Hey, it’s Tony.
You guys know I like real, boring businesses that make money and that normal people can actually run from home, make money online with, and build into consistent recurring income.
Today, I’m breaking down an unconventional strategy that has been severely overlooked.
When people search for ways to earn from home or build a digital side hustle, they usually look in the wrong places. They jump on hyped up trends, ignoring the fact that real money is made in boring businesses.
Meanwhile, a quiet group of entrepreneurs is pulling in tens of thousands of dollars every month by doing something way simpler: reselling existing software to boring local businesses.
I’m talking about party and bounce house rentals, roofers, med spas, neighborhood gyms, and dental clinics.
The best part? You don’t need to guess what works. There is a public leaderboard of businesses making millions doing this right now, and you can legally reverse-engineer their entire playbook from their pricing models down to the exact ads they run to get paying clients.
Here is the full, step-by-step breakdown.
The Reality Check Most People Won’t Tell You
Before we dive into the tools, let’s be completely honest for a second.
You can literally hand someone a step-by-step blueprint that breaks down how other people are making $10k, $50k, or $100k a month and 95% of people will still do nothing with it.
They’ll skim the post, jump in the comments to say “this won’t work” or “it’s saturated,” and then spend the rest of the day looking for some magical push-button passive income dream.
The people who say this stuff doesn’t work are usually the ones who give up after sending two emails or trying something for 48 hours.
The strategy isn’t the problem. Consistency is.
Every single business model requires you to test things, make adjustments, and actually follow through. If you’re willing to put in the work and stay consistent, the roadmap below gives you everything you need to start today.
How To Find Boring Businesses That Actually Make Money
Let’s start with the foundation. How are people running software companies without knowing how to write code?
It’s called white-labeling.
In the software space, GoHighLevel is an all-in-one platform that handles CRM, SMS automation, appointment booking, and marketing funnels. Instead of building your own software from scratch, you can white-label their platform putting your own logo, brand name, and custom domain on it.
Now here’s to fid those boring businesses where the real money is at: GoHighLevel hosts a public SaaSpreneur Awards page every year. You can check out the winning ones here SaaSpreneur Awards page
It’s a public leaderboard of people running these white-labeled software agencies, divided into three tiers based on active, paying customer counts:
- Gold Tier: 100+ active paying subscribers
- Platinum Tier: 500+ active paying subscribers
- Diamond Tier: 1,000+ active paying subscribers
Because their software subscription fee is a flat monthly cost (around $497/mo on the SaaS plan, regardless of whether you have 10 clients or 1,000 clients), the math is simple:
- 100 clients paying $297/mo = $29,700/mo revenue (Overhead: ~$497 software + minimal phone/SMS fees).
- 500 clients paying $400/mo = $200,000/mo revenue.
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. All the top companies are listed publicly. You just have to reverse engineer what they’re already doing.
How To Clone Boring Businesses That Make Money
You don’t need expensive espionage tools to figure out how these companies operate. You can dissect any business on that leaderboard using these free tools:
Tool 1: The Wayback Machine (See Their 5-Year Evolution)
Drop their URL into web.archive.org. This shows you what their website looked like 1, 3, or 5 years ago. You’ll see that most of them started out as broad, generic marketing agencies, discovered a specific boring niche that worked, and gradually narrowed down their offer. You get to skip years of trial and error just by studying how their messaging matured.
Tool 2: The Meta Ads Library (Steal Their Winning Ad Creatives)
Go to the free Facebook Ads Library, select “United States,” and type in the company’s name.
- Look at all their active Facebook and Instagram ads.
- The Golden Rule: Look for ads that have been running continuously for 3, 6, or 12+ months. If a company is paying Meta to run an ad for months on end, that ad is making them money.
- You’ll notice their best ads are rarely flashy high-budget productions. They are often simple 15-to-45 second vertical videos, text on a black background, or basic problem-solving hooks.
Tool 3: BuiltWith.com (Inspect Their Tech Stack)
Enter their domain into builtwith.com to see every script running on their site—their tracking pixels, WordPress plugins, analytics tools, and hosting providers. You’ll quickly see there is no secret proprietary tech; they’re using standard, accessible tools.
Tool 4: LinkedIn (Analyze Their Team Structure)
Search the company on LinkedIn and look at the “People” tab. You’ll see how many team members they actually have. Most of these high-profit agencies operate with lean remote teams, often utilizing virtual assistants for day-to-day client support.
5 Boring Businesses That Make Money That Will Pay You
Here are five real industries from the leaderboard that prove serving mundane local businesses is where the real leverage is:
1. Bounce House & Event Rentals
- The Pain Point: Parents and event planners message 3–4 rental companies at once when planning a party. The first company to respond and take a deposit wins the booking.
