Happy Thursday!

Really quick before I dive in, I get this question all the time: “How do I actually make money with all these AI tools?” Thats why I built Playmakers- my AI agency program where I teach you how to charge local businesses $500-$5,000 a month to set up and manage AI for them. You get three live calls a week, plug-and-play automation templates you can deploy for clients on day one, a 5 Day First Client Challenge, and my personal lead lists with businesses in your area ready to connect.120+ people are already in the community building agencies right now. Go to playmakersai.com and check it out.

Okay, let’s get into it.

Rachel and her husband did about $50,000 in six months on an idea that costs almost nothing to start. Roughly $45,000 of that was profit, which puts them close to 90% margins. Their operation now runs between $10,000 and $15,000 a month at about 85% profit and it’s insanely simple (but brilliant).

You know that sandwich board near the host stand at a restaurant, with the day's specials/ happy hour written on it? Rachel figured out how to turn that into a business. She gives restaurants a nice board for free, then sells advertising space on the bottom of it to other local businesses. One board placed brings in around $3,000 a year, and most of that is margin.

I sat down with her for the full interview, on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. By the end of it, you’ll have everything you need to run this in your own town this week.

The product is an aluminum sandwich board with a dry erase coating, rated for indoor/ outdoor use, sitting on a stand. The restaurant's logo goes at the top. The middle is open space where the owner writes their specials, lunch and dinner deals, or upcoming events. The bottom has six small printed ads for other local businesses.

The restaurant gets a better looking specials board than the tiny chalkboard they were using, completely free, and you get six ad slots to sell. Two different sets of customers, one piece of aluminum- very old school and simple.

Find a local print shop and get a quote on a single dry erase aluminum board. Rachel pays about $350 each near her, and there is no minimum order, so you can print one at a time and reprint as you sell more. Their turnaround runs about two weeks.

Add the stand and the markers and your all-in cost lands around $400. What keeps your risk near zero: you do not print anything until you have sold the ad spots. You’re not fronting money on inventory. You only pay for the board once the money is already collected.

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Do not sell any ads before you have a home for the board. Advertisers want to know where their ad is going, so the host has to come first.

You’re looking for high foot traffic where people sit and wait. Restaurants are the sweet spot, and coffee shops and gyms work too. Skip the low traffic waiting rooms like a dentist or physical therapy office, where twenty people might see it all day.

Message ten to fifteen local restaurants on Instagram. Tell them you are looking for a local spot to host one of these boards for free, they came highly recommended, and would they take a look. Attach a photo so they instantly get what you are offering. Roughly one in five replies. When they ask you to stop by and you show up with the actual board, the close is nearly automatic. It is free for them, it looks good, and it solves a problem they already have. (Somewhere to write their daily specials!)

Get a simple agreement in place. The restaurant keeps the board up in a visible location for one year, and if they sell the business, the agreement transfers to the new owner. That protects your advertisers.

Then, before you leave, ask the owner who should be on the board. Get specific. “Who handles your insurance?” “Who is your attorney?” “Last time your HVAC went out, who did you call?” “Is there a realtor who eats lunch here every week you would want to give a shot?” Those pointed prompts pull names out of someone who can’t think of anyone

In a perfect world. You should walk out with twelve to twenty referrals.

This sign hustle gets you the client. It doesn’t touch the follow-ups, the booking, the leads going cold while you're busy. Landing the work and running the operation are two different jobs, and the second one is where most people quietly drown.

HighLevel handles that second job. CRM, automated follow-ups, booking calendars, text and email campaigns, all in one place. The system handles reputation management, handles reviews, chases leads, and books calls for you. You can also white-label it and resell it in your niche. It’s a no brainer add-on for your clients that already trust you. My readers get 30 days free at gohighlevel.com/tkopod.

Call the referrals. Rachel closes about six out of every twelve - twenty, (which is exactly what she needs to fill a board.) Sell each of the six spots for $600 a year, collected upfront. That is $3,600 per board against about $400 in cost.

She says the easiest businesses to close are tax offices, insurance agents, and realtors. They already understand branding advertising and do not obsess over tracing a single sale back to it. When someone asks about ROI, explain it like a billboard. If the restaurant sees 7,000 to 10,000 customers a month, that is how many people your ad sits in front of. At $600 a year, that works out to about a $30 cost per thousand views, which is a genuinely good rate next to a billboard or Facebook ads.

Pro-tip: Offer a business two locations for $900 total instead of $600 for one. Double the exposure, and you have a natural reason for them to spend more.

Now that the spots are sold, send your designs to the printer. You can make the ads yourself in Canva or ChatGPT and include the design in the price, or let advertisers submit their own. Once the board is printed, place it at the host location and send each advertiser a photo of their ad live in the wild. Then repeat the whole cycle with your next host.

This is an extension to the original sign hustle. The reason Rachel's business does $10,000 to $15,000 a month is what happens after the board goes up.

Once a business has paid you and watched you deliver, you have trust. When you send an advertiser the photo of their live board, mention that you noticed a few gaps on their website or Google profile you could help with. Now you are pitching websites, which run $1,000 to $6,000 to build, and reputation management at around $400 a month.

The reputation management is the real money maker. Use software like HighLevel which automatically requests and responds to Google reviews, setup takes about ten minutes plus a short onboarding call, and it brings in roughly $4,800 a year per client. It’s crazy easy for you and invaluable for the clients. (Home service businesses like HVAC and painting are the easiest upsell, because they live and die on their reviews.)

At just six months in, Rachel’s boards have produced about $50,000 with roughly $45,000 in profit. The digital work built off the back of those boards is on track for around $200,000 a year- at about $7,500 per client. Combined, Rachel is profiting six figures working part time, fewer hours than a regular job.

So go get a board quoted, message ten local restaurants offering it free, and land one host. Sign them, get your referrals, and sell six spots at $600 each. That first board is about $3,200 in profit, and it is also your front door to everything that comes after it. Again, the full interview with Rachel has a much more in-depth plan on Spotify and Apple Podcasts if you want to steal this business for your own community.

Have a great week!

Chris

P.S. I share deep dives on business ideas and complete playbooks three times a week on YouTube and every podcast platform.