Starting a Mobile Car Detailing Business

[SC87Dominik]

It was after I received an email from a retailer, denying my part-time job application, when I felt the pressure rising. My micro-FTE. A few days earlier, I remember feeling a sense of relief when I got the interview, I was so convinced I’d be working again. I was supposed to go and apply to more retail jobs. I don’t know if it was social anxiety, or laziness, or my brain stopping me from wanting to work another job with a boss, but I couldn’t get myself to go and apply in person. Fast forward to job rejection day: the realization of what I needed to do hit me right after I opened the email with my rejection. I need to start working on a business, now.

I’ve edged in life before, and now it takes on a different format. In my (ex) strict aviation college program, I was placed on probation every other semester. At one point I was taking a probation exam. Had I scored 2% lower, I would have been booted out of the program. Due to authoritarianism, I had to leave my program and halt my pursuit of becoming a commercial pilot.

Now I am edging financially. Thankfully, I genuinely learned that money doesn’t buy happiness. Although it helps, your mind is the ultimate factor for being happy and fulfilled. Your self-consciousness of knowing that you are in a position of growth beats having a large bank balance. I am now $20k in debt, less than $200 in the bank, but I am reassured that this will probably be the last time in my life that I’m broke. Luckily, I am 21 and living with my parents. I am now uniquely positioned in my life to go from a slowlaner to a sidewalker to a fastlaner. Resilience is how I am going to go from working as a grocery delivery driver to reaching the beautiful process of the unscripted , fastlane dogma.

As MJ preaches, FTE’s have the capacity to propel your life into a ruthless pursuit of Fastlane entrepreneurship. I cannot attest to having a singular large FTE, and I believe this is what happens to people who were not contrarians to the mainstream world views before (most of the time). In my case, I’ve been trying to piece the puzzle together in the past few years, and finally decided that I just need to do… something. Anything. I’m tired of action faking, I’m tired of being picky, I’m tired of analysis paralysis, I’m tired of having an ego that “I can make a way better business than that” so I end up just circle jerking and doing nothing, I’m tired of looking to God to give me an idea that I could work with, I’m tired of dismissing everything, I’m tired of making excuses, I’m tired of wanting to avoid small problems. I just want to do something rather than nothing.


I’ve decided to go into mobile car detailing. Do I think this follows CENTS? Not necessarily. I just need to do something. My main issue right now is determining a value skew. Also, as a disclaimer, I have just started to look into this yesterday. I will look at local competition, research how to get the job done, and deal with the rest of my problems as I go.

So here’s what I’m going to do:

• I will continue to work as a grocery delivery driver. This will allow me to be flexible on time.
• I will invest that money into a few things:
  • A vacuum and a pressure washer
  • Cleaning/detailing products
  • A website (landing page)
  • Google ads
  • Facebook ads
• I will post on Kijiji (Canada’s craigslist) and facebook marketplace (I don’t have facebook so idk how this works)
• I will find a single person who would pay me to drive to their house and wash/detail their car.
• I will figure out how to do that by watching youtube videos and asking my friend who worked as a detailer.
• I will practice on my car.

I don’t care about anything after this point right now.

I’d also appreciate pointers on how to validate the business given the relatively low barrier of entry. Like I mentioned earlier, I would encourage to give me different ways to think about value skew. Please let me know if there are any fundamental mind blocks/ points of inexperience/ obvious setbacks/ wrong mindsets I have.

This is my “first business”. I will make mistakes along the way. But I’m damn happy that I even wrote this piece today (which is a part of execution). I’m happy to finally get started with something even though I don’t really “like” cars or detailing or cleaning.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Johnny boy]

Get some customers, make some money, try different things

and then ask.... "How do I pay an employee $15 an hour and get him to do $100 an hour worth of work?"

That's the million dollar question. If you can find a system that gets $15 an hour workers to do $100 an hour worth of work consistently, you'll have something great on your hands.

Do the numbers. $100 an hour = $800 a day. How can you get $800 a day worth of work for 1 guy? Would you do 16 cars for $50? 10 for $80? 5 for $160? 2 for $400?

Is there a model that people can subscribe to? Is there a common problem that all of your leads tell you? Listen and keep your ears open so you can learn what people actually want and you'll be able to spot opportunities. What would be incredibly valuable in the auto-detailing industry? Is it hard to find a mobile detailer? Is it hard to find a detailer in general? Is it hard to find a high end paint correction expert?

 

[heavy_industry]

Do I think this follows CENTS? Not necessarily.

When it first starts out it won't be Time and Scale compliant, but you can fix that later by hiring people.

