Passive Income Expert: How To Make 10k Per Month In 90 Days!

In this extensive conversation, entrepreneur Chris Koerner shares his wealth of experience launching over 80 businesses, many with minimal startup costs and high potential returns. Chris dives deep into practical advice on starting side hustles, overcoming mental obstacles, the role of passion and persistence, and leveraging modern tools like AI and social media to validate and grow simple but profitable ventures. He also explores mindset shifts necessary for entrepreneurial success, the trade-offs involved, and the nuances of scaling and partnering in business.

Early Business Lessons and Mindset

Chris recounts his entrepreneurial beginnings at age nine, when he started selling golf balls he collected from a neighbor's yard to earn money for a bicycle. This early experience cemented his belief that business is approachable and scalable. He stresses that most people have ideas but are often stopped by fear of judgment or not knowing how to connect tools with those ideas. Chris emphasizes that overcoming these mental blocks is fundamental to launching any venture. He also challenges the misconception that entrepreneurship must involve quitting full-time jobs or raising capital, highlighting how testing and validation tools today make starting accessible and less risky than ever.

The Importance of Copying and Validation

Chris is a strong advocate for copying proven business models rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. By analyzing competitors' websites, pricing, marketing strategies, and evolution over time—using tools like the web archive and traffic analyzers—entrepreneurs can jump in exactly where the market currently stands. He illustrates this with his phone screen repair business, where he replicated an existing recycling model and scaled it to multi-million-dollar revenue. Chris breaks down validation as rapidly confirming whether the market cares about or demands the product or service, emphasizing quick and low-friction testing like Facebook Marketplace ads and in-person trials. He critiques the ego-driven urge to innovate prematurely, explaining that starting by replicating established success creates a solid foundation for iterative improvement.

Overcoming Fear and Embracing Failure

A recurring theme is that fear—especially of what others think—is the biggest barrier to starting a business. Chris encourages desensitizing yourself by launching even if it feels imperfect or embarrassing, as persistence breeds experience and confidence. He shares how years of rejection during a missionary period trained him to handle "no" and persist until "yes." This mentality shapes his approach to entrepreneurship, where failure is reframed as research and experiments rather than setbacks. Such resilience often differentiates successful entrepreneurs from those who give up too early.

Passion versus Profit

Chris urges ignoring passion at the start and instead focusing on profit to fund further endeavors. Following passion from day one rarely succeeds because the overlap between what one loves and what is immediately profitable is statistically minimal. Instead, he recommends developing a passion for business itself and commerce, which can be channeled toward any industry later. He shares examples from his personal trajectory where following profit taught him valuable skills that enabled him to return to ventures aligned more closely with his interests in the long term.

Business Partnerships and Team Building

Addressing the common question of needing partners, Chris advises most entrepreneurs begin solo to learn about themselves and their work style before bringing someone else on board. He highlights that failure rates are disproportionately higher for co-founded startups compared to solo founders, often due to mismatched expectations or poor communication around effort, equity, and roles. Chris stresses the importance of delayed equity discussions, suggesting starting partnerships with clear goals—such as achieving a set revenue milestone—before formalizing ownership splits. He underscores trust as the ultimate foundation for working with operators or partners and prefers profit-sharing over equity to incentivize good management without diluting value prematurely.

Testing Ideas with Limited Budgets

The conversation offers concrete examples of businesses launchable with $500 to $5,000, underscoring how these amounts can be leveraged strategically rather than seen as limitations. With $500, Chris recommends starting an AI implementation agency serving small businesses, helping them integrate affordable AI solutions to save money or increase revenue. He also suggests physical ventures like drop servicing local services or building micro-directory websites that generate passive income through ads or lead aggregation. Vending machine businesses can also be entered with small capital, focusing on location testing and simple product offerings.

With $1,000, Chris points to wedding rental businesses—creating rentable items like arches or photo walls marketed to wedding planners—and local email newsletters built via Facebook ads and simple email tools, monetized through sponsorships. This strategy leverages hyperlocal audiences to build steady recurring income.

For $5,000, he encourages investing in small RV parks through seller financing, a relatively underexplored real estate niche that can yield higher returns than traditional rentals. He explains how to negotiate terms, boost occupancy through digital marketing, and increase property value. This also illustrates mixing active and passive income through hands-on asset management.

Using AI and Digital Tools

Chris emphasizes the unprecedented accessibility of no-code and AI-powered tools for entrepreneurs today. Platforms like Replet and Lovable let even non-programmers quickly build websites and apps with simple prompts. He stresses that learning Facebook ads is essential, calling it a foundational marketing skill akin to email writing or website building. Even minimal ad spend on Facebook Marketplace or Instagram can quickly validate product demand and help shape offerings. AI's rapid integration into business processes—especially within small to medium-sized companies—represents a massive opportunity for those who can bridge the knowledge gap and create practical implementations.

