YouTube interview where Chris Koerner interviews 21-year-old Joel Cruz (owner of Finn Cruise/Clean Cruise) about starting a mobile detailing business. Joel started on January 1 after losing his server job, grew via handing out business cards and word-of-mouth, listed on Thumbtack, and now earns roughly $5,000/month working ~40 hours/week. He estimates startup gear cost about $4,000 (but says a $200 pressure washer and $500 can be enough to start). He charges about $100/monthly services and $110 standard jobs; quoted $80 for a Porsche; aims to reach $10k/month and hire staff. Joel emphasizes targeting high-end/exotic vehicles and warns against taking every job (watch client 'vibe').
Questions this video answers
Since January 1st; about eight months (as stated).
Finn Cruise (also referred to as Clean Cruise/Clean Crew verbally).
Broadway, Texas.
About $4,000 (bought over time).
$500 (he says you could start off with $500).
Chapters
All right, so I had this guy come detail my car today and I wanted to ask him how much money he's making. How much money did you spend starting this detailing business? How much money do you make every week? How do you find customers? What are your marketing costs? What can people learn from you? What should people avoid? All of those details and more. I gotta go find out. Let's see what we learn. All right, man. What's your name?
Joel Cruz.
And where do you live?
Broadway, Texas.
What's the name of your business?
Finn Cruise.
And how long you've been in business?
Been in business since January 1st. So eight months.
What made you want to start out on January 1st of all?
But due to unfortunate circumstances, I lost my job at the beginning of the year. So, yeah, forced me to pick a side. Hustle and tele logo detailing. And I just stuck with it since.
What was your job?
It was a server job at a seafood restaurant.
And why'd you lose it?
I was trying to be a nice guy and give a guy a free shot and fortunately they didn't like that. Free food or three shots.
I. All right, so what kind of planted the seed for this business? What got you thinking along? Had you done it on the side in the past or.
Yes, so during that server job, I was doing this on the side. The way I really got into it is I had a BMW. You know, it's a black BMW, as you can tell. Picks up a lot of dirt. Yeah, it's dirty really quick, so I would have to clean it every so often, every week. And I just fell in love with the process. You liked it? Yeah, it was satisfying.
So what was the game plan? What did you do on January 1st to get this business started?
Well, I sat down, thought about it, decided what equipment I needed and just started buying equipment, you know, little by little. Started building myself, building myself up from the ground up. Started some business cards and then I just left those business cards in people's cars. And that's basically how I started off.
Where did you leave these business cards?
I started at like high end malls, like Northport area, other places around here. And I just left those cards and people just started hitting you up.
Okay, so you just go to like Vistaprint or whatever. You design some generic business cards, your first thought is to go to the mall and to put them. Were you putting them on specific cars? Like nicer cars?
Yeah, okay, for sure.
Were you putting them on dirty cars or was that irrelevant to you?
No, I put them on all cars, but more. More towards the nicer cars, the well maintained cars.
Yeah.
Because people, they like to keep their stuff full.
How many did you put on cars? Do you remember?
I want to say 250 cars. 300 cars.
How long did that take?
A couple of days. I want to say a week.
Okay. Just like a little bit a day.
Yeah, just a little bit a day.
And how many calls would you say those 250 brought you?
I only got about two people.
Two?
Yeah.
So 1%.
1%.
Not terrible, actually. But you were probably pretty disappointed by that.
I was, yeah.
You're crunching the numbers. Like if I only get 10%, each job is $250, you know, make thousands of dollars. And then you were a little disheartened.
Yeah.
Was it two jobs or two phone calls that you got?
I got one job and then one phone call.
Okay.
That one job landed me some high profile clients, which scaled up my business from there.
What do you mean by high profile clients?
So it was in the north park area, around the Highland Park, Preston Hollow area. And as the lady that I got the one phone call, her house was on the end of the street. So people would walk by, walk their dogs, and they would see my job. And then this one guy, he just walked by randomly. He was just like, I need my. My Porsche 911 hand cleaned. Yeah. And one day he passed by, he didn't speak to me. But then the following month, because the lady was getting the monthly service done, the guy decided to stop by and actually speak to me. That's when I landed the job right then and there. From there, he gave me other clients of his or other friends of his that are now clients of mine.
How much did you charge, first lady, and how did you decide on that price?
First lady? I charged $100 because her car was fairly clean. Okay. And she gets it done every month.
Do you still charge that or have your prices gone up?
For standard, like, cleaning like these is 110, but monthly services are 100 bucks. Okay. For every cube.
That seems pretty low. Are you kind of on the lower end of the market as far as price is concerned for, say, in the middle? So how much did you charge for that guy's Porsche?
