Luke Van Der Veer, Website Rental Coaching: Building passive income and generating leads through website rentals

Founder Wisdom podcast, we're live guys with none other than Luke Vander Veer. I was saying to Luke that he had some Vander built in his veins because he just acquired a business, uh, an ice cream truck business with apparently 50-ish trucks, which is super interesting. We're also going to talk about website rental coaching, which is his company, um, super interesting itself.

Luke, can you briefly introduce yourself and tell us what you're up to nowadays? Yeah, my name's Luke Vander Veer. I have a a background in human resources, so completely unrelated to what I'm doing now. Um, I built a company around lead generation and building websites to generate leads for businesses and treating it like a real estate like property and renting it out to business owners to keep it passive for me.

So that I didn't have to work a job or really have to work at all. And the money from that, I just recently acquired this business as well. Um, and my family's going to run it. To also keep me out of it. So I basically bought the business, my brother's going to run it, and then I just keep my passive piece. Uh, so that's what I'm up to. Yeah, that's uh, that's pretty cool.

Sorry? I'm in the office for that business I acquired right now. That's Yeah, with this old Corvette calendar, um, interesting. Tell us about IDX though, cuz that was like your first, uh, start uh, in the entrepreneurial world, I guess. Zero to 420K in 1.5 year, and then you sold the stake in the company. I don't know crap about liquidations. I just know like from seeing them on TV and they're quite exciting.

Tell us a bit more about that one. Yeah, so I was living down in New York City and my, um, my roommate at the time was looking for something to do aside from just a normal job, and I was already doing SEO and some other things on the side. Um, and one of his friends approached him about doing liquidations. We all started doing this together, and what we're doing was buying truckloads of merch like returned merchandise from Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond, couple other big retailers, and then we're taking that and we're flipping it originally at a flea market in Brooklyn.

But it was taking up way too much time, so we started going online, and that scaled it up a little bit. And online we couldn't really sell the Walmart stuff anymore, the margins were too low. So we took all the Bed Bath & Beyond products, which were a lot more expensive, and we started selling those on eBay and Amazon, and we got that up 38 grand a month or so.

Was kind of the peak, and then we were hovering around 35 grand a month. Interesting. What about the, website rental coaching? What led uh, to that? What was that transition? I had an SEO agency with a lot of people I was working with in all different niches, water damage, roofing, demolition, all over the country. And uh, one of the clients called me up on a Sunday night really, really late, like woke me up.

Um, just complaining about his his business. And the thing that bothered me about it was that he was getting a crazy amount of stuff. Like he was buried before I met him, getting nothing, and now he's getting tons of calls, and he was complaining to me. And I was like, no, this is we're we're done. So fired him on the spot, and I just decided to shut down the agency.

So instead of working for a client, I just started building websites in all of the niches I was already in, and taking those properties, keeping all the leads myself, and then renting it out to a business owner in those areas, and just charging them a rental fee like you would do if you had a physical property. It's pretty cool. So how much would you charge them?

Cuz my first agency was a website building agency, so I know how to build websites quick. Then you just add a form to them, you optimize them for SEO, maybe invest a little bit in ads, so you get these leads on autopilot. Then you need to qualify these leads. Are they good? Are they crap leads? Right. It seems like it's a lot of work to get it off the ground, but maybe you find a formula to make it uh, stupid simple, and then you would send these leads, and so you wouldn't give the access to the website, but you would send these leads to the folks that would decide to pay you like 1 to 5K a month.

Is that the formula? Yeah, pretty much. I I would just kind of look for a niche where it's got a a really good margin. I thought it would be pretty like competition was low enough where I thought I could rank pretty easily without having to do a lot of continuous work. My work would mostly be up front. And it the margin would be high enough where I could charge a reasonable fee.

Like I want to make a few thousand at least, or I'm not going to do it monthly. Um, and I just kind of started with the ones I was already in with SEO clients. And when I got rid of those, some of those ended up renting sites from me. It just kind of changed the dynamic because since I own it, I don't have to deal with any client requests. So there's no more reporting, there's no like all this stuff they would normally have that would take up your time is gone.

