Spicymemer45's Adventures in Capitalism (For life)

[Spicymemer45]

 

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[mike24601]

Another day of progress, I like the VLOG idea. That was worth a good laugh. I wanted to share with you the story of how I became infatuated with the carpet cleaning business. A few years ago I was a broke sailor living in Hawaii and trying to find a place to live. I got this apartment and it was definitely in a bad place but all I could afford. When I walked in with the realtor, the first thing that popped into view was this enormous stain on the carpet, proportional to a human body. It was probably nothing, but the manager said they would send a guy over to take care of it. The day arrives and Mr Carpet shows up, and we strike up a chat. It turns out he had spent the past 30 years island hopping in the Pacific and cleaning carpets for the government and stuff. He'd been on islands you never knew existed, Pahnapei, Kwajalein, Bikini. Places we used to test nukes at. We talked about aliens and three eyed
nuclear fish and existentialism, and I watched his machine spin away at the fibers of my carpet. An hour and some gentle raking later, and the carpet looked like a million bucks and Mr. Carpet was $200 richer. I was just in awe. Later in practice I learned that you earn every penny in sweat, but in this service you have great potential to dazzle your customer with instant, right before your eyes value. Do a side by side comparison of clean vs dirty when you get your first customer, and I guarantee you will begin setting in motion some serious PULL that will sustain your business regardless of advertising.

 

[Spicymemer45]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXgGScTttbU&feature=youtu.be


Goals:

Local Carpet Cleaning Services.
Landscaping (Maybe Temp)

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Today's Execution:​

Good evening you entrepreneurial night owls, today it rained hard as shit and I got the mulching done and a few yards, "hired" on a high school kid to cut for 8.50 an hour. He does good work and he's excited as shit and today was as smooth as could be. Rest of the info is on the blog!

Have a lovely day Fastlaners.

Cheers!

(Shoutout to the lads following this thread, always appreciated!)​

 

[becks22]

Been reading your thread since you started. Glad to see your execution is working out. Good news on the trucks..
Anyway, about the website you mentioned. When you create it and/or social media, you could create time lapse videos of the work you do and post those to give potential clients an idea of your skills and abilities. Just a thought. Kudos to you so far kid

 

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[BrooklynHustle]

Google Rohan Gilkes. His claim to fame was building a maid service biz and documenting it on Reddit. He also got into yard work and carpet cleaning (if I recall correctly). You should be able to find good info to start you off by looking up his stuff.

That guy is a boss. Some epic Reddit threads documenting his processes. New business is very cool as well

 

[BrooklynHustle]

It doesn't seem like it in the moment, but girls, like money, are abundant.

(Money doesn't seem abundant when you're broke, and girls don't seem abundant when you're lonely...)

But, always more girls on the girl tree...ya know?

Keep going!!!!

That's a fact

 

[BrooklynHustle]

Goals:

Local Carpet Cleaning Services.
Landscaping (Maybe Temp)

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Today's Execution:

Top of the morning lads and ladies! I've landed two more yards on a weekly recurrence (I live on the Eastern Seaboard, plenty of rain, sun and fun) and I'm outta food lion now and making a nice 20 an hour working a third shift in a manufacturing plant. I'm really embracing the chaos and this is without a doubt the most fun I've ever had and heart breaking and painful (worth it)

It's a F*cking rush.

I'm watching the power of word of mouth and it's quite the thing, people have been relatively friendly so far.

Got a really hilarious story to post later tonight.

Have a lovely day Fastlaners.

Cheers!

(Shoutout to the lads following this thread, always appreciated!)​

Way to work!

 

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[mike24601]

There's a lot of ways you can get a decent website up and running quickly. I took a basic web design class in college which covered HTML and CSS coding, and like a lot of things in life, it is tedious and confusing at times. Getting something to move where you want it, making sure you didn't leave any errors in your code, dealing with deprecated (old) code that doesn't groove anymore. I am currently running a niche info website which I built partly to learn web design, SEO, paid advertising strategies etc. So far it has been a huge learning experience. I am trying to drive as much traffic as I can so that I can monetize the page and bring in some money--anything--even if it's just beer money, it will be a success. I bought a domain for $10 and paid for a year of hosting, then built my page with the Wix platform.