For the Porsche, I charged them 80 bucks. 80 bucks? Yeah. Wow. Because it's a coupe, so it was a two seater. And it was hardly any pin. It wasn't really dirty.
How long did it take you to do it?
An hour. So hour? Two hours.
Okay. Because that guy's probably getting quotes for two to 300 to clean it. Right. So you quote him 100, he's happy, and you're over here thinking, I'm making 80 bucks an hour, like it's a win win. Right. And then as you get more busy, you can start going up on price. Right. Okay. So two phone calls. One of them did not turn into a job.
No.
And the other one did, and then that turned into more jobs. How did you get your next customers after that?
After that, I started making better business cards, and I just started handing those out. My business was based off of word of mouth, so it was just friends, family that were just giving me jobs. And then from there, I became reliable source of them. So. Okay, more people just started aiming towards me.
When did you go list yourself on thumbtack? Because that's where I found you.
Two months ago.
Okay. How has that gone so far?
So far, I've had a handful of.
Jobs, just like a half dozen or so.
Half dozen.
How much do you have to pay thumbtack for those jobs?
I want to say $10 a lead, just depending on the service they pick.
Okay.
Full service. I know it's about 12, $15 for a lead, and then just interior only. It's about eight, ten dollars.
Okay. And what percentage of those leads are you closing?
Let's say about half of those.
So like $30 to acquire a customer, give or take. Okay. How much did all of your equipment.
Cost, give or take? About, let me say, $4,000.
4,000. But you bought it over time, right?
Yes.
If someone wanted to start this with, like, bare minimum, what do they have to have?
I would say, say, pressure washer for sure. Gets the outside clean. It's easier. Vacuum. Vacuum.
And a pressure wash would like a 1 to $200 Ryobi pressure washer do the trick or do you need more than that? A1.
That's what I run.
Okay. And that's still good today?
Yes. Okay.
Because some people would say, oh, that's not. That's not good enough. That's not going to get. But you're saying no, it's. It's great. Yeah. So out the door, someone wants to start doing this, how much money do they need?
Say you could start off with 500.
500 bucks?
Yes.
Okay. And then what do you think before you having to hire employees?
Well, right now, monthly, I'm gonna say I'm making roughly $5,000 a month. Wow.
Okay.
Awesome.
And how. How many hours per week are you working?
40 hours a week.
So you could scale if you wanted to start hiring people, but then you open A whole other can of worms right now. Where are you getting all of your customers from today? Are you still doing the business cards on cars?
Yes. Really?
So 1% was your first response rate? What does it average over the long term?
I mean, I give out my car. For the most part, I land that job. Right. What do you mean?
Like how many cars do you have to put your card on to get one job?
I would say about 10 cars. 10 cars.
So 10%. Why was it only 1% to start?
I guess because I didn't have like social media.
Okay, you didn't have like a reputation?
I didn't have a reputation.
Okay. So now that you have like case studies, testimonials, before and after pictures, your response rate has gone up 10x?
Yes.
What types of cars have you learned to target for? Like what have you learned about targeting the right types of cars for these business cards?
The customer base I want is high end clients. Yeah. I go for exotic cars. Don't get me wrong, I still do any type of car. Yeah. My target is the exotic cars.
Are you doing just cars or trucks or anything that's higher end?
Trucks? I do four by fours, duallys and stuff like that.
Yeah.
And then SUVs like Escalades and Yukons and stuff like that.
What are some things you learned the hard way in this business that other people could avoid?
I would say don't take every job.
What are some signs to look out for on jobs people should avoid?
Depending on the client? You know, you can.
Just the vibe of the client.
Just the vibe of the client. For sure.
Is there a correlation between like a really messy car and a bad client?
Yeah, you can just sort of. They say it's not that bad and.
Yeah.
Open the door and it's trash everywhere. There's a car.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What's next for the business? What's your goal for it?
We're shoot for 10k a month.
Are you going to have to hire people to do that?
Yeah.
Where are you going to find them?
Probably.
What do you hate the most about this business?
I really don't hate anything about it. It's laundry.
Yeah. Yeah.
Just washing towels. That's the worst part of that.
It's funny. You don't mind like scrubbing cars out in 100 degree heat, but you hate washing towels in the air conditioning.
That's funny.
What do you love about it the most?
The people that I meet.
Okay.
For sure. Cars are one of those. The people that I get to meet. Yeah. And the relationship I get to have with these people.
That's awesome. Any words of motivation or advice to.
Young entrepreneurs out there, just get after it daily. Yeah, yeah. And just be 1% better every day.
How old are you?
21.
21. That's amazing. Good for you. How did you afford your truck?
This is actually my father's truck.
Okay, that's awesome. What's the name of your business again? Clean Cruise, Clean Crew. What's your website?
