What Small Businesses Are the Most Profitable Today? (Podcast) | Ep. #111
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A continuación: What Are Small Businesses That You Can Start from Home When You Have No Skills? (Podcast) | Ep. #112 Cancelar 10
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Are you in the process of creating a business, but unsure whether your idea has any lucrative potential? While it is impossible to predict the success of every new business venture, there are certain industries that have a proven track record of yielding significant financial returns. In episode #111, Elizabeth Larkin and Gene Marks discuss several of today’s most profitable businesses.
Executive Summary 1:14—Today’s Topic: Which of Today’s Small Businesses are the Most Lucrative?
1:56—With hourly rates ranging from $100 – $400, accounting businesses have been proven to be quite profitable for individuals with the proper licensing and education. They also require little to no initial investment.
7:43—Becoming a real estate owner or landlord is a good option for those with the startup capital because once you purchase the property, all you essentially have to do is maintain it and collect rent.
10:03—Those with a law degree and a relevant experience should consider establishing their own office since legal services are always in demand. As with accounting, this small business requires no overhead or direct cost.
11:28—The management of companies and enterprises is another lucrative industry for business owners because it allows them to serve as consultants to preexisting companies.
12:55—Starting your own construction business can be very profitable, provided that the current economy is strong and you have priced your rates accordingly.
14:98—While dentistry has always been a stable profession, private practice owners who have expanded their basic services to include cosmetic dentistry have the opportunity to reap additional financial rewards.
15:56—When the housing market is strong, those with the drive and determination can find great success as a real estate agent due to all the commissions.
17:42—Despite the high barrier entry and the high initial investments, owning a mineral mining or quarrying business can generate significant profit margins since it is such a commodity-based service.
18:36—Warehouse and storage space rental is another fast-growing industry that requires little of an aspiring business owner beyond the initial purchase of the storage units or facilities.
20:03—Due to sheer necessity, death care and funeral-based services offer a steady and highly lucrative income to those who decide to establish a business in these areas; the industry has growing opportunities for women because they are perceived as more nurturing and comforting than men.
22:59—Gene advises travelers to book their airplane tickets an average of 70 days in advance to get the best fares.
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Transcript Elizabeth: Gene, we never talk about our favorite books anymore or what we’re watching, or movies we’ve seen.
Gene: Boy, I’d love to share, so I can I share with you a great show that I just finished watching?
Elizabeth: We’re going to save it to the end of the episode.
Gene: Oh, okay.
Elizabeth: Because people don’t like to hear … Some people like to hear about it, but others are like, “You know what, you’re going to talk to me today about what small businesses are the most profitable. I’m starting up a small business or I just started a small business, just tell me what businesses are most profitable.” They don’t want to hear about our banter about what we’re reading, what we’re watching.
Gene: Meanwhile, you’re bantering right now.
Elizabeth: I know.
Gene: You’re just droning on and on. People want to get to the meat of the issue, here.
Elizabeth: I just want to let the people that do like us, and want to hear about what we’re doing right now-
Gene: I’ve got a great show on Netflix to recommend, so stay tuned to the very end.
Elizabeth: Yes.
Gene: You will not regret it.
Elizabeth: And I have a good one, too. After the Word of Brilliance, stay with us.
Our topic today, as you may have guessed, what small businesses are the most profitable right now, and we’ll be back with that list after we here from our sponsor.
Our Sponsor This podcast is brought to you by The Hartford. When the unexpected strikes, The Hartford strikes back for over 1 million small business customers with property, liability and worker’s compensation insurance, check out The Hartford’s small business insurance at TheHartford.com.
QUESTION: What Businesses are the Most Profitable Now? So, Gene, I’m going to run through these industries, and what I want to talk about is commonalities between them or how hard it is to start a business like this.
Gene: Sure.
Elizabeth: Because some of them, there’s a barrier to entry. Number one, accounting.
Gene: Yeah, first of all, I think we’re going to find of the businesses here, because I took a sneak peek at this list, involve this thing called, skills.
Elizabeth: Or education.