Now, when you go with a template system, all of the underlying code is already there, you're just dragging the pieces around. But you can sort of mess with the HTML a little if you want to. I know enough about coding to alter things a bit to get what I want. With Wix, Weebly, etc you will see that most of the templates are super flashy, image dominant themes. I don't think that's very good. My theory is that people will not be bothered by a simplistic design, as long as they can get to the information quickly. In my class we conducted numerous usability tests, and found that many websites are laid out to look pretty, but the information is buried. Most people tend to muddle through sites instead of reading directions, so if your target doesn't find what he/she is looking for in the first few seconds they will leave. That's called a "bounce."

You could do this website in 4 pages or less: A simple, to the point landing page WITH your services and pricing listed there, right off the bat - an About page (take lots of before and after pictures, maybe put some testimonials there) - and a Contact page. Regardless of the contact page, you also need to plaster your phone number all over that bitch, on the top and bottom of every page so that nobody has to look more than a few seconds to find it. There's a lot more to this than I can spell out in one post, but there are lots of great books out there to help guide you the rest of the way. Just keep executing and teach yourself little by little. Cheers!

 

[Spicymemer45]

Goals:

Local Carpet Cleaning Services.
Landscaping (Maybe Temp)

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Today's Execution:​

7,000 dollars feels real F*cking good, that is all for today.

Have a lovely day Fastlaners.

Cheers!

(Shoutout to the lads following this thread, always appreciated!)​

 

[Spicymemer45]

Goals:

Local Carpet Cleaning Services.
Landscaping (Maybe Temp)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------​

Today's Execution:​

Been driving from Virginia, today I'm moving furniture into a long term shelter for a homeless man, afterwards it's a coin toss because it looks like hella rain is coming. Website is being worked on atm, looking into Vistaprint for some spicy business cards. Slow day!

Have a lovely day Fastlaners.

Cheers!

(Shoutout to the lads following this thread, always appreciated!)​

 

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[ColbyG]

Love your work mate. Keep hustling.

 

[Spicymemer45]

Goals:

Local Carpet Cleaning Services.
Landscaping (Maybe Temp)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today's Execution:

Sorry about the delay in posting for the past few days, the death of a good family friend who got me through some tough years when I started highschool has been impacting me for the last few days, alongside traveling to see family members.

But, I'm here, I'm ready to get back in it. Let's F*cking go!

Have a lovely day Fastlaners.

Cheers!

P.S: A special thank you to the users that have monitored my journey since the beginning of my Fastlane experience. @MidwestLandlord @SinisterLex @ZF Lee @Walter Hay @AgainstAllOdds

I hope one day to meet you all.

(Shoutout to the lads following this thread, always appreciated!)​

 

[The-J]

Your hustle is impeccable. Let's see that hustle grow.

A large part of what I do is help businesses like yours. (@Andy Black) I want to give you advice that most people have to pay me for.

For every client you service, you absolutely need to tell them + give them benefits for referring you to someone else. This has become my main source of new clients, and for businesses like yours it's the lifeblood of success. Not advertising, not cold calling, but good ol' word of mouth. Why?

Because it actually works for you. It's as Fastlane as marketing can get. Your service should speak for itself, but an extra word will give clients the push they need to say 'Hmm, my cousin out in Oxford has been needing to get this done but he's been putting it off forever, let me give you his number, I'll tell him you're the real deal'. If possible, get them to write a review for you.

In order to do that, you need to be getting more clients. With your hustle, this won't be a problem... however you're going to want to have a steady stream of clients that ring your phone. I'm sure you've looked into Adwords, but I think you should get into it ASAP. Jump in head first and get data.

How wide is your geographical range? How far are you willing to travel to clean carpets, mow lawns, or do some landscaping? This will determine how big your campaigns can get. If you get 5 clients a month from Adwords, that opens the door to 5, 10, 20 clients in the next 3 months from word of mouth alone.

Read Andy Black's Adwords posts and set the campaigns up yourself. Maybe buy his course.

In addition to this, you need to get out there and make yourself known in the community. Get out to your chamber of commerce and hit up those meetings. They've having a BBQ on the 20th (yea I Googled your town lol) and these people love it when young bloods come out.

