Good evening all!
I currently work swing shift, which allows me a lot of time to wash on the side. I would love to transition into washing full time, eventually. I searched through a bunch of threads for people who have gone through this transition and nothing matches up - at least to what I would like to do.
My goal is to hire someone within the next 2 years to wash while im working and with me on my days off. This would allow me the ability to grow the business enough to replace my current income (hopefully).
So, to cut to the chase. I’m looking to connect with someone who has taken a similar path so that I can start to form a solid plan. If there is a thread I missed please point me in the right direction.
Thanks!
Where are you located, and how saturated a market are you in?
I’m in Upstate NY, around Syracuse. Its not very saturated here, there are a handfull of companies only 2 that seem to be bigger outfits. I started late last year but this season has already been busy, I feel as though my area could provide enough work to transition into doing it full-time. Then again, I’ve been wrong before.
I’m sure you’ve considered this but you have 4-5 months where you can’t work due to frigid temps. You basically have to double your current income from your full-time job in half the time. Other guys do Christmas light installation so they can keep earning in the winter. There’s supposedly great money in it. Another option is ice dam removal. You’ll need an enclosed trailer and a hot water washer that puts out low gpm. I’ve considered doing ice dam but I’d have to do a new trailer build. I have an 8 gpm hot water but think I can just swamp pumps to a 2 gpm for ice dams. If mention that because if you ever decide to try ice dam removal I would buy a larger gpm hot water washer so you have it for washing and then you can swap over to a smaller pump in winter.
I have pretty much stepped away from my full-time job to concentrate on washing. My situation was a little different though because we usually never worked in the summer. Plus, they closed down 5 coal fired power plants in our local and only have one left. We have 3 nuke plants but hardly get in work on them. If I kept doing that I’d have to travel the country for work and be away from my wife and kids 6-8 months out of the year. I spent more than enough time away from them in the Marine Corps. I did make the transition though so if you have any questions just ask. There are some others on here that have too.
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Thank you, I will message you. Lots of insight, this is a long term goal, which may never happen but I would like a solid plan in place if the opportunity presents itself.
My advice: keep it as simple as possible. Best way to get away from a fulltime job, is to cut expenses to the bare minimum and learn to live on less. Much less. Read Mr Money Mustache or one of the other myriad personal finance blogs to see just how wasteful your current spending probably is, and how to curb it.
Once you have debt paid off and 6+ months of expenses saved up, and have learned to exist on a minimal budget, put in your notice. It will take you no time at all to pull in enough work to cover your expenses and start banking for winter.
The following season, you can probably replace most of the income lost from your old job, and start to loosen the belt a bit. Maybe it’ll take two years to get to that point. But it’ll be worth it.
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Thanks Infinity, we have reduced our debts substantially in the last year and are still working at a few others (one car and student loans). Ill look into that book, thank you! The next goal after debts is a nice cushion, one thing at a time. This will probaby take at minimum 3 or 4 years to do but without a goal you get nowhere!
It’s a blog, not a book (last I checked; maybe he’s published one by now…)
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Just wing it. If you do quality work, know how to talk to customers and have a a hint of problem solving skills you can’t not make money from cleaning organic growth.