Gene: Or education. Maybe, we’ll get back to that or maybe we’ll talk about that now, but accounting is considered to be a very profitable business to run, right? Here’s the reason why it’s a profitable business to run, because I’m an accountant. Typical accountants charge-
Elizabeth: Nerd.
Gene: Yeah, well, okay. Typical accountants charge, a 100 bucks to $400 an hour, depending on the work that they’re doing, whether it’s tax returns or advice or whatever. You’ve got no out-of-pocket costs. You could have an office or you don’t have to have to have an office. You can just work from home if you wan to. When you think about a billable week, if you’re an accountant and you can find 40 hours a week, billable, even $100 an hour, that’s $4000 a week or-
Elizabeth: What would an accountant-
Gene: That’s like 50 grand a year is what you’re making with basically no out-of-pocket, no materials, no costs, no-
Elizabeth: Well, your computer.
Gene: That’s nominal stuff.
Elizabeth: You accounting software.
Gene: Yeah, that’s also very nominal. That’s just you doing the work, by the way. You can easily make a living, 50 grand a year, that’s at 100 bucks an hour, when really most accountants are charging twice that. Really, you could be making 80 to 100,000 dollars an hour, if you could be 40 hours chargeable a week for 50 weeks a year, that’s a pretty profitable business.
Elizabeth: What if you think about the education that you need to do that.
Gene: Yeah.
Elizabeth: Now, your son is an accountant.
Gene: He is.
Elizabeth: How much did you spend on his college education?
Gene: Exactly right. First of all, too much. We spent three times the amount of money that we needed to spend. Here’s the thing, to become a CPA, in most states requires you to get 120 hours of accounting credits that you need to have. So, you need to go to school, and some even require even more. Those accounting credits can be from a community college, or they can be from a local college, they don’t have to be from any expensive-
Elizabeth: And he went to Pitt, right?
Gene: He went to Pitt, which is a state college, so that’s-
Elizabeth: That’s still pretty expensive.
Gene: It was about 25 grand a year to go to Pitt. Okay, that’s one thing. We could have gotten it, I’m going to a school even cheaper than that, and he could have gone to community college for half that amount of time for even cheaper, but then he would have gotten the credits he needed. Then, he could sit for the CPA exam. Once you pass the CPA exam, you’ve got license to practice in your state, you now have those skills, and then you can earn a really good living. There will never be a shortage of accountants in this world unless governments decide to stop taxing their people, which clearly is never going to happen. It’s a really consistent, good business to go into. Now, a lot of people don’t because it’s boring and you have to have a certain personality. You have to be detail … You can imagine what the downsides are … Now, I know this is why, this is considered to be one of the most profitable businesses, that’s why, it’s you and your brain.
Elizabeth: Yes, you do have to be detailed oriented, and you have to be good at math or at least proficient in math.
Gene: By the way, you don’t have to be that great in math, believe it or not. It’s a lot of adding and subtracting.
Elizabeth: You know what, I know when I-
Gene: There are calculators that do that.
Elizabeth: … I go see my accountant and I’ll ask him questions, and he’s just got his ten key out all the whole time.
Gene: He’s just calculating away.
Elizabeth: I wonder if he’s not able to do it in his head or if he just loves his ten key. I think he loves his ten key.
Gene: I’m thinking it’s the other thing around, he’s probably not able to do it in his head. I took accounting in college, I met a lot of, these guys are not going to be rocket scientists, but they’re smart enough to be accountants. People in the accounting profession are going to yell at me, but-
Elizabeth: You need to be detailed-oriented.
Gene: Yeah.
Elizabeth: You also have to be good with people because you’re dealing with clients.
Gene: Not necessarily. I know a lot of accountants that are very good accountants, they’re just not necessarily that great with people. Would you rather have your accountant be not good with you socially, but saving you money on your taxes, and really be excellent at what he does? Or would you like the accountant the other way around, he’s like, “Hey, let’s go for beers, I love ya”, meanwhile he doesn’t know what he’s doing when it comes time for your tax return? What would you prefer?
Elizabeth: I think you know, but okay, the next episode, I’m going to tease this, are these are businesses for lazy people to start, it’s businesses you can start at home and you don’t need any skills, so the barrier of entry-
Gene: Hosting a podcast.
