I’m getting a bit tired of the ‘AI Agency’ and ‘Dropshipping’ loop. You know the one—where everyone is trying to find the next ‘hack’ to make money while they sleep, usually by selling a course to other people on how to do the same thing.
I’ve been looking into something different lately. Not ‘disruption’ or ‘scaling to the moon,’ but just… boring stuff. The kind of businesses that don’t make it into a TikTok reel because they involve actual grime and hard work.
I came across this video from Codie Sanchez and it really clicked. She’s not talking about the future of tech; she’s talking about the HVAC company down the street.
The weird thing is, the more ‘unsexy’ the business is, the better the margins usually are. Why? Because nobody else wants to do it. I found this list of ‘boring’ ideas and one line really stuck with me:
“Nobody wants to touch a maggot-infested trash bin, which is exactly why this business exists.”
— Incbook
It’s a simple truth: profit hides where people are too proud or too lazy to look. We’re so obsessed with being ‘innovative’ that we forget that people still need their trash bins cleaned and their parking lots striped.
Michael Heppell put it perfectly in a post I read recently:
“But while the headlines are being grabbed by sexy flash-in-the-pan start-ups, it’s the grafters who are the real backbone of any economy.”
There’s a real kind of freedom in that. Not the ‘laptop on a beach’ kind of freedom, but the kind that comes from owning a mechanism that actually works because it solves a real, boring problem for real people.
If you’re tired of the guru loop and want to actually find a gap in the market, you should check out Beyond the Hustle. It’s all about moving away from the noise and finding the things that actually move the needle.
Maybe the secret isn’t finding a new way to do things, but just being the only one willing to do the boring stuff well.