But you still get the money. Right. Then I pivoted to Facebook ads agency, so me instead of relying on organic, I just like pop these ads, it would be extremely quick cuz I guess these websites, they must take some time to uh, catch in the SEO, um, so like basically I would sell yeah, these Facebook ads to realtors at 600 bucks a pop, and uh, soon soon enough I had like 50 of them.

Bring my business to yeah, 30K MRR back in these days. Um, am I right in saying that yeah, website rental takes a bit more time to rank in on Google? And if so, how much days? I mean, it's really going to depend on the niche and the size of the city. Like if you pick like personal injury lawyer in New York, you're it's going to take you months, 6 months, something crazy cuz it's a lot more competitive.

But if you pick, you know, some random blue collar niche in the middle of the like the West, it's not as bad. So I mean, the average for our guys are usually around 89 days, 90 days. Um, assuming you're following that kind of process. It's quite long. Um, and you're still unsure like or do you have a formula um, to constantly rank even even if it takes time?

That's the first question. And second, do you have it on autopilot nowadays with ChatGPT like popping a bunch of articles on the website? Oh, yeah. Yes, I mean, there's a I use a very specific process to do everything from the way we structure the site to the way we write the content to the way we do links and strategy, too. Um, ChatGPT is a thing that a lot of people have asked about.

I personally don't love it because I think people use it to produce a lot of crap. Especially with content. Overall, my thoughts are like it doesn't matter whether something is human written or AI produces it, quality is quality in terms of content, which is great. But what I've noticed with the content from ChatGPT or really any of these other things, Jasper, any of these AI tools, unless you give it the inputs and it has a lot of human involvement, the out the output is usually not very good.

And just testing it on the sites I've used it on, I did it across a bunch of different niches and areas just to kind of see what would happen and test this with my own network, and the sites went down an average of seven spots within about a week just with using that type of content. So I see that Google knows how to point it out, and I would rather just have a human write it at that point because I don't want to be using my time to you know, input it into that.

I'll just hire a human writer, and I specifically tell them in the job post, if you use AI stuff and I catch any of this, cuz you can check for it with different um, tools, I'm not you're not getting paid for the work. Straight up. For the website rental coaching, first it's the first time I have ever heard the term website rental, so my brain had to do some work here.

You now teach what you know, so you're teaching people to acquire kind of digital properties. Uh, you apply real estate concept to it, which is quite interesting in itself. Um, who uh, is your target market for that? Because it's like, hey, um, yeah, I mean, you apply real estate concept to it, so I think it helps a lot of people understand that. Yeah.

Is it like people that are currently in the 9-to-5 and would want financial freedom? Are they existing founders? Are they already in the game? Who do you target with that business? Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic cuz I could help a lot of people, but I can only really target one. So I mean, the people I'm typically aiming this towards are business owners who are looking to establish more passive income.

They already have some from something, they want another source. But really, you any business owner could use it to generate leads for themselves, and if they're 9-to-5 or like I was, you could also use it to kill your job. So it's like I I sit in both of those worlds cuz I was there. Yeah, if I do it, I ironically I'd do it ChatGPT way, and I'd find a way to have GPT give great insights, which I I think there's a way, or at least extract value from something that is somewhat new and develop on it, which is a process I was this uh, discussing with the president of an SEO AI tool um, slash SaaS that I interviewed last Monday,

and which is quite interesting cuz yeah, that's the dream, right? Scaling SEO, everything on autopilot, uh, bots are working instead of humans. In reality, it's different, but I think it's it's uh, it's definitely doable. How much do you charge for your coaching and what results could I expect if I hire you? So the coaching depends. It kind of goes up as the students get more and more more results.

So I wouldn't even know what to tell you there. Um but what can you expect? You can expect an exact process and a road map to follow. So like 7 years of doing this and hundreds and hundreds of sites and a lot of members going through. We've screwed up enough just doing things and testing things that we have all that data. Like I already know what works and what doesn't.

