From $500 to $30K/Month with a Mobile Car Detailing Business
if you're great with cleaning tools just love cleaning in general and you're very attentive to detail becoming a mobile detailer may be your ideal business today isaiah is sharing his advice with you on what you can do to start a successful mobile detailing business we're going to talk about things like the skills you need training experience the budget you need to get started also where do i find clients and what do you do to make sure they hire you anything over you know three grand 3 500 is a really good day three tools must-haves do you have that you could detail cars what would they be bar none that's definitely the biggest expense this is a little secret maybe let's highlight maybe two three different products that i think is important for our viewers to know this is the man who knows about all those products it makes the job way easier and it increases the quality of the work tremendously how do we stand out from other 10 vendors that are competing for your business and clientele i'm over in los angeles and the business is happening in seattle i wasn't joking when we're saying we're spending six or seven hours on each car wow so before we meet isaiah like this video subscribe to our channel hit that bell icon so that you don't miss any of our videos and let's go talk to the man of the day [Music] let's dive into it what does it take to start a mobile detailing business yeah you know what were your steps that you took to get going yeah and then start there yeah for sure i mean for any business it's gonna take number one thing was hard work uh for me the the first year that i started it it was 12-hour days uh you know i remember my diet my diet was mcdonald's i was on a shoestring budget and so i'd get three sausage mcmuffins in the morning and i'd make them last throughout the day and i'd get one of those big dollar coffees um so was it was definitely a little gritty it's a blue collar job at the end of the day so what were like the first steps to break it down for us maybe make it simple five six seven steps you took to get going and wash your first car for sure uh first thing was i had to learn how to do it so i worked at a shop before okay i worked at a big shop up in mukultil washington and that's where i learned i also grew up my dad was really into auto detailing so i knew kind of the ins and outs after that i needed to learn how to get the right equipment get all the right chemicals and just kind of get my process down but if i want to detail a car what does it look like from a to z um and figure out what that looks like in my head get practice get reps in and then from there of course you need customers so you have to stir up demand somehow okay so learning how to market you don't have to get some cars dirty yeah i'd go around and i'd find dirty cars and leave leave businesses no i'm joking i didn't do that but it was really gorilla marketing it was printing out flyers i learned how to build my own website uh you know i didn't program it myself but i used one of those i think i used wix at the start um then i moved over to godaddy so okay the skills the supplies figuring out what your package what your service is gonna look like right and uh stirring up demand getting getting customers [Music] somebody looking to start from scratch what would be their budget from you the expert yeah i mean 500 bucks enough to get go and a thousand what would the number be if i was to go back and look at it i'd like to start with a thousand okay if it's yeah yeah it's you could get it started with a thousand get the you know the shoestring equipment get a website up for 200 bucks on squarespace and you can what else you need you need your license so get your dor license your secretary of state license all that stuff you know that's really the bare bones once you start getting bigger you might want a crm software you know different stuff like that but really you just need your website okay print out some business cards and you're good to go good to go as far as actual tools yeah like if you were to say three tools must-haves do you have that you could detail cars what would they be yeah yeah three three three four four five yeah we gotta go uh so you know in all honesty you don't have to have a pressure washer okay you might think you do get away um when i very first started it was very very low budget i was a high school kid saved up 500 that's all i had so i did it with just uh one of those nozzles on the hose oh yeah okay it's called a water saver but it you can twist it and it pressurizes the water so get that so you have some type of pressure that's like what 15 bucks yeah yeah 15 20 bucks okay then you got your soap you got your uh you know your clay bar your wax um all your microfibers your pads your tire dressing your apc leather and plastic cleaner leather plastic conditioner so all the right chemicals okay when i started off i my first package was 35 bucks there you go and i started off just under cutting everything in the market and it wasn't it wasn't the fanciest stuff but it was it was insurance you know what yeah it was better than minimum wage at the time and so that was what i was doing that's great um straight out of high school straight out of high school yeah so if you want to start but if you have the money to start with better stuff to get back to your question about the key you know the key stuff a pressure washer yep it's very helpful an extractor very helpful steam cleaner very helpful i didn't have these things when i started it but now you know our guys we equip them with all that stuff because uh it makes the job way easier and it increases the quality of the work uh tremendously what's a good day bad day for you dollar wise i mean you're a year seven into this business yep yeah what does that look like i mean yeah celebrate kind of