#24-80% Will Survive in 10 Years: How to Start a Side Hustle with a "Boring Business"
A man in Texas is reselling gas station snacks online. His monthly sales are 37.5 million yen. That is the equivalent of a typical salaryman's annual income coming in every single month.
He doesn't use AI. He can't program. All he does is pack beef jerky sold at a rural drive-in into boxes and ship them to customers in other states.
Meanwhile, Japanese note is overflowing with articles on "How to make money with ChatGPT" or "Making X0,000 yen a month with AI illustrations." The words "AI side hustle" fill the timeline.
But the way people are making money across the ocean is heading in a very different direction.
A man who grew a service for storing college students' belongings during summer break and sold it for about 10 times the annual salary of a new graduate—$1.7 million (approx. 25.5 million yen). An owner who earns a stable monthly cash flow just by letting people park their campers on empty lots owned by others.
What they have in common is that they aren't using flashy technology.
What they are using is existing demand and a simple system.
The Option of a "Micro-Business"
For several years now, movements called "Boring Business" and "Sweaty Startup" have been spreading overseas.
In short, it is the idea of running a business individually that is plain and boring but guaranteed to be profitable, rather than a flashy tech startup.
This movement has accelerated further between 2024 and 2025. The newsletter "Contrarian Thinking," led by Codie Sanchez, has surpassed 1 million subscribers, and the message "Get rich by buying boring businesses" is delivered to inboxes across the U.S. twice a week. Crowdfunding amounts have increased by 27% while VC investment has shrunk by 15% (QuickBooks, 2026 report), signaling that the mainstream of fundraising is shifting from Silicon Valley to Main Street.
There are several figures at the center of this wave.
Chris Koerner — A serial entrepreneur in Texas. What he repeatedly talks about on his podcast, "The Koerner Office," is "Texas Snax," a business that simply resells snacks from the Texas specialty store Buc-ee's. It generates $250,000 to $300,000 in monthly sales (approx. 37.5 to 45 million yen), with annual sales estimated to reach the $3.6 million (approx. 540 million yen) scale. It was expected to see eight-figure dollar sales (over 1 billion yen) in 2024, and similar sales figures have been confirmed in a report by The Hustle. By the summer of 2025, the cumulative number of orders exceeded 100,000.
Nick Huber — The proponent of the podcast "The Sweaty Startup" and author of the book "The Sweaty Startup: How to Get Rich Doing Boring Things" (HarperCollins), published in 2025. He expanded "Storage Squad," a luggage storage service he started in college, to 30 campuses, 15 cities, and 9 states across the U.S., selling it for $1.7 million (approx. 25.5 million yen) in 2021. Using those funds, he launched the self-storage business "Bolt Storage," which has now expanded to 68 locations, 2 million square feet, and 11 states. The asset value of his portfolio exceeds $100 million (approx. 15 billion yen). He has over 420,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter).
What both have in common is not an innovative idea, but turning the demand right in front of them into a system. Moreover, as Huber's Storage Squad shows, even a plain business like storing college students' luggage can lead to a multi-million yen business sale if the system is properly set up.
Why are they "small but strong"?
The reason micro-businesses work is simple: large corporations don't touch them.
Reselling snacks has profit margins that are too low for public companies to be interested. Storing college students' luggage is too seasonal to scale easily. Renting out empty lots for parking generates too little revenue per unit to justify a sales team.
In other words, individuals are slipping into the gaps that large corporations have deemed "not worth doing."
Furthermore, these types of businesses share four structural strengths.
1. Low inventory risk. The turnover from purchasing to selling is fast, so there is no need to hold large amounts of inventory. In the case of Texas Snax, they simply buy from Buc-ee's stores and sell on Shopify. The risk of inventory spoiling is limited to the shelf life of the snacks.
2. The barrier to entry is the "hassle." It is not that they are hard to imitate because they lack flashiness, but because they are a hassle. What Huber repeatedly emphasizes is the point: "Are you prepared to wake up at 6 a.m. and break a sweat?" Software can be copied, but "doing mundane manual labor every day" cannot be easily copied.
Being boring is the ultimate barrier to entry.
3. Resistant to economic fluctuations. Because the demand is rooted in daily life, it does not drop drastically even during a recession. The U.S. lawn care and landscaping market reached approximately $184 billion (about 27.6 trillion yen) as of 2025, and no major contraction has been seen even during economic downturns.
4. Geographically protected. While programming puts you in competition with developers around the world, local lawn mowing or junk removal only competes with others within a 30-kilometer radius. This is directly linked to pricing power. For high-urgency services like "I want you to clear the junk in front of my house tomorrow morning," customers will hire you without comparing prices in detail.
Instead of changing the world by building a flashy app, you pick up the "leftovers" from an economy that is already running.
It's mundane, but solid.
