12th Hustle: Sell Water
The Hustler has officially gone mad. How do you sell something that is seemingly free?
Let me show you.
There are many different angles that you maythink I am going to approach this from. Sure, you can buy bottles and sell it on a hot street corner in the summertime, maybe even slap your own label on the bottle, that may be lucrative for ya. But what happens if it rains?
Or maybe you would like to go toe-to-toe with your local municipality and sell your own brand of H20. Good luck with that!
Da Hustler always wants his readers to think higher, so here is the real deal. What I’m talking about is offering a service to offices, hotels and other local businesses to supply their water to them, along the lines of a Crystal Springs (or any number of businesses whose name ends in Springs). What you will do is get contracts with the business owners, and sell them everything that the big guys sell them for less. For instance, it may cost $20/month for water service to one suite in an office building, which normally consists of three bottles of 5-gallon water containers and the water cooler itself. Well if you can offer this same service for $15 dollars/month, you already are ahead of the game!
The key to this hustle is in numbers and customer service. The best thing to do is target office buildings that have a lot of suites, and offer your services to them. See if you can get in contact with the building manager, and get them to sell your services to the tenants! Not only do you have the trust factor, but you don’t have to do the legwork or run into cold shoulders because of any ‘No Soliciting’ ordinances that may be in effect. Also, be timely and courteous so you can get more business through word-of-mouth advertising. The best way to approach something like this would be to hit new buildings either under construction or nearly complete, so you can be the first to get the contracts.
The materials required for this hustle are:
- Water cooler (~$75)
- Water bottles (~10)
- Water (~$1.50/5 gallons)
- Adequate transportation
- A computer to keep up with your clientèle
Now there is an initial investment up front, but you could do a contract that has a required duration of 3, 6, or 12 months to ensure you get a return on your investment, else there will be an early termination fee (yes, just like the cell phone companies). If anything happens to the machine, you would have to replace it, but if you do a contract for 1 year, it will be covered under the manufacturer’s warranty anyway. As long as you keep the water bottles clean, they should last longer than the machine itself in most cases! Finally, as you grow, you will need to get a truck to handle all of the bottles and machines you will be deploying. This hustle also complements my 3rd Hustle, which spoke of selling destruction services to these same types of customers since they are in the same locations!
The whole world is on the new health kick wave, and clean water has always been something that we need. Be a supplier of this, and you’ll grow to be a major player in this market!
