [00:21:00] funny. Uh, 'cause I feel like a lot of this stuff I used to look into and just spend hours. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Like how do we, how do we do that?
And then the business passed $5 million and it's like, nope. Gotta focus. Yeah. Yeah. But I, I do think it would be, on one hand, it sounds fun to run these little like magic things, but on the other it's like, I kind of do wanna hit a thousand employees like God. Right.
Jack Carr: You know, I could go buy this business that's never gonna grow and it's gonna be about this size forever.
Maybe if I do some stuff and spend some time, it'll get a little bit bigger. Yeah. Or I can go drive my business past 40 million. Yeah. One, one of those
John Wilson: two. Yeah. Yeah. One of those like,
Jack Carr: yeah. Yeah.
John Wilson: So, well, I, I think, I think the tricky thing too, like, so, uh, you know, we run a conference called HoldCo comps, like, you know, I get it.
Uh, but you know, running different verticals gets really complicated. Mm-hmm. And, uh, arguably I'm running two verticals right now with like the content business [00:22:00] and Wilson Plumbing. Those are two pretty different. We've been using Avoca AI for over a year, and Tyson and the team have just been incredible partners.
We've been able to catch more after hours calls, more weekend calls, and book more jobs automatically. Make sure you click the link below and tell 'em we sent you,
Jack Carr: but Yes. Um,
John Wilson: so yeah, so we, uh, we run two verticals now and the. Problem is, you know, and this is, this is meant to be like the fun way is to make a bunch of money, but it, it, it's, uh, it's hard.
Jack Carr: Yeah,
John Wilson: it's hard. And I have, I have friends like, and we see 'em at Koko, where like you'll have people running like 10 different projects, but they're like $10 million total revenue, $15 million from revenue. So I'm like, all right, I think you took hold cook comp a little too far. 'cause a bunch of million dollar businesses sounds like a fucking nightmare, fucking nightmare.
Jack Carr: I mean, maybe if they're like the magic one. So I, I and I, I've never been to hold cook comp. I just, [00:23:00] I, in some of the same circles, a lot of 'em are high leverage, low lift businesses, like this magic one, right? It doesn't take a ton of work. It is only gonna generate a million dollars in revenue every year.
But like. How much energy do you have to put in still? That being said, I would take one business doing that versus 10 businesses doing that.
John Wilson: Yeah. Well the problem is at a certain point, like no matter how much lift or leverage, you can't, you have to build a team. Yeah. And it almost defeats the purpose of owning these disparate.
Jack Carr: Yeah. I mean, you can kind of see that actually though, within the, the hvac, plumbing electro space. Right. Is one of the things that I didn't understand when I started the plumbing department was that even though it's under the same roof. Like running HVAC and plumbing. Yeah, totally different infrastructure, different businesses like Yeah, completely different businesses.
Yeah. And so if we all think, ah, you just, you know, add plumbing, just add plumbing. It's that easy. And you turn it on and it's good to go to some extent. Yes. There's an easy portion, like instant ip, you get some customers. Yeah. But on the other hand, it's. [00:24:00] You have to market separately to those customers.
Yeah. To get plumbing jobs versus HVAC jobs, different call boards, you did different call boards, different trainings, different every different managers. Yeah. You lose that, some of that scale effect. Um, and so, but at the same time you do see some benefits like running, owned and operated, owning, you know, Wilson owning this, that all kind of go in that same direction.
And I think that's the goal if you're gonna own multiple, but this was supposed to be about fun, weird businesses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So my other one, oh yeah. This, besides this super niche website selling like 250,000 watt specialty generators that you're gonna hold onto for six years and then finally sell it to some random company for like a 50 times.
So like a 50 times wild multiple or like used wind turbines. Um, the other one that I liked that I thought was super weird, but would be fun in a sense was that restocking and supplying. Of Jets, private jets, [00:25:00] so, oh yeah. Remember we had that? We you, we did the food service. We did the food service for that.
Yeah. So like, how much fun would that be to be like, we are working with these really high-end owner assistant or like business class peoples assistants to restock their jets and to make sure that they're good to go. They have their food, they have entertainment, whatever they need. For those jets. I always think that business would've been fun, even though in my mind, I know probably not.
Probably terrible. What? Just I think because A, you're not actually working with the person who owns the jet, which is what I would think could be the fun part. Like, hey, I get access to a bunch of millionaires and billionaires that are like flying in on Jets. Two, I think that there's a very, very high level of expectation and, um.
I, I mean in food service expectation, not my thing. Yeah. Like making sure that the meal is good. Like how do you make sure the meal is, you know, I, I'm never gonna be French Laundry or one of these five star [00:26:00] Michelin star restaurants. So like how do you make sure that the food expectation is good enough to meet those demands?