Elizabeth: … is much, yes exactly. The barrier of entry is much, much lower, but for these businesses, to be an accountant, let’s say you’re not a CPA, but you’re like, “Oh, accounting is one of the most profitable, small businesses to start. Maybe I just hire a bunch of accountants to work for me.” Is that plausible?
Gene: I mean, sure, of course it is. When I gave you this scenario of a person being 40 hours chargeable a week at a 100 or 200 bucks an hour, that’s a decent living, that you could make, but you certainly ain’t getting rich. You’re earning a decent living. You want to make money, you become a business person. The way you become a business person, you hire other accountants to work for you.
Elizabeth: So, how come you don’t hire a bunch of CPAs to do?
Gene: We’re not in the accounting business. We’re in the technology management business, so we really focus on more the applications.
Elizabeth: I’m thinking, just you know, forget about The Mark’s Group-
Gene: And do it separately on the side? No, it’s a good question, but it’s like any other business, every business you get out of it, what you put into it. I’m not going to be able to hire ten CPAs, and then, boom, I have a business plan, you’ve got to market that business. I got to get clients, they have to be served, there has to be organization, and structure, and all that. That takes, that’s a full-time job to manage that stuff.
Elizabeth: Okay, so accounting is the most profitable small business, but there is a barrier to entry, you actually have to be a CPA.
Gene: You have to be a CPA by the way, you can just be a regular accountant, it’s just-
Elizabeth: Really?
Gene: The CPA certification, besides it being, it bolsters your credibility by a 1000%, you can’t sign off on financial statements unless you’re a CPA.
Elizabeth: Okay.
Gene: But you can prepare somebody else’s tax return if you’re not a CPA, but if you’re going to hire an accountant and one’s a CPA and one’s not, you’re generally going to lean towards the CPA.
Elizabeth: You’re going to hire the CPA.
Number two, business number two, most profitable small business, real estate AKA landlord, so not a real estate agent, but someone owns property-
Gene: Property.
Elizabeth: … and is renting it out. That’s got a pretty high barrier to entry.
Gene: It does.
Elizabeth: Because you have to have money.
Gene: You need to have money. It’s funny, we’ve done that, as well. We’ve, over the years, my wife and I purchased some small properties that we rent out in Philadelphia. Once you’re able to scrape up the money to do it, that’s a super easy and profitable business to do, because then it’s a matter of just charging rents and collecting them.
Elizabeth: If someone calls your tenant and they’re like, “Oh, the toilet’s clogged again.”
Gene: Then it becomes-
Elizabeth: Are you the person who’s going over there?
Gene: It depends. Having said that though, these are the kinds of things, that we were talking about profitable businesses, you can do yourself. The barrier to entry there is very low. Once you bought the property, to learn how to be a handyman or whatever, it’s a skill like anything else, and there are different levels of expertise there, but it’s a Home Depot type of thing. You can service your apartment. Plus, if you buy property that’s in pretty good shape. We buy, we have a few condos in Philly, so there’s like zero work that needs to be done on them. Then, from a profit standpoint, it’s a matter of … You’re just subject to that market value of rents in your area, so that’s something that’s out of your control.
Elizabeth: Have you ever had to lower rents?
Gene: No, we’ve never had to do that yet, but we’re prepared to if that is the case.
Elizabeth: Because you aren’t relying on that income.
Gene: Right, but you’re depending on the market and what the rents are. You have a mortgage if you finance it, but if you have, like you said earlier, if you’ve got the cash, you have to finance it, then you are literally collecting a check. Now, the only other thing you have to worry about is that if, what if somebody doesn’t pay, a tenant doesn’t pay. Honestly, that’s really few and far between. The fact is in this world is that 99% of the people out there, they do pay their bills, and they are honest people and they are … Okay, there is 1%, that you might stumble on that gives you a problem, and that’s a potential headache, but that shouldn’t happen to you often.
Finding new tenants is a cost because when you lose one, then you gotta advertise for another, and then spend some time-
Elizabeth: And it’s time, you have to interview people.
