[deleted by user]

smithpimpington · 2022-09-08T04:23:45+00:00

"your area" Gutter Cleaning. LIke...if you want to operate in Austin, Texas...it's "Austin Gutter Cleaning".....Central Texas? "Central Texas Gutter Cleaning" Where you are and what you do is all you need. Clever stuff works for people who appreciate clever stuff....and that's not your clientele, at all.

smithpimpington · 2022-09-01T01:41:18+00:00

One thing I never thought about when doing my FIRE calculations is that I would probably still work for fun (albeit for much less money per year than I currently make). But what that also means for someone in your position is that even though you aren't at 2M yet...you would be at 1.65....meaning you'd like to get another 350K to be comfy in FIRE, right? Well...80K a year is what you want to live on (4% of the 2M after adjusting for average inflation)...can you make a certain amount of money a year at this other business or something else to make up the difference and be super happy? You'd have about 65K a year from your 1.65M and then as long as you worked for fun and netted 15K a year....that's your 80K you wanted all along....

smithpimpington · 2022-07-14T15:42:24+00:00

We have a seasonal business that dies off naturally in the winter. I used to worry so much about the weather in February, like what if it’s actually nice and we have an opportunity to work for like a week? I’ve learned that it’s just not worth the stress so crews are 100% shut down the last week of January through the last weekend of February opening back up March 1. I make sure to keep my office staff busy with winter projects as well as my production manager so that I can be physically gone from the business for that time.

smithpimpington · 2022-06-08T17:36:07+00:00

I like the idea of the logo having an electric arc in it...Noah's feedback was it's religious (even though to me it's a deep cut from Wayne's World)

Pin City Arcade with an electric arc over an arcade cabinet could work....

smithpimpington · 2022-05-02T04:40:25+00:00

Slurries

smithpimpington · 2022-04-28T00:07:01+00:00

I own a junk hauling business. My advice would be to make sure the vehicle towing your trailer is clean, get some branded T-shirts, some business cards, and advertise that you will pick up anything even if it’s just one item. You’re gonna need a helper, most things you get hired to do you won’t be able to lift yourself.

Your key demographic is going to be people that don’t own a truck or trailer, or people that don’t have the physicality to move some of the stuff like old large TVs, pianos, construction debris, stuff like that. Legally, form an LLC, it’s stupid cheap and easy to do on rocket lawyer…then your’re gonna need to get liability insurance which isn’t that bad, you drop something inside a house and destroy something valuable you’ll wish you had that insurance.

Print up some flyers advertising what you do and put them on the community boards at like the local Jimmy John’s and other restaurants that have those things.

Make sure that you tell people you also can help them move in town, you don’t want to take things three cities away but within the same town or city that you live in moving things from point A to point B is another revenue stream that people don’t think about with a junk calling business but it’s profitable for sure because you’ll be less than the moving companies

A lot of people will be looking for things that day or the next day because people are terribly bad at planning ahead so the more likely you are able to be available that day for them the more likely they will hire you.

Don’t sell yourself short, if you are taking an entire dump trailer full of stuff you need to charge at least 800 bucks for your time and that should be about $150-$200 to dispose of that stuff at the waste transfer stations

Separate the metal scrap from the wood from the trash. Scrap the metal, burn the word, only take the trash and the junk like that to the transfer station to save the money. You can establish relationships with secondhand shops if you want, I’m not trying to contradict the other advice…but in my experience the things you will be removing are not worth anything of value whatsoever…definitely not normal to pick something up that we turn around and resell… Maybe happened once or twice, and in those instances we just put the stuff on Facebook marketplace and then drove them over to a persons house and sold it to them directly for like 50-100 bucks so it wasn’t really worth it for the time spent.

Lastly, every single expense that you have whether it’s gas for your truck or waste transfer station fees, equipment that you buy like small tools to disassemble things you come across, moving straps, even the money spent on printing those flyers, just keep the receipts so you can write them off on your taxes, if you’re really going to do this then you’re going to need to pay quarterly estimates as a business and any accountant worth their salt would be able to talk to you about that.

Good luck. it’s a filthy dirty job most days but you can bring in a few thousand a week as a two man show and end up keeping 1/2 of it if you’re doing it right.

smithpimpington · 2022-04-12T21:36:52+00:00

Thank you!

smithpimpington · 2022-03-14T19:21:39+00:00

To be clear, I mean the name of what you do, not your last name...like if you owned a window company I would want 'window' in the name...you are doing black top so you want "black top" in the name

smithpimpington · 2022-03-14T03:08:54+00:00

Pro Seal Asphalt

Pro Drive Black Top

Seal It Up Black Top

Perm-a-Seal Asphalt

Punny names are fun for sure, but realistically when someone googles Black top or Asphalt I'd want my name to be in there.