Yeah. But in my mind, I'm gonna still pretend that it's a really fun business where you get to hang out and talk to a bunch of multimillionaire business owners,
John Wilson: I think. I think there could be. Um, like a problem solving business, like a concierge style business that could be fun. Uh, like, Hey, I want this unique thing.
Uh, how do you make it happen? Mm-hmm. And then like, that's the business. Yeah. It's almost like what people say Amex Black card was like 20 years ago. Or like, Hey, I need a seashell off this beach. And like someone from Amex like goes and, you know, grabs it and drives it out to wherever. Those were some of the stories from like original black card.
Mm-hmm. And I think that type of business would be fun because it's like eccentric as hell.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: You just get to do random match shit. It's problem solving
Jack Carr: too, right? Yeah. Like that's a big problem to solve. It's like how do we get out there and make this happen?
John Wilson: [00:27:00] Yeah.
Jack Carr: And that's kind of a neat thing, especially for people who are like fix it mentality.
Yeah. It's like it is a fun problem. It's different every day. Yeah. That's why I like facilities. Um. When I did facilities, it was like, Hey, one day somebody's clogging the toilet and the next day that data wasn't fun. Yeah. But the next day's like, Hey, we need you to build this intricate bar out of Redwood and you have a week in this budget to do it and make it look really cool.
Go. Yeah. And like me and the, our carpenter on staff are like, design it and build it and this is where the fridge is gonna go. It needs a fridge, it needs this many drawers. How are we gonna hang line racks and like this whole night? So we gotta like design it and build these like just beautiful pieces of.
Furniture and art and everything. It has its good sides when, when it works and people really like it. And then other times when they know they're like, Jack, that was shitty. It's not so good day. It's like, you just wasted a thousand dollars on this piece of crap. It's like, oh, I thought it was cool. Good job.
Good job, Jack. That's how I actually, I lost all my hair, so. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of head pats. A lot of head pats. Yeah. Uh,
John Wilson: [00:28:00] I know you've seen some cooler businesses, though. I feel like Marina would be fun. So we had a marina locally. Mm-hmm. That went for sale. So the city owns the marina. Mm-hmm. And they're trying to find someone to run it.
'cause I guess they can't, or it won't, they just don't want to, I guess headaches. I have no idea. I, I guess I, it, it felt like a repossession, but they needed the marina to stay open.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: Because it, it was kind of weird, but there was an email that was sent out. I don't know, I don't even remember how I got it.
Like someone's like, John might buy this thing buying random things all the time. Yeah. But I think marinas are kind of like a funny business. Um, Brandon just got a new boat like last two weeks ago or something like that. Mm-hmm. And it had a three year prepaid dock slip. Okay. And it's like three grand a year.
Yeah. And it's just like, for fucking, nothing, like a dock, just parking a dock. They installed like 50 years ago. Uh, and then like food's high, you get rental, you get just a lot. It's just a [00:29:00] funny business, so I feel like I can mess around with. Plus you get to tag in like the, you know, we talked about yacht repair, like.
In this case it's like pontoon repair. But
Jack Carr: yeah,
John Wilson: you can tag in boat repair, which seems extremely high margin.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And then back to lifestyle, you're working on the the marina? Yeah. You like fishing, you like boating? Yeah. Like
John Wilson: yeah, like get a boat. There we go. And it's, it's like the, like no one could tell me the marina owner doesn't have a lake house on that lake.
The lake, yeah. Like, no, no one can tell me that.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: So I feel like a marina would be a funny way, a funny way to do it. You know, the problem that I always come back to all these things is like, there, there's no way to get it to a hundred million. It's the same thing as like the window cleaning with kilts thing.
Yeah. It's like never gonna be a hundred million. There's no big, it's lifestyle's, big business built inside there. Mm-hmm. Like I, I would be ill suited for the task.
Jack Carr: I think you get magic. Your magic one to a million. Oh yeah. Before you get a marina to a million or a hundred million.
John Wilson: Yeah, magic. I [00:30:00] can believe.
You just gotta revive the sport you tournaments. You could revive the sport, man. YouTubes, you could do so
Jack Carr: much with the face of magic. You could be that guy, dude.
John Wilson: How great would it be to run like the biggest cohort of channels that are like pack cracking channels? You know, like, Hey, I'm gonna like Mr.
Beast, like I'm gonna crack 10,000 packs today. See, I never got into it. Let's see what we got. You know? Yeah.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Oh, this one's worth a hundred bucks.
Jack Carr: I had people would,
John Wilson: that's like as MIR or A SMR, whatever. Yeah. People would watch the shit outta it.
Jack Carr: I had friends in, in 2020, make not friends, excuse me.
Employees in 2020 make more cracking packs live than they were at their job. Yeah. Making $35 an hour. They're making more just breaking open packs. It's real and like,
John Wilson: yeah, it's real. I tried to convince a friend of mine to do this, uh, like a couple, he was, he, he was into something. Oh. The Star Wars had like this car game that came out and it was like, super hot.
