Welcome to Ghost Business 👻 Your weekly Tuesday email, where we turn $1 into thousands building these weird but simple side hustles

Cardboard Cash

The breakdown… This idea is to ONLY scratch my own itch. And I KNOW others have this exact same problem. Cardboard box buildup. It’s a disease that affects 1 out of 1 Americans.

And it gets worse…

Once Santa hits the streets and spreads it to everyone, the epidemic becomes unstoppable. But lucky for you Ghosties, I have the solution:

Cardboard Pick-up Service. It’s incredibly simple and WAY more lucrative than expected.

Here’s the skinny:

1. You receive a load of Amazon boxes at your door (you forgot you ordered)

2. Recycle pick up is next week or already full

3. You argue with your spouse/roommate

4. Your cat thanks you for all of the “cat boxes”

5. Cardboard is your home

6. You are now cardboard

Here’s where CPS(name pending), Cardboard Pickup Service, comes into play. For a small fee, someone will come and pick up your cardboard for you. For an additional smaller fee someone will breakdown your boxes for you.

Turns out, some junk removal companies are already doing this. After getting a a small handful of quotes for my Seattle neighborhood, the average quote is a staggering $100!

So how could we build this quickly to make some easy side cash and how much would it cost us?

The MVP (Getting your first customer)

Neighbors = $$$… If you face this issue, chances are your neighbors do too. The easiest way to engage interest is to post on your neighborhood facebook page or nextdoor app.

I would write something like this:

“Guys I have a serious problem. I can’t get it out of my house, it’s causing my family some serious (space) issues and it keeps adding up. I’m talking about cardboard.

So I decided enough is enough, I’m getting a truck and removing all the cardboard from my property.

But I’m probably not the only one right? Comment if you want your cardboard removed on X weekend and I’ll come pick yours up for a small fee.”

DONE.

So you either have a truck ($0), borrow a truck ($0) or rent a truck ($90) to do pick ups in your neighborhood. After pick up you bring it do the dump to recycle ($0).

All in your at most up to $100 for truck + gas. And looking at our competitors, we could price this service at $50 and still give people a 50% discount compared to other companies in the space.

Getting Your Next 100 Customers

Weekend warrior… This side hustle is surprisingly scalable and can be applied to your neighboring neighborhoods as well. There’s a few add ons you can throw in there as well:

• Unflattened boxes? +$$

• Large amount of stairs? +$

• Need other stuff hauled away? +$$$

But it doesn’t stop there. If you get some boxes in good condition you can re-purpose those and sell them as moving boxes for additional income.

Post that same paragraph in other neighborhood FB groups and you could be booked every weekend of the year.

With your average sale being $50 and getting 10 houses a weekend, that’s $500 a week!

Viability:

1 [building spaceships] 🚀 to 5 [easy peasy] 😊 

Cardboard Boss… This issue is one that many many families have. Very easy to set up and you can hire some part time workers if your demand exceeds your capacity.

This is a manual labor intensive job so if that scares you or if you have any physical conditions that would prevent you from doing the work, this might not be for you.

(As usual each business will have it’s own setbacks, and it’s all about the execution and consistency rather than just having the idea 😉)

It’s a great day to be great!

Love, Mike 👋