16 Year-Old Starts a $4,500/Month Pressure Washing Business
some people think you need many years of planning and saving money to start their own business well today i'm interviewing olay burns who's a power washing business owner who proves that that's not the case i started burns pro-rush during online school i'm already making thousands of dollars a month in revenue ola's story goes to show that you don't need a ton of time or money to start a profitable power washing business i started with a home depot pressure washer how much profit was your first week or month my first month legally or yeah what were the challenges you faced as a teen entrepreneur what's going on with this thing another super important tool for me is google earth because it gives a very accurate measurement so here it is you guys nothing fancy that's really the point essence of today's interview is you can start somewhere like ole at 16 years old making thousands of dollars of revenue every month do you want to find out how he did it keep watching the video for more of his insights big thanks to keeps for sponsoring this video all right let's jump into it you started the business recently right april of this year yep so it hasn't been that long not very long at all what did you do before and why did you decide to start your own business specifically so before this i was actually working at a barbecue restaurant washing dishes and before that i would just do odd jobs like yard work for neighbors and all that but i just wanted to make more money and control my own hours and you were in high school yeah while you started the business right yep did you graduate at this point uh no i'm actually going into my junior year this year last year was online but this year is going to be all in person what inspired you though as a 16 year old uh entrepreneur to start on your own versus continue to be an employee and work somewhere one of the biggest influences was probably your guys's channel i'd see a lot of power washing guys on there making it and just making it happen hustling and i decided why can't i do it [Music] in terms of your overall monthly expenses what is that number just to pay all the hard costs it's uh anywhere from fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars a month okay not bad what was your best month so far as profit goes yeah it was around four thousand dollars four grand okay so possibly a take home of north of two thousand dollars cool uh later on in the video guys we will share more insights on how to finance a business and maximize your startup investment so keep watching so we're here at your job site and uh we're gonna show you guys exactly what happens and how oli does all the business so let's help you out with all this stuff and i'll ask you about operating procedures like do you have anything in place when it comes to managing the the workflow and the jobs and scheduling and everything yeah how do you do that big tool for like managing time and like keeping organized is quickbooks for me it's uh just keeping all my numbers for numbers that's your books okay numbers and uh getting estimates that's also done through quickbooks you don't use any other third-party software i use invoices and quickbooks what other uh software do you use to just run the day-to-day business another super important tool for me is google earth because it gives a very accurate measurement of a service area oh yeah and i can multiply that by what i'm charging per square foot based on the service line cleaning yeah we'll talk about the the process of bidding a little bit later but i've used that tool before it's really really effective uh do you use it all the time or are there sometimes we have to show up and actually see something in person sometimes i can't use it because there may be like trees blocking the from like bird's eye view yep but uh i usually like to go out to do jobs most of the time but um in person but i've been starting to quote them remotely to save time gotcha okay we're here to share your story because i think you're one of the youngest ones we've interviewed who has his own business so let's talk about the challenges that come with being a teen entrepreneur so when you first opened burns pro wash right what were the challenges you faced as a teen entrepreneur how did you overcome those share a couple things my biggest challenge starting up and still now is probably just time management and going to school and balancing work and social life let's dig a little deeper how much time is allocated to school and then business on a daily basis when i was starting up the first month i would spend about two hours a day on this like computer work and all that and then i'd be skipping school to go do jobs and all that my parents don't like it you don't encourage skipping school finish school but there's a way like you to be in school and still make a decent revenue on a monthly basis you can bend the rules a little bit right have you faced the the resistance or the challenge of you being a teen and they're like i don't know you're too young to do this job yeah there's got to be some of that how did you overcome that there has been people that are like kind of questionable like hey this guy's just going to tear up my deck or he doesn't know what he's doing yeah but i kind of overcame that with just having all the proper licensing and insurance is there