Might still be hot, but it was like,
Jack Carr: it
John Wilson: was like, turn it [00:31:00] bubble like crazy. Um, and I was like, dude, you should, you need to go buy a thousand packs and just start cracking 'em. Mm-hmm. Because we'll make a million dollars in like 90 days. He didn't, and he didn't make a million dollars in 90 days. But yeah, I think all that random stuff, I think the problem is monetization is an issue.
Yeah. You're mainly like monetizing off of views, but like gamer in general is super low, CPM, so these channels have to have like 10 million subs or followers to make any amount of money at all. Mm-hmm. So that part sucks.
Jack Carr: That part sucks,
John Wilson: but the idea is fun. Yeah, that is Well, so yeah, so my original idea when I was not buying this other one, I was like, let's, let's, I, I was trying to figure out how to machine it.
So what you do is you go buy like a crate of packs, so like thousand packs, 10,000 packs, whatever. It's not even that much money. And then you buy these machines, they're like $5,000 a piece. You can get three of 'em, and they sort [00:32:00] them and it scans the card and then it puts it into an inventory, which you can set up.
To all these card resellers.
Jack Carr: Yeah,
John Wilson: so like you make money like the whole way down the line so you can make money cracking the pack. 'cause like people are watching, there'd be, people would watch 10,000 packs being open. Like you'd get good views and then you could like maybe auction 'em off right there and then you put 'em into this machine.
It's sorts it. And you immediately set it to these card resellers and you start. Fired 'em off. If your books say you're making a lot of money, but there's nothing in the checking account, let's talk about CFO made easy. Most term service businesses hit a point where the money's coming in, but it's still unclear where it's all going.
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You know, this
Jack Carr: is not the direction I thought this episode was going, but I mean,
John Wilson: it was the weirdest ways to make money.
Jack Carr: I know. I just, I don't think I pinned you as, as going into hard cracking territory with this, but I'm in I love it.
John Wilson: Yeah, I was looking for space. I was like, I actually think I only need like eight to 10,000 square feet to do this.
I found a spot, oh
Jack Carr: dude, that, that's like not so crazy now. Much crazier back then. I remember. When I was mining, doing mining for Bitcoin.
John Wilson: Yeah, yeah,
Jack Carr: yeah. We had 30,
John Wilson: I didn't eat there for a couple
Jack Carr: years. 30 some rigs going.
John Wilson: Oh yeah.
Jack Carr: And like had a full, took apart a, like a double wide trailer. [00:34:00] Put fans on one side.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jerry rigged all the electrical myself. Looking back, probably huge risk. Yeah. Um, also surprised the power company never came to us, but we ended up finding like an apple. App, an old apple orchard storage facility up in Washington where it had like 3 cent power.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: And we were going to, then it had full, you know, HVAC on it and go do like a full hundred, 200 unit operation.
I'm sad I didn't sometimes, but at the same time, Hey, you know, it is what it is. But just reminds me that I'm thinking like we went through the whole process. Oh yeah. Contacted the realtor. Like it was really close to going all in on Bitcoin. I think it's in like 2015.
John Wilson: Oh yeah. That ah, would've been better.
Yeah. I, I think it is kind of funny to go down these rabbit holes and like fall. I just think it's like a fun. Mental exercise, uh, like ideally they don't happen because it ends up being a shit show.
Jack Carr: I do think about it's healthy to see the model and healthy to see like how margins work and see how businesses work on [00:35:00] inside and out.
And then to actually dig and think of like, is this a really actually a good idea? Am I gonna put my, you know? Yeah, yeah. My stuff on line. I, yeah, I'm
John Wilson: not gonna go pay $2 million for a, you know, a website. Probably not. Uh, I do think, uh, like. DI diving into other businesses and own and operated have helped us, like we understand distribution better and we've been able to take a lot of the lessons we've learned from growing a media business to Yeah, the core business, definitely.
And it's helped a ton. Especially in like Yeah. Especially in the marketing department.
Jack Carr: That's awesome. Yeah. Sweet. So I don't even know where to start. Uh, we covered some weird businesses. Weird businesses, magic maybe, and ski maybe like, and lifestyle. You can make money doing anything. I think you can, I think it's true.
I think you can make monetization can be a hard, hard sometimes, but I There's definitely a path to it. Yeah. To almost anything through almost anything. Sweet. Do you like what you cards and skiing, including your hobbies. So I'm gonna go back and look [00:36:00] at mushrooms and ants and figure out how to Oh yeah, there's a way.
There's a way how to do it well, yeah. I almost started
John Wilson: Sweet, sweet. You like what you heard, like and sub check out owner operated.com for the workshop. Drop your weirdest niche business below in the comments. Uh, we'd love to cover it.
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