The DeCoste Group

08/07/2026

We’ve been exploring how AI can amplify our effectiveness for a while now. Have you?

08/03/2026

Attention business owners and entrepreneurs: Join our Building Inspection Division for a forum on Certificate of Use Requirements and Converting Use Building Permit Process.

🗓️ Tuesday, 8/11
⏲️ 9am-Noon or 1pm-3pm
📍 Main Library (303 N. Laura St)
💻 https://forms.office.com/g/RtN66Ah2GA

08/03/2026

A Reddit thread asked a simple question: what's a boring business that quietly makes its owner rich? It got 10,000 upvotes and the answers are worth paying attention to.

The most upvoted response: commercial grease trap cleaning. Restaurants are legally required to have them cleaned. The work is unpleasant enough that almost nobody does it. One operator charges $300–500 per stop, runs 8 stops a day and drives a Porsche. Every customer is permanent because it's a health code requirement, not a discretionary expense.

Close behind: portable toilet rentals. One commenter's single construction site pays $5,100 a month for six units. A two-person operation in Sydney pulled $25,000 from a single weekend festival. High margin, constant demand, zero glamour.

Parking lots came up repeatedly. A lawyer who bought land near busy areas in the 1980s now makes $85,000 a month without working. The real long-term play: hold the land until a developer makes an offer, then lease it instead of selling.

And then the ones that generated the most "wait, really?" replies: concrete street dividers rented to municipalities. Wire mesh. Wooden pallets. Metal eyelets for truck covers. Toothpicks. Urinal cakes. Businesses so specific and unglamorous that nobody thinks to compete.

One commenter summarized it well: "The businesses people rarely brag about often have the best economics. Things like waste management, commercial cleaning, self-storage and B2B supply aren't exciting, but they solve recurring problems."

That's the through-line. Recurring demand. Low competition. Work nobody else wants to do or even thinks to do.

The boring business funds the interesting life. It's been true for a long time. This thread just reminded a lot of people.

Read the full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1v96m3r/whats_a_boring_business_that_quietly_makes_its/

08/03/2026

This one’s worth the read: AI will include your business when its users search and ask for recommendations, but only if YOU are visible, too.

46% of Business Owners Are Invisible to AI. Over Three Years, That’s Millions in Lost Revenue. Here’s How to Get Seen.

Read more at the link below.

07/30/2026

Brian Lizama spent over a decade in insurance sales, eventually becoming a senior vice president managing more than 300 agents and working 16-hour days.

In 2023, a wellness rabbit hole led him to French sea salt from the Celtic region of Brittany — mineral-rich, hand-harvested and impossible to find locally. He ordered two pallets, stood at his kitchen counter with his father and hand-filled bags one by one.

Within two months, monthly revenue was hitting five figures and Brian quit his insurance career. He scaled from his kitchen to his garage to a warehouse in Paramount, California.

Growth came the same way his insurance career did: face-to-face outreach, personal store visits and relentless follow-through. A booth at Expo West in March 2025 landed distributors across North America and a partnership with national distributor KeHE.

Nature's Pantry is now in more than 3,000 retail locations, generated $700,000 in revenue last year and is on track for $3 million this year — with a goal of 20,000 stores by year-end.

His advice: take the shot and figure it out along the way. Move, learn from mistakes and don't let setbacks weigh you down.

07/03/2026

07/03/2026

Every expert was once a beginner who looked like they were getting nowhere.

The early stages are supposed to feel slow.

That is where your discipline is tested.

Your patience is tested.

Your belief is tested.

Anyone can stay committed when results come quickly.

Very few keep going when the reward is invisible.

That is why persistence is so valuable.

The people who win are often the ones who simply refused to quit.

Keep going.

One day, the progress you barely noticed will become impossible for everyone else to ignore.

07/01/2026

Successful companies solve problems with their products, rather than just selling products and hoping people want them.

Jessy Tierney was working in digital marketing for a natural CPG brand when a Celiac Disease diagnosis changed her relationship with food — and eventually her career.

Most gluten-free options tasted terrible, cinnamon rolls had always been her weakness and she decided to fix the problem herself. She perfected a recipe, self-funded a trailer from personal savings, got her food licenses and applied to her first farmers market without waiting for everything to be perfect.

Going from a steady paycheck to nothing was terrifying — there were months she didn't know if she could pay rent. She stayed anyway, learned to dance with the uncertainty and built Rollin in Daisies into a brand built as much around kindness and community as it is around cinnamon rolls.

Her advice: start scrappy and upgrade as you go. If you wait for perfect, you'll still be waiting.

06/22/2026

In 1996, an Ogilvy team created a retirement ad for TIAA-CREF that predicted a $16 burger, a $12,500 vacation and a $65,000 car in 30 years. It keeps going viral because those numbers are essentially accurate.

But the more useful story is how the ad got made.

The original brief was generic: "You can count on TIAA-CREF to help ensure a comfortable retirement." Creative director Todd Heyman called it the equivalent of advertising malpractice — the same message already drowning in financial services advertising.

So the team started with the audience instead of the product. Their research showed that most people found retirement investing intimidating — and because of that, they procrastinated for decades. The insight: promoting the service wouldn't overcome that inertia. Showing the concrete cost of inaction would.

They took the average rate of inflation, extrapolated 30 years and wrote the ad around the numbers. The copy didn't sell TIAA-CREF's services. It made readers feel what life would look like without them — then offered the solution.

"No problem. You'll eat in. You won't drive. And you won't go anywhere."

Heyman calls the approach "emotional hard sell" — appealing to logic and emotion at the same time. The math was real. The discomfort was intentional. The product came second.

Thirty years later, the ad is still circulating. Most advertising doesn't survive the week it runs.

The lesson: start with what your audience is actually afraid of. Build from there. Safe is forgettable.