Selling Sawdust

One of the best businesses you can start is a byproduct of one you’re already doing.

Amazon’s cash cow isn’t books or flat screens, it’s their cloud computing software, AWS, used by everything from Airbnb, Netflix, to Soundcloud and Zillow. Even Coinbase.

So yeah pretty much everything on the internet is riding on the backbone of Amazon (if you didn’t think they were big enough already).

Which was launched as an internal way to handle online shopping demands back in 2006, later become the first pay as you go cloud computing and storage, and the rest is history. Even government agencies use this thing.

Which brings me to the idea of Sawdust. Sawdust is a byproduct of cutting wood, but instead of throwing it out or burning, someone smart enough saw (no pun intended) it as an opportunity and started selling it.

Do research and the same thing happened in the diary industry. Whey was once discarded until some fitness freak entrepreneur thought “hey, we can use this!”. At one point every protein powder was 100% whey, trash that was once skimed off the top of milk.

I wrote my book Cash Pad, after an already successful Airbnb. I wrote down everything I was doing, sent the pdf to Amazon, and they packaged it up. I now have a book that sells 24/7/365.

When I had my brick and mortar gym, PRYMAL, I used it as a ‘lab’ to test and learn different exercises, workouts, strategies, that I then brought online and scaled to the world via my social media.

Having an actual gym kept my hands dirty, but the internet allowed me to connect to a billion other people, not just those in the 20 mile radius of Chesterfield, MO.

So my challenge to you, if you're looking to start a side buisness: What are you already doing?

Are you a gutiar instructor for a local music shop? Record your lessons, put them on teachable and create a course.

Are you a chef working out new recipies? Cook for your friends, solict their feedback, and then package the winners as a pdf/cookbook. The friends get the benefit of food and you get the benefit of feedback. If you wanted to take it a step further, take pictures of the food, tease it on your social media, and let people know a cookbook is coming.

Just ideas. I love double stacking and triple stacking. You’ll see this a lot with guys who do real estate or amazon sales, they’ll create a course around it, often ironically more profitable than the actual thing they’re talking about.

Training and education is evergreen and people always want to learn. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignore is the opportunity to teach someone what you already know and pass the baton. And make some cash in the process.