Howdy Founders 🤠

I’ve written A LOT of these and by far the most favorited post which seemed to bring in the most positive feedback was this old one from 2024 where I detailed my Problem/Market validation cycle for taking a bunch of you on a founders retreat in Bali.

Well Since then, I’ve done something I think you’ll find pretty cool (which I announced in the last edition of Founder’s Only) which is that I build and sold a concrete business in 4.5 months without knowing anything about concrete to start.

So, after SEVERAL dozen of you requested more information on the HOW, here we are:

Today we're going to cover:

• The Leveling Bet: a business good enough to keep running

• The Turn: a throwaway line from my subcontractor

• The Real Business: why nobody else was advertising it

• Why I never actually stopped validating

• Business Idea of the Week 💡 

Validation Doesn't Stop When The Money Starts 💵

Walk through both validation cycles with me. It took two.

Every founder talks about validating an idea before you build it. Nobody talks about the version that happens after you're already live, already billing customers, already able to call it a real business. That second kind is the one that actually mattered here. If I'd stopped looking the moment I had paying customers, I would've ended up with a good business instead of the great one that I sold.

Cycle 1: The Leveling Bet

Step 1: Identify a Problem

A few issues back I told you about Jeff Price, who runs Texas Slab Guys. One conversation with him and I couldn't unsee it: uneven concrete is everywhere. Go on a walk in any neighborhood and you'll see sunken driveways, tripping-hazard sidewalks, slabs a tree root pushed up two inches. The problem doesn't need a poll. You just have to look down.

Step 2: Find a Solution

Concrete Leveling. And instead of building a crew from scratch, I planned to sub it out: get a real signal on demand before I committed to hiring anybody.

Step 3: Early Validation / Step 4: Build an MVP

I launched ads on February 13th. Facebook and Google Ads. The creatives were, and I'll just say it, either stolen from Google Images or badly generated by GPT, not my finest hour as a marketer, but the point was to get a signal, not win an award.

Step 5: Analyze

In the first two and a half weeks, I got 38 leads. Here's how they broke down:

• 2 became actual completed jobs

• 19 went cold ("lost")

• 16 were bad leads

• 1 cancelled

A 5% close rate. But here's the part that mattered more than the close rate: most of the people reaching out didn't want Concrete Leveling at all. They wanted driveway replacements, crack repairs, resurfacing, patio work. The demand for concrete work was real. The demand for the specific thing I was selling wasn't the strongest wedge into it.

Conclusion: Real market, wrong offer. But here's the thing: a 5% close rate on cheap ads was already enough to call this a business. Two jobs is two jobs. I could've kept running the same playbook, slowly gotten better at it, and had a perfectly fine little Leveling operation a year from now. Nobody would've blamed me for calling that a win and moving on to the next problem.

I didn't. I kept my eyes open.

The Turn

This is the part that only happens if you keep validating after you're "done." I already had jobs on the books. I already had a “working” funnel. It would've been easy to put my head down and just run it.

Instead, one of my Leveling subs, mid-quote on a job, tossed in an upsell service called “Expansion joint sealing” like it was nothing (a throwaway add-on). I stopped him and asked him to actually explain it: why he does it, what it costs him to do, what he charges for it.

His margins were high. Higher than I expected for something he treated as an afterthought.

Every founder gets told to talk to customers. Nobody tells you to talk to your vendors. The guy doing the actual work, every day, in the field. He sees patterns you'll never spot from behind a laptop. My best insight this year didn't come from a customer interview. It came from asking my subcontractor one follow-up question I almost didn't bother with.

Dollar Shave Club exists for the same reason. Michael Dubin didn't crack the razor business by talking to frustrated shavers. He cracked it because his co-founder was previously a vendor who had manufacturing connections and knew what razors actually cost to make. That margin was the whole business, and only a vendor could've shown him that.

That's when the second half of it clicked. I'd been staring at concrete marketing for weeks by that point, and I'd seen brutal ad competition for Leveling, for repair, for resurfacing. For expansion joint sealing? Nothing. Zero real marketing. A real, high-margin service that nobody was bothering to advertise.

Here's the pitch, in plain terms: it's preventative maintenance. Spend about $1,000 now, avoid a multi-thousand-dollar problem later. That trade sells itself once someone actually explains it to a homeowner.

And the market size isn't a guess. It's a walk around the block. Every driveway and sidewalk in Central Texas has these rotting wood expansion joints. They fail on a clock: about every 5 years. Replace with wood, and you're back doing it again in 5 more. It's not a one-time sale sitting in someone's driveway. It's a recurring problem baked into every single home in the state.

Cycle 2: The Real Business

Step 1-2: Problem and Solution

Same state, same driveways, but this time the offer was Expansion Joint Sealing, sold direct, and I wasn't treating the ads as an afterthought.

Step 3-4: Validate / Build the MVP (done right this time)

Because I actually believed in the market size now, I went in seriously. I had ChatGPT write a script that hit every point that actually matters for this kind of sale: prevention, cost savings, the danger of waiting. Then I filmed myself lying down in my own driveway, pointing at the exact problem, and put a few of those videos up on Facebook.

(Reply to this email and let me know if you’re interesting in seeing the winning ads I created)

Step 5: Analyze

I had leads throwing money at us on day one. They were coming in fast and cheap.

Where it stands today:

• Expansion Joints isn't a side offer anymore. It's the business, by a wide margin, and Leveling is the smaller line now

• Facebook is still running today, cheap and steady

• What started as a throwaway line from a subcontractor turned into a genuinely great business which I sold at about the 18 week mark.

Conclusion: I validated my way into a different, much bigger business than the one I set out to build.

Why I Never Actually Stopped Validating

Here's the actual takeaway, and it's not "get lucky with a good subcontractor."

Validation isn't a phase you complete before you launch. It's a habit. The moment you get comfortable (first customer, first repeat customer, first month you can pay yourself) is exactly the moment most founders stop asking questions. I almost did too. Leveling was looking good enough to stop looking and double down (better ads, more ad spend, tighter funnel, etc).

"Good enough to keep the lights on" and "the biggest version of this business" are two different businesses. You will never know the gap exists if you stop checking.

💡 Business Idea Of The Week

This is the easiest Business Idea of the Week I’ve ever written:

Create a trades business from scratch and I’ll help you grow it. I’ll even guarantee you that it will be a profitable business.

Need an idea to try out? Here are a few:

• Exterior caulking re-application

• Paver joint sand replenishment

• Fence post rot repair

• Mosquito misting system installs

• Roof soft-washing (moss/algae treatment)

• Attic insulation top-offs

• French drain / yard drainage installation

• Crawl space vapor barrier / encapsulation

• Septic riser installation

• Tree cabling and bracing

• Sump pump backup battery installs

• Basement window well covers/drainage

Simply reply to this email that you’re considering this and I’ll set up a call with you to chat about what I’m doing to help entrepreneurs build a profitable trades business in their spare time.

THE END

Thanks for reading :)

-John