Go where there's "Peak Demand" for $1m/mo - Mike Feldstein and Neville Medhora Interview
Mike Feldstein runs Jaspr Air, and has had a career in the "Disaster Industry."
This means you go somewhere where there's "Peak Demand" and fulfill that demand.
So if there's a hail storm that damages 100,000 roofs, you go to that city and start fixing roofs.
If there's a flood, you go to that city, hire labor, and get to work.
He's seen people make $1,000,000/mo, and one case of a guy making ~$70,000,000 in 4 months.
His main company Jaspr Air was started when he was fixing fire damaged houses, and built an industrial-level air purifier for homes.
My Notes on this conversation
- Started in the "Disaster Business" by going where there's super-ultra-high peak demand and fulfilling that demand. Wild fire damage, hail storms,
- He priced his air purifier for under $1,000 and it didn't sell. Simply changing the price to $2,000 made it sell out quick. It indicated to buyers it was more valuable.
- "By charging higher prices you have margin to make a better product and deliver better customer service."
- "You may as well start your pricing high, because nobody cares if you lower your price, but everyone goes nuts if you raise your price."
- If you price too low, you can raise money and sell to lots of people, but you now have to service tons of low-paying customers and fill tons of demand. Pricing high is better.
- When there's volatility and chaos, if you're good at making decisions on the fly you can make a lot of money in the chaos business. You can also go broke, but also create a lot of value.
- Disasters include things like Floods, Fires, Earthquakes, Power Outages.
- You can throw up a simple web page and ads to get leads after a major disaster and pickup work.
- Once got 2,000 calls in one hour. Spent $10,000 on Ruby Reception in 40 minutes to answer 600 simultaneous calls.
- Doing just drywall work is $600...but if you do drywall to replace mold it would cost $12,000. He learned many industries can charge 20X more for doing similar work.
- Insurance companies come into disaster areas ready to spend billions of dollars on repairs.
- Canada is way less litigious than the US, so getting insurance money is faster, whereas in US the insurance companies will frequently refuse to pay unless you force them. Much harder in US to compete than Canada. \
- Hired 55 guys in one week in a disaster zone. Hire a pressure washing company with 10+ guys, and instead of pressure washing he told them to clean the inside of homes. If they can pressure wash houses, it's likely they could do other related tasks. So he got huge labor forces quickly like this.
- Would hire companies from 3 or 4 hours out, and hire their entire crew, and pay a daily rate and guarantee them 2+ months of work. This helped quickly build an organized workforce with their own equipment.
- Internet business seems to easy compared to the war-time-like environment of the disaster industry.
- Insurance is messed up because it's cost-plus pricing, so companies are almost
- You can "hit it and quit it" and make $1,000,000/mo for about 2 or 3 months.
- Some people make $20,000 from selling courses for a year, but in this business you can make $100,000 in a month because of just insanely high demand.
- There's big arbitrage opportunities during these times, but you have to be super quick, and it's extremely stressful.
- Some pest control companies made tonnnsss of money during Covid because instead of spraying pesticides they did disinfecting services (with the same equipment) for large buildings and venues.
- His biggest "sellers" for Jaspr Air were the dental hygienists raving about the Jasprs in their offices for cleaning the air.
- Most big air purifiers were ugly and loud, so Mike made one who was good looking and super quiet....this did really well.
- What water is to fish, air is to us.
- Thinks of himself as a "Street Engineer"
- Some people are really good at interior design, and have an "eye for design", but don't realize that same skill applied to something else (such as hardware) can be worth 10x more.
- Bought 25 different giant air purifiers to find the best qualities of each and designed his own.
- Trend he's noticing: People are "relaxing hard" like sauna, cold plunges, etc.
- When growing up thought rich people had to be evil, but as he knows more rich people realizes that's not really true at all. Also notices they're not that busy, almost easier to meet up with them.
$12,000 day during an ice storm + other Disaster Time opportunities
Mike saw some kids in Austin, TX. making $12,000 a DAY by hauling away tree branches and debris after a major ice storm.
Small money move vs big money move
After a hail storm, the small money is repairing roofs since that is slow, the big money that's scaleable is tarping roofs.
Why do some businesses outperform others during certain events or times?
A drywall installer can do a job for $600, or remove mold for $12,000....it's the same thing, but when the job involves something scary like mold, it can 20X the price.
"Mold Is Gold."
Gary Halbert's mindset was incredible.
Gary Halbert always talked about finding "the hungriest customers" and nothing else really mattered.
If you wanna sell a lot of hot dogs from a hot dog stand, good marketing can help a little, but being around a bunch of really hungry people is even better.
Are you looking to make $80,000 quickly? Here's an idea.
There's all sorts of "Peak Demand" events like when Burning Man flooded and people couldn't get out.
Mike talks about how we would've booked up every helicopter service in the area to just fly out Burning Man attendees.
How to make $1,000,000 in one week?
Go where there's peak demand, and you can make tons of money.
Some kids with a pickup truck and small utility trailer were hauling away tree debris after a big freeze, and were making $12,000/day.
Is there a business that makes $70,000,000 in 4 months? YES.
One guy in Ft. McMurray made $70,000,000 in 4 months. He made a website as a homebuilder.
Normal prices for homes are $250/sqft, but he was charging $600/sqft because demand was so high after a flood.
