💰 Absentee Pest Control Biz – $314k/yr

Welcome Back to The Corporate Pivot!

If the most daring thing you’ve done lately is microwave fish in the breakroom, it’s time to spice up your life. The Corporate Pivot shows you how to go from breakroom rebel to business owner. Read below for practical advice and businesses waiting for your big move.

Confusing Corporate Saying of the Day:

“This task is urgent!”

Professional Translation: “The shareholders are counting on you to get this done fast.”
Corporate Pivot Translation: “A mild suggestion at best.”

Here’s what we have for you today:

Sam’s Perspective (1st Time Buyer)

🆕 Status Update: Picking up the flowers on Saturday to kick off the event rental business. A good friend of mine just got married, and his wife made 18 centerpieces, a flower arch, and other floral decorations. He’s giving me the inventory for free to get the business started—as long as I go and pick it up. What an awesome start! Of course, if I manage to book some events, we’ll repay him with a portion of the profits. I might have to hide the money in his shoe for him to actually accept it, but where there’s a will, there’s a way. I also technically have a use case already from his wedding, so using some of those pictures would be a great way to show the pieces in action!

Other business prospects in the works include an absentee pest control business, a construction cleanup business, and a possible porta potty rental business. We have calls lined up with the owners next week to dig into the financials and see if there are any major red flags. I’m also working on some off-market leads, so stay tuned!

💡 Cool Business Idea: Pontoon Boat Rentals

I came across a really cool business model this week—simple and makes money, that’s what I call cool. It’s a pontoon rental business, and after crunching the numbers, it looks like a solid opportunity, even if you start with just one boat. Let me break it down.

How to Hit ~$50k+ with One Pontoon

From an owner’s perspective, this business is pretty straightforward. You just make sure the pontoon is ready to go—filled with gas, cleaned up—and all the paperwork and waivers can be handled electronically. The renters show up, hop on the boat, and they’re good to go. Pricing typically varies by the hour, and if people want extras, like equipment or extended time, they pay for that too.

Let’s say you’re charging $300 for a half-day rental and $500 for a full day. With one pontoon, here’s how the numbers can look:

• Weekends (2 days per week): If you rent it out for full days on the weekend, that’s $1,000 per weekend.

• Weekdays (2-3 days per week): Let’s say you get 1-2 half-day rentals during the week, which brings in $300–$600 during the weekdays.

So, each week you’re pulling in somewhere between $1,300 and $1,600. Multiply that by 30 weeks in a longer boating season, and you’re looking at about $39,000 to $48,000 in revenue with just one pontoon.

Costs: Gas and Insurance

Now, let’s look at operating costs. Pontoons burn about 8 gallons of gas per hour. At $4 a gallon, here’s what the fuel costs would look like:

• Full-day rental = $256 in gas.

• Half-day rental = $128 in gas.

Assuming the pontoon is rented out for two full days on the weekends and two half-days during the week, your total gas costs per week would be around $768. Over the 30-week season, that adds up to $23,040 in fuel costs.

Pontoon insurance typically runs around $400 per year, so that’s another fixed expense to consider.

The Bottom Line

After accounting for gas and insurance, here’s what your profits might look like:

• On the low end, if you’re making $39,000 in revenue, after subtracting $23,040 for gas and $400 for insurance, you’re left with about $15,560.

• On the high end, if you’re making $48,000, you could net around $24,560 after expenses.

Scaling the Business

Once you’ve got your first pontoon up and running smoothly, scaling is simple: you add more pontoons. Let’s say you add a second boat. You could easily double your revenue potential to around $78,000–$96,000, with similar profit margins.

The beauty of scaling in a business like this is that the process stays the same. Each new boat requires the same setup—gas, insurance, maintenance—but the revenue grows exponentially as you increase your fleet. By adding more boats, improving your marketing, or even offering extras like fishing gear or coolers, you could eventually turn this into a six-figure business.

Tyler’s Perspective (Multiple Businesses Owned)

🚨 Tip of the Week: You never know how or where leads will come from. This week I was talking to a friend and he mentioned he was looking to liquidate some of his assets. I naturally asked why, and he said that he had purchased a tourism business a year ago and wanted to pay off the debt he had on it. So of course, my eyes light up, and I ask if he is interested in selling or taking on investors. He said yes, and we now have a call set up to chat with him on Friday. You never know where a lead can come from, so don’t be afraid to ask questions. Sometimes your circle of friends/family is a great place to start sourcing leads. Just keep going.

💰 Deals < $500k

Business Name: Commercial Power Washing Business
Revenue: $848,000
Asking Price: $299,500
Profit: $316,800 (Profit Multiple = 0.95x)
Location: Boston, MA
Established: 1990

✅ Pros:

• Recurring Revenue: Established commercial maintenance agreements provide stable income.