day or maybe we just covered our cost day yeah yeah i think anything over you know three grand 3 500 is a really good day okay i would say you know anything under a thousand bucks is not so great it's under 500 bucks it's like all right that was a sleeper day maybe no one was uh working that day because we try to be flexible with our employees schedules um so you know if everyone's taking a certain day off or maybe it's a holiday we're not going to really do much in revenue but you know i would say anything over that three thousand dollars is a really good day um and also weekends are likely going to be slower because not as many people want to work yeah so that's that's also something so weekdays you get all that squeezed in weekdays that's nice you got one job with three cars exactly i mean these are great these are great opportunities and it's it's great to have customers that you know have more cars like this and you can knock them all out it makes things more efficient cost wise and you can cut the customer a little deal as well nice [Music] year seven in your business what does it cost you to operate it today per month and what's the biggest expense for you yeah yeah so i'll start at the end of that the biggest expense labor bar none that's definitely the biggest expense okay we have a great team of managers at this point so you know when we started not a lot of overhead that was our whole business model very low overhead but now we're scaling up and we've got a good amount more management support software support things like that a lot higher quality equipment and so our overhead now is 20 30 grand a month in overhead okay um most of that being labor and we'll dive deeper deeper into how you're operating this business because you're doing this for more remote yeah right yeah okay exactly that's the interesting guy so stick around and watch how that operates and how that's possible for you to be where i'm over in los angeles and the business is happening this is in seattle so uh yeah across states and um and we've been you know i've been running it remotely for really six years except for year one but the other six years were all remote [Music] all right you guys we just came here to isaiah's business storage and uh we're gonna show you what he's got in there this is where it all goes down you don't need much of a storage space do you no so we're able to fit probably about up to 10 10 to 15 people in here that's what we're kind of mapping out at this point so what tools are working the best for you right now which social media platforms what other tools you you can share with us yeah that our viewers can implement today you know if they're if they've done the foot traffic the face-to-face now they're like okay what's next yep yep so i mean diving into really it's the it's the tech giants i hate to say it but the yelps the facebooks the google ads i would say yelp is our best right now okay um i think facebook and google ads are a little bit more flexible why is he doing better for you because i think the people that come to yelp it's it's a little bit more directed of a um it's a little bit more targeted of an audience yelp is a little bit you know just easier to to throw some money at it and it's going to convert some leads facebook and google you have to be a little bit more strategic and a little bit more technical okay to to really get the the same amount of leads and sales coming through there so it's something that we're working on i think in the long run we want to be more facebook and google but it takes a lot more management a lot more effort to make sure those are still converting whereas yelp you can just set a budget and let it go isaiah what service packages do you offer and what has the lowest and highest profit margin and why yeah yeah so the way we've structured things is really trying to make things simplified so that they can be you know standard qualities of service so we only have three packages that's it interior exterior the whole thing okay that's it and so you know when we do the whole vehicle that's going to have the highest profit margins what is that and so right now the way we have things set up we're pushing growth so we're reinvesting everything into more marketing more employees more you know more support better software better equipment so our profit margins are slim to none at the moment yeah um if we were to take a step back we're talking 20 to 30 percent profit margins on the bigger package yeah on those bigger packages okay and so but then on i would say our interior is probably our slimmest margins okay um and that's close to that 20 range and then when you do the whole car that's that's close to the 30 and that's talking you know labor taking out everything for all the equipment so you make the lease when you just wash the exterior and you're done i would say yeah yeah yeah just you know and that's why we charge you know honestly a decent amount because to just get our guys out here right it has to be worth it to to get our people to different locations we don't want to come out and and just do us something really small okay um that's it's pretty difficult for us to do that what's your revenue here to date at this point i know i forgot to ask that question but yeah just let's touch on it real quick um you know overhead was like 30 right to carry through year to date and this is going to be super ballpark that's okay i would have to guess um we're probably looking at 200-ish 200k um because what it's june right now so we're probably roughly around there okay middle of the middle of june going into july so nice we're probably around 200 um trying to push to you know be close to four or 500 um by the end of the year and then push into that 700 uh to to a million next year is our kind of our stretch mark so that's a good goal to go for yeah yeah that'll be that'll be what we're