Gene: Correct, and it might involve a cost because you have a new tenant, so you have to put in new rugs, or have the place painted again. Over the long term, operationally, it’s profitable.
Elizabeth: Number three, legal services.
Gene: Same thing as accounting. It’s the same concept.
Elizabeth: Again, you’re going to spend a lot of money on education.
Gene: You do, more than accounting in this case because there you got to go undergrad, and then you go to law school, and then once you go to law school, you then got to sit for the bar exam.
Elizabeth: And law school is really expensive.
Gene: Super expensive. Again, once you’ve got all of that behind you, then like an accountant you can open up your own practice, and you charge by the hour, and you can do it yourself. You don’t necessarily have to hire other people. There’s no materials, there’s not inventory, there’s no machinery, there’s no equipment, there doesn’t even have to be any rent if you want to do it from your home. I have a very good friend, who’s a labor attorney. Just background is, he went to Duke Law, and then he worked for ten years at a big law firm.
Elizabeth: I hate Duke.
Gene: Well, listen, Duke is, that their basketball team, you can’t argue that they’re one of the-
Elizabeth: I hate them.
Gene: … whatever, it’s a very good school. It’s very beautiful.
Elizabeth: I’m a UConn fan.
Gene: Okay, you’re a UConn. Anyway, let’s get back on topic here. My friend, Claude, he’s the attorney, he’s a labor attorney. He works out of his home. He built a little office for himself over his garage, and he’s got like ten clients, and he represents the bad guys. He represents corporations when they fight employees.
Elizabeth: So, he has no soul, basically.
Gene: He has no soul.
Elizabeth: Okay.
Gene: But a funny guy. His business is highly profitable because there’s no overhead and no direct costs.
Elizabeth: Okay. Number four is something called, and by the way, this is based on a Sageworks survey.
Gene: Sageworks is an excellent firm that provides data to both small and large companies. We got this from a list that Sageworks put together from their database.
Elizabeth: We’ll link to this in the show notes. This is something called management of companies and enterprises. The explanation is this industry consists of small, privately owned offices of bank holding companies, and they help out other businesses in influencing management decisions and organizational strategies. What does that mean, Gene?
Gene: I’m not really sure. I’m not really sure. My-
Elizabeth: Are they business consultants?
Gene: Yeah, I think what they’re talking about is we are consultants and investors of people that buy in like private equity companies, that buy into other companies, and take over ownership or part ownership, and then they charge a management fee.
Elizabeth: Okay.
Gene: There are a lot of companies out there, that do that. There is a company in Philadelphia, one of my clients, actually, that is they are a private equity firm, and they go into middle market, boring manufacturers, and they buy them out, where they buy majority ownership in them. Then, they charge a management fee back to that company, in turn for their management services.
Elizabeth: That’s a racket.
Gene: Well, they do own the company, so they’re not going to charge a management fee that’s going to put them out of business, but their management fee is structured in some way, that okay, yeah, it’s a bit of a racket. It’s still, a very profitable type of enterprise, obviously.
Elizabeth: Okay, number five, construction.
Gene: That interests me, and caught my eye for being most profitable or one of the most profitable types of businesses.
Elizabeth: Because there a ton of costs.
Gene: There is a lot of cost because there’s material cost. I think what we’re talking about in construction is if you’re small time. If you’re a drywall guy, or if you’re a contractor, if you are somebody that’s carpenter, and you’ve got your own carpentry business or drywall business, that’s not that different than your accountant business or your legal business. It’s just you, so you’re charging time and materials for the work that you’re doing. If you price yourself correctly … Listen, housing prices now are jumping around the country, there’s a shortage of housing. The construction industry is trying to catch up, it’s been very good to be in the construction industry, and they’re willing to pay top dollar to independent construction companies, drywall people, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, those kind of guys, and they’re charging an hourly rate. If you can get the rate, then it’s profitable.
Elizabeth: What happens if we go into a recession in 2019?
Gene: Then, it’s not profitable.