• Competitive Advantage: Proprietary equipment allows for efficient cleaning of large buildings from ground level.

⚠️ Cons:

• Weather Dependency: Business could be affected by seasonal weather fluctuations.

📈 Growth Opportunities:

• Expand Service Area: Targeting nearby cities or towns could significantly boost revenue.

• Increase Marketing Efforts: A more aggressive marketing approach could attract additional long-term contracts.

💰💰 Deals $500k - $2m

Business Name: Absentee Pest Control Business
Revenue: $642,000
Asking Price: $995,000
Profit: $314,000 (Profit Multiple = 3.17x)
Location: Albertville, AL
Established: N/A

✅ Pros:

• Diverse Services: Offers multiple revenue streams including termite protection, pest control, and mold remediation.

• Absentee Ownership: The business runs efficiently without the owner needing to be involved in daily operations.

⚠️ Cons:

• Market Saturation: Regional competition may limit growth without aggressive expansion.

📈 Growth Opportunities:

• Service Expansion: Introducing new pest control services could attract more customers.

• Geographic Expansion: Expanding into neighboring counties could increase market share.

💰💰💰Deals $2m-$10m

Business Name: Exterior Cladding Specialist
Revenue: $4,553,645
Asking Price: $3,900,000
Profit: $1,311,732 (Profit Multiple = 2.97x)
Location: Hillsborough County, NH
Established: 2014

✅ Pros:

• High Margin Projects: Commercial contracts provide a solid foundation for profitability.

• Skilled Workforce: An experienced team and established subcontractor relationships.

⚠️ Cons:

• Leased Facility: The business operates from a leased space, adding some limitations to long-term expansion.

📈 Growth Opportunities:

• Geographic Expansion: Moving into additional states, such as South Carolina, shows promising early results.

• Service Diversification: Adding related construction services could increase revenue streams.

**If today is your first day reading, go to Chapter Recaps to get up to speed!

The Lean Startup: Ch. 9 Part 2

Howdy, and Happy Thursday! Today we are going to continue to discuss small batches, specifically at IMVU, and design processes accelerated through 3 ways… you’ll have to wait and find out what those 3 ways are.

Normally, products like IMVU are released to customers on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis. Think about cell phones, at least once a year a new version comes out, and let’s be honest… you don’t need the new one. No, Apple isn’t slowing down your iPhone, maybe check those websites you keep visiting… it’s called viruses, and your kid isn’t the only one in your house who can catch them. Anyhow, the process that is used to design the product is stuck in the era of mass production. Using Apple as an example, all 1,500 changes made from one model of iPhone to the next is delivered in one GIANT batch. In the development and design of the product itself, large batches are still the rule.

“Product managers figure out what features are likely to please customers; product designers then figure out how those features should look and feel. These designs are passed to engineering, which builds something new or modifies an existing product and, once this is done, hands it off to somebody responsible for verifying that the new product works the way the product managers and designers intended.”

At IMVU, Eric and his team tried to design, develop and ship their new features one at a time, taking advantage of the power of small batches. Engineers and designers would work together side by side on one feature at a time, instead of working in different departments. Whenever features were ready to be tested with customers, they immediately would release a new version of the product, which would go live on our website for a relatively small number of people. Just like Toyota, IMVU checked for defects immediately, preventing bigger problems later & used an elaborate set of defense mechanisms that prevents engineers from accidentally breaking something important. Eric calls this a product’s immune system. Those promotions all for the mistakes to be found and removed automatically

When our immune system detects a problem, a number of things happen immediately:

1. The defective change is removed immediately and automatically.

2. Everyone on the relevant team is notified of the problem

3. The team is blocked from introducing any further changes, preventing the problem from being compounded by future mistakes until the root cause of the problem is found and fixed. 

IMVU calls these steps continuous deployment. More and more industries are seeing their design process accelerated by the same underlying forces that make this kind of rapid iteration possible in the software industry. There are three ways this is happening:

1. Hardware becoming software. The latest phones and tablet computers are little more than a screen connected to the Internet.

2. Fast production changes. Many assembly lines are set up to allow each new product that comes off the line to be customized completely without sacrificing quality or cost-effectiveness. 

3. 3D printing and rapid prototyping tools. Most products and parts that are made out of plastic today are mass produced using a technique called injection molding.

“The ability to learn faster from customers is the essential competitive advantage that startups must possess.”

Read more at corppivot.com!

Hope you enjoy this week's insights and happy deal hunting! Remember, if you find these updates helpful, share this newsletter with a friend!

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