nothing in addition in terms of you know being a 16 year old 20 year old in terms of licenses and stuff uh you have to have a specialty contractor's license but interesting what did that cost you to get um i'd say it was like 150 bucks what total amount did you spend to officially get going it wasn't uh around three or four thousand dollars in total with all the equipment and licensing how did you fund the business um i took a loan out from my mom and i paid it back okay did she ask for interest oh no so best bank ever the best bank answer ever interest free interest rate that's awesome how quickly did you pay it off it took me about two to three months to pay it off not bad [Music] what else can somebody watching right now do as a newbie if i could say that to get their first customer no marketing money no budget what was most effective for you is it just friends and family or is it knocking on doors what else can you share i would say friends and family just go around your neighborhood or just like a local community that you're in where people may know you or at least stay local were you ever hesitant on door knocking door knocking's kind of scary at first any any interesting experiences you can share with us and what you've learned from that you kind of have to take like the sales pressure out of it and uh really you got to be really careful with door knocking because people don't like you coming their doors sometimes so i'd say the best way would just be friends and family and getting referrals off those have you had any experiences with door knocking um that were worth mentioning yeah uh when i first started out i made a bunch of flyers and it was middle of summer and i was just going around this was when i was just doing i was like well side hustle i had my home depot pressure washer and everything and i was just going around passing out these flyers and there was this lady sitting out on her porch and she had a no soliciting sign but i didn't see it and i like went and put a fire on her doorstep she just started going off on me and i was just like i'm so sorry did you make her your client no uh that would have been a perfect outcome [Music] why don't we go look at your i would say humble beginnings burns pro wash trailer with all the equipment and walk us through what is must-have like do you use a particular tool on all of your job site and so on so here it is you guys nothing fancy that's really the point essence of today's interview is you you can start somewhere like ole at 16 years old making thousands of dollars of revenue every month so i don't want to uh trespass here but i can help you take this tarp down yeah sure i think i got it actually besides licenses and equipment costs this is really what we're looking at in terms of like three thousand dollar investment that you put in right this i've since upgraded my machines and equipment so this this machine right here alone is three grand what's special about it that you want to highlight to our viewers um the most important thing about this machine is the gallons per minute that pushes out so it's not really about how much pressure it's putting out it's about how many gallons a minute why is that important really oh do you need more or less more more flows cleans faster so you can more efficient on the job site interesting okay but you are using more water yeah obviously are you connecting to the customer's water yes i do most of the time i can't see any other options i mean you'll deplete this guy pretty quickly what's inside the barrel uh this is what i use for my soft washing so i'll batch mix sodium hypochlorite with water and soap in here beforehand and then i will use this guy right here which is my kind of a makeshift thing right right diy software system so drop this down into the tank and then i'll hook this end down here up into a hose gotcha i don't have a guy down here so you can buy something like that but it's probably pricey what are we talking about oh like four grand oh wow yeah okay three or four grand but the point is which i do want to highlight too is you could start here did you do this yourself for like yeah like 400 bucks wow that's pretty cool outside the box kind of thinking when you start a small company [Music] what kind of insurance do you need to start a power washing business uh i carry a 2 million dollar general reliability insurance so is that minimum or can you do a million uh you can do a million but i just did two million just to be safe is that all you need to be on the roofs on the ground etc uh you need a contractor's license to be operating type of equipment on people's homes what is it costing you for insurance on a you know six-month or 12-month basis for a 12-month basis it's 3 600 and okay so yeah would you say that's one of the more costly operating costs the insurance yeah okay what else is part of your overhead on a monthly basis for soft washing services i'll use a lot of overhead and chemical cleaning so it's the sodium hypochlorite that we use what are you spending on average per month i'll spend anywhere from three to seven hundred dollars a month on the on chemical okay besides insurance and the chemicals what else is your biggest expense on a monthly basis um it would have to be marketing i think okay and i think we'll dive into marketing later in terms of the platforms you're using and the roi that you're getting on