pushing for all right you guys we are driving around for you today showing you the full scoop of how a mobile detailing business works where it is suppliers are which is where we're at this is a local distribution center where isaiah has been buying from them i think six years now isaiah tell us where we're at alrighty yeah we are here at westmar products they are our local distributor for a lot of our auto detailing chemicals uh different types of brushes different types of tools that we use and so we've been going here for a while out there so we've been here they're our first supplier so since day one this is kind of what got us off the ground honestly so seven years now and um they're the first person people i talked to and without them there probably wouldn't be biggs mobile because i might have thrown in the towel but they they had everything here and they know about their products so as a young kid i was able to say here's what i want to do and they were personable enough to say let's walk you through what you need and get you set up [Music] let's talk about you know unsatisfied or maybe somewhat difficult clients who do everything you can they're still not happy did you have that experience if you can't share with us how did you handle the situation and give our audience a piece of advice how do we provide the best customer service that we can yeah yeah so we've never had an unhappy customer i'm joking i'm joking we've uh we've had thousands of customers and of course there's gonna be some that are upset uh they might have you know different expectations and and whatnot so uh our motto is just to do the right thing okay uh stealing that from spike lee and you know it's very spiky sorry spike but it uh it's really just kind of the way that we do things if the customer is not happy if we have a policy that we go back out and fix it okay or we give a very generous refund have you done that so you've taken the loss just to yeah just to oh yeah we've done that i mean that's doing the right thing i mean if they if they're paying good money for us and they're not happy with what the outcome was or a certain aspect of the service we'll say hey you know what we're going to get someone back out there to do it and and you know fix what you what the missed spot was or or whatever so that's really just how we go about it very cut and dry all right i say so if i'm getting into the business you know i find a local distributor just like you did you're standing right in front of this massive warehouse why don't you walk us in and maybe let's meet the sales manager maybe let's highlight maybe two three different products that i think is important for our viewers to know okay okay yeah for sure we'll follow you yeah no follow me in here um i would say you know some of the core ones you're going to want your soap you're going to want your wax you want your tire dressing so maybe we could talk about those this is the man who knows about all those products good this is steve um he's been helping me out for years great to see you um and he's you know he knows about everything so i'll kick it over to him yeah steve show us the three we'll just follow you got it all right so we are a the washington carb right distributor but we also have a sister company who manufactures chemicals um as well which is westboro product chemicals you know one of the products that isaiah was talking about was washing wax this stuff right here yeah so one of the things with washing wax is a really good soap that does this job cleaning but also leaves you know a wax behind that helps you have water beating and protect you from the elements of acid rain and fallout and things like that okay phenomenal product [Music] crosswise so we got three vehicles behind us that's one client curious what what's the cost of assuming i'm the client for example right all the cars vary or are they almost the same we've got the mercedes the range rover and then the porsche yeah so for these they're all going to be about the same okay um we've got a four door a two door so we priced them a little bit differently and then we got our suv so we price them a little differently based on size okay but um other than that since we have just those standard packages assuming they're each getting just that that standard package um they're all going to be that same baseline costs plus the vehicle size what's the baseline cost just so for these it would be 349 per car per car yeah and then you add on the size so for the coupe uh that'd be an extra 20 bucks for the sedan that's gonna be an extra 40 and then the suv's gonna be an extra 60. wow so we're looking at like pushing 400 bucks yeah you're doing a full detail obviously and that's the whole thing yeah um and you know we really i i wasn't joking when we're saying we're spending six or seven hours uh on each car right so it's it's a very i say that very depth in-depth service here um really spending the whole day on the car wow there's franchises for mobile cleaning right yeah and then you've created your own company yep why what's the advantage in your life and your world why did you pursue this versus just approaching some franchise and you know going with them because people are interested in that option as well that's a that's a great question the short answer is right when i started this i didn't even think about franchise but it's buying a franchise it was more like i had 500 bucks i was in high school i knew how to do it let me just buy the basics and start doing it if i was older if i had more money and maybe i didn't want to build everything myself maybe i wanted to just pick up a set of processes pick up a set of equipment and go franchises wouldn't be a bad option but if you're if you're shoestring and you need to save every dollar you can then you kind of have to start it on your own right you can't pay those you know 10 