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White collar pressure washing

Anything considered a "hustle" and not necessarily a CENTS-based Fastlane

mikesmith

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I am an entrepreneur and want to add to my income. All of my current income only requires me to have a computer and internet connect some of the things I do include options trading. Amazon FBA, affiliate marketing etc. . I want to expand and stat a service based business. After some research I found that pressure washing would be a good business. however all tutorials I have found about starting a pressure wahsing business involve that the founder is actually physically doing the job himself and that is not for me. I only wanna focus on white collar work not blue collar but I cant find any helpful sources for this. As this would be my first service based business I don't know where to start, any advice for starting a pressure washing business if I only want to do white collar work?
 
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fridge

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So I'll try and make this rather quick. I own a property maintenance/general landscaping business and have been experimenting with several different services in my area to see what works best, so far it looks like Johnny Boys model for lawn mowing is the best for building a legit business where you're hands off the technician side of things.

I think you're on the right track in terms of going for a service business (I'm experimenting with e-commerce as well) - but there's a few things you need to be aware of. In terms of scalability, I personally don't believe pressure washing is the route to go for. Jobs are one-off, and depending on what area you're in, it could be years before a client comes back. If you're somewhere in Florida, maybe it'll work since there's high mold/algae growth, but over here in the Midwest, it's not as viable. There's also an EXTREMELY HIGH amount of liability. Guys are working with very expensive equipment that likes to break quick, is not easily replacable, and legitimately one screw up can be devastating towards your clients property and your business. I highly advise against trying to scale this business for the liability reasoning alone.

I will say though, if you're looking to work 1-3 days a week, you can still make good $ - when I pressure wash, I make $1000/day for about 6-8 hours of work, about $800 profit/day. If you don't have the capital to open a business that can scale, then yeah, start a property maintenance business and do pressure washing under it yourself till you can do something with less liability/higher repeatability, otherwise you're in for a major pain. Me personally, I'm using the profit from pressure washing to focus on growing the lawn mowing side of things, playing around with e-commerce, and saving for a house down payment.
 

socaldude

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I don’t know why I imagined a guy in an Armani suit doing some pressure washing LMAO.
 

stavedeve

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I am an entrepreneur and want to add to my income. All of my current income only requires me to have a computer and internet connect some of the things I do include options trading. Amazon FBA, affiliate marketing etc. . I want to expand and stat a service based business. After some research I found that pressure washing would be a good business. however all tutorials I have found about starting a pressure wahsing business involve that the founder is actually physically doing the job himself and that is not for me. I only wanna focus on white collar work not blue collar but I cant find any helpful sources for this. As this would be my first service based business I don't know where to start, any advice for starting a pressure washing business if I only want to do white collar work?
what do you mean my white-collar pressure washing?
 
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msufan

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I am an entrepreneur and want to add to my income. All of my current income only requires me to have a computer and internet connect some of the things I do include options trading. Amazon FBA, affiliate marketing etc. . I want to expand and stat a service based business. After some research I found that pressure washing would be a good business. however all tutorials I have found about starting a pressure wahsing business involve that the founder is actually physically doing the job himself and that is not for me. I only wanna focus on white collar work not blue collar but I cant find any helpful sources for this. As this would be my first service based business I don't know where to start, any advice for starting a pressure washing business if I only want to do white collar work?
I recommend focusing on work you are at least willing to do in the short term so you can become an expert at it, understand potential profit niches in the industry, and teach others to do it well.
 

msufan

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what do you mean my white-collar pressure washing?
He means he's too white collar to actually do any pressure washing work himself, but he sees potential for profit there.
 

Surf&Turf

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Commenting to follow. I am also white-collar slow lane with cash set aside for business ideas.
I do enjoy the outdoors and have spent plenty of man-hours doing landscaping/physical labor. So, while I don't want to do that for the next 20-30 years, it does have some appeal doing it for yourself.

Thank you for the liability commentary w/power washing. I think about this every time I string trim around my truck...
 
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G

Guest-5ty5s4

Guest
So I'll try and make this rather quick. I own a property maintenance/general landscaping business and have been experimenting with several different services in my area to see what works best, so far it looks like Johnny Boys model for lawn mowing is the best for building a legit business where you're hands off the technician side of things.

I think you're on the right track in terms of going for a service business (I'm experimenting with e-commerce as well) - but there's a few things you need to be aware of. In terms of scalability, I personally don't believe pressure washing is the route to go for. Jobs are one-off, and depending on what area you're in, it could be years before a client comes back. If you're somewhere in Florida, maybe it'll work since there's high mold/algae growth, but over here in the Midwest, it's not as viable. There's also an EXTREMELY HIGH amount of liability. Guys are working with very expensive equipment that likes to break quick, is not easily replacable, and legitimately one screw up can be devastating towards your clients property and your business. I highly advise against trying to scale this business for the liability reasoning alone.

I will say though, if you're looking to work 1-3 days a week, you can still make good $ - when I pressure wash, I make $1000/day for about 6-8 hours of work, about $800 profit/day. If you don't have the capital to open a business that can scale, then yeah, start a property maintenance business and do pressure washing under it yourself till you can do something with less liability/higher repeatability, otherwise you're in for a major pain. Me personally, I'm using the profit from pressure washing to focus on growing the lawn mowing side of things, playing around with e-commerce, and saving for a house down payment.
I agree with fridge. Pressure washing would not be my first choice for a service business for all the reasons he gave, but mostly because it is one-off and the $ amounts are small. Lawn mowing has similar dollar amounts, but the big difference is you need your lawn mowed every week, or every other week. How often do you get power washing done? Exactly.

The way I see it is if you go for something that people only do once in a while, it needs to be high magnitude... Like thousands of dollars, or better yet, hundreds of thousands, or millions. Like building something.

If you are going to do service jobs for 50 bucks or 100 bucks, it needs to be on repeat...if you want it to scale.

Otherwise, you are going to spin your wheels in a job you built for yourself for the next 50 years.

Hell, I've seen that happen even in service businesses with one-off projects in the millions (in that case, the issue is really profitability and keeping a slice of the millions... Not easy to do on complex projects)
 

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