I will call a business that meets these four conditions the Law of Boring Business. Low inventory, hassle as a barrier to entry, resistant to economic cycles, and geographically protected. In the space where these four overlap, there is still room for individuals to win.
If you want to make money with AI, look for jobs that AI will never touch. This is the contrarian way of making money that is quietly gaining momentum overseas.
The destructive power of "boring businesses" in numbers
Let's look at a few industries to see the scale of these businesses.
RV Parks (Parking for recreational vehicles) — The U.S. RV park and campground industry is worth approximately $10.9 billion (about 1.6 trillion yen) as of 2025. There are over 16,200 private facilities across the U.S., with 1.3 million sites in operation (Kentley Insights, 2025 report). There is an increasing number of cases where individual owners buy land to operate small-scale parks with 10 to 20 sites.
Self-storage (Rental warehouses) — Huber's Bolt Storage raised $40 million (about 6 billion yen) from external investors to acquire 62 properties, growing to an asset value of over $100 million. Self-storage is a monthly subscription model with a low churn rate, and it is said that once a tenant moves in, they use it for an average of over 14 months. With little operational effort, it is a prime example of a "boring business."
Junk Removal — The U.S. junk removal industry is worth approximately $10 billion to $15 billion (about 1.5 to 2.3 trillion yen). It offers a gross margin of 45-60% and a net profit margin of 15-25%, and can be started with just one truck.
Pressure Washing — The initial investment for a full set of equipment is $3,000 to $8,000 (about 450,000 to 1.2 million yen). It can be started with the capital equivalent of one used car. With high profit margins of 40-65%, it is common to recover the investment within six months to a year.
What these have in common is that "technology is not the protagonist." Technology is used only as a "tool" for things like reservation management and route optimization.
The protagonist is the specific problem the customer in front of you has.
Why it "hits home" in Japan
Have you ever had the experience of aiming for 50,000 yen a month in a side hustle, only to realize you've spent three hours staring at ChatGPT?
Searching for "#AI side hustle" on note yields over 33,000 articles. On the other hand, "#microbusiness" yields fewer than 400.
What does this mean?
The AI side hustle market is crowded. Differentiation is extremely difficult, and the freshness of information is lost within a few months.
According to a 2024 survey by Lancers, the freelance population in Japan has reached 13.03 million with an economic scale of 20.3 trillion yen, but the reality is that about 70% of them earn 990,000 yen or less per year.
In other words, while the number of people "earning money individually" has increased, the majority are "not earning much."
On the other hand, information on micro-businesses—especially the angle of "how to replicate business models that individuals are quietly earning from overseas in Japan"—is something no one has seriously tackled yet.
Moreover, the soil for this already exists in Japan. The infrastructure is in place across three layers.
Platform layer. The parking space sharing service akippa has exceeded 5 million cumulative members (as of October 2025). The flea market app Mercari has over 22 million monthly users. The skill market Coconala has surpassed 5.5 million members and 950,000 listings (as of the fiscal year ending August 2025). Kurashi no Market has over 100,000 businesses registered and offers more than 400 service categories. The infrastructure for "individuals to do business on a small scale" is already in place.
Institutional layer. The five-year survival rate for startups in Japan is 81.7% (based on data from the 2017 White Paper on Small and Medium Enterprises). This is significantly higher than the survival rate for the same period in the United States (approximately 48-50%, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). The risk of starting a business in Japan is actually not as high as the image suggests.
However, the startup rate for fiscal year 2023 was 3.9%, which is at the lowest level internationally compared to the United States (9.3%), the United Kingdom (12.4%), and France (11.3%) (Small and Medium Enterprise Agency, 2025 White Paper on Small and Medium Enterprises).
You can survive if you start, yet few people start. That is the current situation in Japan.
Demand layer. In an aging Japan, the demand for "I can't do it myself, but I want someone to do it for me" is increasing year by year. Garden maintenance, disposal of unwanted items, house cleaning. The more rural the area, the fewer the competitors and the more room for entry, and the shortage of skilled workers is strengthening pricing power.
What is missing is the idea of "what to sell."
Ideas are lying around overseas
The U.S. RV park industry is worth $10.9 billion (approximately 1.6 trillion yen). The number of RVs owned in Japan is also on an upward trend, and the number of spots for overnight stays in vehicles and RV parks is increasing year by year (refer to the official Japan RV Association website).
It is not uncommon for individual owners of laundromats to generate tens of millions of yen in annual sales. The initial investment for one vending machine is about 340,000 yen, and in a good location, it can exceed 150,000 yen per month. Mobile car washing can be started with an initial investment of less than 100,000 yen, and some sole proprietors are generating 750,000 yen in monthly sales.
Information on these "quietly profitable businesses" is shared daily in overseas podcasts, YouTube, and newsletters. Hubar's Substack newsletter "The Sweaty Startup," Sanchez's "Contrarian Thinking" (over 1 million subscribers), and Koerner's "The Koerner Office" podcast. In the English-speaking world, features like "Boring Business of the Month" appear almost every week.