So when someone goes out and they try to figure all this stuff out, I mean, you could do it. It's just going to take you tens of thousands of dollars and a lot of time. So now you just have a road map. I just it just step-by-step what to do. Get this type of domain name. This is what you're going to consider. Here's the site. This is the structure. Header looks like this.

This is what the title's supposed to be. Like literally step-by-step as specific as you could possibly go. And we're covering, you know, strategy, tactics, and everything in between. And then the coaching comes into play with roadblocks because of course with any business you're going to hit roadblocks along the way. It's inevitable. So when you hit that roadblock, it's like are you the person that's going to give up and say I quit?

Then, you know, that's not the person I'm interested in working with. If you're the person who's like, "Okay, what do I do now?" That's the person I can help because I'll just tell you. Right. And the coaching, is it weekly? Is it bi-monthly? How do you go with Weekly. So there's a program they go through. You know, they got the community with a lot of the people and the cool thing about the community is that we've got people from all over the world, first off, nine countries.

And then some 9-to-5ers, some business owners, and a lot of people with really varied skill sets. Um so people partner up on deals and stuff together, which I think is really good, especially if you're not great at a certain aspect. Like some people hate sales. Some people hate the technical. You just partner up those people and they crush it. So that's awesome.

Um and then the coaching is weekly. So I hop on a live call Monday nights on Zoom or Tuesday nights on Zoom, rather. And uh we just work through people's stuff, just whatever they got. And the call kind of lasts as long as it needs to. Like last night's call was about 2 hours. And we just went person to person, just fixed whatever they're working on that they're stuck on.

Right. Um You started websites in 73 niches and 48 states. What niches and what states were the hottest? Ooh. Well, concrete was my favorite niche originally. Um not so much anymore because everybody just does that now. So I don't know that I do that one. It used to be tree services and concrete were my favorites. And that's definitely where I have the majority of the stuff.

Um states middle of the country, but I'm kind of evenly all over the place, just different niches. I try to stay away from stuff that's seasonal. And I think the only state I don't have something in at the moment, what state? Like Alaska. Arkansas. Like these or Wisconsin, you know, like Milwaukee. And I'm not not even sure if that's a state or city.

Um Interesting. Hmm. Cuz it's supply demand, right? It's like Okay, how many people are looking for that and how is the supply there? Is it weaker? Is it stronger? Um how how do you go with product market fit? Cuz nowadays, I mean, you you just mentioned that it used to be, right? Like what's hot nowadays? Um And do you have like a scalable formula to that?

Me, I use cold email to know what's hot and what's not in this market and I'm constantly testing new markets and seeing what works and what what doesn't uh through cold email through call a bottle. So what's your process and what's hot nowadays? Yeah, so what's hot, there's not really a specific niche cuz it changes city to city, wherever we go. So it's more doing Google searches and looking at different pieces.

So and I'm looking at it kind of different in the map section, I want businesses that don't have a lot of reviews or nothing at all. I want businesses that don't have a website. I'm looking for businesses that have like a social media profile in there, like a Twitter. If that's in the maps, I know it's going to be easy for me to boot one of those businesses if I put up something and create my GMB listing and so forth because they're not doing a good job.

So I can easily replace them. And then separate, looking at the search, I mean, I want a business that's well, first off, um I want something, let me think here, population-wise. Let's go population for the city. 50K to like 4 500K, somewhere in there. If you go below it, there might not be enough search volume. If you go above it, there's going to be a lot of competition.

And there's other things you can look at. Like how many competitors are in that market? Right? If there's like 50 people in that little area, I don't really love it. If there's only like two or three, there's not enough. So somewhere lower end, maybe 10, 15. Um and then looking at that organic search, how many of those are local businesses? If they're all local businesses all ranked in there and it's the same people that are in the maps, that's a problem.

I don't want to compete with all of those. I'd like to see Yelps, Thumbtacks, Better Business Bureau, directories because Google doesn't like those as much as they like a local business. So if I put up something local, I've got an advantage. So it's a lot of little things like that. And then there's niche-specific things, right? I want something that's not seasonal.

Like I could do paving if I pick somewhere that's warm, but if I pick somewhere like New York, I can only run it half the year. So that's a problem. Or um sales cycle, right? I could do pool construction, but that lead is going to take 6 months to close. So it's a lot harder for me to convince a business to take those leads or to charge them if they're not going to see money for half a year.

