Just had an interesting chat with a guy selling equipment we thought might work for an upcoming project. Turns out, that wasn’t the win of the day—the real gold was learning what he's doing. He’s running these scruffy little ice cream trailers. And when I say “trailers,” I mean bare bones: a generator and a freezer. That’s it. They’re not pretty. They’re not fancy. They look like they’ve been through county fairs for a decade or two. Here’s the kicker: he’s got contracts with manufacturing plants. His crew just shows up three days a week, parks a trailer outside, and gets paid $200 just for being there. On top of that, he sells popsicle-style ice cream for $3–$4 each. I looked it up when I got back: a 24-pack of these costs about $17. So he’s running a 300–400% margin on top of his $200 appearance fee. The trailer probably cost him $5K if I had to guess, fully kitted out with generator and freezer. He’s running several of these. All of them are rough-looking—nothing you’d ever expect to be a serious profit machine. But it’s proof: you don’t need perfection or a big budget to make money. You just need a simple model that works, then repeat it until it pays. Oh yeah… what’s he making? Each trailer slings around 600 popsicles a day. At $3 each, that’s $1,800 in sales per trailer. Three trailers? $5,400 a day—plus $200 just for showing up at each site. With entry-level staff working four-hour shifts, he’s probably pocketing close to $4K profit per day. Not bad for a setup most people wouldn’t give a second glance.

I recorded this a few months back, Never shared it, It is a bit too harsh for my business brand. But I thought this place might be a good fit for it.

We run a service called Project X. Without diving too deep, it’s basically a system that gets small businesses ranked for hundreds of keywords across all the cities they want to work in. We usually stay busy from social, referrals (we pay $1,000 per), and an AI voice agent that makes outbound calls. It works, but I’ve got a team that can handle way more volume. So I’m always looking for ways to grow. While traveling recently, I started noticing how many small print shops I was passing—places that do screen printing, flyers, banners, all that local promo work. And it hit me: these shops have exactly the kind of clients we serve. Service businesses. Local operators. People who actually need more calls and visibility. And these print shops already have rapport with them. It never occurred to me to partner with them directly until now. I’m in the Port Huron area right now, so I made four quick calls to local print shops. Just introduced myself, explained what we do, and offered a partnership: flat fee plus a recurring cut for referrals. Two out of the four were immediately interested, excited. One already sent me a landscaping company that I just got off the phone with. That was two hours ago. Now I’ve got two new vendor partners and a fresh client in the pipeline. Just like that. Moral of the story? Sometimes the opportunity is literally right in front of you. You just need to look at what you’re already driving past and think a little differently.

He runs a welding and fab shop. He’s on job six or seven for a major grocery store chain, good jobs, decent margins. This one was a $21K job. Site coordinator tells him they’re ready, so he lines it up. Schedules steel delivery, rolls out with two rigs, drops the material with the crane, and puts it where he was told. Coordinator’s nowhere. Site’s not ready. No call, no heads up, nothing. Now the steel’s just sitting there. He welds the ends of it up into bundles, heavy stuff, 2000 pounds a pop. Not easy to walk off with. That was just a precaution in case something stupid happened. Didn’t know it would actually happen. Three weeks pass. He’s in the area and swings by to check on it. The job still isn’t moving. But now half the steel is gone. $3300 worth, just disappeared. So he calls me, asking who’s responsible. Truth is, we won’t know until Monday because the property management company isn’t open on Fridays. But the job was scheduled, the delivery was approved, and the delay wasn’t his fault. He did everything right and might still get dinged. Now we’re adding language to his contract that says if material is delivered to the site on an agreed start date and the job gets delayed, he’s not on the hook for theft or loss. It’s not something I would’ve thought to write in until this happened, but now it’s going into every contract for our clients that want it. Contracts are living documents. As we learn about new issues, we cover them with future contracts. So if you’re ever sending materials out ahead of the job, add this. It’s one more way to make sure someone else’s screw-up doesn’t come out of your profit.

There’s something you said you’d do tomorrow. Or next week. Maybe you’ve said that a few times now. So why not today? What’s the excuse this time?