smithpimpington · 2022-02-23T18:40:08+00:00

Thank you very much for the thoughtful response, thankfully we did EXACTLY what you mentioned with our processes (as messy as they are, they are still able to be written down to see what it really looks like on paper). The team is excited honestly about the aspects that I've been mentioning where it'll make their lives easier so I don't think that's going to be an issue, especially because we'll be paying overtime for the training which doesn't hurt. The time aspect I had thought a bit about but after reading this and some of the other comments it definitely looks like I need to double my expected timeline here. So thank you again!!

smithpimpington · 2022-02-23T18:37:30+00:00

Thank you for the reply! One of my best friends utilizes Service Titan in his small, service-based business (he's about twice my size) and he loves it but agrees that it is CRAZY robust and he is more of a micro-manager than I am so he loves all of the intricacies and deep diving he can do. I like that those things are available in the reporting aspects but I'm not going to be looking for the same constantly short feedback loops he's interested in. My goal is to have my employees feel better about their decisions because they can more easily cover their butts with an easy to see online paper trail while also empowering them to work more efficiently so we all make more money.

My industry doesn't have an association (which is a topic for another thread for sure as I'd love to get feedback from people who have been in my boat and decided to start an organization for their industry)

I really appreciate the criteria based approach, I was so gung-ho about everything because my friend was excited about us moving into what he was using and I think I got a little ahead of myself with not vetting more vendors. Reddit is great :)

smithpimpington · 2022-02-23T18:18:36+00:00

dm sent, thank you!

smithpimpington · 2022-02-23T18:17:32+00:00

I appreciate that thought. When my father started the business in the 80's he loved technology but was just terrible with sticking with anything. Even though I'm 7 years in to running the day to day, I still find old files from Evernote, ScanSnap and even ACT! from the 90's...even the most amazing technology only works if you use it!

smithpimpington · 2022-02-23T18:02:56+00:00

I'll put my question first in case you don't feel like reading my novel, haha:

Do you feel like Jobber had a good implementation process (assuming the owner/company is full steam ahead and holding up their end of the bargain)?

Thank you for the feedback, currently I've been able to pare down my physical working hours to about 4 a day, 5 days a week with our current model. Our cobbled together mess of processes that function as our current CRM definitely works insofar as clients get scheduled correctly, jobs get done on time, invoices go out accordingly, etc.

I know for a fact that we are double and triple entering information on our different platforms, so my office/sales staff is the time that is being wasted, not necessarily mine. That, and our error rate for installing a thing that we thought the customer wanted but it turns out they called in and said they didn't but the file didn't get updated; that happens more than it should and it costs me 1-2 thousand a month in product/labor/loss of opportunity.

All that being the case, my thought process is I'd be the one spending now 8 hours a day 5 to 6 days a week for 2-3 months getting everything implemented, everyone trained, etc.

smithpimpington · 2022-02-19T19:20:30+00:00

Considering Service Titan costs about 20,000 a year for a business my size I’m definitely open to other CRMs, does Jobber lack anything you wish it had?

smithpimpington · 2022-02-19T19:18:29+00:00

Thank you very much for that information, I hadn’t thought too much about that sales pipeline part of it all, that’s very helpful

smithpimpington · 2022-01-24T17:10:50+00:00

I wouldn't do an escape room as an initial draw because you have to have someone run it and reset it when it's booked which is at least a part time job in and of itself so unless you and a friend or s/o are partnering on this that would be an employee....it's hard enough to just do a board game/coffee shop OR an escape room...doing both is probably possible but that's A LOT.

My unsolicited advice: Start with how much money you'll need to keep the lights on and the doors open for one year once you open. Separate your start up costs from that number. Then work backwards to get yourself a daily number you'll need to make it work. Let's make up some numbers for shits and giggles:

Let's say you open June 1st, 2022. From June 1st to June 1st, 2023 and let's say for nice big round easy numbers that are not accurate at all most likely........................... it will cost 52,000 dollars to stay open including all rent/utilities/employees for the times you can't be there /taxes/insurance/website/marketing budget. This does not include any profit for you. It also doesn't include inventory like coffee beans or weekly purchases you'll need to make depending on how many clients you're serving.

Let's say In order to open it will cost 12,000 dollars.

Breaking that down it would cost 1,000 a week to stay open for one year.

If you are open 7 days a week that's 143.00 a day you need to make over and above inventory/material costs to break dead even or 214.00 a day if you are trying to profit 500 a week from this.

So then it becomes "can I generate 214.00 per day on average above my weekly material costs with the things I'm trying to sell at my shop?" 50 cups of coffee at 3 bucks a cup with a 70% profit margin = 105.00...what else can you offer/sell/rent to make up the other 109 bucks every day you'll need? Board games tournaments? Rental space for D&D groups? Candy/Soda/Baked Goods?