Types of Entrepreneurs and Focus

Chris identifies three archetypes of entrepreneurs: starters (visionaries and idea generators), maintainers (operators and optimizers), and finishers (deal makers and closers). He situates himself firmly as a starter, needing partnerships or operational support to sustain ventures beyond initial traction. He contrasts his broad, momentum-driven approach with the laser focus famously exhibited by Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg. While he acknowledges focus increases the likelihood of monumental success, he personally prioritizes lifestyle balance as a father and husband over building an empire, valuing variety and personal fulfillment.

The Reality of Entrepreneurship: Trade-Offs and Freedom

The discussion challenges romantic notions of entrepreneurship equating freedom and independence. Chris and the host agree that owning a business often means more responsibility to employees, investors, and customers, reducing personal freedom compared to traditional jobs. Entrepreneurship entails significant mental and emotional labor, uncertainty about income, and the need for constant problem-solving. Therefore, he stresses the importance of understanding the trade-offs honestly before committing. He advocates for people to test entrepreneurship rather than assume it's right for them, recognizing different temperaments and life situations call for different approaches.

Managing Rejection and Growth

Chris shares that repeated exposure to rejection, especially in sales and cold outreach, reshaped his mindset, encouraging rapid iteration and resilience. He advises young entrepreneurs to embrace sales roles to fast-track learning and improve conversion rates over time. He admits to struggles with pride and being an introvert but shows how persistence triumphs over natural inclinations. This growth mindset fuels his ongoing experimentation across industries.

Avoiding Mirage Opportunities

An insightful framework Chris offers is the identification of "mirage opportunities"—seemingly obvious billion-dollar ideas repeatedly attempted by founders but never materializing due to fundamental market or behavioral realities. Examples include apps for campus event coordination, podcasting tools, or group communication platforms attempting to replace mature platforms without new breakthroughs. He encourages entrepreneurs to recognize these traps and instead focus on copying proven models or areas where they hold an unfair advantage, such as through existing networks or content.

The Power of Momentum and Surface Area

Chris uses the metaphor of fishing with different lures and depths to emphasize the importance of testing many ideas rather than expecting immediate success from one. Increasing "surface area"—the variety and volume of experiments—improves the chance of catching winning opportunities. He advocates for persistence and viewing each test, whether successful or failed, as data refining future efforts. This approach blends patience with momentum, creating a sustainable pipeline of business ventures.

Content as an Unfair Advantage

Currently, Chris is focused on leveraging his content creator status as an unfair advantage to launch new businesses. He believes that content platforms and communities provide unique access, trust, and reach that can be transformed into revenue streams. This aligns with his principle of starting ventures where you have a right to win, maximizing pre-existing assets.

Passive Income and Sweat Equity

Chris dispels myths around passive income, describing it as rare and often preceded by "sweaty, ugly, active income." Real passive income usually emerges after investing significant effort and money upfront, often in the form of building systems, outsourcing operations, or acquiring income-generating assets. Examples include vending machines, RV parks managed by operators, and e-commerce businesses with hands-off management. He encourages attendees to embrace "sweaty income" first and only expect the true passive flow once a business proves profitable and stable.

Practical Business Examples and Revenue Potential

Throughout the conversation, Chris offers real-world examples showing revenue potential and mechanics. His concierge car buying business charged fees without inventory risk but eventually lost appeal to him personally. Wedding rental items can command $1,000 per event with minimal startup costs. Local email newsletters can generate hundreds to thousands monthly through sponsorships. Small RV parks purchased creatively can earn tens of thousands in annual profit, beating standard rentals by a wide margin. Vending machines can scale from hundreds to millions annually depending on location density and operational efficiency.

Advice on Starting and Scaling

Chris repeatedly emphasizes starting small, keeping costs low, and focusing on rapid validation through existing digital tools and local marketing. He advises building sales and marketing skills fast but avoiding overengineering or waiting for perfect conditions. He encourages entrepreneurs not to prematurely "burn the boats" or quit stable jobs until proven business scaling paths and profits exist. When scaling, leveraging operators and profit-sharing incentives often outperforms equity dilution or micromanagement.

Mental Health and Family Impact

The discussion candidly covers the strains entrepreneurship places on mental health and family dynamics. Chris admits to episodes of guilt, stress, and emotional withdrawal during lean periods, choosing to shield his family from hardship. The challenge of balancing transparency with protecting loved ones is acknowledged as ongoing. He stresses the importance of finding outlets for stress and growth beyond immediate family, such as mentor relationships or peer networks.

Learning from Rejection and Building Confidence

Ultimately, Chris frames entrepreneurship as a skill developed through relentless testing and learning from rejection. Improvement in sales conversion and resilience leads to compounding success, enabling further risk-taking and expanded venture creation. This growth trajectory contrasts with fixed mindsets and fuels his belief that entrepreneurship is more accessible than ever, provided one embraces the journey without fear or ego.

Resources and Following Chris Koerner

For those interested in exploring Chris's work, his main platform is tkopod.com, where he publishes weekly tactical guides on starting varied businesses based on audience requests. His content focuses on practical, actionable advice designed to empower new entrepreneurs. A popular viral video he produced outlines a simple ice cream vending concept demonstrating how low-cost, visually appealing ideas can generate substantial daily revenue. This reflects his philosophy of combining creativity with tested business fundamentals.