Sounds like a great idea.
Do it and see what happens. I'm sure you will learn a lot form this experience.

 

[JamesAce]

This is actually motivational for me since I’ve just recently gone through my own FTE. I’m rooting for you in you journey to the fastlane.

You could market yourself as a luxury mobile detailer. I’ve seen YouTubers who detail cars make their own chemical solutions that rival commercial brands. You could offer engine cleaning services which isn’t that difficult but the result is mind blowing. With services you can get creative and offer something unique with what you have and can afford. Consider the kind of neighborhoods you market yourself. Could make the difference between hagglers and those who know your worth.

Just my two cents

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Move the chains]

Ih

It was after I received an email from a retailer, denying my part-time job application, when I felt the pressure rising. My micro-FTE. A few days earlier, I remember feeling a sense of relief when I got the interview, I was so convinced I’d be working again. I was supposed to go and apply to more retail jobs. I don’t know if it was social anxiety, or laziness, or my brain stopping me from wanting to work another job with a boss, but I couldn’t get myself to go and apply in person. Fast forward to job rejection day: the realization of what I needed to do hit me right after I opened the email with my rejection. I need to start working on a business, now.

I’ve edged in life before, and now it takes on a different format. In my (ex) strict aviation college program, I was placed on probation every other semester. At one point I was taking a probation exam. Had I scored 2% lower, I would have been booted out of the program. Due to authoritarianism, I had to leave my program and halt my pursuit of becoming a commercial pilot.

Now I am edging financially. Thankfully, I genuinely learned that money doesn’t buy happiness. Although it helps, your mind is the ultimate factor for being happy and fulfilled. Your self-consciousness of knowing that you are in a position of growth beats having a large bank balance. I am now $20k in debt, less than $200 in the bank, but I am reassured that this will probably be the last time in my life that I’m broke. Luckily, I am 21 and living with my parents. I am now uniquely positioned in my life to go from a slowlaner to a sidewalker to a fastlaner. Resilience is how I am going to go from working as a grocery delivery driver to reaching the beautiful process of the unscripted , fastlane dogma.

As MJ preaches, FTE’s have the capacity to propel your life into a ruthless pursuit of Fastlane entrepreneurship. I cannot attest to having a singular large FTE, and I believe this is what happens to people who were not contrarians to the mainstream world views before (most of the time). In my case, I’ve been trying to piece the puzzle together in the past few years, and finally decided that I just need to do… something. Anything. I’m tired of action faking, I’m tired of being picky, I’m tired of analysis paralysis, I’m tired of having an ego that “I can make a way better business than that” so I end up just circle jerking and doing nothing, I’m tired of looking to God to give me an idea that I could work with, I’m tired of dismissing everything, I’m tired of making excuses, I’m tired of wanting to avoid small problems. I just want to do something rather than nothing.


I’ve decided to go into mobile car detailing. Do I think this follows CENTS? Not necessarily. I just need to do something. My main issue right now is determining a value skew. Also, as a disclaimer, I have just started to look into this yesterday. I will look at local competition, research how to get the job done, and deal with the rest of my problems as I go.

So here’s what I’m going to do:

• I will continue to work as a grocery delivery driver. This will allow me to be flexible on time.
• I will invest that money into a few things:
  • A vacuum and a pressure washer
  • Cleaning/detailing products
  • A website (landing page)
  • Google ads
  • Facebook ads
• I will post on Kijiji (Canada’s craigslist) and facebook marketplace (I don’t have facebook so idk how this works)
• I will find a single person who would pay me to drive to their house and wash/detail their car.
• I will figure out how to do that by watching youtube videos and asking my friend who worked as a detailer.
• I will practice on my car.

I don’t care about anything after this point right now.

I’d also appreciate pointers on how to validate the business given the relatively low barrier of entry. Like I mentioned earlier, I would encourage to give me different ways to think about value skew. Please let me know if there are any fundamental mind blocks/ points of inexperience/ obvious setbacks/ wrong mindsets I have.

This is my “first business”. I will make mistakes along the way. But I’m damn happy that I even wrote this piece today (which is a part of execution). I’m happy to finally get started with something even though I don’t really “like” cars or detailing or cleaning.

I have some mobile detailing lead gens.

There's a quiet time of year (namely, colder weather) and there's only so many jobs that can be done in a day.

As mentioned here already in the thread, start where you are and when you have the customer base, add an employee or two for scaling purposes.

If you're in Canada, what's the reason that people need to detail their car? From living in snowy climates, I'm guessing it's the toll paintwork?

Can you drill down on why people need to invest in a detailer? What are the benefits to the owner of the vehicle.

