0:01 Making hundreds of millions of dollars
0:04 is not complicated. In fact, I would
0:06 argue it's as simple as finding a boring
0:08 business that you're willing to commit
0:11 to. I'm David. I'm CEO of Filterby, an
0:13 air filter company that makes $22
0:16 million a month. Every day, I'm flooded
0:18 with hundreds of boring businesses to
0:20 invest in, and a few I've been willing
0:22 to write million-doll checks to. In just
0:24 a few minutes, you'll understand the
0:26 most important concepts and business
0:29 models to make billions off of boring
0:31 businesses. There are two basic types of
0:34 cash flow businesses I want to focus on.
0:36 Property oriented businesses and
0:38 service-based businesses. I want to
0:39 start by focusing on property
0:41 businesses. These are appealing because
0:43 people think of them as an easy way to
0:46 make passive income. Let's look at my
0:47 three favorites. This first business can
0:50 make anywhere from $1,000 to $100,000
0:53 per month and only takes a few hours to
0:55 operate. In some cases, people have
0:57 turned $2,000 investments in this
1:00 business into millions. Paul Alex, a
1:02 retired San Francisco police officer,
1:05 started his ATM business in 2018 to
1:07 supplement his income. He purchased his
1:10 first ATM for $2,100 and installed it in
1:13 a nail salon. That single machine
1:16 generated him $500 of profit per month.
1:19 Encouraged by the results, he gradually
1:20 expanded his operation and started
1:23 installing ATMs in other locations. By
1:27 2021, Paul owned over 30 ATMs
1:29 nationwide. His ATM business was
1:31 generating over $10,000 a month in
1:34 profit, which allowed him to retire from
1:37 his police job. Today, his company, ATM
1:40 Together, earns over $8 million a year
1:44 and helps others to start their own ATM
1:46 businesses. So, what was so smart about
1:48 how Paul started this business? Well,
1:50 first of all, he didn't go all in on the
1:52 beginning. He still kept his day job. He
1:54 had a specific opportunity locally
1:56 within nail salon where he knew the
1:58 owners. And then when he did expand, he
2:00 didn't do it all at once. He did it
2:03 slowly. He went from one to two, two to
2:07 four, and gradually expanded his ATM
2:10 footprint. The key in the ATM business
2:12 is location and maintenance of your ATM
2:14 machines. If you don't have money in the
2:15 ATM machines for people to be able to
2:17 take out, your ATM machine is not going
2:19 to be making any money. If your machine
2:21 breaks or is not functional for whatever
2:23 reason, it's not going to be making any
2:24 money and you're going to be responsible
2:26 for fixing it. So, making sure you
2:29 understand how you're going to build the
2:31 infrastructure to be able to maintain
2:34 your ATM machine and also to be able to
2:36 continue to negotiate to keep your ATM
2:38 machines in the right places. These are
2:40 going to be the keys to being successful
2:42 in this type of business. I can't make a
2:44 video about cash flow businesses without
2:47 mentioning laundromats. According to an
2:50 industry publication, there's a 95%
2:52 success rate in laundromats, almost
2:55 double the national average of a 50%
2:58 success rate for most businesses. So,
3:00 what makes laundromats appealing? Well,
3:02 everybody is in search of that elusive
3:04 passive income. And at least on the
3:06 surface, laundromats look just like
3:08 that. You find a good location, you put
3:10 in some machines, people put in money,
3:12 wash their laundry, you go, you collect
3:14 those machines or you collect those
3:16 credit card swipes, and your work is
3:18 done. You pay for the building, pay for
3:20 the water, you pay for the detergent,
3:23 whatever the inputs for laundry would
3:25 be. And then you can set it and you can
3:27 forget it. But it's really important to
3:30 understand here that in business and in
3:32 life, if if it sounds too good to be
3:34 true, it often times is. Laundry mats
3:37 can be a great investment, but remember,
3:39 you're still going to be responsible for
3:40 the maintenance of all those machines,
3:42 for actually collecting that money,
3:45 making sure that you have a safe, clean
3:47 environment consistently, and most
3:50 importantly, have the right location
3:51 because people are not going to choose
3:54 you if it's not convenient and not in
3:56 the right area. Laundromats can be great
3:58 profitable cash flow businesses and a
4:00 great entry point for people to get
4:02 started. But if you want to scale it, in
4:04 my experience, it takes more capital
4:06 than people often times realize. And
4:08 that's one downside of laundromats from
4:10 my perspective. I will pay you $10,000 a
4:12 month to start this next business. I was
4:14 opening up our plant in Salt Lake City,
4:17 Utah, and we had a problem. Our air
4:20 compressor broke. This was during CO and
4:22 they told me it was going to be 3 weeks
4:24 before we could get a new one. I didn't
4:25 know what to do because without an air
4:27 compressor, it was impossible for us to
4:29 run our business. I started scrambling
4:31 and I found a local rental company that
4:33 had a diesel version of this air
4:35 compressor that we were able to get up
4:37 and running within a couple of hours. I
4:40 paid them $500 a day to rent this air
4:42 compressor, but it was well worth it to
4:44 be able to keep our operations going.
