Hypothetically, what are the best kinds of businesses that I can passively invest in and largely hire managers to deal with the day to day stuff if I had a robust annual income/cash flow. Something with some leverage/financing that have the best upside and least amount of headaches. I am not too enthused of index funds and residential/multifam RE although I do have that stuff in my portfolio.

The best I can come up with coin laundries and the underlying RE, luxury/upscale car dealerships and maybe franchises like Subway shops

I am getting into independent taxi/transportation companies here in northeast Ohio. If you are SERIOUS, you can contact me.

Valet...

My friend just started a company, and I didnt realize how cheap it would be. Obviously insurance is expensive, but there are ways to get it cheap. Hire people over 21, with low points on their license, he pays like $5.5k a year for a 2 million policy.

Basically what he does is he finds an account. He started off cold calling country clubs, restaurants etc and undercutting other valet companies.

Right now he has two accounts, one country club and one art museum here that does ~3 events per month. At the country club only one employee works and there are two shifts. 11am-5pm and 5pm-10pm. He pays the employee $5 per hour and they get to keep their tips. He charges the country club $10 per hour. Apparently this is dirt cheap but he is still making like what $55 per day. Its not alot but if you had a few accounts it adds up. The art museum gets charged $20 per hour and he pays out $10 per hour to employees.

This really is little headaches. It might be tough at first hiring the right people and keeping clients happy with service but employees gotta be happy with the payout.

I used to valet in college and the company I worked for did it wrong I feel like. They charged $5 per car and let employees keep $1 of that and their tips. Most people didn't tip cause they thought we got to keep the 5 so people started ripping off the company and stuff reusing tickets and it seemed like a big headache. Keep employees happy and they will work hard for you.

Plus the way is has it set up he gets cash directly from the accounts as opposed to trusting the employees to pay him.

If the valet worker had any sense he'd go to the country club and undercut his parent company for an hourly inbetween the two rates... But then again, he is a valet worker.

But he wouldn't have insurance

man you didnt really think about that when you wrote it.... trying to talk bad about valet workers?

1st) he wouldnt have insurance
2nd) he wouldnt have the backing of a "company" to even pitch to the people
3rd) he would have to work all those hours by himself, unless he hired other people? then what pay them? then he has to form a company, payroll, taxes etc.
4th) the $2-3/hour difference probably wouldnt even be enough to pay for the insurance, also probably wouldnt be enough for the club to switch after they just got done switching

This is an interesting idea. It seems like it would take alot of effort to get up and running(building client base) but once you have established yourself you are free rolling. My concern with something like this in San Diego is, there seems to be a monopoly on the valet industry here. While I can't say for a fact, but my observation is that only 1 company seems to be doing valet(Ace Parking). I don't think i've ever seen any other company but Ace doing valet.

I'd say you're looking at this the wrong way. If a single company has a monopoly of the area, it'd be a safe assumption that their rates are inflated due to lack of competition. Therefore, if you can simply charge less than Ace does, you should easily be able to take some of their business away from them.

Note: Potential liability for tortious contract interference.

The real question would be why the country club wouldn't just hire their own valet people.

This may be from me being located in a somewhat smaller population area, but if the owner of the valet company can get competent people to do it for 5$/hr + tips, why can't the hotel just cut you out of the equation?

I suppose the answer is that it's not of value to hire someone to oversee these people and get everything setup, but still I wouldn't think it's that difficult.

I was under the assumption that valet workers did not get any benefits.

lol what?

Insurance for the cars hes driving moron

Its something this kid did in his free-time, so I would be confident to say it might not take that much. Just cold-call people. Get into contact with your alma-mater and maybe some old alums who may need valet. I think the manager of our art museum graduated from the university this kid attends. Once you get one client, you can advertise them to other clients.

Yeah, I agree with this, also from another standpoint, when the valet company is large they often have dumb policies in regards to the people actually working. Plus they might not be concerned with smaller accounts you can steal away. Obviously they only care about the largest clients which you probably couldnt even handle with a small company. Take a few small clients, and I think it could work.

