An Idea for Solopreneurs
By: Sah Kilic
Tags: Small Business, Startup, Entrepreneurship, Productivity, Business

An Idea for Solopreneurs

The Ferrari Market Letter: The perfect small business

Photo by Viktor Theo on Unsplash

The other day I was scrolling through Twitter when I came across a tweet from Chris Bakke — it was his take on the perfect small business.

Pick a hobby that you spend too much money on Create a newsletter for that hobby Market to other enthusiasts via Reddit, Twitter, or Facebook

Of course, this was something people did already, but two things caught my attention.

The hobby — that you spend too much money on, and the example he used.

The Business

Bakke used the example of The Ferrari Market Letter.

Now let’s back up here for a second — if you’re someone who doesn’t have a lot of money or was born in the 90s onwards, you probably haven’t heard of this website. And for a good reason — it’s old.

Here’s the pitch: Bringing buyers and sellers of second-hand Ferraris together, advertising auctions, and vetting entries.

Sounds interesting? So I went to the site to do some research on this — and I was shocked. If you go to that site, you’ll see that it’s favicon is the Hostgator logo, it’s not mobile-friendly, it’s clunky, and the template likely hasn’t been updated in years — *psst* web designers, there’s potential for a cold email sale there.

This rusty, design defying, SEO nightmare of a website is bringing in $2,000,000+ revenue, with a team of two, on an email list that’s 5000 strong.

This is a fantastic example of value over fluff.

No one cares about how bad the website is because, for 45 years, it’s been delivering the value perfectly — and when you have real value like that, you can charge for it. Oh, and they do.

Ferrari Market Letter Subscription Page

It’s not surprising that they can charge these subscription prices, this isn’t mass-market Netflix — it’s a niche, and the enthusiasts have expensive tastes.

Which brings me to the next ingredient for success in this type of endeavour.

The Hobby

The very first step in the process for this type of small business is a hobby you spend way too much money on.

Gerald Roush was the founder of The Ferrari Market Letter because he was a super-fan of Ferrari.

He collected memorabilia, photography, and kept the most complete database of information about the brand and its vehicles, the largest in the world probably.

He owned three Ferraris throughout his life, and to him, it was money well spent.

Other enthusiasts relied on Roush for his extensive knowledge and therein lies the opportunity, the small business that Roush created.

People who love cars, watches, purses, shoes, clothes, wine, whiskey, cigars, skiing, bicycling, hunting, etc. will pay big $ to learn from, connect with, and buy from other enthusiasts. — Bakke

Bakke’s right, and here’s my take.

The cheaper and less time-consuming the hobby, the more people who are doing it.

The more people who are doing it, the larger the pool of content and support that’s already available.

Am I saying go pick up an expensive, time-consuming hobby so you can make it rain? Absolutely not.

This is what it feels like to have a pricey hobby…

What I am saying, is that if you have something that you’re that into, something you’re on the top of the “enthusiast pyramid” of, you can absolutely capitalise on it.

Here, let me adjust the list for 2020: drones, sneakers, e-bikes, e-scooters, e-skateboards, nostalgic collectibles (cards, figurines, clothes), vinyl and more.

If you’re deep into a passion, out of the almost 8 billion people on earth, there’s definitely more like you. In fact, if you’re that deep, you have plenty of value to give to everyone that hasn’t gone as deep yet.

And value is money.

The Solopreneur

I rarely imagine myself leading a company with 100+ employees, dealing with organizational structure, legal teams, salaries, resourcing — all of that seems like a nightmare.

But purposefully running a business that isn’t meant for massive scale, that serves a small but passionate niche, that has a turnover of $1–2 million, something manageable by 1–2 people — that’s the dream.

And the dream is real.

Put passion over profit, and somehow the profit makes its way to you.

And if you don’t believe me, I should mention that Roush with his newsletter isn’t the only case study.

If you need some more validation that this is doable, check out Tim Ferriss’s case studies on other founders who are doing it in different ways.

What’s my cool hobby?

What am I passionate about?

Can I provide value to other hobbyists?

These are the questions that I’ve been pondering since reading that first tweet, and the thought exercise has been absolutely worth it.

I hope you give it a go too.

Good luck 😎

Sah