So I want something that's a few days. Something where I can call this person up, phone-driven, and they're just going to come over and do whatever it is. So like plumbing, great example. You can call somebody, your toilet breaks, whatever. You call them in, couple days, fixed, they get the money immediately. Wouldn't it be magical to have a business starter GPT that would analyze populations, how many Google Ads, how our business ranking on an SEO level, the quality of their services by the Google star ratings?

We just scrape everything and give you, "Oh, this this business right there is a super green. Uh you should definitely give it a test, you know?" I think that's that's the dream right there. Um You take it. Take it. I'll do it for you, but if I do it for you, I think I'll charge like, yeah, at least 1K or two or or three cuz, yeah, it's must be quite valuable.

Then the question would be who would have the means to act upon that data, you know? Would it require cash? Would it require just having the softwares and the know-how? Um I think that's going to exist pretty soon. I have a question though. Um you just mentioned that you acquired this ice cream company. I mean, ice cream is pretty much perennial, you know?

Um It's refreshing uh when it's hot. It hydrates. It is delicious because it's it's full of fat and and sugar. Um maybe we can make it healthy. Maybe we can make it cheap. Um You decided to acquire an ice cream business. The ice cream truck is I like it also because it's is like this classic image. Uh should I call it like the the American dream or the the '80s, you know, and the little music truck and so forth.

So I think there's place for innovation there. Why are you bullish on this business? Why did you decided to acquire that one? The numbers just make sense. The numbers are just great, right? There's very big margins and I can apply lead generation to it and we got it for a good price. Those are the main things. I believe an ice cream app, you know, like, "Hey, can I order my ice cream truck?

Uh $5 for the delivery and the the show." And whether it's for a party or just for a single use, you know, and uh yeah, to maybe to sell a bunch of ice cream and just make it a fun experience, you know? Unite all the the kids. Yeah, send them a notification, "Hey, ice cream trucks near you." Um Yeah, I mean, see, these are some of the things we talked about.

I was really just with the lead generation skill set and using website rental, I could apply it to anything. So I'm like, "What do I want to apply it to?" Well, this just kind of fell into my lap and I was like, "I could still apply it to this." And with the cool thing is the company had it grew to where it is with no social media, no ads, no website, not They literally have nothing.

Everything is paper. So with a some systems and some automation and some ads, the sky's the limit. So when I saw this, I was like, "Oh, definitely getting that one." Yeah, maybe I'm not sure if you analyzed the the market and so forth, but I can definitely see this ice cream app, you know, like um let's say you're you're kids and you want to impress your friends, you know, and you order the ice cream truck to come near your house.

The parents are happy cuz the kids are happy. And as a parent, you finish work at I don't know, at 5:00, you arrive at home and pre- or post-supper and you get a bunch of kids in the front of your house. It's a good way to foster the community and so forth. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Uh did you ever get some of these ideas? Yeah, we've actually talked about a bunch of these.

It was some of the stuff we were looking at before we even acquired it because what we didn't really have we had narrowed the business potentials down to just something in the 1 to 5 million-dollar range because that's what I could get. Um and then it just had to meet a certain net. Like I want 400k net plus. And I just wanted something where I didn't have to be part of it if I didn't want to.

I could just throw in a little bit of marketing and blow it up, but I don't have to run it. So this fit pretty perfectly and it was right in my hometown, so I already knew about it, too. Which was a major bonus. Then you make the trucks like more eco. Uh that's another one. You put QR on them. Um and you make Facebook live. We are at this destination now and so forth.

Yeah, that that's I mean I I love that business. Um I I love it. And I mean if it doesn't work, you can even resell the trucks and so forth. I did I guess it was like from basic calculations that you did and it was like, yeah, this is a no-brainer. Very cool. Uh Luke, thank you for coming today. Where can people find out more about you? websiterentalcoaching.com would be a good place to start.

Or if you see my name on here, lukevanderveer.com has more information about me and a little bit more about the coaching program.