- The Solution: An automated booking and SMS follow-up system that instantly texts leads back and lets them reserve equipment directly on a mobile calendar.
2. Roofing Contractors
- The Pain Point: Roofers spend their days up on roofs or on job sites. When their phone rings, they can’t answer. A missed call is a lost $10,000–$30,000 roof replacement.
- The Solution: Automated Missed Call Text-Back (detailed step-by-step below).
3. Medical Spas & Estheticians
- The Pain Point: Med spas spend heavily on ads to generate consultation requests, but leads go cold quickly, and booked patients frequently no-show.
- The Solution: Automated SMS/email reminder sequences and instant lead-to-booking funnels that keep their treatment rooms full.
4. Neighborhood Gyms & Fitness Studios
- The Pain Point: Gym owners are busy training clients and managing staff, leaving inbound membership inquiries sitting unanswered for days.
- The Solution: Lead capture automations that instantly deliver a free day-pass barcode or trial class booking via text message.
5. Dental & Specialty Clinics
- The Pain Point: Dental practices want high-ticket patients (like full-arch dental implants worth $15,000–$30,000), but front-desk staff don’t have time to qualify leads over the phone.
- The Solution: Dedicated qualification funnels that filter high-ticket inquiries and schedule qualified consultations directly onto the practice calendar.
Step-by-Step: How to Build a “Missed Call Text Back” Service in 10 Minutes
Let’s take the roofing example and build the exact starter solution you can sell to contractors.
Here is exactly how you set it up inside → GoHighLevel
Step 1: Create the Client Sub-Account
- Log into your agency dashboard on GoHighLevel.
- Click Sub-Accounts → Create Sub-Account.
- Choose the pre-built Home Services / Roofing snapshot template.
- Enter your client’s business details (name, business address, contact info).
Step 2: Set Up a Dedicated Business Phone Number
- Switch into your new client’s sub-account view.
- Go to Settings → Phone System → Phone Numbers → Add Number.
- Choose a local phone number with the same area code as the contractor’s market (this costs about $1.15/mo).
- Set up call forwarding so any incoming calls to this number forward straight to the contractor’s real mobile phone.
- Set a 20-second ring timeout.
Step 3: Activate the Missed Call Text-Back Automation
- Navigate to Automations → Workflows → Create Workflow.
- Select the pre-built Missed Call Text Back template (used thousands of times across the platform).
- The workflow is already built for you:
- Trigger: Call status = Missed, Busy, or Voicemail.
- Action 1: Wait 0.2 minutes (a short 10–15 second delay so it feels natural, not like an instant robot).
- Action 2: Send SMS to the caller.
Step 4: Insert the Booking Calendar Link
- Go to Calendars in the dashboard, grab the link for the pre-configured Roof Inspection Calendar, and copy the URL.
- Go back into your SMS automation step and customize the message:“Hey, this is John with Neighborhood Roofing. I’m currently on a roof with a customer right now—how can I help? If you need us to come out and inspect your roof, you can grab a time on our calendar right here: [CALENDAR LINK]”
- Hit Publish and Save.
Step 5: Demo It to a Contractor in 90 Seconds
Call the number from your phone, let it ring until it misses, and watch your phone immediately receive the automated text with the booking link.
When you show a roofer that demo on their own phone, they instantly understand the value because you’re saving them from losing $10k+ roofing jobs to their competitors.
How to Find Other Lucrative Niches (Using AI)
If you don’t want to target roofers or party rentals, you can use AI tools like Claude or ChatGPT to identify dozens of identical opportunities.
Use a prompt based on first principles:
“A common business model involves white-labeling software platforms like GoHighLevel to local service businesses to automate their lead follow-up. Give me 10 local service or rental industries with similar high ticket sizes, urgent customer inquiries, and busy owners working in the field (e.g., dumpster rentals, heavy equipment rentals, tree service).”
You’ll get niches like:
- Dumpster rentals
- Skid steer and mini excavator rentals
- Portable restroom trailers
- Mobile detailing services
- Tree removal contractors
Pick one niche, study the top players on the leaderboard using the 5-tool toolkit, and focus your efforts there.
Consistency Is Key
Everything you need to launch this is publicly accessible. The software infrastructure is pre-built, the winning competitor ads are sitting in the Facebook Ads Library for you to study, and local business owners in every city are missing customer calls every single day.
The only difference between the people earning recurring subscription revenue and those reading about it is execution and consistency.
If you want to poke around the platform, look through the pre-built industry templates, and test out building your first workflow, you can start → here
Have Questions?
If you run into technical hurdles, want feedback on an industry you’re considering, or need help crafting your outreach angle, reach out.
You can connect with me directly through any of the three options on my → Contact Page
Pick the platform you prefer and send me a message. Tell me what niche you’re looking at or what step you’re working on.
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