From $300 to $40,000 per Month in the Car Detailing Business
would you guys like to start your own mobile car detailing business and scale it to more than 30 000 in revenue per month sam justin and abu did exactly that and in this video they're going to share with you how they made that happen [Music] in this episode we are interviewing the brains behind seattle mobile detailing that had a starting budget of 300 and now has six employees and is going to see more than 350 000 in revenue in 2021. this is their first mobile car detailing business but they're already scaling by hiring more full-time employees to handle more customers can you break down the 300 budget how long did it take you to break even yeah well the first day as entrepreneurs we could take jobs easily but we quit our jobs to do our passion what's your overhead monthly and what's the biggest expense for the business going forward today they're going to share secrets with you guys that allow them to scale their business to such heights we're also going to talk about how to train and find new employees and everything else you guys need to know to start a successful mobile car detailing business and do it on your own but right now we're looking at expanding into more of a corporate clients and and send that to your customer and they will help you promote your business that involves a lot of scale you know and so there's always a component of bringing on more staff find what you love because in this country you can make money doing anything if you're new to this channel make sure you hit that like button subscribe to our channel so that you don't miss any of our videos and let's go meet the brains behind seattle's mobile detail we just showed up to their job site here that's probably sam how you doing sam i'm hey paul good to see you good to meet you and that's back there you guys abu i'm paul good to meet you abu nice to meet you all right let's get to the interview [Music] all right you guys so i'm here with abu the ceo of seattle mobile detailing uh tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up starting seattle's mobile details seattle mobile detail yeah my background is mostly in construction okay and i also i've always been interested in cars you know so that's how we actually came to the plan because we noticed that a bunch of people they want their cars clean but they don't know how to do it so i want to do something that i really love yeah which is uh working with cars [Music] let's talk about the marketing approach that you first used when you got the business going right what was most effective at that point well you have to be you have to have an online presence and then you have to get good reviews so one of the key things is your first few customers are very essential they essentially become your disciples of your business right so you have to invest a lot of time and effort into building those relationships because they lead you on to other relationships how do you get those first customers did you do facebook instagram what was someone who we did look kind of like a soft i guess like a soft open with some friends and family and we did we did the work for them so they got us some uh you know just just one or two details and then uh you put that online and then you you know we grew it organically okay and so you have to uh you know you just have to put time and effort into just doing the work what platforms are you using in terms of marketing more specifically is it facebook instagram what's giving you the best return on your investment now mostly google uh google ads and there we do some on facebook uh we did a little bit of yelp but that's that's a little different type of market so it's mostly facebook and and uh facebook mostly google and a little bit of facebook okay what was your initial budget when you got started what's the story behind that because it doesn't sound like it was a lot no the initial budget was believe it or not like three hundred dollars so three hundred dollars plus uh the passion and interest getting all the right stuff the right attitude that's what get you got us to where we are today yeah more than 30 000 in revenue per month that's incredible from 300 to 30 000. can you break down the 300 monthly budget how is it allocated how was it used in this originally well initially one of the most important things to start you know working on a car right you have to have good vacuum okay you have to have all this chemical supplies that you're going to use to clean the car and brushes so we went from there so you just bought a vacuum brushes and brushes we have our car so so pretty much things we need for the detailing initially [Music] so let's talk about profit margins for this industry what are you guys focusing on in terms of profit margins where are they at what can you share on that so uh right now we're looking at expanding into uh more of a corporate clients because then you can have multiple uh jobs in one site what are you expanding from though are you at 10 30 profits right now or have been so far yeah so we're about um i haven't really looked at the the latest numbers but yesterday about about 30 30 okay is that about average you say for the industry as a whole i i think so you know but it depends on your market too if you if you can get uh you know higher end cars then obviously you could you could have more profit there and then uh depends on your clientele you know if you're in a certain zip code you're going to be able to get more uh more leads and more jobs in that zip code too okay there's a social economic uh component to detailing right because you're dealing with people that that value their time more right [Music] sam what was your revenue back in 2020 crazy year for all of us right yes and uh where do you expect it to be for 21. 2020 was a an odd year because we had a lot of people interested in disinfecting their cars and dealing with the whole virus and germ situation so in order to keep so we had actually a pretty good uh year in 2020 what was the total revenue um roughly i mean so roughly so we're like average about 35 a month so so you guys can do the math on that yep but um to maintain that we're gonna have to expand our market uh we're gonna have to go you know find more customers and and part of me coming on board with the team here is is uh doing uh business development and bringing that into the more of a corporate structure gotcha you know so you can bring you can have uh clients that are uh you know they have a parking garage that has that have uh you know 300 cars there and you could detail 10 cars a day nice 20 hours a day so where where would you want your revenue to be in 21 i guess what's your goal and we've got a couple months left for more than a few yeah so um you know what do you think you're going to be you know uh 500 okay somewhere around there uh but uh but that that involves a lot of scale you know and so there's always a component of bringing on more staff mm-hmm uh and and training and then keeping keeping the staff really reliable right and still maintaining your quality as your scale [Music] can you share