How Long Did It Take To Break Even?

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Delicate Touch Auto

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Hi All,

I'm new to the business professionally and I'm moving along at a slow pace. I am currently trending one new customer every 14 days approximately. All my customers have come from Groupon. To generate business I've been going to door to door at most twice a week for 2-3 hours at a time. It's hard for me to contribute more time soliciting because I still have a full time job. I was thinking about it and was curious how long did it take some of you to break even? By even I mean the cost of creating an LLC, insurance, products, equipment, advertising, etc. Also, would be interesting to know how many working hours were put in to break even?

Sam,
 
Welcome to Autogeek. I am not a professional, but I am interested in the responses to your question.
 
1 year and a 24000 dollar loan on a new econoline.working 7 days a week,but I never had the cost of advertising or websites.started In waste management employee parking lot doing details and grew from word of mouth.
 
Some years I worked on Christmas Day.when you own your own business you have to keep the checks coming.worked a 8 hr day.
 
I think the best advice I was given was, you'll never break even on your initial investment into the business.
That's money spent to get product, supplies, machines, etc... As you start to bring in more customers, you'll need to order more product.
APC's, Glass Cleaners, Upholstery cleaners, Degreasers, tar removers, wheel cleaners, trim detailers, MF cloths and applicators are some of the major expenses.
Then maintenance on the gear as it wears out. So far I've gone through one Metro Vac, one GG BOSS G-15, my Tornador needed rebuilding yesterday, various daytona speed brushes broke and my hot water extractor vacuum hose broke.

This is why the GOV allows you a write off depreciation of assets, and percentage of supplies and after three years of no profit, you become a hobby.

As you grow, so will your purchases. Not sure if there is ever a "break even" from the initial investment.
 
I hear ya,spent 1500 on my transit and sometimes it never ends.
 
I broke even pretty quickly. Between my low purchasing costs, and my extremely low overhead, I came out on top after the first year. Now, my products are the only real purchases.
 
After my hobby became a business with an actual 'LLC' designation I still spent about 3 years detailing part time on weekends. During this time I sold my truck and bought a cheap E250 Econoline off Craigslist for $2000. I pretty much made sure that during the 'warm up years' I broke even by purchasing tools and supplies with the proceeds from each detail. I payed myself a little bit but most of the money received went towards building my detailing arsenal.

As soon as I quit my day job I landed a dealer account which kept me extremely busy through my first winter. This was absolutely crucial to the success of my business since my market slows down quite a bit during the winter. Along with my dealer account I was growing my retail clientele through basically free leads from my website. I did a tiny bit of Craigslist advertising and actually gained some pretty solid repeat business from it. One of my best clients actually came from a free Craigslist ad. I've also run a few AdWords campaigns on Google with extremely high success (low cost per customer acquired). AdWords is the only time I've ever spent money on advertising but there was an almost immediate return on investment because the schedule filled up QUICK. Literally 100% of my wholesale and retail clients have been people who called me. I've knocked on zero doors and I've not made any calls to land new business.

It would be difficult to total up all the hours I've spent working on the business through the years. There is a lot of time that goes into running a detailing business that is not spent touching a car. I mean there time just loading up the van, doing laundry, cleaning and organizing the garage, sending invoices, taking phone calls, responding to emails, etc., etc. Plus I've easily spent over 1,000 hours building and maintaining my website, learning and interacting on detailing forums and other business related social media stuff.

It all paid off though...

Currently I spend $0.00/mo on advertising, I'm booked out a solid 30 days in advance, and I bring in over 6 figures a year, working by myself, doing something I absolutely love.
 
I was profitable within 1 month. You mentioned that you don't have a lot of time to continue to solicit the way you are. My "secret" was to specifically target my customer and get to know my specific target. How specfic? My original target customer was women age 35-55, who worked 40+ hours per week, had 1 or more children, 1 dog, etc...I got to know my target market and spent WAYYY less time marketing b/c I knew exactly "where" they were. This is what helped me save money and more importantly on the time I spent marketing and allowed me to spend more time cleaning vehicles. Eventually I expanded to other target markets. Try this excercise: Pick a very specific target market and find out where they are (facebook, grocery store, senior center, YMCA, big office building down the street). Once you do this, DOMINATE your market. If you can't be great to a few, you can't be great to everyone.
 
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