---

More specific advice with the web stuff:

So, with web + advertising on the web, all you really need is a simple, clean-looking website that (1) shows off what you do, (2) gives them a way to contact you, and (3) tells them what to do when they do. It's also gotta convince people that spicymemer is the real deal, even if he and his company are young. Make it EASY for people to contact you: a big fat phone number + a big fat easy quote form that will give you their email and phone number for you to contact them.

It needs to load FAST. I'm talking less than a second on both desktop and mobile. Use small, low-res images + a link to a higher res image on the low res one.

They need to see what you can do + how they can get you to do it. They need to know if you can solve their problem, whether it's a tree that needs to be removed or some shrubs that need trimming. Show past clients + testimonials.

That's all your website is. You can build it yourself, or you can hire it out.

With Adwords, it'll be easy to find you. Set up your Google business pages + put images of your work there.

Other routes of advertising include the free stuff (Craigslist/Kijiji), directories (Yellow Pages, BBB; mainly use these so people know you're legit), and Facebook. Facebook is an interesting beast and for you, should be one of the last things you look into. But man can it grow a business.

---

I'm excited to see where this goes. Rep+++

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

7,000 dollars feels real F*cking good

Nice!

 

[jpanarra]

Hey man, Loving the Hustle... PM me if you want a site.. I can build a good one for ya.

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

Amazing thread so far.

Check out Website Templates & Themes from ThemeForest for templates you can use to build your site.

Keep hustling. You're on the right path.

Also, as far as direct mail goes: You can probably pay your high school employee a little bonus and have him go door to door delivering advertising material. That will let you reach a lot of houses at a tiny cost.

Here's a direct mail copywriting article that's in a similar niche to what you're doing: https://kopywritingkourse.com/powerwashing-flyers-copywriting-case-study/. Worth the read and potentially a good starting point.

Keep up the great work!

 

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[Spicymemer45]

Goals:

Local Carpet Cleaning Services.
Landscaping (Maybe Temp)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today's Execution:

Last night's shift wiped my a$$ out, went out and did some yards before the rains hit (And it hit hard)
So the highschool lads I take out to jobs wanted to earn some more money. I decided to give a bonus of 20 Dollars for every new yard they acquire for the company on a recurring basis. Getting the website going right after I finish this post.

By the way, I've never hydroplaned before until today, I was driving with a female "friend"
the front wheels spun and when we got the grip back and she thanked me for not letting her die.
(Shoutout to @MidwestLandlord , indeed the women are abundant)

Have a lovely day Fastlaners.

Cheers!

(Shoutout to the lads following this thread, always appreciated!)​

 

[Tim Allen Jr.]

Love your posts man and the hustle.

Ditto on the site (i coulnd't find where you said you wanted/needed one), If ya need help, just let me know.

Easy to get something up. I use instapage for a bunch of testing, super simple, drag and drop, templates yadda yadda. Just don't fall into the rabbit hole of 'making it perfect', i've spent countless hours 'perfecting' a site that didn't need to be perfect.

 

[Dunkafelics]

Hey man, found out about you through that other forum post of the 19 year old who seems to be making waves for all the wrong reasons.

Dude, well done. Glad to see your dedication and motivation to your craft and how you are moving forward.

How are you handling the night shifts and then going to cut lawns the next day? I don't say this from a negative mindset, but I also work night shifts as well and want to make sure you are taking care of yourself bud.

You have my interest and I will be checking back here for sure.

 

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[Spicymemer45]

Goals:

Local Carpet Cleaning Services.
Landscaping (Maybe Temp)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today's Execution:

Had to get my trucks insured today, that was a pain in the a$$. I also wanted to ask some open ended questions on a philosophical/physiological scale. I've noticed the mass majority of people accept one truth (moral truth, financial truth, any truth really) as a divine fact, I feel like society is really denying people of their nature, as Nietzsche calls it "The will to power" (To expand, express and grow yourself as a living being) and it encourages conformity, weakness and fear. I also believe in this forum because it promotes taking yourself and elevating oneself to financial power/freedom via the aid and assisting in the lives of others.

Any thoughts, I know it's all over the place, thanks for keeping up!

Have a lovely day Fastlaners.

Cheers!

(Shoutout to the lads following this thread, always appreciated!)​

 

[Spicymemer45]

To expand on that last point because my writing is all over the F*cking wall.