in terms of what kind of brands or must-have equipment you went for why i mean for people watching and want to start from nothing right yeah they've got 300 bucks where do they go for shopping what kind of brands to buy what to look for any types of advice there yeah i would say startup start with a shop vac it's not really that much like 90 dollars you can get you a good shop vac you get your set set of brushes yeah um it's not that expensive you get that as well i mean eventually like now i've upgraded obviously to a much better you know much better stuff i have vacuums that cost as much as you know when i started the business with you know with justin um it's just a matter of like scaling up eventually getting to where you need to be that makes sense and by the way guys justin couldn't be here he's on on uh training somewhere so yeah at least there's three of you guys as part of this big story yeah if you like this video make sure you hit that like button you guys subscribe to our channel we appreciate you a lot and stay through the video because we've got an amazing hack that sam will share with you that you can use in your business as well in terms of marketing right you're in it almost a year too here at the end of 2021 how has that changed when you started to now are you doing anything different in terms of marketing now or what's worked in the beginning is continuing to do the same now well it's uh it's uh changed a little bit in in the in the beginning we were um looking for customers right so we're really looking for the online reviews but we we did that uh with the quality of our work right and so now the quality of work is built into our process you have to have a checklist of things that you get done right right but once you have that then the cust then the reviews kind of take care of themselves and then people find you uh organically right now is there a specific process how you ask for reviews because i know that's really important for any business how do you how do you get that customer to take the time and leave a review yeah we just tell them we just asked them specifically we'd really appreciate what we were trying to expand our business and grow business we would really appreciate uh you leaving some comments about your experience with us you know and we take that we take that into account because your your customer is the best person to help you grow your business right and most people don't listen to their customers as far as you know what inputs they have but we actually listen to our customers [Music] what about services that you offer can you break it down to our viewers what kind of services you offer uh which ones did you start with maybe what are the most profitable uh service packages yeah so so we do an inter package and then that includes uh you know getting all the dust out all the the creases and corners and everything uh cleaning the windows uh the chairs and then putting a a polish uh you know like a a protectant on the the surfaces got it let's talk about prices so when you mention that package what is the price for that yeah so it's one 160 uh for a vehicle uh for a car uh interior uh exterior is 160 uh and uh for a suv it's a little bit more it's like 20 30 more so 160 inside plus 160 outside yep gotcha what what tends to be the the highlight i guess service people go for most of the time most people are doing the interior right now uh because they're concerned about uh uh hygiene and the concern about viruses because people spend a lot of time in their cars now right in and out all the time um you know living in seattle that some people are you know not so concerned about the the weather and things like that but people with newer cars they want to keep that the exterior nice too okay for resale and things like that how long did it take you to break even a couple hours couple minutes yeah well the first day you know you get a couple cars in and then that we're into like well that actually worked i mean because the initial investment was only 300 bucks right well okay so literally buy a bunch of materials same day you get your return on investment yeah that's amazing uh let's talk about sales uh 2020. a lot of businesses were struggling you guys killed it in a good way how did you do that what happened and then you know what's your advice to businesses that are kind of struggling and how do they survive through some difficult times like that well you have to offer something that um convenience is a really big thing right now and so you we're offering a convenience service right because people are busy today and so they want us to come and clean and detail and uh sanitize their car uh that was the second component is uh we're in a we're in a situation where people are really concerned about their health and and germs and things like that and so you know it that match very well with what we do i want to dive in a little bit more about advertising what are you spending per month and where's that money going so uh right now we're spending about a thousand sometimes 1500 per month uh most of it's going to google uh we we're doing a lot of seo on google there's some facebook in there with with uh you know banners and and click click banners and things like that right but uh mostly most of our advertising uh is going towards that but we're getting a lot of referrals because of the the work that we do too uh people are finding that this is a a needed service and so we're gonna word-of-mouth referrals and that's that's the golden key right right that's the best form of advertisement so far you're doing just residential right like just what we saw here um what's your plan more specifically that you can share with our viewers in terms of how to switch over to corporate and have more commercial clients what's the difference there in terms of service level what can you share well with corporate you're looking at value added for them for their staff members right so employees have a benefits package that they offer to their staff you know whether it's healthcare and things like that uh in-house dry cleaning services and things like that so we're gonna have to package it in a way that this is a value added come work for us we have all these services we've got a gym nice we've got detailing and things like that to make their employees uh have a little bit more time and then they they value working there you know that's interesting content by the way you guys we've interviewed other detailing businesses check those videos out but and then coming back to this i think this is incredible in terms of you know a business model so uh where did you get the idea of like approaching a company and having a garage full of 300 cars yeah i uh i was a pharmaceutical scientist before this a cancer researcher so i was always a busy person and so if you find that you're a busy person uh you got i got i got things that i need to be done you know whether it's dry cleaning or servicing my car right and so at the time i came up with this concept of auto free time you know like my car is parked there for eight hours when someone go do the work on it because