4:46 That's when I first started looking into
4:48 the rental equipment business. There are
4:51 companies all throughout the country
4:53 every single day that have a need for a
4:56 piece of equipment that they do not have
4:58 on site. any type of equipment you can
5:00 imagine. This is where the opportunity
5:03 comes. If you have that equipment in
5:06 stock, in working order, ready to go,
5:09 then companies will pay you a premium to
5:11 rent that equipment on a daily basis.
5:13 Even better, it's an incredibly
5:15 taxefficient business. Not something
5:18 people think about. If you buy equipment
5:21 for $100,000 and you're able to rent it
5:24 out for $60,000 over over the course of
5:26 that year, you're actually able to write
5:29 off 100% of that $100,000 against your
5:32 income. So that $60,000 you make is
5:35 taxfree. And think about now with all of
5:37 this talk of tariffs and all of this
5:39 change, one way or another, more
5:41 manufacturing is likely to come back to
5:43 the US. So, I think that the equipment
5:45 rental business is only likely to
5:47 increase over the next decade, making
5:49 this an opportune time to be thinking
5:51 about it, but that doesn't mean it's
5:52 going to be easy. Yes, you're going to
5:53 have equipment that you have to
5:55 maintain. You have to figure out the
5:56 logistics of how you're going to get
5:58 that equipment from your place to that
6:00 customer's place and making sure you're
6:02 doing it timely. All overcomeable
6:04 problems, but it doesn't mean it's going
6:06 to be easy. I would encourage you to
6:07 start small from the beginning. Really
6:09 learn the ropes before you expand it.
6:11 It's not the kind of thing that I would
6:13 go all in on on day one. Those
6:15 businesses we just talked about are
6:17 generally good for making thousands. But
6:19 if you want to make millions or
6:21 billions, I actually don't think
6:23 property businesses are the best way to
6:26 scale. Services businesses, however,
6:29 cost less to start and have more upside
6:31 if you do it right. If you skip college
6:33 and go to trade school, I genuinely
6:36 believe this business may be one of the
6:38 smartest ways to become a millionaire.
6:41 So, a few years ago, I decided to do
6:43 this playbook. I had already built our
6:46 air filter business into a decent size,
6:49 but I really saw the opportunity in the
6:52 service-based business and just how big
6:55 service-based businesses can be. So, I
6:57 decided to partner with a friend that I
7:00 met back at Goldman Sachs to go out and
7:02 start our own service-based business in
7:05 the HVAC space. We call it filter by
7:07 HVAC solutions. The beauty about the
7:09 service business is very capital light.
7:12 What it does take is knowledge and
7:14 systems to be able to go out and scale
7:17 it. That's why if I were starting out
7:20 and I didn't have money, what I would do
7:22 is go to trade school and really learn
7:24 the HVAC industry, maybe even go out and
7:26 work for a successful HVAC business for
7:28 a while before getting started. So, if
7:30 you have the knowledge and the ability
7:33 to offer a good highquality service at a
7:34 fair price, you're going to be able to
7:37 find a business model that scales. So,
7:38 how do you get started in something like
7:41 this? You follow my exact playbook. You
7:44 start locally. You start building in one
7:47 small community, become the best, build
7:49 your systems around that one specific
7:52 community, and then you slowly start to
7:54 expand it out from there. Social media
7:57 and the ability to reach local
7:59 communities at scale has completely
8:01 changed the game. And what I found is
8:03 most local businesses are still not
8:06 really utilizing it in the ways that
8:08 matter. They're still spending millions
8:10 of dollars on outdated marketing tactics
8:12 like billboards and radio, all of these
8:14 types of things. When the reality is the
8:16 attention has moved, the things that the
8:18 younger demographics are looking for
8:20 from these services has also changed.