that so you did some outdoor cleaning before this business what was that just on the snippet what were you actually doing i would be doing like yard work and odd jobs for people and i had a guy that would go over and work at his house he's a family friend and he had me do quite a bit of pressure washing so he uh showed me how to use a pressure washer originally and then had a pressure armor at my house and i was like hey why not make some money exactly so how much of help did that give you in terms of starting out and going it kind of just sparked the idea in my head of you could make money with like a machine like i was a young i was around 12 and i kind of got the idea but i never really sprung it into action until recently that's pretty cool so it's all those experiences the youtube channel up flip that kind of came together in marriage and now you have your own licensed business at 16. that's awesome guys for more business helpful information tips check out our blog upflip.com forward slash blog or just click the link in the description below how much profit was your first week or month and how did you calculate that just curious when you got started what was it um i was doing about like three jobs a week when i first started that's april this year well i started like as a side hustle last summer but i took it legal this this spring yeah that's what we count yeah okay so my first month legally or yeah um yeah i think i did around like seven hundred dollars in revenue and like six hundred dollars in profit okay i like how he's like my first month legally yeah i don't want to say something to give you a troubler it's fine we all we all started somewhere okay holy what's your typical profit margin have you done that math like where 30 profit margin after all expenses on soft washing services it's a it's around like a 70 60 to 70 profit margin wow and um with power washing it's more like 80 to 90 just because you're using more supplies on the software yeah it's a lot of overhead with chemical but this is just a gasoline and water gotcha okay are you experiencing hair loss two out of three men experience hair loss by the time they're 35 and we're here to tell you that hair loss can be treated and even prevented with keeps we're giving away a three-month treatment package to this random guy i'm sure he's gonna be happy christmas came early here you go son use this we'll come back to check on you keeps is clinically proven doctor recommended hair care subscription that gets delivered straight to your door save your time money and your hair keeps save you from having to go to the doctor visits and also with keeps you only pay half the cost of a traditional pharmacy be sure to check back in future videos to check on this guy's progress how did you know hair loss stops with keeps to get 50 off your first order go to keeps.com forward slash up flip or click the link in the description below that's k-e-e-p-s dot com slash up flip what was the whole point of this thing anyway let's talk about your website what's important to highlight there who designed it who did you hire and what did that cost overall is this stuck or something yeah it is um i use a guy from seattle called mindful web design no that doesn't work okay and uh he kind of walked me through uh the steps of building a website because i couldn't afford it he he was like hey if you pay my hourly rate i'll kind of give you a puts a little little course together for you and teach you how to build a website so i did that and that was a thousand dollars so you did the website yourself right yeah but with the help of a professional so what's the total cost for the site then is this good thousand dollars thousand bucks okay what's going on with this thing do you maintain it on a monthly basis yourself yes i do is there a cost to that it's mostly just time but uh i think i pay like some sort of fees every month with like 50 bucks a month or something what platform is the website built on um board press wordpress for us well what's more important is for you as a startup business why is the website important what kind of value have you seen from it uh having a website super important to the business because it kind of gives the customers a landing page and tells them about what we have our licenses and why they can trust us and what we bring to the table and they can also remotely get quotes through a form that i set up on there okay [Music] so what's a must-have i mean i can't obviously start with this potentially right can i start with something less yeah i would say a must-have for any pressure washing business is one of these guys it's a 16-inch worldwide service cleaner it's got two nozzles that rotate and spin and it makes cleaning go faster so you can buy a pressure washer you've got this whirl away can you do jobs just with these two tools yeah that's how i started i started with a home depot pressure washer and uh one of a home depot service cleaner which i don't recommend starting with a home depot surface cleaner because i burned out through like three of them in the first week so what would you recommend i would recommend just going to like a industrial pressure washing supply and grabbing like a camera like a commercial grade yeah commercial grid okay [Music] so what's next you we've basically just hooked up the pressure washer to the hose bib this thing stays in the trailer yeah