20 50 000 or whatever that might be as the franchise fee and pay five or ten percent of your revenue off to a franchisor that might not be feasible for you um to get started with depending on how you're so i think it just comes down to how you're starting okay um and what your goals are too well you guys check out our other franchising videos we've done a few we tell you how to join a franchise start a franchise so check that out it's right there as well and check out our blog upflip.com forward slash blog where you have in-depth information on how to start businesses grow them do check that out as well so and to piggyback on that i will say uh to the viewers out there look out for biggs mobile to be start starting to offer franchises in the future so that's your goal that is kind of what we structured our business around as far as standardizing all our processes keeping our services very simple and cookie cutter so that they can be duplicated across the different regions we'll be able to do it remotely exactly and that too so franchising opportunities will be coming in in the near future for biggs [Music] do you plan to expand into other services within the realm of uh mobile detailing yeah so yes no what do you think so i'll say no we are focused on doing what we do and doing it really well so going back to how we structured our packages and how we structured you know all these different processes and keeping things very standardized and streamlined we want to figure out the best way to do one thing which is mobile auto detailing and do that better than anyone else does and once we figure that out then it's step and repeat and i kind of got this uh i decided to hone in on this from a book called good to great james collins so if you guys are any up-and-coming business owners check out good to great it was a really good book for me it kind of breaks down they actually do a lot of research they have a whole research team that looks at companies that sustained really you know great growth whether it's in the stock market or just their company overall p l performance and whatnot okay versus companies that didn't or maybe companies that did good but not great over a long period of time and what's the difference between them two okay there's a lot of differences but one of them was they focused on doing what they do really well and imperfected that all right i say let's talk about like the one much needed skill that a mobile detailer could probably not live without so yeah that's the question and follow up what would you wish you'd know now seven years ago that would help you in terms of skills you know for sure for sure i mean this might this might sound cliche but attention to detail is huge detailing is detailing people are marginally better than others at it but it's really your attention to detail the lack of missed spots that's going to set you apart from other detailers so we're all using relatively similar chemicals relatively similar tools following similar processes but it's who does it better is what's going to set you apart so having that eye knowing how to move the seat forward to get that certain section under it and making sure you move it back to get that front section in front of it that's going to set you apart or making sure that you're not getting overspray on the windshield while you're doing the interior leather so that you don't have those streaks and those spots on the windshield right that's going to set you apart how do you learn that though or r d again or just comes with mentorship or just in a nutshell look at that when you're the when you're the owner of the business i think it's it's more intrinsic so it's your own company you you know your work is your work and it's however much time so i when i was out there i was spending seven hours on a car and i was diving into it and really spending a lot of time because that you know that's how you build your brand and your reputation as you scale that's where the difficulty comes in especially in a mobile setting where you don't have a manager that's overseeing every single car before it goes back to the customer right so you have to find how to motivate your employees and how to also have quality control so that they take the same care of it that you take and they have that same attention to detail that's really the biggest thing that i've learned over the years so tell us about the value of having a storage unit yeah you know what's in it what what people watching right now can take from you and say you know that's a good idea let me do this why yeah definitely so i would say one of the main things i mean besides the fact if you don't have a garage if you don't have a storage space to keep all your stuff um then you kind of have to get you have to put your stuff somewhere you're trying it's not big enough if your truck's not big enough when i first started my truck you know i could fit everything in there it was all good um but you know as you get bigger say you have a sedan or something and you can't do that you might want a small storage unit okay but you know it really becomes necessary so that's you know more of a optional becomes necessary when you have employees and you need multiple people to have multiple sets of equipment right you need them to have a central place where they can come back they can pick stuff up they can go to their next job and that sort of thing so that's why you know you really can't have that running out of your home garage if you got 10 15 20 people coming in on a regular basis that's that's not really feasible so you basically created a hub it's a hub where they need something this is where they show up they go to work and until we're big enough to get a full on warehouse where you know we've got our own facility uh this is a much more affordable way you know you're paying 100 we're paying 180 bucks for this space