Adam Keller started Tent-All Rent-All with three tents, some maxed-out credit cards, and his mother’s SUV as his only delivery vehicle. Nearly two decades later, he runs a full event rental operation in upstate New York, owns a wedding venue, teaches close to 400 students at StartAPartyRentalCompany.com, and built a follower count of over 300,000 on social media channels “Real World Side Hustles” and “The Tent Guy and other Entrepreneur Stuff”.
In this episode, Aaron and Adam start with the question most operators never ask: not how much revenue a job brought in, but how much work it actually required. Adam breaks down the equipment – a stake driver, chairs on wheels, an electric dolly – that turned labor hours into real profit, and the inventory mistakes (gold Shivari chairs, a sailcloth tent that never sold) that taught him to test before he buys.
They get into the moment that gives this episode its title: “rich customers suck.” Adam explains why two nearly identical jobs – one in a working-class neighborhood, one in a wealthy one – turned into completely different experiences, and how a buried, broken tent on a freezing Valentine’s Day taught him to trust his gut and turn down business.
Adam also opens up about the real dollar cost of his own mistakes – close to $350,000 between overlooked credit card fees and years of paying himself as an LLC instead of an S-Corp – and the single most expensive mistake he sees new operators make in year one: buying too much inventory before they know what their market actually wants.
The conversation closes on why Adam is now doing something most growing operators wouldn’t: selling most of his tent business and going backward on purpose, down to just two tents. Not because it failed – because he was clear from the start about how big he actually wanted to get.
What you’ll take away:
- Why “how much profit did you keep” matters more than “how much revenue did you make”
- The equipment and inventory rules that saved Adam the most money
- Why “rich customers suck” – and what two nearly identical jobs taught him about who to work with
- The single most expensive mistake new operators make in year one
