The $20m podcast founder, a $1M Airbnb cleaning service, tips to start a food business

Dear starters,

Pat Walls here, creator of Starter Story. 

I’m hitting your inbox to share with you the best ideas and insights we've published over the last week.

P.S. I'm also offering a limited-time deal on Starter Story premium for just $1.71/week (see bottom of the email).

🎙 Podcasts are still huge

Almost 80m people listen to a podcast at least once a week, meaning weekly podcast listenership has more than doubled since 2016. And in 2021, this figure will grow to over 100m weekly podcast listeners, just in the US.

This week we spoke with John Lee Dumas, founder of the famous Entrepreneurs On Fire Podcast. His story is kind of amazing, he went from finishing college to being a tank commander in charge of a platoon of 16 men in no time.

Once he was back, he started listening to podcasts a lot, but noticed that most of them just were updated once a week and he needed more (too much commuting, anyone else feels related?). That’s how EOF started.

Since 2012, he’s interviewed 3,000+ entrepreneurs, including Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin and Barbara Corcoran; achieved millions of downloads and generated almost $20m in gross income.

The Common Path to Uncommon Success is his latest effort, a 17-step guide to financial freedom and fulfillment with the world.

Want to learn more about starting a podcast? Check out our detailed guide, and the stories of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast (750k downloads) and EcomCrew ($35k/mo).

🛠 Build on top of a popular service (and go local)

This is something that has been said a million times in the past, but riding the wave of a popular service can help you a lot in terms of gaining traction. Our friend Neel started a platform that offers cleaning services to short-term rental hosts (and residential homeowners).

He started from scratch with 1 cleaner in Los Angeles making $400 per week. Now it grosses over $100K/mo and runs the business while living the “digital nomad” life. 

Also, the approach of finding a local service and building something better than the existing competition is great because:

• A little bit of technology and smarter operations can win (Like this $1m/year moving services from Phoenix)

• You have less competition from "big business". They can’t focus on small niches, and there’s when opportunities emerge (Have you read about the $3.6m/year SEO agency that works just with law firms?)

• A small local business can be scaled geographically if it works. (Neel is now expanding using a franchise model)

More Airbnb businesses? Gary started a $35k/mo Airbnb concierge service in Dublin.

🍉 The way we eat is changing

Food intolerances, allergies, supplements need are more common every day. And the space of food startups is growing non-stop.

In the past, we’ve featured many innovators in this field: caffeine-free turmeric latte mix, farm fresh cocktail ingredients, craft granola and many more. The opportunity here is huge!

Our latest interviewee is a great example. Louise was diagnosed with various health conditions and refused to take medication for the rest of her life. That’s when she started to think about solving her own problem and created her own food supplements.

Their challenge? It’s so good they ran out of stock for Indulgence Chocolate Collagen for almost 3 months last year. As she says, in ecommerce stock management and logistics are key.

☝️ Job opportunities

Many of the businesses we talk to are growing and looking for talent to join their teams. Check out these opportunities:

• Dean Bokhari is looking for an audio editor and a writer to grow his 100k/mo membership platform.

• At Ticket Tailor they sell more than 5m tickets every year and they’re looking for full-time senior PHP developers (based in London).

• People need help with their taxes, that’s why BearTax is growing fast and has over 10k users. Interested in joining their marketing and sales team?

• Production managers are wanted at Baloo to keep growing their $400k/mo weighted blanket business.

• Are you from Austin and love making custom-cool-as-hell knives? Chris is looking for you.

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