A lot of people think you need a big idea to start a business.

Mine started with a joke from my dad.

We should start a beach chair company.

Somehow that joke ended up changing my entire life.

(and making us $850K, but we'll get to that)
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“Following the path”

Finance major. Fortune 500 internship. Full-time offer lined up before graduation.

By all traditional definitions of success, I was crushing it.

Then I spent three months in a cubicle.

Hey, just circling back on this...

Do you have enough bandwidth to take this on...

Boy, it's nice out today. Maybe I'll eat lunch outside.

Oh no. This is my future.

I had somehow ended up in a world where lunch felt like adult recess.

Where grown humans got excited about eating a sandwich outside for 30 minutes.
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One morning on my usual Blue Line commute (s/o Milwaukee stop), I had Eminence Front in my headphones.

The city had that early morning buzz.

This was my ‘main character’ moment of each day.

Then I’d get to work, sit under those soul-crushing fluorescent lights, and feel drained.

This can't be it.

- -

Hey, I’m down at the beach right now. It’s packed.

These chair rental companies have to be crushing it.

That was the text from my dad.

He was on vacation in Florida.

I was already 90% sure I'd never step foot in a corporate office again.

And any business model was on the table.

(before this text, I was convinced I was moving home to start a valet company... yeah, idk)

But the more I researched beach chairs, the more realistic it seemed.

It was a mom and pop side hustle in the eyes of the general public.

But under the hood, these companies were printing 7-figures each season.

All through websites that looked like they were built in 2007.

Why was no one talking about this?

- -

So… I guess we’re starting a beach chair company?

… and all we have to do is have better marketing?

One problem:

I knew nothing about marketing.

In college, I was learning how to analyze Shopify's stock price, never how to actually use it.

So I did what any desperate college kid would do…

I asked the smartest marketing guy in his fraternity for some help.

(lucky for me, he now owns a 7-figure ad agency)

Together, we mapped out a game plan:
• 2 click booking
• Direct response landing pages
• Optimize for phone call leads
• Scale paid ads like our lives depended on it (they did year 1)

Throughout senior year, I basically got a mini MBA in marketing.

Courses, YouTube videos, and probably annoyed my smart friend with a thousand questions.

(I eventually paid him for consulting)

My GPA went to absolute shit.

But then we got our first order:

$1,700.

For beach chairs.

No one is ever going to pay that much money for beach chairs

People back home in Cincinnati said.

Well, I guess they were wrong.

In our first 3 months, we made more than I would've made my entire first year at that finance job I walked away from.

- -

This story comes with its fair share of lows.

Like moving to Florida alone, three days after graduation.

All my friends (including the girl I'm now marrying) were off to big cities with "real jobs" and rooftop happy hours.

I'll never forget people saying:

That seems fun... but once summer's over, are you gonna get a real job?

Meanwhile, I was sweating through my shirt, delivering chairs out of a '07 Toyota FJ Cruiser with no AC and 170,000 miles on it.

But when it got tough… when I felt alone or unsure… I'd remember that feeling.

Fluorescent lights. Corporate small talk. Adult recess.

Nah. Never again.

So I'd turn on Eminence Front and roll down my windows on 30A.

(they were always down... again, no AC)

And I'd feel this weird sense of peace.

My "real job" looked a lot like other people's summer vacation.

Isn't that the whole point?

- -

By season 2, I had become an all-out marketing nerd.

Funnels, paid ads, local lead gen… it was my second language.

The business tripled in size.

We hit a record month in June 2023:

$68,000.

Pretty good for renting beach chairs lol.

- -

In early 2025, we sold the business just before our 4th season.

All in, we collected just over $850,000 in 3 years.

Would've been cool to say we hit 7 figures slinging beach chairs, but smart money knows when to fold.

The county was issuing some new beach regulations, so we decided to take our chips off the table.

We hired great people.

Made good money.

And proved that betting on yourself is usually the least risky move you can make.

Turns out the "risky" move was staying in that cubicle, waiting for adult recess time at noon.

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The real lesson here:

Most people think they need a genius idea.

Or a fancy product.

Or some cool new piece of tech.

You don't.

You need a boring market with customers, and an angle nobody's trying.

That angle for me was speed + internet.

Old market + new tools = arbitrage.

That's all this was.

A business hiding in plain sight, waiting for someone with a little curiosity and zero tolerance for fluorescent lights.

It wasn't a cool Silicon Valley startup.

It didn't make TechCrunch.

There was no "massive exit" story.

But it was real.

It worked.

And it started before I even walked across the stage at graduation.

Not bad for a kid who just wanted out of a cubicle.