RigUp for X, the Geek Squad model, hyper-local franchise opportunities, and more...
This week's trending topics, ideas and inspiration you need to take action and build a successful business
Welcome to another edition of Everyday Startup, a newsletter all about startup ideas and trends aimed at solopreneurs, DYI experts, and indie makers. We bring together ideas and strategies from all over the internet including My First Million podcast.
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Weekly roundup of startup ideas & trends…
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RigUp for X
[Source: My First Million Podcast]
RigUp is an online workforce and vendor marketplace geared towards the energy sectors. It’s valued at $3B valuation, according to Sam Par of The Hustle. The service targets energy sector workers who typically makes $100K / year. They have tools that help you file taxes, handle health insurnace, and more. If you run a company they can help you hire qualified workers for your projects.
What are other sectors could you build a RigUp type of platform?
A good place to start is by looking for where the job growth lies. According to Sam Parr, the sectors below are growing at a 25% to 60% per year rate. The average growth for these are 4%, which is above average: Wind turbine technicians, nurse practitioners, personal care aides, IT security analysts, derrick drill operators (oil & gas), speech pathologists, fire inspectors, animal caretakers, and solar panel installers.
Take one of these booming sectors and model it after Rig Up.
Sam and Shaan pick nurse practitioners as an example (which is the largest growth from the list above). To create a RigUp for nurse practitioners, Sam would create a Facebook Group for them and share therapy sessions on how to deal with their struggles. He would find common struggles they have and create tools to solve them. He would also create a job board for them or a group on how they can do better at their job. Sam likes the idea of ‘niching’ down to traveling nurses.
Shaan says a community group is a great starting point. That way you can create an audience and test it so you can ask them what their problems are and what they want. You also learn their language, jokes, etc.
Shaan would also create an Instagram account that is simply a meme account for nurses. Inside jokes that nurses will appreciate. Then follow (maybe with a scraper) anyone who is a nurse that liked the content you created. Shaan says he would end up with a 300K IG account.
Sam swears if you worked on this for six years you would make $10M per year by year five.
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The Geek Squad model
[Source: My First Million Podcast]
Geek Squad is a service from Best Buy that dispatches computer “geeks” to fix computer and network issues at people’s homes.
Sam estimates Geek Squad (owned by Best Buy) does $2B in revenue with 50% margins.
Computers are a huge challenge for older folks so niching down to this population might give you a boost.
Sam thinks you could make a similar service as Geek Squad without visiting people’s homes. Just have them install an app that allows you to control their computer
Some ideas within the Geek Squad Model: Grandkids as a Service: Hire a kid to help you with technology, Geek squad for home office, and Geek squad for Alexa and connected technology
How can you take advantage of the Geek Squad model?
Shaan recommends trying to create the local franchise model for this. He would recruit kids thru Facebook and make a kid the franchisee: “Hey kid, you can run it for your local neighborhood and make $40K per year.”You would run FB ads to collect leads and disperse them to the local franchisees based on their location and charge something like $40 and they keep $20.
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Hyper-local franchise opportunities
[Source: My First Million Podcast]
Nana is an example of a hyper-local franchise where they teach and offer services for local appliance repair. If you want to start your own appliance repair business, Nana trains you in a school to fix certain appliance for a fee. The average graduate from Nana makes $75K to $100K per year depending on how many jobs you want to take on. They also worked with appliance manufactures to make Nana graduates the technician they dispatch for warranty repairs.
What are some hyper-local franchise opportunities?
As we just discussed, the Geek Squad model could be a hyper-local franchise opportunity. We’ve also talked about Card My Yard as a franchise here. You can also go basic and look into lawn health, lawn care, power washing, Christmas light installation, pest control, and other services. I would try and find an area that only has one of these businesses serving the area. If they are super successful I would consider competing with them and taking market share based on a competitive advantage you’d have to come up with. The fact that one business is successful confirms demand for your services. If there were no competitive businesses in the area, it may be because there is little or no demand. Then I would add franchises in locations that meet the same requirements.
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Robo Advisors
[Source: Exploding Topics]
Robo advisor services automate investing so you don’t have to research and pick individual stocks yourself or worry about rebalancing and other profit enhancing or tax avoidance tasks.
“One of the major players in this emerging space is Betterment,” according to ET. “Since launching in 2008, they've raised over $275M in venture capital. And they have $22B assets under management.”
There are a growing list of Robo Advisor services including Schwab’s Intelligent Portfolios, Wealthfront, Wealthsimple, Ellevest, Sofi and Beanstox. Together, InvestorPlace estimates total assets under Robo Advisor management will reach $16 trillion by 2025.
How can you take advantage of the growing Robo Adisor trend?
With increasing choices comes more confusion for consumers. Which Robo Advisor is best? Like many things in life, “best” is dependent on individuals and their goals.This makes a great opportunity for a niche coaching or consulting business, an online course, or even a newsletter/blog all about robo advisors which would be part of the financial tech (fintech) meta trend. I would start by signing up for all of these services you can and learn the pros and cons based on individual circumstances. I would then start blogging about it to slowly capture Google ranking and promote it ad-free as much as possible. Once you have an audience it will be easy to sell to them.
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Influencer Marketing Platforms
[Source: Exploding Topics]
Influencer marketing platforms help businesses connect with influencers to market their products and services. For example, Upfluence is a search engine database of influencers with over 4 million listings across YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitch, Instagram, and other social media platforms.
Other platforms include AspireIQ, Brandbassador, and Heepsy. Upfluence is reported to have raised a $3.9 million in 2018.
It is estimated (by WebMX) that influencers can charge around $10,000 for a sponsored post if they have at least 1 million followers. With all the influencers at the 1M follower mark, there’s plenty of reason influencers would pay to increase their reach and gain more sponsors.
How can you take advantage of the growing influencer marketing platform trend?
How about sub-marketing services for influencers to rank higher on Upfluence and other influencer data bases? Or influencer consulting in general to increase their sponsorships? You can think of it as Influencer SEO (search engine optimization). The methods to rank on these platforms will probably not be similar tactics as ranking with Google, but rather working with Upfluence and other platforms directly to increase your clients’s rankings. You may be able to spot trends and techniques that make influencers more appealing to sponsors and teach your clients how to increase their ranking across these platforms.
Well, that’s it for this week. Hope you enjoyed it!
