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Doing this while you have a full time job is the perfect way to start. More on that here.

Step 1: Do a quick and dirty market study - start searching and calling competitors. Use trends.google.com to find out which company in your town is the largest (most search volume) and study them. Are they doing digital marketing? Are they putting out good content (content marketing) on their website? Call them and play a customer. Ask them 100 questions about their process and their lead time. Lead time is the most important. If they are booked out a few weeks you know they are overloaded with customers. Thats a good sign. Move on to step 2.

Step 2: Buy a web domain and hosting for $1.99 per month and build a WordPress site. Get a Google My Business location at your home. Get some reviews on here as fast as possible. I wrote down all the early tools I used here if you'd like to check it out. Google is going to power your business early on. Get a logo and some door hanging flyers put together using a freelancing site. Get your logo embroidered on a nice polo shirt.

Step 3: Write some great content focused around keywords in your town here. Use ahrefs.com to research the keywords you want to target and build some DIY guides for homeowners in your town using those keywords. Some really useful stuff that people will engage with. Thats content marketing and its the best way to get a leg up on google. More on that here.

Step 4: Consider getting a part time for a painting company that specializes in interior and/or exterior on the weekends. Get a feel for the sprayers, rollers equipment, methods and get better at painting. Speed is the key in this business. Offer to do some painting for friends for free (if they buy the paint). Get those friends to take pictures of your work and leave you a nice detailed review on your Google My Business location. Get at least 5 reviews. Have them call you and get directions to your location and click through to your website before leaving the review so Google knows it isn't fake.

Step 5: Marketing. Watch Zillow and Realtor.com and filter for homes that are recently sold in your target areas. New homeowners are exponentially more likely to want interior and exterior painting services than a random joe off the street. Put on your polo and a pair of khakis and go to the homes that recently sold and knock on the door. Smile at them and shake their hand firmly. Tell them about yourself and that you’d love to offer them a free quote to touch up or re-paint some rooms. If they don’t answer hang the flyer on the door and go to the next house.

Go to a paint store and make friends with the employees there. Give them your business cards and your flyers and ask them to spread the word. Offer them $20 cash each time they bring a customer that says they sent you.

Get some nice lawn signs made and ask customers if you can put them in the lawn. Some will let you if they like you. If they don’t offer them a discount on a future painting.

Ignore getting a social media following. Not worth your time or money. Post videos of your work on youtube with local keywords instead. Experiment with social media marketing and PPC marketing by hiring a freelancer who specializes in this sort of thing.

Get creative with your marketing. You know where your customers are and who your perfect customer is. Go find them.

When you get some interest move on to step 6.

Step 6: Purchase used equipment and a cargo van. Here is my used cargo van buying guide (i've purchased 15 or so used vans all under $7500 and they are amazing assets. Get a sprayer, rollers, brushes, a ladder etc. You're about ready to go.

Step 7: Housekeeping stuff. Register with the state as a sole proprietor and get liability insurance. Before you hire your first employee get workers compensation insurance and consider incorporating. Get accounting software like quickbooks and outsource your payroll to a service like Gusto or Paychex. Keep very detailed records of everything and read this book. Consider hiring a bookkeeper but make sure you understand most of it yourself as well. Become a licensed contractor in your state.

Step 8: Get out and paint.

A few notes:

Its competitive. A lot of companies are painting. Answer the phone every time with friendly, eager professionalism and enthusiasm and you’ll be in the top 10%. Nurture your Google Business location. Its your most important asset. Reviews with photos are worth 10 regular reviews.

Play around with the pricing you charge. Price your time at what you estimate would be $40 per hour at first but make sure to charge by the job and not by the hour. You will get better at quoting over time and you will also get much faster at painting.

When you start to get some momentum set up a CRM like Jobber. It allows you to look way more professional than you are. Do all of your billing online. Attach photos of the jobs as they are completed.

You are not going to compete on price. You are going to compete on speed, professionalism, customer service and quality. They are going to like you as a person and want to do business with you. Learn more about this concept in my episode#13 "never compete on price again".

How about a text message when you are on the way to service a customer? How about a link in that text to a picture of the smiling clean cut person who will be stepping onto their property? And a note about what you can expect from the person and how the appointment will go? How about instead of a t-shirt and dirty jeans you have a collared shirt and khakis? How about hair up in a pony tail, tattoos covered, and beard neatly trimmed? How about a giant smile, a firm handshake and an enthusiastic opening statement?

