Multi-Millionaire Reveals EASY Way To Start A Business

Summary

Chris Koerner’s central advice is to start with a business model that already works rather than trying to invent something completely new. Copy the proven fundamentals, then improve the model gradually through experience and experimentation.

Business playbook

• Start small and validate cheaply. Use tools such as AI website builders, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, online ads, surveys, or even a sign outside your home to test demand. Koerner argues that there is rarely a need to quit a job or raise capital before testing an idea.
• Treat competitors as evidence of demand. If a business already exists, investigate how it developed instead of assuming the market is saturated.
  • Use the Wayback Machine/Web Archive to review changes to a company’s website, pricing, and messaging over time.
  • Use Similarweb to examine traffic trends and compare them with site changes. Koerner gives a hypothetical example of a mobile-friendly redesign coinciding with monthly traffic rising from 3,000 to 4,500 visitors.
• Copy the proven model first, then optimize. Do not copy intellectual property, logos, or other protected assets. Instead, learn from the business model, pricing, site structure, target niche, and operating practices. Make changes once you understand what is working.
• Ask why competitors do things a certain way. Seemingly unnecessary fees or processes may reflect years of hard-won experience, cost realities, or customer behavior. Koerner advises starting with the established approach rather than assuming you can improve it immediately.
• Separate old problems from new ones.
  • For familiar problems—such as hiring, cash flow, legal structures, and finance—use proven expertise, specialists, mentors, or established examples.
  • For genuinely new problems without a reliable playbook, experiment.
  • Koerner estimates that roughly 95% of business problems are old problems and says his businesses continually test new ideas.
• Use focused experiments rather than intuition alone. Koerner says he would start with a channel that has already worked, such as Facebook ads, and reserve about 5% of the budget to test alternatives.
• Test more candidates in parallel when hiring. Rather than spending a month assessing one person, Koerner prefers giving five people 30 days to demonstrate their abilities. He also cites Y Combinator’s short interviews, in which candidates may be assessed within the first few minutes of a roughly seven-minute interview.

Examples and results

• Early entrepreneurship: At age nine, Koerner collected and cleaned golf balls found near his home, then sold them from a roadside sign for three for $1. He describes this as an early lesson that starting a business can be accessible.
• Broken iPhone-screen recycling: While running a phone-repair business, he learned that broken screens could be refurbished. He found recycling partners through Alibaba, tested suppliers with samples, and later applied marketing methods such as Facebook ads and cold calling. The business reportedly made $2 million in its first year, then $5 million, then $9 million, before eventually closing.
• Fulfillment business pricing: Koerner initially simplified pricing by removing storage and other fees. He later learned that established fees covered real costs and risks, including clients leaving goods behind. He says copying competitors’ pricing from the outset could have saved two years of experimentation.
• Buc-ee’s online store: Seeing strong customer loyalty and merchandise sales at the gas-station chain, Koerner noticed its website lacked a way to buy products. His team bought merchandise, photographed it, launched an online store, and contacted journalists. After a news story drew widespread attention, the store generated hundreds of thousands of dollars organically in its first 30 days. Koerner said Buc-ee’s had about 50 locations, described its stores as roughly 40,000–80,000 square feet, and claimed the chain generated billions in revenue.

Mindset and overall track record

Koerner says fear of other people’s opinions is a major barrier to starting. His rule of thumb is that the pain of the problem you want to solve should outweigh your concern about what others think.

He has started at least 80 businesses. Collectively, they brought in a few hundred million dollars in revenue and tens of millions in profit, but he says most were abandoned, failed, or were deprioritized because of opportunity cost. He frames entrepreneurship as a numbers game.

Presenters and source

• Chris Koerner: Guest and entrepreneur
• Steven Bartlett: Host of The Diary of a CEO