Again, I'm assuming first and foremost because of the insurance cost.

Past that, it might just be because its one more thing for them to manage, put on payroll, pay taxes, etc. This way they just cut a check each week and their members are happy.

I guess i should just stick to investing and not running a business lol

Although I like the valet idea and I pitched it here to you guys I honestly think the real money is in owning parking lots.

you can lease them out to office buildings, valet companies, or other parking operating companies.

I think you also may need insurance, but it has to be less because the people are liable for themselves driving and they must have insurance to drive. You wwould just need insurance incase of break-ins or vandalism.

Most parking lots in downtown here don't even have any workers they just have an automated pay machine. Maybe with 1 attendant to verify that the customers have a ticket saying they paid. I think this is where the real money is at.

Would be great to get a lot where you could lease it to a company by day and a valet company by night or something. No work for you but just collect your monies

Its hard to find some for sale though and they are expensive for obvious reasons

I'm not sure if you are referring to downtown Columbus or Cincy. I work/park downtown Columbus and pretty much every garage/open lot has a sign up stating they are not liable for vandalism/break-ins.

Even if you own a lot with no attendee you still need somebody to collect the cash from the box and ensure that people actually paid.

The main problem is a lack of available real estate and the cost of the real estate when it does become available as you said.

Basically this. Where there is a lot of parking, there would be no need for a paid parking lot...

but where there is a need for parking (downtown columbus AND cincinnati) then that real estate is going to be expensive.

Who do you work for out of curiosity? Parking solutions? I worked for them in Columbus. The perfect example is if you know where the Cap is in short north. Parking Solution uses that lot thats under the highway. Imagine owning that lot and not having to do anything except collect money from Parking solutions for use.

Also at that lot they have a machine that punches a ticket for you and based on how long the ticket is for, you pay a machine. They use this during the day for Convention parking. There is no way out unless you pay. So you don't even need an attendant.

That would be even easier then starting a valet company plus also probably more money

You just asked the million dollar question.

If there's anyone that knows the answer, they sure in hell won't answer you

But good luck!

Hey if you got 200-250k lying around you can buy a profitable Subway franchise, and I will run it for you. Even after paying me you can probably make 25-30k a year. I'd have to think about what my cut would be.


I bought from someone who was totally passive, he paid a fellow Subway franchisee about 50k a year to run his 3 stores for him. The franchisee obviously cared more about his stores and let the passive guys 3 run like **** though. Overall I think the guy lost money, because Im sure he borrowed to buy the stores in the first place. A passively run business is almost never going to be profitable after you pay off the business loan.


A almost totally passively run business is never going to print money, though it will probably beat the market.

What about Commercial Real Estate? If you have the funds available, if its leased out for lengthy periods of time then as long as the tenants pay the rent on time there isnt much more you would need to do?

I dont know what the differences of US and UK real estate agreements / laws are but in the UK the tenants are usually responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the property, so when they leave it is supposed to be in the condition it was when they took on their lease. And leases can be quite lengthy for some of the bigger chains, so for little effort, the money could just keep rolling in.

Obviously if a tenant goes out of business, or decides to not renew a lease, there would have to be some work in getting new tenants..

If you think you can just throw a bunch of money somewhere, turn a blind eye, and hope it magically grows. You're deluding yourself.

Every single business out there requires work and some sort of knowledge.

If RE is too much time for you I honestly don't see why you want to go into business at all. Or maybe you don't like it for other reasons?

lonnie deals

Self Storage warehouses.

Mobile Home parks where all u own is the land, concrete slabs & water pipes. Tenants own their own trailers & pay their own electrical. They pay monthly rent to you, all you have to do is pay a lawn maintenance company to keep the place looking decent.

Methadone clinic. Just buy out an existing one and keep the employees. It can't be any less possible to fail, the clients show up 365 days a year.