Eventually you will get some momentum. You will be able to upgrade your equipment and get a nicer sprayer. You'll need to hire some help on the weekends you work. Pay well, $15+ per hour, and get competent people. Oversee them for a while until you trust them to paint without you being there.

Avoid being a subcontractor. General contractors only care about one thing - price. You aren't competing on price. You are adding service the the equation so your business only deals with the customers one on one.

Focus on what you do best and outsource everything else.

Form a personal relationship with your customers. Know the names of everyone in the family. Show up with a teddy bear for the little guy. Send a thank you note a few weeks after the job.

Maybe partner with a few realty shops in town or watch the MLS and visit homeowners the week before an open house. A home looks a lot newer with a fresh coat of paint. Use google maps and street view to quote exterior jobs instantly over the phone with customers.

Consider learning Spanish so your customer and employee base is expanded.

Consider expanding to other services like sealcoating and deck staining. Partner with deck builders and pavers and send them business and they will return the favor by sending business your way.

Study and emulate businesses in other towns or cities that are doing an amazing job. Take bits and pieces from each business and build your business as a hybrid that takes the best practices from the best companies.

Eventually you will build a great little business. You will compete on speed and quality and not price. You will charge more than the average joes who offer painting on craigslist and people will be happy to pay it. You can chose to stay small and charge a high price or try to grow and scale the business.

“On demand” is going to be your competitive advantage so you can charge a higher price. Make sure you can offer next day service or same day service. As soon as you get too busy to do that you need to raise your prices or hire another employee. Make sure that person is presentable and clean cut.

Remember that its not about finding great people. Its about simplifying the job so your employees can thrive. Train them to do their core task really well. Don't ask them to do 20 things or they'll do them all poorly. Don’t forget workers comp.

Now spend all of your time answering the phone, dealing with clients, and quoting jobs and managing the marketing. Build a series of youtube videos targeting your city and the keywords so you show up on the second largest search engine in the world (Youtube).

When do you quit your job? That is all up to you. Lean out your life and your business so its less risky and you can get by on earning less. Stay lean as you grow and keep your expenses variable so you can change, pivot and close up shop if things go poorly.

Don’t like painting? Check out this list and take your pick.

Good luck to you, but frankly I think you're trying to create a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Here's how I already solve all these issues:

1. When I use a bulk item and I notice it's getting low, I write it on my magnetic laminated shopping list that lives on the fridge with a dry erase maker. I add the list to my groceries app before I go shopping. Total cost, $1.50.
   
   
2. Food going bad for temperature control reasons is extremely rare. Almost to the point of being not worth spending anything to prevent it. But I'll bite. I bought $500 worth of beef directly from a rancher years ago. Because if that i have a two channel battery powered fridge/freezer monitor/alarm from Amazon AcuRite 00986A2 Refrigerator/Freezer Wireless Digital Thermometer It has an audible alarm, records high\low temps and works quite well for the entire fridge and freezer. $25
   
   
3. I don't even know how I would use this. Either I would need 40 of these devices to track most of the kitchen staples I own, or it's a game of roulette that I put it on the container that I'm going to misplace next. Do people really lose things in their kitchen that often?
   
   Like I said, good luck. I hope this is a amazing success and I'm just an outlying laggard. People who want smart home everything, or people addicted to buying kitchen uni-taskers are probably going to be your core customer.
   
   All the best.
   

1- Buy this windshield repair kit for $10.

2- Print out flyers that say “windshield chip repair, I come to you, help me save for college, satisfaction guaranteed, blah blah blah”. $10 one-time cost.

3- Start in your neighborhood. Check out windshields in driveways and on the street. When you see a chip on a windshield, knock on the door.

4- “Hi sir, you have a chip in the windshields of two of the cars in your driveway. For just $20 per windshield, I can seal those right up and save you from a costly new windshield!” Bat your eyes. Say something about saving for college. Also mention you accept Venmo or Apple Pay.

5- if they didn’t answer the door, leave the flyer.

6- Fix the windshield (learn from a YouTube video.)

The kit you bought will fix about 7-8 chips. At $20 per chip, you turned a profit of $150 on just a Sunday afternoon. Do it two days per week for $300 profit. Do it every day after school for 2-3 hours and you’ll make more than an entry level college graduate.

Everyone gets chips in their windshield. People love to see kids working toward something instead of sitting on their phones. If you approach someone about their chip, I’d put my bottom dollar that 7/10 of them give you $20 to fix it. It’s the same reason everyone stops for the lemonade stand. They don’t really want cool-aid, they want to help an ambitious kid doing something productive.