Another route is to reach out to dealerships or companies who have fleets of vehicles that need washing. Bus charter companies are also in need of help if they outsource. If you can land these kind of contracts, it's easier to scale quicker.

 

[SSTrey]

It was after I received an email from a retailer, denying my part-time job application, when I felt the pressure rising. My micro-FTE. A few days earlier, I remember feeling a sense of relief when I got the interview, I was so convinced I’d be working again. I was supposed to go and apply to more retail jobs. I don’t know if it was social anxiety, or laziness, or my brain stopping me from wanting to work another job with a boss, but I couldn’t get myself to go and apply in person. Fast forward to job rejection day: the realization of what I needed to do hit me right after I opened the email with my rejection. I need to start working on a business, now.

I’ve edged in life before, and now it takes on a different format. In my (ex) strict aviation college program, I was placed on probation every other semester. At one point I was taking a probation exam. Had I scored 2% lower, I would have been booted out of the program. Due to authoritarianism, I had to leave my program and halt my pursuit of becoming a commercial pilot.

Now I am edging financially. Thankfully, I genuinely learned that money doesn’t buy happiness. Although it helps, your mind is the ultimate factor for being happy and fulfilled. Your self-consciousness of knowing that you are in a position of growth beats having a large bank balance. I am now $20k in debt, less than $200 in the bank, but I am reassured that this will probably be the last time in my life that I’m broke. Luckily, I am 21 and living with my parents. I am now uniquely positioned in my life to go from a slowlaner to a sidewalker to a fastlaner. Resilience is how I am going to go from working as a grocery delivery driver to reaching the beautiful process of the unscripted , fastlane dogma.

As MJ preaches, FTE’s have the capacity to propel your life into a ruthless pursuit of Fastlane entrepreneurship. I cannot attest to having a singular large FTE, and I believe this is what happens to people who were not contrarians to the mainstream world views before (most of the time). In my case, I’ve been trying to piece the puzzle together in the past few years, and finally decided that I just need to do… something. Anything. I’m tired of action faking, I’m tired of being picky, I’m tired of analysis paralysis, I’m tired of having an ego that “I can make a way better business than that” so I end up just circle jerking and doing nothing, I’m tired of looking to God to give me an idea that I could work with, I’m tired of dismissing everything, I’m tired of making excuses, I’m tired of wanting to avoid small problems. I just want to do something rather than nothing.


I’ve decided to go into mobile car detailing. Do I think this follows CENTS? Not necessarily. I just need to do something. My main issue right now is determining a value skew. Also, as a disclaimer, I have just started to look into this yesterday. I will look at local competition, research how to get the job done, and deal with the rest of my problems as I go.

So here’s what I’m going to do:

• I will continue to work as a grocery delivery driver. This will allow me to be flexible on time.
• I will invest that money into a few things:
  • A vacuum and a pressure washer
  • Cleaning/detailing products
  • A website (landing page)
  • Google ads
  • Facebook ads
• I will post on Kijiji (Canada’s craigslist) and facebook marketplace (I don’t have facebook so idk how this works)
• I will find a single person who would pay me to drive to their house and wash/detail their car.
• I will figure out how to do that by watching youtube videos and asking my friend who worked as a detailer.
• I will practice on my car.

I don’t care about anything after this point right now.

I’d also appreciate pointers on how to validate the business given the relatively low barrier of entry. Like I mentioned earlier, I would encourage to give me different ways to think about value skew. Please let me know if there are any fundamental mind blocks/ points of inexperience/ obvious setbacks/ wrong mindsets I have.

This is my “first business”. I will make mistakes along the way. But I’m damn happy that I even wrote this piece today (which is a part of execution). I’m happy to finally get started with something even though I don’t really “like” cars or detailing or cleaning.

I think everyone's FTE moment is the seed driver to continuous pivotal growth. My attitude toward freedom comes from a point of EXECUTION. It matters less what you do, and more about just doing it.

I own a SAAS mobile platform/marketplace operating in South Africa & Mauritius currently, we are expanding into various African countries right now.
Feedback from my onboarded mobile auto service providers is always 2 things:
1. Scale --> They battle with reaching enough users. There definitely is business available city wide but they can't service far enough customers due to price and operational limitations. (To travel further means more expenses which means higher price points - margin is affected).
2. Cost/Price --> Customers have an average range price they willing to pay for a service. Above which they won't be interested and will just drive nearby to a brick and mortar business instead - this destroys your value skew.

You need to find a way to achieve more scale with lower expenses so you can keep reasonable price points with enough margins to be profitable and to grow more.