i i don't need to like take the day off of work that makes sense and so the concept here is uh you know get someone mobile to come do something for me [Music] what's your overhead monthly and what's the biggest expense for the business going forward so biggest biggest expenses is staffing obviously because it's very labor type business and then you know that's that's probably uh probably 30 40 percent of overhead right there what is the number overhead per month right we're pointing about 30 so probably about 10 or so okay yeah so but it kind of varies you know with um as we get as we onboard more people they get more uh we get more efficient in our process you know when uh initially when uh when someone comes on board there's a lot of um there's a lot of uh fine tuning of their techniques and quality assurance yeah training all right you guys we're gonna do some fun blitz questions with sam and let's just dive into it if there was a movie about your journey what would the title be perseverance perseverance i love it if aliens take over tomorrow how would you convince them to stay open as a business well you guys are busy like taking over the world will handle your we handle your spaceships okay if you could have anyone in this world endorse your business who would it be and why i would uh right now uh probably probably some influencers because influencers are busy people but who comes to mind elon musk jeff bezos yeah that'd be great to get one of those guys because they're going off in spaceships and stuff like that so tell us about your most bizarre business encounter well we've had a few customers uh not a few but just one customer that was that is very uh didn't use really uh language that was proper without staff and so that was an issue to deal with you know calling them names and stuff like that so that was that was very odd i would say that's pretty bizarre okay what's the most outlandish purchase you've made you know we have uh you know we've bought uh vehicles and equipment and so we just bought a drone okay a drone so we wanted to get some uh some marketing videos and so uh you know i'm learning how to fly that drone and things like that but i wouldn't say that's really outlandish but for us that works for blitz so these are questions from our subscribers our fans thank you first one is from mahad what are your plans for the next five to ten years to scale and to bring this and uh to bring this into um a lot of corporate places a lot of corporate businesses and just to get our name out there that we are available for um doing this type of service for people uh this is from gump happens what made you think about starting your own business how long had you been thinking about it and what finally made you take that jump when you started seattle mobile detailing yeah for me personally it was a time component because you can make money but you you can be money rich but time poor and so the only way to get time rich was to own a business gotcha right there you go this is from aw this is good um thank you for the question what's the next target goal in terms of revenue for you guys let's say 2022.
we want to hit 500 from 2021. uh yeah okay yeah so we went ahead so you aim high you miss high there you go how many cars will you do today what would be the average check from each customer okay so each customer the check is is 320 for the you know usually an interior exterior okay and then there's a tip you know it varies you know from 50 to 100 bucks depending on the job okay and that goes to the tech you know and and the quality of the work and so that's why we really train people to to do good work you know because that's your business like that you get repeat customers and then the tech gets nice tips how can i pay you what are the forms of payment that you accept so we do uh you know paypal or venmo uh cash is always great uh and so uh but we've we've been sticking a lot with the digital because right people are concerned about interactions you get the receipts the records yeah exactly make sense i love this question in terms of entrepreneur right what crucial skill absolutely skill that you think every entrepreneur needs to have any advice on that yeah you know you you have to you know it goes back to that passion thing if you if you're opening a pizza store like you got to be a pizza fanatic because if you're not if you know you're not fanatical about your you know almost ocd about you know some kind of passion about if you're not into your business then it becomes a job gotcha right so an entrepreneur entrepreneurs we can take jobs easily but we quit our jobs to do our passion interesting okay right some people just struggle to find what their passion is what would you say to them uh find what you love find what you love because in this country you can make money doing anything but but but choose something that because you get paid not only in money you get paid in love right for what you do that's why you're excited to get up in the morning [Music] sam let's talk about your process and any systems that you have in order to create a best customer experience for for your customers what can you share on that yeah probably the most important time thing is a time and that's that's scheduling right and so we we want to schedule a convenient time for the customer uh because people today are very busy so so um we have to be very cognizant of their time and how to manage our time to get the job done for them right so how are you doing are you using certain app systems or what's the tip or trick you can share with us yeah so uh abu and justin they have an online schedule that they use and and people call when the people call into the website we automatically go into that schedule and ask them uh well right now we're booked out a few weeks in advance so we tell them our next uh availability and will that work for them and then that's that's when we show up and get the job done [Music] you guys we mentioned a small little hack for you guys sam why don't you go ahead and share that with us please yeah take a before and after picture and send that to your customer and they will help you promote your business that's it that's it so some companies obviously don't do that yeah that's my guess yeah they don't and then because people like to brag about things that they enjoy that's what social media is okay and so you enable them with a before and after picture they can say hey check this out friends and family i just got this done and that automatically leads to a referral awesome so do the bna the before and after this has been a pleasure sam thank you so much thank you appreciate it well there you guys have it seattle mobile detailing i hope you enjoyed this really fun episode from 300 budget to more than 300 000 a year in revenue what an incredible story lots of dirty cars out there they all need to be cleaned i hope you guys took out a lot of lessons and learned something uh if you haven't already subscribe to the channel do so right now we appreciate you a lot like this video and check out all the other videos we've done for you as well thank you
2021-09-15 20:27