what do you do next you dress up like a yellow man or yeah throw my bib on i can't imagine you wearing this in summer though so what's the tip on on clothes the proper clothing i will actually just wear these in summer with like a shirt just because you get pretty dirty otherwise yeah at my feet and my legs what's your revenue target for 2022 end of the year i'd like to hit like 16 to 20 000 in revenue for the end of the summer for the summer okay so what's your typical or average invoice holy would you say on on a per job basis are we talking a few hundred bucks or a couple grand or i'd say it's around anywhere from three hundred dollars to fifteen hundred dollars that's about the average yeah that's a pretty big spread though three to fifteen yeah averages are around 500 500 bucks okay that's not bad for somebody who's still doing high school online and doing this side hustle as an official business that's pretty cool i hope you guys are inspired by it [Music] all right we're going to do a quick uh blitz with ole you got about 10 seconds to answer some of these fun questions and it starts off a bit space themed so how would you rebrand your business on mars okay mars after all pressure washing pressure washing the dust off of roofs i'm sure that all the houses there get really dusty so i'm gonna integrate that in my marketing somehow whoever thinks of these questions okay name one object that you would like to eternally disappear from the planet pickles pickles they just that's offensive to me i love pickles i'm joking what do you do with your profits i eat at chipotle almost every day best part of being an entrepreneur making your own hours nice what is your favorite business book think and grow rich by napoleon hill awesome well we will be giving away a free gift of oli's favorite business books so make sure all you have to do is answer a question below in the comments what is the most outlandish purchase you have made and then we will select a random winner so go ahead and do that right now [Music] holy if somebody wants to start a pressure washing business and has no money what is the absolute minimum budget that they can start with and how would you spend it i would say six to seven hundred dollars would be the absolute bare minimum you can get a home depot pressure washer with uh some hoses and you'd need a truck obviously or even an suv to move your stuff around you can use your mom's minivan too right if you really want to start somewhere yeah okay that's what you're doing right that's not your vehicle no that's my mom's so you just hook up the trailer and yeah nice where did you get the money to start your business uh i'd say it was mommy and daddy interest-free loan yeah like you said that's the best bank to go to so you got into this business pretty fresh right i'm curious i'm asking how did you get the knowledge the hand-in-hand experience did you go to some website look at some resource to get the basics of things or did just learn everything on the fly what would you suggest to our viewers in your situation you can learn basically anything online nowadays youtube was a huge help for me learning how to use like machines and how to operate a pressure washer and most efficient way to clean things so you didn't necessarily buy a pressure washing business book you don't i just use content advertising yeah it's all out on the internet man that seems pretty simple there's nothing else to it that you want to highlight in terms of learning resources as always i'm trying to extract all that information from them guys it's just flowing out some of the industrial equipment suppliers have also been a huge help so just talking to the guys that run those shops they have a bunch of super valuable knowledge on machines and what equipment to use what tools are best and get things clean the fastest nice yeah so how is it breaking down in terms of revenue how much is power washing versus soft washing yeah i'd say it's a 70 percent uh power washing and 30 soft washing gotcha how important is it uh olay to have a variety of services as a startup i think it's super important to like have at least a little bit of variety in what you offer because if there's a big change in the market or like one of your machines breaks and you can't offer one of those services for a while you can be out of business i want to come back for just a second in terms of offering multiple services right what are the challenges or advantages or disadvantages to offering more than one um the more services you have the more equipment you got to buy so when you're starting up it may take longer to make that money back on your initial investment but other than that no there's no disadvantages okay so just more cost of equipment and that's for you guys to decide for your market right what's going to yield the most so what's important like an aha moment for a website if you have one what's important to do using visuals for my customers to see the before and after of when the work's completed is a really big tool for me that really makes a difference people just love seeing i guess what it looked like before and then the magic you did yeah so what are we doing on this job as well so our audience know we're doing all the walkways the driveways and the back deck gotcha may i ask what this job was quoted at um this was for just the flat grounds it was 540 and how long will it take