Elizabeth: Then, they fall out of the-
Gene: That’s right. Well, that gets back to, and we’ve had conversations before about managing cash, but my smartest clients are in the construction business are the ones that scoop up the money when things are good, and stick it away because they know particularly in that industry, it is very, very much fluctuates with the economy.
Elizabeth: Okay, number six is dentists.
Gene: Interesting one about that, as well. Dentists are lucky in the sense that, when I say lucky, I’ve never met a happy dentist. Whenever I talk to dentists, they always are grumbling. I guess I would be grumbling, too, if I were to be looking in people’s mouths. That is a job I could never imagine having, but okay, that’s fine. It’s a profitable business, and it’s never going away because-
Elizabeth: My dentist loves me.
Gene: Is your dentist happy?
Elizabeth: Uh …
Gene: See, that’s exactly, that’s my point.
Elizabeth: You know, I don’t really see the dentist that much, I just see the hygienist, but since I have perfect teeth, they’re like, “Oh, your teeth are great.”
Gene: My teeth have paid my for my dentist’s three kids’ college education. When you are a dentist though, particularly … It’s amazing to me because this is an industry that really, essentially didn’t exist 150 years ago unless you just had to have a tooth pulled. Now, you got teeth whitening-
Elizabeth: Then, they tied a rope around it, and the other, a horse-
Gene: They put a bunch of leeches on your body, then they pulled your teeth, and that was supposed to fix all of your woes. Nowadays, obviously, there’s a lot of value added services that you provide as a dentist. I mean, teeth whitening is huge, high margins. Things when you put in posts into your mouth because you have to pull teeth.
Elizabeth: Veneers.
Gene: Veneers, cosmetic surgery, as well that gets done, gum surgery and services that are done. They’re just, they’re a lot of value added stuff that you can do and people … When I get my teeth cleaned, which I do four times a year, I go.
Elizabeth: Me too.
Gene: Do you really go that much?
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Gene: I go four times a year. It’s like 200 bucks each time I go or something like that. It ain’t cheap. It ain’t cheap.
Elizabeth: No.
Gene: But dentists can get that because there is a value for doing that. That’s why they’re profitable.
Elizabeth: Number seven, real estate agents. Now this is a business I cannot believe it’s even in the top 20, because I feel like it’s so dependent on the economy.
Gene: It is. Maybe this isn’t the same thing when we’re in a recession, but for the most part, the real estate markets are active enough that you can make a business being a real estate, and by the way, do we mean somebody renting out properties or somebody selling, getting commissions on … How do we describe a real estate agent?
Elizabeth: The agent is the person getting a commission from selling, either residential or commercial real estate. The thing is, you always hear about people, “I guess I’ll just become a real estate agent.” Now, I know there’s a lot of real estate agents who are really good, and it was their calling, but the market is so flooded with people that are like, “I don’t know what else I’m going to do.”
Gene: You’re right about that, by the way, a lot of people go into the business because the barriers to entry are pretty low. I forget what the exam … Don’t you have to take an exam to be a real estate agent?
Elizabeth: Yeah, you do. My real estate agent, I will ask her a simple question, and she’ll ask me ten questions back. I’m like, she’s a real professional.
Gene: The cream rises to the top.
Elizabeth: She knows what she’s doing.
Gene: Whenever you hear people saying, “Oh, I’m going to get in and sell real estate.” That’s in any business. If you’re really good at what you do, you can make money at it. Being a real estate agent, let’s face it, your biggest cost, I believe is you’ve got marketing costs because you’ve got to be out there. You get referrals, but you also to be out there.
Elizabeth: And travel. You’re always in your car.
Gene: You’re always running around, so you’ve got those out-of-pockets. I also think good real estate agents have a bit of an administrative team behind them, as well to handle the paperwork and all that. Those are all costs, but again, they’re relatively lower costs, so that’s why I can understand why that business would be profitable.
Elizabeth: Number eight is something I was really surprised by, mineral mining and quarrying.
Gene: Now that is a commodities business, it is a very capital-intensive business, I’m sure it’s a very high barrier to entry into that. You don’t just wake up one morning and say, “You know what, I’m going to be a mineral mining and quarrier.”
Elizabeth: That’s something someone in your family is already in that business.
