Grand Opening Today!

I've only had the open sign on 3 hours, and already scheduled 4 appointments. Guess that's what happens when there's no other detailer in town. Half the people who stop by seem to have vehicles that haven't been detailed in years.
 
Great looking shop. I would have kept the wooden bench and put some sweet rims on it.
 
FinishingTouchA said:
Mike, I remember a post where you said you had a shop in Albany which is just 10 miles from here. Any tips?
Click to expand...


Just realized you live in Stayton, Oregon!

I spent many a summer bucking hay and swimming in Thomas Creek under the old red covered bridge in Scio or as we called it SC 10.

My uncle owned a Draft Horse Farm just up the hill from Thomas Creek, the farm was over a hundred years old when I spend my summers their as a kid and it's still in the family today.

The MOST important thing you can do for either a mobile business or a fixed location business is provide the highest quality in customer service. This will get you word-of-mouth advertising and that is the most powerful type of advertising in the world.

Tell your customer what you're going to do and then do it.

Underpromise and over deliver

I teach these business principals in my detailing boot camp classes and show how to put them into practice. I also taught a class on tis topic at this year's Mobile Tech Expo.

Have to move forward this morning on some hot offline projects for the upcoming Boat Detailing Class taking place in in just a few weeks but I'll try to revisit this thread.

Marine 31 Boat Detailing Class - Saturday, April 18th 2015


To my knowledge, this is the first formal boat detailing class of it's kind. Anyone attending this is in for a real treat.


:dblthumb2:
 
Mike.Phillips@Autogeek said:
Just realized you live in Stayton, Oregon!

I spent many a summer bucking hay and swimming in Thomas Creek under the old red covered bridge in Scio or as we called it SC 10.

My uncle owned a Draft Horse Farm just up the hill from Thomas Creek, the farm was over a hundred years old when I spend my summers their as a kid and it's still in the family today.
Click to expand...
Haha, that's great! My home address is actually technically in Scio. And I went to elementary/middle school up in Jordan at Lourdes. It's really cool to know someone of your caliber came from the same small town.

Mike.Phillips@Autogeek said:
The MOST important thing you can do for either a mobile business or a fixed location business is provide the highest quality in customer service. This will get you word-of-mouth advertising and that is the most powerful type of advertising in the world.

Tell your customer what you're going to do and then do it.

Underpromise and over deliver
Click to expand...

I've always known that this is key, rather than how most detail shops around here offer a one size fits all solution, I go over each package with the customer and assess what they are looking for. Then when I'm done I make sure they are 100% happy with the results. After yesterday, what I'm seeing, is that if I want to put out the numbers to cover the costs of having a fixed location I'm going to need more manpower. I had an interior detail yesterday which I had 4 hours into, but it took me all day because of the time I spent talking to customers. By summertime I plan on hiring someone to help do the production details so that I can focus on the customers, my main goal by July is to build up a maintenance customer list that comes in monthly, weekly, etc. This will be hard evidence that people are happy with my work, and it will create consistent cash flow, and as a bonus these jobs will be a lot less work after the first detail.

Mike.Phillips@Autogeek said:
I teach these business principals in my detailing boot camp classes and show how to put them into practice. I also taught a class on tis topic at this year's Mobile Tech Expo.

Have to move forward this morning on some hot offline projects for the upcoming Boat Detailing Class taking place in in just a few weeks but I'll try to revisit this thread.

Marine 31 Boat Detailing Class - Saturday, April 18th 2015


To my knowledge, this is the first formal boat detailing class of it's kind. Anyone attending this is in for a real treat.


:dblthumb2:
Click to expand...
At some point I hope to come to one of your classes, I was at SEMA this year but didn't get a chance to meet you as it was my first time and I was so overwhelmed. Experience is awesome, but learning from other people's successes and failures helps a lot.
 
Congratulations! The shop looks great, can't wait to see shop pictures.

Walter
 
What prompted you to convert from mobile to a shop? Seems like the overhead would cut into the profits considerably. Thanks.
 
Congrats! Can't wait to see where the magic happens!! (The bay's!)
 
jwgreen6 said:
What prompted you to convert from mobile to a shop? Seems like the overhead would cut into the profits considerably. Thanks.
Click to expand...

So many reasons...
The biggest being exposure, Trying to market to this tiny community has always been a little issue of mine. Yeah Adwords and word of mouth are a good start, but having a storefront on the corner of the second busiest 4 way stop in town changes the whole game of advertising.
The next reason is now that I have an indoor shop with plenty of space, I can schedule people any day of the year without worrying about the weather interfering. Many of my customers do not have garages and therefore decided to cancel their appointments when the weather wasn't prime. (Here in Oregon it rains 2/3 of the year)
The third reason is more of a personal thing than one that has a huge influence on the business itself. But I always found the time spent packing up my supplies, driving to the customer, unpacking, setting up, packing everything back up, and unpacking again a huge waste of time. And also I hated working on paint in the sun and trying to wash a car in a muddy driveway.
With the shop I was also able to get a large extractor, a pressure washer, a big shop vac, an air compressor, a tornador, and lots of other supplies. Having everything with me at every detail job allows me to upsell extra services and work quickly with everything organized. Also I find my quality to be a lot better. And on top of all that I feel that my business image is a lot more professional.
Like I said in the beginning though, the most important thing to me is the built in marketing that the location provides. That alone more than covers my cost of rent.

Everyone makes such a huge deal about overhead, it's just a cost of doing business. Most mobile guys are mobile because they want to be self employed and keep the money they make. I want to make it clear that I did not start my detailing business so that I could work for myself. My goal is to make money without doing the labor, it's called "owning a business" for those of you who are self employed. (yes, right now I'm an employee of the business) I pay myself bi-weekly paychecks and count myself as a liability of the business. I don't see the money that comes from each job as money in my pocket, rather divide it into expenses of running the business and profit to be reinvested. My goal is to hire employees to do the labor while I work on marketing and other business tasks. Most of you won't ever hire someone because "it'll cut into your profits." What you're not seeing is that while your profit per job isn't as large, you are increasing your total profit. I know that if I were to try and put in 10 hour detail days for 10 years my body would be 25 years older. I'd prefer to take the "easy" route. (bedtime, will continue later)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top