you i think it'll take me around three hours three hours okay you plan to finish today yeah gotcha all right well let's keep at it uh marketing super important when you got started as a young entrepreneur what did you do in terms of marketing when it came time to actually spend marketing money how did you allocate that where did that go um i try to dedicate at least 20 of my profits to marketing reinvest in marketing and i'll use angie listings so it's like affiliate marketing i'll pay like around 50 per customer that i'll get off there and then i'll also use facebook ads or facebook groups in general you're spending a couple hundred bucks a month and that's split between facebook and angie's list is that it pretty much as far as platforms yeah i'll use uh an app called nextdoor which has also been really great go to that one yeah and it's completely free so how much business have you gotten from it though i've gotten around like six jobs off of there nice so that's pretty good you've got your own profile in there cool all right in terms of growing or doubling your revenue for example today right let's say you did five grand this month if you want to go to 10 next month what do you think as a young entrepreneur you need to do to get to that number i would need to get a bigger trailer set up and i would need two of them i'd have two workers going full time doing jobs for me and i'd be focusing on marketing gotcha so two employees you're fully focused on marketing and then you've got a little bit more equipment okay that makes sense [Music] talk to us about the process of a customer reaching out to the point where you show up to their house and start cleaning are there apps to use to communicate here let me help you out are there apps you use to communicate um text messages tell us everything about that yeah so people can reach out to me via email text message facebook or they can just call me whatever if they reach out to me on like email or text i'll have a i have a bunch of written up um just like copy and paste messages that i was plugging their name and so yeah these templates yeah via text message yeah so i can just get their uh what they want clean and understand the project that they have yeah i'll i'll ask you guys the customer what they're getting cleaned and if there's any like any problems with the surfaces or like say there's a big crack in the deck or it's rotten away that's something i'd need to know beforehand and then i would uh go out on site or use google earth to quote the job and i'll send them over an estimate and schedule them what is your closing rate would you say out of 10 people that reached out how many are you going to close and sign a deal with i'd say 80 percent that's pretty good yeah okay any tips and tricks on how to get to 80 or more is it a demeanor is it something else and just uh acting like a human not a robot trying to be like super nice because when i first started sending out these messages my friend was looking over him and he was like oh you sound like a bot right now and so i'm just trying to sound like super friendly and welcoming and inviting that's awesome in a world of ai and technology man we need more of that just personal friendly customer service so ollie besides a website what other areas should your business be present in this year so that you get maximum exposure and continue to grow as a pressure washing business one really important thing is just being present on multiple different platforms like tik tok and instagram that's a big mistake that i've made and i actually haven't been posting so that's what i'm really trying to focus on from this month for you now it's just basically facebook your website and then what was the other platform you mentioned store next door okay right but you really believe that tick tock can do wonders for appreciation business just getting content out there i've seen people like landing big commercial jobs from getting tick-tock yeah okay i guess tick-tock's on its way up and it's just the beginning [Music] can you share an experience where it was a little bit of a struggle in the beginning to get customers to commit to you and give you the job how did you overcome that um i would present my general liability insurance statement and my bonds and all my licenses and i would say hey we're legit if we cause any damage we're totally liable for it my number one job is taking care of you guys as the customer and getting your guys stuff clean that's awesome so they weren't as concerned about your age they were concerned that you're insured you're licensed and all those things okay well that's i think encouraging those watching that hey it doesn't matter how old you are just get the right paperwork get the right insurance and go sell the service yeah [Music] did you write a business plan and if so why and what are the golden nuggets that you can share with us and why that's important yeah i do actually i had a i had a family friend help me write a business plan and it's super important mapping out like all your expenses your profit where money's going money coming in money coming out how many pages it's uh one page good i was gonna say if it's like 30 pages that's the wrong business plan right yeah cause i've heard from a business guy like it needs to be on one page if you can't fit it on one page so he helped you do you still have it yes i do how close are