I started a commercial cleaning business as well and all the leads I've generated have been on the phone. This book has been my saving grace.


Buy the book, buy a desktop phone and VOIP service and start hitting the phone for 2-3 hours every morning and setting up meetings. It's the most cost effective way to get business as well.

There are a log of good marketing books out there. Lee Odden has a good one. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118167775/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1118167775&linkCode=as2&tag=dominicsstore. But the truth is, SEO is changing so much, all the time, you can't really become an expert unless you are in the sort of inner circle. These books are stupid because they are usually written by n00bs with no cred. When I read these guides I find that they are about 70% correct, and the 30% that isn't correct is either 1) super dangerous for your site's longevity or 2) super giant wastes of time. If you want to learn SEO, the first and only guide you will need at this stage of your training is this one: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf. It's Google's guide and it's way more useful than anything Dallasmaids puts out. Please don't follow this guide. It has a lot of really bad, site-harming advice in it.

Well, I'm lookin' for some disruptive startup ideas.

I've read lots of books on entrepreneurship and innovation, and I got to know about something called The Medici Effect (https://www.amazon.com/Medici-Effect-Elephants-Epidemics-Innovation/dp/1515959341), according to which most of the Disruptive Innovative ideas associates at the intersection of different, unrelated fields. That leads me to learn more about different industries. To be specific, I'm interested in Tech (AI), Finance and Entertainment (Music) one.

I am an autodidact tech person (Software Engineer), freshmen, studying computer engineering (Bachelors').

Thanks for taking the time to post this.
I too have become very interested in CBDs recently, especially after reading Cannabis Climax - The Connoisseur's Guide to Cannaphrodisiacs


What are your thoughts about the female side of the market and the growing number of lube and balm products?

You know, I've been thinking about getting into this sort of business. What have you tried that hasn't worked? Where are you located? Mind giving any details? That book seems interesting.




http://www.amazon.com/INSTANT-OFFICE-CLEANING-KIT-Rodman-ebook/dp/B0044UHTHO here are some Amazon reviews for the book.

I would prescribe David Goggins' 'You Can't Hurt Me' as the perfect remedy for you https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Hurt-Me-Master-Your/dp/1544512287

Another book that is a “fun” read and has a great way of telling stories that illustrate marketing principles you can apply to your own business:

https://www.amazon.ca/How-Sell-Lobster-2nd-Psychological-ebook/dp/B0140CLF7K

Really, really, you need to work on your audio. How did you even get to 40+ episodes like this? Smh

Two very simple tips you can implement right away:

• Get a desktop mic. Get a cheap one if you want, something like this.
  
  
• Set up all phone calls over VoIP, not phone. Between FaceTime Audio, Skype, WhatsApp or any other, your interlocutor is likely to use one.
  
  You can also turn off your AC or more away from noisy fans.

I work with ICs, so their equipment varies.

Here's two top-rated options from Amazon at two different price points: $200 USD from Hoover, #1 rated and $500 USD from ProTeam.

We have w2 employees now so we provide everything, including a cart. In the past when we used contractors they provided their own cart and supplies.

Something similar to:

https://www.amazon.com/Hoppa-Lightweight-Shopping-Polyester-Guarantee/dp/B00CTQHMNQ/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1486919309&sr=8-12&keywords=shopping+cart

https://www.amazon.de/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer/dp/1591848369

Boom! http://myws.sitesell.com/MYWS!.pdf

And kaboom: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400064287/?tag=hyprod-20&hvadid=15473565099&hvpos=1o1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=196745963789649889&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&ref=asc_df_1400064287

I use one of these on the hardwoods for dog hair. I also use it on the rugs before I vacuum. Works for me.

This is filled with low cost ideas: https://www.amazon.com/100-Startup-Reinvent-Living-Create/dp/0307951529

Some good comments here already.

+1 to what u/krunchygymsock said.

Overall I’d agree the middle ground is a very dangerous place to be. And I’d avoid the race to the bottom for sure. Multiply your pricing range there by 10 and we had the same issue with a full service design agency in London!

You’re providing a commoditised service in a saturated market so the key is finding the right niche / audience / volume / margin that can work, focusing on that and differentiating like a mofo.

I’d suggest reading Differentiate or Die: https://www.amazon.com/Differentiate-Die-Survival-Killer-Competition/dp/0471028924