For those of you that are new here, every week I send what I call a 1x1x1.
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One thought from my week.
One interesting find/tool from my week.
One image from my life.

Let's dive in 👇

Thought from the week

Someone should go build this business.

(And cut me in for 5% 😉)

I have more business ideas than I know what to do with.

So I’m going to start giving some of them away in the hopes that one of you crazy people actually goes and builds one.

Bonus: If you do, I’d be happy to help with marketing, operations, customer acquisition, and figuring out how not to accidentally light your money on fire.

Today’s idea:

The Enchanted Forest.

This is what I call a Blue Square Business.

(Using ski run ratings, because everything is better when measured in ski runs.)

🟦 Blue Square = pretty straightforward, relatively low complexity, and doesn’t require inventing a fusion reactor or raising $50 million from venture capitalists.

Last year my family was road-tripping through Canada.

We were in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

One of those stretches of highway where you’ve seen the same tree for 47 miles and your toddler is asking if you’re there yet every 30 seconds.

Then we saw a giant sign:

ENCHANTED FOREST

It also had great reviews online.

Naturally, we pulled over because:

1. We needed to stretch our legs.
2. My wife and I have the self-control of a golden retriever when it comes to roadside attractions.

The tickets were about $12 per person.

Three of us.

$36 later we entered what was essentially:

• A walking path
• Some whimsical statues
• A few art installations
• A pond
• Kids play areas
• Lots of photo opportunities

And you know what?

It was packed.

Absolutely packed.

I’d estimate there were at least 100 people there while we were visiting.

Families.

Road trippers.

Grandparents.

Kids.

People taking Instagram photos.

People just looking for an excuse to get out of the car for 45 minutes.

The entire time I was walking around I kept thinking:

This is brilliant.

The land is cheap because it’s in the middle of nowhere.

The attraction itself isn’t particularly complicated.

And people are literally driving by all day long.

You’re just giving them a reason to stop.

The business model is surprisingly simple:

👉 Buy inexpensive land on a high-traffic highway.
👉 Build something memorable.
👉 Charge admission.
👉 Let bored road trippers do the rest.

There are dozens of locations where this could work.

Oregon alone has several highways with millions of annual visitors passing through every year.

Take Highway 26 heading toward Mt. Hood.

2.5-4 million vehicles pass through that corridor annually.

And here’s the fun part:

Organizations like ODOT and Caltrans publish traffic counts.

Meaning you’re not guessing.

You can literally look up how many eyeballs pass your property every year.

Imagine buying a few acres along a major corridor and creating:

• An enchanted forest
• A giant troll sculpture park
• A fairy village
• A whimsical art walk
• A dinosaur forest
• A Sasquatch preserve

(I’d personally pay $12 to visit a Sasquatch preserve and I don’t even believe in Sasquatch.)

Now let’s run some napkin math.

Initial investment:

Land: $365,000

Buildout: $60,000

Permitting: $30,000

Total: ~$455,000

Let’s assume:

• 2.5 million vehicles pass annually
• 1% stop
• Each stopping vehicle buys one ticket

That’s:

25,000 visitors × $12

= $300,000 annual revenue

Now before all the MBA types show up in the comments…

Yes.

There are more expenses.

Insurance.

Property taxes.

Maintenance.

Payroll.

Utilities.

Marketing.

The occasional child who decides your carefully curated fairy village should be used as a climbing gym.

Once you factor in real operating costs, a more realistic operating profit might be around $150,000 per year.

Still not bad.

Especially for a business built around people walking through the woods looking at cool stuff.

But here’s what gets really interesting.

The biggest variable isn’t expenses.

It’s tickets per car.

Because road-trip vehicles rarely contain one person.

They’re families.

Couples.

Groups of friends.

If the average stopping vehicle buys 2.5 tickets instead of one?

Revenue jumps from roughly $300,000 to roughly $750,000.

That’s the difference between:

“Nice little lifestyle business.”

And:

“Holy crap, the fairy statues are paying for my retirement.”

Of course, there are risks.

Seasonality matters.

Location matters.

Your attraction actually has to be interesting.

And a 1% capture rate sounds small until you realize convincing drivers to stop is harder than it looks.

But I keep coming back to the same thought:

We spend so much time looking for complicated businesses.

Meanwhile there are people quietly making great money because they put giant trolls next to a highway and gave families something fun to do.

Sometimes the best businesses are just a really good reason to pull over.

If somebody builds this in Oregon, call me.

I want my 5%.

Image from my life

See you all next week!