you to achieving what's on that page at this point four months in i'm still got a long way to go i'm i want to grow into like a very large company and then eventually get into real estate but why do the business plan in the first place just curious like uh just to help map everything out or have goals and then as far as market research how much did you do to look at who are your competitors what their services are costs and how do you dive into that world of competition yeah so i would say the pressure washing industry is a little bit oversaturated at the moment there's a lot of people doing it on this market yeah but um i did not do a whole bunch of market research it was more just get up and go get up and go okay that's what we do when we're young we don't we don't ask too many questions we just do it [Music] so what's your biggest struggle right now as a business owner what can you think of biggest struggle for me is honestly just being so young and having to be in high school and i can't really put my full energy into the company and take it full time so i'd say it's a it's a full time for like someone my age but it'd be a part-time for an average adult like an hour right because leaving high school is not an option right yeah i mean mom's probably not going to do that i've done it a few times and mom and dad are not happy because you know there are successful people that have never even hit the door of the school but i'm not encouraging you i think you should finish it yeah continue growing what are some pitfalls in terms of growing a side hustle into a full-time business for you time management it was probably just my biggest thing just managing my schoolwork with my business and then also trying to have a social life at the same time i was gonna say like how much of that do you have because you're here working while others may be sitting on the computer playing games or very variable some people all you know what fomo is like fear of missing out right i'll be like working and my friends will be at the beach hanging out having a good old time especially with summer yeah yeah it's been it'll i'll have some fomo sometimes but man that's commitment yeah how many hours a week do you invest into the business versus school it's very variable when i'm in school but now that it's uh summer right it's more kind of i can put like more my full attention into it but take the time when you are in school just curious yeah i understand that anywhere from like 20 to 30 hours a week 20 to 30 and then how much school 10 15 or you're doing yeah 10 okay not a lot not a lot to do as a high schooler well there's a lot to do but sometimes i don't choose to do it okay i've been out of it for a while yeah [Music] what do you think most customers expect from a pressure washing company like what have you learned in the last you know three to four months pressure washing yeah they basically just want anything like organic growth and grime to be removed from the surfaces without it being damaged and they wanted a affordable price okay competitive how would you describe a wonderful customer experience in your perspective they reach out to me via email and i send them over a quote and uh they're happy with it come to their house in and out as quick as possible and they send me on my way okay do you ask for reviews in person via text yeah email i use i usually ask them in person because i always say hey i'm a young i'm a young company my company floater syncs based on these google reviews how many reviews do you have i have zero at the moment there's a i'm having an issue with like the google it like won't let people i'm sure you'll figure it out but just getting things started tell us about an experience if you had a dissatisfied customer you know they left a bad review or not yet luckily you're at zero so you have a good zero platform to start with but have you had those opportunities to learn something about that experience and get better were they happy with your job and how did you deal with it thankfully for now i haven't had any angry customers but if i were to have somebody leave a bad review or reach out to me i would come back and i would do what i can to make it right well we hope that you have few of those but at the same time it's a good learning opportunity yeah cool what is your vision for burns pro wash for the next five to ten years where do you want to be i'd like to be at the top of the industry here in seattle which is it's a big goal but why not shoot for it because we may uh do a follow-up on you so why don't you tell us where you want to be in two years from now we'll reach out and see if you've gotten yeah i'd like to be doing at least like half a million dollars in sales by the my first year out of high school or my senior year okay when do you graduate uh i graduate 2024 24. okay yeah so 25 would be a good follow-up year all right well this has been a pleasure i hope you guys were inspired by his not only young age and the fact that he's doing this hustle and doing many other things and and you're going to go far so we really appreciate you thank you likewise well that's a wrap i hope you guys enjoyed this episode before you go make sure you check out another interview you've done with alan who is a 22 year old and makes 50 000 a month with his mobile card detailing business and thanks to keeps for sponsoring this video
2022-07-06 13:43
