The Boring Index

Every business in this database is scored out of 100 on three weighted factors. The score does not measure quality, size, or growth. It measures how thoroughly a business repels attention, which we argue is the most underrated predictor of durable profit in small business.

The three factors

Inverted glamour, 40 percent. Would the owner get a follow-up question at a dinner party? Every "no" adds points. Septic pumping has never once been asked a follow-up question. This is the heaviest factor because glamour is what attracts capable competitors, and capable competitors are what destroy margins.

Recession-deaf demand, 35 percent. Trash accumulates in downturns. Laundry gets dirty in booms. Construction sites are legally required to provide sanitation regardless of the S&P 500. We score how completely the demand ignores the news, with legally mandated demand scoring highest.

Absent competition, 25 percent. The graduating MBA class is not starting grease-trap businesses. That absence is a moat, and it is priced into the margins of every entry in this ledger. Where competition exists but is fragmented and unprofessional, as in cleaning, we score it middling: fragmentation is opportunity, but it is not absence.

A business needs 80 or higher to enter the database. Restaurants, for the record, are exciting. That is not a compliment, and it is why a documented $15 million chicken sandwich chain sits in our screening file rather than our ledger.

What the distribution shows

Across 22 documented entries the mean score is 90.0 and the median is 90, with a range of 82 to 99. That tightness is itself a finding: businesses that clear our threshold cluster hard, which suggests the factors are correlated in the real world rather than independent. Work nobody wants to do is usually also work the economy cannot skip, and usually also work nobody is competing for. The three factors are, in practice, three views of the same thing.

The highest scores belong to portable toilets (99) and septic pumping (98), both of which combine legal mandate with a disgust barrier. The lowest, at 82 to 85, are storage unit flipping, lawn care, and self-storage, each losing points to visibility: everyone has mowed a lawn, storage attracts institutional capital, and auctions carry a gambling glamour the rest of the category lacks.

Where the score is weakest

Three honest limitations. First, the glamour factor is culturally specific: what draws a follow-up question in San Francisco differs from Quincy, Illinois. Second, scoring absent competition is a judgment call, and we make it from published sources rather than market share data. Third, high scores do not imply high returns. Brian Winch's 97-scoring litter route reports $600,000 to $700,000 a year after four decades, while Mike Andes's 85-scoring lawn care franchise reports $50 million systemwide. The index measures the durability of the opportunity, not its ceiling.

We publish the scores anyway, because the alternative, ranking small businesses by revenue alone, is what every other publication does, and it systematically points readers toward the crowded end of the market.

Common questions