But even if you look for the same information in Japanese, all that comes up are articles about "making 1 million yen a month with AI side hustles."
Information flows in English. Money can be earned locally. This asymmetry is the true nature of the opportunity.
What to start in a "country where you can survive if you start"
The high corporate survival rate in Japan deserves a little more attention.
In a country where 81.7% of businesses survive after 5 years, the startup rate is only 3.9%. There is little competition, and the probability of survival for those who start is high.
Despite this, the side hustles people choose are almost exclusively in areas that are already red oceans, such as AI writing or social media management.
Sanchez's proposal to "buy boring businesses" is still barely known in Japan. However, it is said that there are 1.27 million small and medium-sized enterprises in Japan facing business succession issues (Small and Medium Enterprise Agency), and businesses without successors are entering the market every year. It is the same structure as "micro-acquisitions" in the United States.
The important thing is not to bring in overseas cases exactly as they are.
It is to bring in the "structure of demand."
The reason luggage storage for college students works in the U.S. is because there is a rule that they must move out of dorms during summer break. The same model would not function if brought to Japanese universities.
However, if you look for "moments when temporary storage space is needed" in Japan, demand definitely exists, such as during the moving season in March and April, clearing out a family home after a death, or temporary storage during renovations.
Translate not "what" it is, but "why it sells." This is the most important technique for bringing overseas micro-businesses to Japan.
What you can do today
Open akippa or Curama (Kurashi no Market) and look at what services are available within a 5km radius of you. Just noticing "what is missing in this area" is enough.
Rather than aiming for a flashy hit, picking up one local problem has a higher probability of survival 10 years from now. At the very least, the numbers say so.
Who will still be around in 10 years? Will it be those who jumped on the AI boom, or those who quietly continued a boring business?
The answer will probably come in 10 years. What will you have started by then?
Reference Information
【Podcast/Newsletter】
・Chris Koerner, The Koerner Office (Podcast)—Sales data for Texas Snax of $250K–$300K monthly, milestone of over 100,000 total orders, etc.
https://chrisjkoerner.com
・Nick Huber, The Sweaty Startup (Podcast/Substack/Book)—Figures for Bolt Storage: 68 locations, 2 million square feet, asset value over $100M
https://www.sweatystartup.com
・Nick Huber, The Sweaty Startup: How to Get Rich Doing Boring Things (HarperCollins, 2025)
・Codie Sanchez, Contrarian Thinking (Newsletter)—Over 1 million subscribers
https://www.contrarianthinking.co
・The Hustle — "How one man created a multimillion-dollar resale market for Buc-ee's snacks"
https://thehustle.co/how-one-man-created-a-multimillion-dollar-resale-market-for-buc-ees-snacks
【Public Data/Research】
・Small and Medium Enterprise Agency "2025 White Paper on Small and Medium Enterprises"—FY2023 startup rate 3.9%, exit rate 3.9%
https://www.chusho.meti.go.jp/pamflet/hakusyo/2025/chusho/b1_1_8.html
・Small and Medium Enterprise Agency "White Paper on Small and Medium Enterprises (2017 Edition)"—5-year corporate survival rate 81.7%
・Lancers "Freelance Survey 2024"—13.03 million freelancers, economic scale of 20.3 trillion yen
https://www.lancers.co.jp/news/pr/24055/
・QuickBooks "2026 Entrepreneurship Trends"—Crowdfunding procurement up 27%
https://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/small-business-data/entrepreneurship-in-2026/
・Kentley Insights "RV Parks and Campgrounds Industry Report 2025"—U.S. RV park industry $10.9B
https://www.kentleyinsights.com/rv-parks-and-campgrounds-industry-market-research-report/
【Platforms】
・akippa — Over 5 million cumulative members (as of October 2025)
https://www.akippa.com
・Coconala — 5.5 million members, over 950,000 listings (as of August 2025)
https://coconala.com
・Curama (Kurashi no Market) — Over 100,000 registered businesses, over 400 service categories
https://curama.jp
・Mercari — Over 22 million monthly users (as of February 2026)
https://about.mercari.com
【Other】
・Japan RV Association Official
https://www.jrva.com
・Nick Huber's Bolt Storage figures of 68 locations and 2 million square feet are based on the official website (boltstorage.com/about) and X posts. The point about raising $40M from external investors was stated in an X post.
・Chris Koerner's Texas Snax milestone of over 100,000 total orders was stated in an X post (December 2025).
・The $1.7M sale price of Storage Squad was confirmed in a report by the Cornell Chronicle (April 2021).
※ Figures for overseas cases are from their respective official websites and news reports. Exchange rate is estimated at 1 dollar ≈ 150 yen.
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