Optimists vs. Pessimists, House Flipping Math, Tile Design

Welcome to Biz Brainstorms –

My name's Connor.

I go down weekly rabbit holes of business ideas & lessons. Then, you get this 200 second email. This weeks send is a quick one.

Today's Outline:
📚 Business Lesson
💡 An Idea I Love
🏠 House Flipping Hack
🇺🇸 Richest Person in Alabama

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🔢 Optimism & Pessimism

I’ve always believed the quote:

“Pessimists sound smart. Optimists make money.”

But lately that opinion has become more nuanced.

The goal in business is to play the long game. (see my phone background below for what I mean):

And the only way you can play the long game is by not being forced to leave the game early. Which means being pessimistic of what could happen in the next 3, 6 or even 12 months.

That’s why some of the best entrepreneurs are paranoid in the short-term.

“From the day he started Microsft, he (Gates) insisted on always having enough cash in the bank to keep the company alive for 12 months with no revenue coming in.” (Same As Ever)

“What Gates seems to get is that you can only be an optimist in the long run if you’re pessimistic enough in the short run.” (Same As Ever)

🌲 Yard Zen

I love this business: Yard Zen

Here’s why:

Residential Landscaping is a $175B industry in the US alone.

But despite the demand, running a landscaping company seems hard.

• Managing Entry-Level Employees
• Physical Labor
• Finding Customers, Estimates, etc.

The beauty of Yard Zen is that they:

• Do the design work that your average landscaper isn’t good at (and huge margin)
• Sell the job to a local contractor (lead gen)
• Aren’t on the hook for the actual fulfillment
• Location agnostic (helllooooo bigger market)

It’s freaking awesome.

I would look into repeating this EXACT playbook for different services:

• Pool/Tile design (see this company Paverart I learned about this week + Spotify episode on founders journey)
• Unfinished Basement Conversions
• Home Gym Builds
• Office Space Designs

🏠 House Flipping Math

Chris does a killer job breaking down the economics behind how 2 mid west guys buy TV spots as their primary lead source for flipping homes

🇺🇸 Richest Person By State: Alabama

I don’t know why, but I had the thought the other day “Why don’t the richest people live in the nicest places?” Warren Buffett has a net worth of $119B but resides in Nebraska.

So I decided to figure out who was the richest person in each state.

Starting with Alabama, it’s Jimmy Rane, CEO of Great Southern Wood Preserving.

They make decks, fences & treated lumber products (boring, but massive).

3 facts on Jimmy:

1) Him & his brother took over their family business in 1971 when it was doing $22,000 in sales and grew it to doing $2B+ in annual sales

2) He saw how Frank Purdue was using TV to market their chickens and decided to start advertising with short western film commercials where he starred as his cowboy alter ego “The Yella Fella”.

3) Despite the company growth, Rane decided to keep the HQ in Abbeville AL (a town of only 2,000 people) where they basically overhauled and revitalized the entire town.

✌️ See you next week

-Connor

PS – What’s the coolest way you’ve heard of someone making money?