1. I believe expressing ones emotions (in any manner, not necessarily openness) allows us to be like children, we feel, then we move on with whatever our drive is.
2. There is nothing wrong with you being number one in your life.
3. Right and wrong is subjective to each individual.

(Thoughts?)​

 

[Spicymemer45]

Goals:

Local Carpet Cleaning Services.
Landscaping (Maybe Temp)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today's Execution:

Everyday I get more and more fed up with being an employee. What I need right now is a site, I need a better way to reach people, I need to make it easier for them. Sorry for the lack of posts, I'm just busy and pissed (In a fiery drive way)

Any thoughts, I know it's all over the place, thanks for keeping up!

Have a lovely day Fastlaners.

Cheers!

(Shoutout to the lads following this thread, always appreciated!)​

 

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[Waspy]

You should be able to get a really simple (but effective) website up in less than a weekend using WordPress. It doesn't need to be too fancy, just real functional.

Then hit up @Andy Black. Getting clients for businesses like your is his jam. Check out all his stuff if you haven't already (Adwords)

 

[ZCP]

Wix.com

 

[EarlOfChina]

Wix.com

This is a great suggestion. For someone non-technical who needs a great website quickly, Wix is brilliant.

They have great templates, you'll be setup in no time!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

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[greyman]

Great thread. I've been trying to help a friend out in scaling his landscaping business so I'm interested in seeing your progress on that front.

Keep up the hustle!

 

[mike24601]

Moar updates! Everything still going good?

 

[DanInSyd]

Hey, Nice Thread!

I do love seeing the hustle in progress.

Have you thought about putting a few of your goals in to the SMART format? (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time Bound). I found this great for my own plans. not sure if you have done it before, but it helps to have a second think over things, get some sort of priority, work at it, and reap the results. Its worth looking in to for an up and coming business, keeps me focused!

I normally link it to a now, next and later type schedule of immediate priorities, things i need to do after that, and things coming up on the horizon. For example, you could have a few hard days of work, (which is now), then the website needs setting up over the weekend, (which is next), and buying the carpet cleaning gear is later. You just need to make sure you regularly update!

Anyway, keep it up!

Dan

 

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[Spicymemer45]

Goals:

Local Carpet Cleaning Services.
Landscaping (Maybe Temp)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today's Execution:

Quit my job today. There's other ways to make money that don't require me to dedicate so much energy. It's sink or swim now, @jpanarra is assisting me in getting a website up. Mindset has shifted so much, F*ck all this sitting around. I'm getting a direct mail ad going.

Business is good, need more. I'm learning some carpentry skills from a family friend. I sound like I'm becoming a contractor lol.

But let's keep the course.

CURRENT REVENUE

• Yards: 300$ Weekly​
• Mulching 450$ (Varies)​
• Misc: 100$ (Varies)​
• Employees: 1​

​

Have a lovely day Fastlaners.​

Cheers!

(Shoutout to the lads following this thread, always appreciated!)​

 

[G-Man]

Goals:

Local Carpet Cleaning Services.
Landscaping (Maybe Temp)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today's Execution:

Quit my job today. There's other ways to make money that don't require me to dedicate so much energy. It's sink or swim now, @jpanarra is assisting me in getting a website up. Mindset has shifted so much, F*ck all this sitting around. I'm getting a direct mail ad going.

Business is good, need more. I'm learning some carpentry skills from a family friend. I sound like I'm becoming a contractor lol.

But let's keep the course.

CURRENT REVENUE​

• Yards: 300$ Weekly​
• Mulching 450$ (Varies)​
• Misc: 100$ (Varies)​
• Employees: 1​

​

Have a lovely day Fastlaners.

Cheers!

(Shoutout to the lads following this thread, always appreciated!)​

I've only caught about half of this thread, so this might have already been mentioned, but have you thought about doing this as a pseudo franchise operation? Here's what I'm thinking if I can articulate:

• There will always be grass to be mowed
• There will always be a fresh crop of 19 yr olds that need extra money
• You don't want to be mowing grass every summer from here to eternity.

Therefore:

Create site and brand built on the good reputation you clearly have with your customers. Focus on customer acquisition, later add scheduling tool to website. Find and train young guys to mow as subcontractors and pay them by the lawn.

Other ways to monetize in the future will be renting & storing equipment for your subs.

EDIT: As always, good to see the incredible hustle.