Happy Sunday!
I’ve gone deep the last 2 weeks on cool AI tools, writing about 3,500 words combined. Let’s do a 180 today and keep it short, sweet and sweaty. Sweaty startups, that is.
You’ve told me in my polls loud and clear: You want to learn about businesses that are all or one of the above:
- AI-centric
- Approachable
- Low startup costs
- Local/home service related
- Get you to $10k - $100k/month in free cash flow
Let’s talk about local business growth hacks today.
By the end of this email you will have very specific tools for finding as many customers as you’d ever need for your local service business, even if you are starting from nothing!
I’ll also provide some niche, profitable service business ideas you probably haven’t thought of before. This email applies to both business owners and aspiring business owners!
Some of these hacks are from 2 of my recent podcast episodes. If you want to dive even deeper and get more context, find those episodes here:
Can these tactics work for an internet-based business? Probably, but not as effectively, in my opinion.
Let’s dive in:
- The most effective way to find local customers is by putting a rock and a flyer in a plastic bag, driving to a neighborhood that has your target customers in it and throwing the “rock flyers” onto the driveway. Don’t answer any calls that come in the first day, because it’s just people mad about the bags. Start answering the phone the next day. If you get your targeting right, you can expect as many as 10-15% of these to convert to customers. Works especially well for roof cleaning, pressure washing and Christmas light hanging.
- Always always always place bandit signs (yard signs) when you’re done with a job. Don’t ask permission, and don’t be phased when/if people get mad. These people will account for a single digit % of people. These should be two sided, two-colored, include the name of your business, phone number, website and QR code.
- To go along with the above 2 points: In person, targeted “sweaty” marketing efforts like these are way more effective than online ads because the targeting is perfect. You’re fishing where the fish are, not where you think they might be. Facebook and Google have all kinds of sophisticated geofencing tools, but they are very imperfect and not accurate on a zip code or neighborhood level.
- GO THROUGH THE HASSLE of becoming an approved Wal Mart vendor. It’s worth it! Most people get hung up on all the forms and red tape, which means the competition to get them as a customer isn’t that high. One WM contract that be a 6-7 figure business.
- Look very seriously into HVAC unit coil cleaning as a service business, both commercial and residential. My podcast guest linked above (Daniel) prints money cleaning grocery store HVAC coils with a pressure washing rig. It takes him 15-20 minutes and he makes $400 - $1,000 per job and it is almost 100% recurring and predictable. This is something that HVAC companies NEED to be doing but don’t want to do (and usually don’t) due to a labor shortage. You can go through them and have them outsource it to you.
- As soon as you have a decent track record CHARGE MORE! Let cheap customers walk. Especially in seasonal industries when you have less time and resources than your demand allows.
- Relatively no one is chasing after utility companies to pressure wash their water towers. Daniel charges $12k to clean water towers and it costs him about $2k in labor and bucket truck rental costs. Or you can even buy a power washing franchise and use drones to clean them. More info on that here. Insanely profitable and niche.
- The permanent Christmas light business kind of sucks. Why? It’s non recurring but the equipment is a liability to you until the warranty is up. Sure, making $3k to hang lights is great but you’ll never have that customer again.
- Sell it before you have it. Daniel wanted to buy a $7k pressure washing rig but didn’t have the cash. So he sold a restaurant hood cleaning job that required the equipment, got cash upfront and used the cash to buy the equipment.
- Say yes to everything until you can afford not to. Those first 5 customers, reviews, case studies and testimonials are worth their weight in gold. Do anything you can to get them, even if that means working for free.
- Piggyback! You’ve likely heard my Buc-ee’s story by now, and piggybacking is exactly what I’m doing with them! The more Buc-ee’s grows, the more my business grows. Daniel found 1 HVAC company to outsource all coil cleaning to him, and they are growing like crazy. He’s riding that wave alongside them! Do whatever you can to find a white whale customer and then piggyback on them until the cows come home.
- Use a tool like this to be notified any time anyone in any local Facebook Group mentions a keyword (lawn care, pressure washing, painting, recommendation, etc). We do this for our tree biz, and while it isn’t a total game changer, we get a few extra jobs from this every month that we wouldn’t have found otherwise.
- Use the tools on the top page of my free toolkit to scrape and cold message potential customers or referral partners. My 3 secret weapon referral partners: realtors, landlords and property managers.
That’s all I can remember for now. Again, if you ant more details, here are links to the home service masterclass podcast interviews:
And to read the 2 part AI tools newsletters from the last 2 weeks, check those out here and here.
Thanks for reading! Please share with a friend!
Chris Koerner
TKOPOD.COM
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