and it can probably get us to 15 or 20 people whereas uh you know a warehouse somewhere is gonna be thousands of dollars a month you gotta walk in a 12-month contract or two-year contract and that sort of thing so this is nice for that reason [Music] so i say what's interesting for us to find out is what's the most um uh difficult challenging part of being an owner of a mobile detailing business you know what's your favorite what's your least favorite okay what can you share with us about that yeah yeah i mean i would say i'll start with the challenging off the top of my head quality control for sure is the most challenging a traditional detail shop you have a general manager you might have another lead detailer that sees every car before it goes back to the customer we don't have that luxury since we're all spread out across the city and so that's one of the most challenging things for us but over the years we've developed different quality controls different you know responsibilities of our managers and ways of of mitigating um you know lapses in quality control and keeping that to a minimum things i enjoy i mean and this might be about any company but just the people i mean i love our team we always bring great people into the team and build a community type of feeling around us and so the people that we're working with and also our customers um we end up getting really great bonds with our customers i'll say when i was out there detailing they'd bring me out snacks bring me out water because we're there for like i said six hours seven hours and then yeah and they they see us working hard and a lot of them are really kind uh kind people that really care about other people so nice um that's one of my favorite parts is our team and our customers as far as experience skills i love the idea of detailing maybe i want to clean cars like we see behind us right where do i go to learn is there are there certifications do we sort of rip off and duplicate by working for someone else i mean that's okay in certain industries yeah tell us what you would do with what you know now to really learn your skills and understand the science behind cleaning cars for sure i mean if i didn't have a background in detailing uh i would go to youtube university that's exactly where i would go i would start watching videos you could look at the biggs mobile videos if you want and we got some videos on there check those to learn to learn how to do that but really youtube has so much information and detailing is is a very uh it's been around for a long time so people know how to until yeah and you can you know you can start with the basic stuff like we like we said earlier where you could just do the wash in the vacuum and do the basic things and then as you get more skills you can get into cutting the paint and you can get into buffing and clay barring and and stuff like that or you can look up all that stuff online practice on your car and and you're good to go nice okay what else helped contribute to your success yeah yeah i would say um yeah going back to some of those other answers as far as processes people technology but on top of that i think not trying to scale too quick so 2017 we actually really push scale um i well i still don't know what i'm doing as far as i'm not going to say i'm the best business owner in the world or anything obviously but um you know i knew a lot less back in the 2015 2016 2017 when i was you know 19 20 years old and we tried to scale too quick in 2017 and almost went bankrupt had less than a thousand dollars in the bank and you know almost had to shut things down we were fortunate enough i kind of just got out there and started pushing corporate accounts essentially just charging as little as we could to to get you know get the clients um and just you know whatever it took just to keep the lights on type of thing okay and we were able to turn the ship around but that was an example of scaling before we were ready and not having a plan as we scaled not having a schedule out okay we're going to get to this many employees we're going to aim for this much revenue by this date and we're going to reassess how things are working we are here going to do blitz 10 seconds 10 seconds ready for it what do you got do you have a life mantra what is it uh live mantra since sophomore year has been to establish the education reputation and capital to make large-scale change in low-income communities wow that's that's my go-to that's beautiful that's the best answer i've heard in blitz ever and that's a great one what is the one quality in a client that is an instant deal breaker for you micromanagement okay for sure yeah can't be over our shoulder the whole time while we're there for hours okay if you could sell your product service to one celebrity who would it be russell wilson because we've already done a lot of his team as far as his you know his his management team so russell if you hear this give us a call we're ready that's awesome if you could go back in time and tell your younger self don't do this what would it be i would say don't don't get too distracted by i started a bunch of other companies throughout college and i wish i would have focused on this one the whole time focused on one thing okay love it what is the one bygone fashion that you'd love to just bring back to today man see i'm not i'm not a big fashion person but these tight jeans gotta go so if we could go back to something a little looser you know i want to let it breathe a little bit this is too much it's too much there you have it [Music] as far as the dressing goes yeah what would be the other product you want to dressing is this is you know carbureted product this is probably our best selling dressing when you say dressing i think of salad dressing okay so this actually has the highest content of silicone of anything else on the market that's