Gene: Clearly, a family business. They have licenses and permits and rights to do whatever mining. They’ve got the equipment that probably granddad bought back in the 1940s, and they’re still just working. You’re pulling stuff out of the ground, and selling it, and depending what the price is of the minerals that you have, you’re able to have really good margins. I wouldn’t recommend going into that business as a start-up, but I can understand why if you’re an established business in that area, you can make some money.
Elizabeth: Number nine, warehousing and storage. I know storage, personal storage units is booming.
Gene: It is. Just yesterday, I was just yesterday, I was in West Palm in Florida-
Elizabeth: I was just there, too.
Gene: Okay, so beautiful there. We were speaking to the National Portable Storage Association, and these are all companies that make and sell portable storage units. There were 650 people at this conference that I spoke to, that were like, this is what they do. These are you can imagine the modular storage units, so when you go to the storage place and U-Haul, they’re all made up of modular storage units. When you go to construction sites, if there’s something going on, they have units that people not only store, but they work out of, as well. When you’re moving house, you get the temporary PODS, that you put … It’s a huge business. You can buy or rent those things, but generally what these people do is they buy these storage units, and then they turn around and rent them out to construction sites and to companies that are in that business.
Elizabeth: Interesting.
Gene: The rents last forever. These storage things are all they’re built withstand hurricanes, so it’s just an ongoing, just collecting the checks for the stuff that’s out there. That business, itself, is very profitable. If you’re warehousing, and you’ve got space, and your cost of ownership is low, whatever the current rents are in the area, it’s a very profitable business to be in.
Elizabeth: Finally, this is the last one on our list, death care services. Now, you talked about this recently, that this is a growing industry for women.
Gene: It is. There are many funeral homes, a lot of women getting into the funeral business because it’s a business that takes nurturing and care, and something that’s just … Many females are much better at that than guys. We’re seeing them get into the business. I spoke, this was last December at the National Funeral Directors Conference in Boston. There, there were, god knows how many thousand funeral directors from funeral homes around the country, and these guys, they’re doing pretty good.
Elizabeth: Mostly men?
Gene: It’s mostly men. It is still a male-dominated business, but again it’s a growing percentage of females involved. People grumble all the time, the cost of a funeral. They recognize that it’s just a business that people still just don’t negotiate.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Gene: The cost is what it is. The margins are what they are.
Elizabeth: There are other options though. You don’t have to use a funeral home.
Gene: I know.
Elizabeth: No one in the … Here’s the thing though, when you have a loved one die, that’s not when you’re going to research it. You’re going to be like, “Oh, my god, call the coroner, call the funeral home.” Very interesting.
Gene: But most of us don’t. Most of us wait until that. What are you going to sit there and haggle with the guy?
Elizabeth: Oh yeah.
Gene: They know that, they don’t advertise that, but that’s why they get big margins on what they sell.
Elizabeth: Can you haggle with them?
Gene: Yeah, sure. When they sell a casket, their mark-up in some case can be 60 to 70%.
Elizabeth: Huge.
Gene: That mark-up is all negotiable stuff. It’s just, it’s …
Elizabeth: What can you negotiate? You can’t be like, “You know what, I’m going to bring so many people into your funeral home.”
Gene: It depends on what the market is, it depends on how many people-
Elizabeth: You don’t have any leverage.
Gene: Well, it depends on how many died that week, it depends on how business is going, it depends on what the person’s competition is. Your leverage is saying like, “You know what, you’re too expensive, I’m going to go to this funeral home down the street.”
Elizabeth: Okay, yeah.
Gene: If that’s the case-
Elizabeth: There are a lot of them.
Gene: There are a lot. There are a lot.
Elizabeth: I’m going to end this here. We’ll do another episode on this called, Elizabeth and Gene talk about Death. We’ll be right back with Gene’s Word of Brilliance and he’s gonna give us his Netflix recommendation.
Gene: A couple of good ones, too.
WORD OF BRILLIANCE: Airfares Elizabeth: Okay, we’re back with Gene’s Word of Brilliance, Gene, go for it.