8:22 And so if you're able to tap into that,
8:24 you can ultimately find a scalable
8:26 business. The hard part about service
8:28 businesses is that they can be easy to
8:30 start, but that means they can be hard
8:32 to stand out. That's why I love this
8:34 next business so much. I'll never forget
8:36 when I first came back to Tallaladega,
8:39 Alabama to start what is now filter by.
8:41 I was looking around at the local
8:43 industry and you know what? There wasn't
8:45 much. but one of the richest guys in
8:48 town. Local unassuming country guy that
8:50 probably didn't graduate the eighth
8:53 grade, but he was extremely successful.
8:55 And you know what business he was in?
8:58 Emergency tow truck services. If your
9:00 car stalled on the side of the
9:01 interstate, he was the guy that you
9:04 called that would come and tow you to
9:06 get you out of harm's way. But this guy
9:09 was even smarter. He realized that the
9:12 real money was when the 18-wheelers had
9:14 a problem and they needed to be towed.
9:17 If you had an 18-wheeler that went down
9:20 on this long stretch of I20, he was
9:22 basically the only person in the area
9:25 that had the equipment needed to be able
9:27 to get your truck towed quickly. And
9:30 best of all, it was high margin business
9:32 and he could basically name his price.
9:34 The beauty about this business is you
9:36 don't have to start big. You just have
9:38 to start in one truck, one service area.
9:40 You buy the truck, start advertising,
9:42 and you're in business. If you want to
9:44 scale your business, you scale the
9:46 number of trucks in the service area
9:49 that you have. Obviously, the downside
9:50 here, of course, is you've got to have
9:52 the equipment. You've got to maintain
9:54 your trucks, and you've got to have
9:56 qualified drivers that are rated to be
9:59 able to go out and do it. Not easy, but
10:01 overcomeable, and certainly can be
10:03 scalable. Not enough people are talking
10:05 about the fact that there's an $80
10:07 billion boring business that you could
10:10 start today. Patrick Dovigi, a hockey
10:13 player from Ontario, Canada, started GFL
10:17 or Green for Life in 2007. He began by
10:19 managing several small Ontario waste
10:21 management companies, then aggressively
10:24 expanded by making more than 100
10:26 acquisitions. His big break came in 2011
10:30 when GFL won a Toronto trash collection
10:32 contract, beating out much larger
10:35 competitors. Under his leadership, GFL
10:37 grew from a small local business to a
10:40 multi-billion dollar empire. Now serving
10:43 customers across Canada and the US with
10:47 over 20,000 employees. Today, GFL is
10:50 publicly traded and recognized as one of
10:52 the top waste management companies in
10:54 North America. So, why is waste
10:56 management so great? Well, it's a huge
10:58 market. It's something that basically
11:01 every home or business needs. They need
11:03 their trash picked up. Is trash
11:05 collection an easy business? No. There
11:07 are environmental concerns. There are
11:08 lots of large players already in the
11:10 market. So, how would I get started if I
11:13 wanted to get into this? Well, I would
11:16 study my local market and find what is
11:18 my local service missing. And the answer
11:21 may be very different depending on the
11:22 community. Maybe you do your research
11:24 and find, hey, they're only picking up
11:27 one day a week, but I know that there's
11:29 enough demand for, you know, doing it
11:31 two days a week or doing it on a
11:32 different day of the week. Maybe that's
11:34 your opportunity. I don't know. But my
11:36 guess is if you study it closely enough,
11:38 you may find an angle that you're going
11:41 to be able to exploit. That little angle
11:44 might become your gateway to a
11:46 multi-billion dollar business if you
11:47 play your cards right. If you're
11:49 committed to changing your life, make
11:51 sure your business follows my cash flow
11:54 checklist. If you do, it could save you
11:56 from making mistakes that could cost you
11:58 thousands. The first step to running a
12:00 boring business has absolutely nothing
12:02 to do with how much you make, but how
12:05 much you spend. A few years ago, I met a
12:07 guy named John at a small conference
12:10 that I was attending. John owns a window