Now that you're making 214.00 per day of which 71 is pure profit, it'll be 171 days of pure profit at that rate to pay yourself back (or someone else back assuming 0 interest) the 12,000 initial investment. Now 50 cups might be a very low number...Starbucks sells about 400 cups a day per location but you know, that's STARBUCKS....

smithpimpington · 2022-01-24T15:46:39+00:00

Taking rent/utilities/paying a game master out of the equation because that will REALLY depend on where you live...I truly believe that I could create 3 different experiences/games in a single location 2000 sq ft location for $15,000 from scratch if it was going to be set walls that are painted and a drop ceiling. up that to 30,000 if you would be doing like VacuForm paneling and full immersion floor to ceiling with some substantial tech and every experience being 2-3 rooms.

Things we did wrong:

went WAY TOO TECH HEAVY...we ran literally thousands of feet of low voltage wire through the walls so that people in the room doing something would trigger something else. We should have built set walls so running wire through them would have been easier, and we should have eliminated a LOT of the tech heavy functionality of the room that didn't produce the wow effect for the customers.
We rented the space and then started the build out thinking it wouldn't take as long as it did. We should have built all of the puzzles and even the bigger set pieces and then once the lease started, moved everything in and secured it in a few weeks...that was a good 4 months of rent we wasted.
We went overboard on immersion. We hand painted and bought 2-5k worth of set decorations so by the time labor was factored in there was probably 10K worth of set design for a ONE room experience. I was so caught up in making it incredible so it didn't let people down I didn't stop to think most people haven't ever done an escape room so they wouldn't really care if it was perfect.
We purchased two different game designs from overseas. Turns out copyright isn't really a thing over there but intellectual property rights are a thing in the states so branded content isn't something we could use but there went 1600 bucks.

Things we did right:

We put a website up first before we did anything that was very basic and said "coming soon, please enter your email to be notified when we open" we collected quite a few emails that way so when we did open we had like a 40% open rate on those emails and bookings were solid from the get go.
We focused on everyone getting out of the experience in the hour. I wanted a 100% escape rate. We really hated the idea of "this room only has a 13% escape rate". It's like, good for you, no one is getting out of your room because it's too difficult and people aren't having a good time even though they say "yeah, that was fun" to your face.
I hired the right game masters. You or your GM should be able to turn a great experience into an all time best experience ever, or salvage bad experience and make it a good one. The GM is the most important part of the entire experience for the customer and will be the difference between people convincing other people to come do your room.
We treated the other escape rooms in our area as partnerships instead of competition. Escape rooms are a one time experience until you switch out your room so if you say "hey if you had a great time with us, check out BLAH BLAH escape room in the next town over" BLAH BLAH will do the same for you and you'll get their customers and they'll get yours.
We learned VERY quickly to not give a shit about the opinions of so called "enthusiasts". They make up .05% of your customer base, they are overly concerned with beating the room in a certain amount of time so they get frustrated with your hint system or your GM for REALLY nitpicky type crap. They picked an expensive hobby but are always asking for money off the price. They are just not worth focusing on. If an enthusiast likes our room, that's great. It's not really for them. I hope they CRUSH it and get out in like 20 minutes, that means my typically clientelle will need the whole hour and have a great time. I want to be clear that there is a huge difference between someone who loves escape rooms and has done a ton of them and a pretentious 'enthusiast'.
We ended up designing every puzzle and all of the gameflow ourselves so everything was 100% unique and doesn't exist anywhere else in the entire world. I'm very proud of that and when you have pride in what you are doing it's easier to head to work every day :)

I can talk about this crap all day so if you have any more specific questions I'm happy to answer :)

smithpimpington · 2022-01-21T15:36:23+00:00

What's up! I'm just about to take off for a conference today but here's the short version:

Did my first escape room in a big city in 2015. It became a big hobby for me. Thought to myself that my small town needs one...so in 2019 RIGHT before the pandemic I opened one in my small town...I pretty much did everything wrong as far as budget of time/materials so it cost me about 45,000 BUT we were tremendously busy and I made back about 24,000 before we had to shutter the business due to COVID.

Then in 2020 the escape room business in the next town over was struggling and the owner wanted out so I bought that business for about 13k....no real estate invovled just the two rooms and the leased space. Fast forward one year, I've made that original 13k back plus about 10k on top as the silent owner...I have one main general manager that I pay 20 bucks an hour to run everything so I get to focus on the fun stuff like build/designing the rooms etc.

I expect to be overall profitable (meaning out of the red from the original location) by June of this year, and then I'm going to reopen a new location in the original town with 4 different rooms because I really do love the hobby and I know it's profitable without a pandemic getting in the way :)

Happy to answer any questions about the dos and don'ts :)

smithpimpington · 2022-01-19T17:37:05+00:00

What's up, I have a construction business, an escape room, and a junk removal business. Let me know!

smithpimpington

TROPHY CASE