Gene: Airfares. I know this is your favorite topic.
Elizabeth: I talk about, yes, I travel a lot, so I talk about this.
Gene: Recently, wrote about this for a Small Biz Ahead about airfares and how to save on your airfare. There was a survey they just came out recently from cheapair.com, Elizabeth. They viewed 917 million transactions on their site with the objective of coming out, when is the best time to buy a plane ticket. And you’re a business owner, so you travel yourself, your employees travel, you’re looking for all of that. Let me share with you, just a few tips about airfares, okay.
Elizabeth: Okay, great.
Gene: First of all, let me just say to you, there is a magic number for airfares, 70 days in advance of your flight is the best time to buy your tickets. That’s a little more than two months.
Elizabeth: We’ll put this is the show notes, everyone.
Gene: 70 days, however, it does depend on the season. So, depending when you want to travel, it’s 90 days if you want to travel in the spring, for example. During the summer, it’s 47 days. Let’s make sure this is up on the site, but the average rule of thumb is 70 days. Booking early does nothing, in fact if you book more than six months in advance of a flight, you’re going to pay a lot more for your ticket than if you booked a little further in. The only advantage to booking early is you get better seats. To some people, that’s kind of important.
Waiting until the last minute is a no-no. A lot of people think, “Oh, prices are gonna come down, they’re going to whatever.” On average, you could be paying up to $200 more for your ticket if you wait to just a few days before buying your ticket. The whole theory of waiting until the last minute is a theory that just doesn’t work. Finally, people talk about when is the best day to buy a ticket. There is no best day to buy a ticket. There was this thing, this myth saying if you buy a ticket on Tuesdays at 11:00 at night … The differences between day to day is really de minimus, however, there is a best day to travel. If you buy a ticket to travel on a Tuesday or on a Wednesday, you will get a much better fare than if you want to travel any other day of the week.
Elizabeth: Interesting.
Gene: So, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best days to actually travel.
Elizabeth: Nice. This is great, this is actually a useful Word of Brilliance.
Gene: Good and useful tips you can read all about it on Small Biz Ahead.
Elizabeth: Not that the other ones were not.
Gene: Of course not, but these actually make sense to you.
Elizabeth: What was your Netflix recommendation?
Gene: I’ll tell you two. Number one, Babylon Berlin, fantastic show, takes place in 1929 Berlin when the Weimar Republic, it’s a detective show and it’s … Berlin was killing it back then, really crazy. The stars of the show are fantastic, the acting. It’s in German, watch in subtitles and it is a wonderful, wonderful show, so watch Babylon Berlin, detective story in 1929 Berlin.
The other show that I absolutely love on Netflix, which I think I told you about, Elizabeth, is called W1A. Did I ever tell you about this show?
Elizabeth: I think you might of.
Gene: W1A.
Elizabeth: I might have just tuned you out.
Gene: It’s a British show and it takes place at the BBC, it’s a fiction show.
Elizabeth: No, you haven’t told me about this.
Gene: Okay, it’s a fictionalized show and it’s like The Office and Parks and Rec, but it’s fast and it’s British-
Elizabeth: I love those shows.
Gene: … and it’s funny, and it’s fast moving.
Elizabeth: And it’s on Netflix?
Gene: It’s on Netflix. I think it’s four seasons, three or four seasons that are on Netflix. It was huge in England, highly recommend that you watch W1A, very, very funny and very smart. It’s like Veep, as well. You know how Veep, every line you have to pay attention to?
Elizabeth: When is Veep coming back?
Gene: She has breast cancer.
Elizabeth: I know, but-
Gene: She’s doing well, I think.
Elizabeth: She is because I follow her on Instagram. We’ll be back next week, our next episode. We’re going to be talking about small businesses that you can start from your home when you have no skills. This is basically the opposite of what we just talked about. We talked about-
Gene: Literally.
Elizabeth: … small businesses that kind of have a high barrier to entry, either education or you need money or you need a certain set of skills. I sound like Liam Neeson. Our next episode is going to be about businesses you can start when you literally have no money, no skills, and you don’t want to leave your house. Tune in for that.
Gene: Like it.
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