I hope this helps. Feel free to message me for help or a chat.

 

[SC87Dominik]

Currently under $30 in my bank account. Just got a part time detailing job at enterprise. This way I can learn the basics, have a lot of free time, and most importantly acquire potential leads. Talked to the dude working there and he said people ask him if he's got his own gig going on so I see opportunity. Watched a few vids here and there to get more accustomed to the work. I will continue updating as I see fit.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[SC87Dominik]

Update:

Discovered the absolute beauty known as Alex Hormozi who is now in my hall of fame next to MJ. Listened to his book $100M Offers and now about to read the physical copy.

I'm currently working as a detailer at enterprise ~40 hrs/week. Still have a bit of a financial hurdle to overcome as I've been living paycheck to paycheck since I subconsciously felt secure with the job. I have to exercise more discipline in this regard. Even though it pays shit, I feel very humbled and achieved at the idea of physical labor. I've lost a good amount of weight, wake up refreshed in the mornings, and don't get sweaty/tired easily at work. Many areas besides money are improving in my life due to the combination of determination, dopamine 'detox', delayed gratification, and a sense of purpose.

The detailing itself is nothing more than vacuuming, wiping, soaping, and spraying cars. aka cleaning cars. I definitely think I've got the hang of the basic cleaning of cars and how to deal with certain situations with different cleaning supplies. With this said I've developed a new plan.

The Revised Plan:

1. Save a few thousand dollars,
2. jointly purchase a cargo van & supplies with my coworker,
3. go into business.

Now I know people on this forum would like to see the order 3, 1, 2, but I have decided this is best for my current personalized situation given income runway and seasonality timing (spring 2023) + a little more time to think about the details. I'm open to discussion about this.

It is my intention to offer clients a subscription detailing service and target higher end luxury customers.

This will essentially be a productized service model with inspiration from this thread

NOTABLE! - The Definite Guide to Productized Services

In the spirit of @LightHouse 's challenge during the summit to reach NOTABLE or GOLD on at least one thread this year (2018), I want to introduce this thread. Also, special thanks to @Andy Black for posting so much about Productized Services and exposing me to the concept in general. A bit of...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

We'd initially offer three packages (interior, exterior, both)

One problem of mine is figuring out what to do in the winter (Canada). I'm also thinking about the funnel and ways to add additional value along the process. Still thinking of ways to be better than other mobile detailers and ways to objectively make promises to prospects. I guess a huge one is actually having a subscription available, reminding the customers to make appointments, etc. (marketing, retention value skew)

The scaling process would be getting the next van and experimenting 2man:1van vs 1:1 and the second van means opportunity to hire 2-3 employees. First employee can even be during first van. The idea of % commission to workers is appealing to me since that would motivate work getting done and to standard. My partner and I would have a max service limit of x clients/cars per month and workers can be independent contractor type that chooses when they want to work but idk yet.

Also something I just remembered is the idea that there's no big brands/ franchises in this industry (I'm pretty sure)-- that people think of instantly. The power of branding is lacking in this industry and I will tackle that. I want people to look at their vehicle, see a spec of dust and instantly think of our brand. I want this brand to be the obvious choice for people.

As always this is just conjecture until I take real action but I feel like I'm taking action more than ever before. Ideas are always popping in my head now that I've narrowed "being an enterpreneur" -> "starting a business" -> "starting a specific business" and being a man of my word.

I'm happy to hear more suggestions and considerations.

 

[Kak]

I had this very business at 16-18. Worked well for me! Still a bit of a hobby. I own half of the Griots and Chemical Guys catalogs.

I didn’t have to have a cargo van, nor did I start with thousands of dollars, or even a partner. Maybe $150 of supplies made my first few clients possible. Then I bought a polisher (that I still actually have and use) and better vacuum that made life easier. I worked out of the trunk of my 1992 Mercury Grand Marquis.

Never used a pressure washer for the business, but I have a nice Honda one now and it is excellent with a foam cannon. You’ll have that to look forward to when you earn it.

I wish you success with your new venture. I believe you can start now.

I liked what @Johnny boy had to say about getting a $15 an hour employee to do work worth $100 plus to the company. How many times can you do that before you run out of resources? Infinite. You never do.

 

[Kak]

If I had a young person in the area that I trusted with this, I’d totally buy everything to start this business and give 50% profit share and sale share (essentially phantom stock) to someone who would run it. The assets would still be mine, but the benefits created by the business would be a 50/50 partnership.

The difference is I would trust them more if they voiced interest before I asked them if they were interested.

The future of my investing plans has a lot of this type of local investment when I can put it together.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.