what makes it shine that's what makes it shine and that's what makes it last can you get this stuff like in walmart or small o'reilly stores you can okay so everything that we sell is professional level that's only sold through distributors on a wholesale level okay you'll hook us up yeah yeah yeah i'll see what i can do no but i will say these two products these are the ones i've i started with them and i never switched okay those are that's the best that's the best soap and proven that entire dressing i've tried other tire dressings but that thai dressing is is good it's real good probably our number one wax as far as a paste wax is easy off yellow it's a easy on easy off just like the label says literally spread it on let it haze wipe it off a lot of waxes are extremely difficult to get off the vehicle this is phenomenal and it's quick you see it interesting so it's uh how long would this last do you think so that would last i mean it depends on the detailer i would say some of the newer guys they might put on a little too much as you get more used to it you realize you don't need that much um so sometimes we'll get a little frustrated if it only lasts you know 30 cars or something like that but i think it should last 50 to 15 75 maybe 100 cars correct me if i'm wrong i mean 50 to 50 to 75 cars is probably real close yeah what would this retail yeah it is available exactly [Music] how do we stand out from other 10 vendors that are competing for your business and clientele yeah yeah uh you know i think it's hard to say on the customer service end i think you know we have multiple touch points for our customers okay um we like to just could really make sure that they're always you know staying in contact with us and that sort of thing we always try to get back to them if they're trying to get a request through whether through email phone social like yeah just have good communication with them um as far as the customer experience and if there has to be a reschedule you know let them know and and call them and explain and we're just very honest i like to tell our whole team we're just people you know where does people we don't have any patented technology we don't have any crazy software we're just people who do what we do and do it well and try to always do the right thing for the other people involved with us whether it's our suppliers customers other team members and so that's i guess that trickles into the customer experience it's a good way to do business [Music] now remember i told you earlier in the video that isaiah does something very special in terms of how he runs his business his business is in seattle you live in los angeles yep so tell us about how you structured to make the business work i grew up here i started in high school i went off to college over at university of washington go huskies go dogs but yeah i went down to uw and i had to learn how to study uh while also having this business run the biggest thing was going back to people having people that you trust in those managerial positions second biggest thing is the software having good software that people can communicate through whether it's you know something like slack where people can have their communications all in one place or a good crm software to manage your customer database and also your appointments and stuff like that the first six years of this company really up until this last year we have not focused on growth like i said i was working at other jobs i didn't have to worry about profit i was more focused on make sure the company is sustainable so i'm not losing money but focus on building the right processes that can sustain growth so that's you know documenting how do we hire how do we you know if we have how do we go from recruiting pipeline through interviewing through onboarding and hiring and training all the way through to off-boarding and you know letting people go what is that whole hr process look like what documents do we need have that all written out same with every aspect your marketing how do you bring customers through their pipeline how are you going you know from your suppliers how do we build this relationship well we have to track our inventory and have certain thresholds where we need to make reorders and this is how you do the reorders right this is who you email and how that structure should be you know all these different things you need to write out and test and tweak over the years so that as you get bigger it doesn't become you know completely jumbled up and people are confused and now you have 10 15 different employees but you don't have any processes for them to follow okay um that's been the biggest thing and if those are written out then you can be in la you can be in new york you can be wherever and those processes can be followed by people you trust and supported by software that's reliable isaiah this has been great that was the last question for you and to the audience and besides the book any other tips advice to those looking to get into mobile auto detailing businesses yeah what else can you say just just a couple words yeah uh you know to mobile auto detailing to any business i would say just be hungry be persistent don't give up when it's not profitable or don't give up when it's not easy because you know eventually if you know what you're doing and you keep working hard and you get the right people behind you um it'll click one day and things will start to take off awesome you guys can do it thank you for watching i say thank you for being with us thank you appreciate it well that's a wrap of big mobile detailing episode what an incredible fun story i hope you guys take all the business advice execute on it like subscribe and hit that bell button so that you don't miss any of our videos and make sure you go check out our other detailing videos as well thank you for watching
2021-07-01 18:12
