Venting here.
Got off the ground with thumbtack. It’s a love/hate relationship.
Most “in season” weeks I’ll spend $600+ and book 5k in revenue. Roughly 10% marketing spend isn’t bad. Add the referrals and repeats that come and the acquisition cost is less than 5%.
I came from the sales world before this venture and time value of a lead is everything. I’ve closed plenty of jobs before any of the other pros even respond. That said, I’m getting tired of quoting stuff within a couple minutes at 9pm.
Got in this to run a business and now just running around with my head cut off. I knew I wanted to run a home services biz. Low cost of entry and low bar of competition. And I like being outside. Worked remote during Covid and hated it. Only thing I enjoyed about office life prior was the team I worked with.
So for those that have transitioned ( 
) from full time washer to biz manager/operator how did you do it?
Set your hours and stick to them, then cancel thumbtack and build you reputation organically if you can. If you lose out on a job because someone else quoted at 9pm who cares, unless you want that lifestyle? You don’t need every job.
I agree. When I first started, I was chasing every lead no matter the time of night and weekends. I’ve since set boundaries and normally won’t answer the phone after 7pm, unless I’m really bored. Weekends are hit or miss with me, depends on what I’m doing if I answer the phone. If I call back first thing in the morning and they already booked with someone else, so be it. I don’t lose sleep over those late night calls or emails.
I did HomeAdvisor for a short period of time and it drove me crazy. If you don’t call back within 15-20 mins, they already found someone. If I did get a hit, I was wasting more time driving out to do quotes and losing time working and making money. It was stressful trying to catch everything and my “performance” on the website was determined how many leads I responded to, so if I was too busy to answer, I lost points and dropped down their list. Also, they charged me for every lead whether I tried or not. My ROI (return on investment) was terrible, most of those people want the cheapest, not necessarily the best. I cancelled them after a couple months and don’t regret it at all.