12:12 cleaning business. What tools did he
12:14 need in order to do that? He had
12:17 invested in a squeegee, a bucket, and
12:19 some soap. And he started cleaning
12:22 windows for a bank. Today, John runs a
12:25 business doing $10 million of revenue at
12:28 40% net margins, meaning he's clearing
12:30 $4 million a year in a window cleaning
12:32 business. This is an example of a
12:35 perfect boring business. One of the
12:37 values of starting lean and by doing the
12:40 processes yourself is later on when you
12:41 actually want to scale that business and
12:43 start to build the systems then because
12:45 you've worked in the business and you
12:47 know the pain points of that business
12:48 you're able to come up with systems that
12:50 solve those pain points. That's one of
12:52 the secrets for me early on when I was
12:54 building filterby. We now have a
12:56 thousand employees but there is not a
12:58 job in any of our factories or in any of
13:01 our processes that I have not personally
13:03 done. People will tell you stories about
13:05 businesses that take months to get their
13:08 first sale, but the truth is most
13:10 successful businesses have models to get
13:12 up and running fast. I had customers
13:15 before I started our air filter factory.
13:16 How do you do that? Well, I actually
13:18 started out by drop shipping. Very low
13:21 margin. Made almost no money early days
13:23 doing that. But I was doing that to keep
13:25 my risk low in order to prove out my
13:26 business model. Only after I was
13:28 convinced I had a system that was going
13:31 to repeatably get me new customers
13:33 consistently did I take the leap and
13:35 actually invest the money in the
13:36 manufacturing process to make those
13:38 filters. If you take that approach, then
13:41 it's way lower risk. Maybe it takes you
13:42 a couple more months to get to market
13:44 because you're delaying yourself a
13:46 little bit, but it keeps your risk
13:48 effectively zero. You can do this in any
13:50 type of a business if you're just a
13:52 little bit creative. If you have a
13:53 service, think about creating a landing
13:56 page, running some Google ads to it, and
13:57 seeing how many people will click to
13:59 buy. Then maybe you find somebody else
14:01 to actually deliver that service for
14:03 them if that's what it takes once you
14:06 sell it. But you validated the idea, and
14:08 you know whether or not you have a
14:11 system that is going to get consistent
14:13 business for whatever it is you're
14:15 looking to build. And that's exactly
14:17 what you need to do in validating your
14:19 boring business early on. Even though
14:21 you need to watch your cost and be
14:23 plug-and-play, you still need to be able
14:25 to compete. If you follow my third step
14:27 in the checklist, you'll instantly be
14:29 able to. When Domino's started in the
14:32 1960s, it focused on just one college
14:35 town, Michigan. The founders learned
14:37 exactly what local students wanted.
14:39 Fast, affordable pizza delivered right
14:42 to their door. They tailored their menu,
14:45 hours, and delivery processes to fit the
14:47 needs of their local community. This
14:49 hyperlocal focus allowed Domino's to
14:52 perfect its delivery model and customer
14:55 service before it expanded. The lessons
14:57 learned from serving one neighborhood
14:59 became the foundation for building a
15:02 global franchise. Even today, Domino's
15:05 are run by local operators who know
15:07 their neighborhoods, which helps them to
15:09 stay competitive and responsive to local
15:12 taste. I love this example because it
15:14 highlights just how important it is to
15:16 be local when building a cash flow
15:19 business. Oftentimes, a mistake I see
15:21 people make is they try to expand too
15:25 quickly. Focus is the key to success. If
15:27 you spread your resources too thin early
15:30 on, you're going to lose focus and
15:32 ultimately are going to fail. You're way
15:34 better off focusing on a narrower
15:36 customer segment, whether that be a
15:39 super local community or a specific
15:41 avatar for a customer base, and really
15:45 focus on your systems before you expand.
15:47 If you like this video, this was the
15:49 first one on a series of how anyone can
15:52 make $10,000 per month. Subscribe if you
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