How To Build a $100,000/Year Side Hustle - Step by Step

Today I want to give you a underrated way that you can make extra money. Start a service based business that has a low barrier to entry. So many people out here are trying to find the next hot business idea or trying to find the next quick way to make money, when in reality a lot of times it's just taking an old idea and making it better or finding a need in your market and simply addressing that need. It doesn't have to be the latest, greatest sexy idea. Sometimes it can be super basic, but and just get you on the path to entrepreneurship, making extra money. Then you could take that money and leverage it to do something else in the future. There's a ton of these ideas out there and the one that I want to show you today as an example is going to be window washing. Cleaning windows might sound a little bit silly, but it's a great business with a low barrier to entry and it's perfect for the exercise that we're going to go through today. Now this business does have the potential to make a lot of money and actually get you out of the rat race. If you're working a 9 to 5 job currently or you could be in a related business like real estate or some other business and this could be a great additional service business that somebody else can run for you, that you can own and operate. It doesn't cost that much to get into the business and it's a great illustration of how you can do this by simply doing a service based business better than the local competitors. Now I am 100% confident that in any market throughout the United States there's going to be an opportunity to start one of these type of service based businesses. It doesn't have to be window washing, but you'll see by the end of this video how you can do this and translate it to literally any other service based business. So the first thing you're going to do is do a simple Google search of window washing in your local area. What you'll find is there's going to be a list of companies there and most likely you'll notice that there's not an ability to book an appointment with them online or pay online. Now they may have a Google My business page, they may have some reviews up, but most of the time with all of these service based businesses, the technology is just simply not there. And most of these guys are overworked right now because demand has gone up in many markets throughout the country. So they don't even have the time to innovate and improve their processes. On the front end. So what I want you do is call one of the companies. When you get the person on the phone, ask as many questions as you possibly can. What are the services offered, what's the cost? How do they determine how much the cost is? Are there any upcharges, are there any upsells? You know all the different questions that you want to know. Because at this point they're going to be thinking you're vetting as a potential customer, but you're vetting to find out what your competitors are doing. Now you might think this is pretty basic, but just adding the ability to book online and to accept payments online is a huge competitive advantage in today's service based business. Now if you add on to that them not having any content online as far as photos, videos, reviews, even YouTube videos, any of that stuff is just going to increase your advantage over these local old school competitors. So now if you get the feeling from them that they are booking weeks out and it's kind of an old school process, which many times it is, then now you know there's an opportunity to innovate and to provide an additional service in your market. Remember, you don't have to be the only game in town. It's okay to have competition. We're just trying to vet what the competitors are doing and what the demand is in our market. So when I did this in my local market, I found that they were booking three weeks out and they were lacking in technology and all those things I talked about earlier. So what I found is this is a great opportunity to provide the service and also innovate. It could be a great business. When I did the preliminary numbers, it actually looked like it would generate enough profit to be worth it even if you weren't the one doing the operations and you hired someone to do that. So now that you've determined that you want to move forward with this idea, the next thing to do would be to buy a domain name, come up with this simple name that relates to your market or you personally, or even just a random set of letters and window washing. So for this example, let's just say I came up with the word clear window washing. And let's say that domain name is available or some variation of that domain name exists. I would go ahead and buy that. Now you could use GoDaddy or Bluehost and it should cost you like very little money. I'm talking like $2 a month to secure the domain name. Now on GoDaddy, you can use the basic website builder to Build out your basic functionality. Or you could use sites like Squarespace or Wix to come up with a basic website for the business. You're going to want to come up with a brand logo and colors on Canva. Canva is free and even the pro version is very little cost. So you're going to come up with a basic logo on Canva, put it together, and then those colors are going to be your brand colors for the website, and that logo is going to go on all the materials, including the website. The next thing you're going to do is set up a Google My business page. You're going to establish the company name on Google and what you're going to do is post about the business there. You can post image posts and you eventually can post video posts. One of the underrated things you can do on this eventually is get video testimonials from your past clients and put them on your Google My business page. Now, you don't need to get a separate business phone number for this business. You can just get a Google voice number. I believe this is free right now. And all it's gonna do is forward to your cell number. You can create a custom greeting to answer that call when you're not available. And you can also create different routing options. You can set up the email using Google Suite. So if you want to use that custom domain name, you can set up your emails to come through at that domain name. In the beginning you could use a Yahoo or Gmail account, but I would suggest getting a custom email at the company name website. It's going to look more professional and the customer is going to feel more IDs if they receive communication from that email address. Now, so far you're into this business for very little money. The next thing you want to do is, is create door hangers. So we're gonna make like two to five thousand door hangers. We're going to create a compelling offer for new customers to utilize your services for window washing. You're gonna come up with a special. And let's say that that special is priced at the same level of the competitors. You could even price it slightly above and offer a slight discount because everybody wants to get a deal. Now this is where you're gonna go back to your notes from the original calls. How much do they charge for a single family home? Do they charge extra for two stories? You know, whatever the different variables are for pricing to have all those details here. So you want to make it very simple. You're going to offer option A And option B. Sometimes there may be a need for option C, but the main thing is you can always price these options and then put a disclaimer that if they come to the property and there's additional work that wasn't disclosed as part of the original package, this would be subject to additional cost. So the next thing you're going to do is try and get customers to book with the business. You're going to take the 5,000 door hangers that you had printed and you're going to canvas an entire neighborhood. I would suggest hiring some high school kids to help you with this, but basically what you're gonna do is pick a community which has the homes very close together, like track homes, and you're just gonna put those door hangers on every single door handle. Now you're gonna go through there and you might be worried like, am I trespassing here by putting something on somebody's door? Do not worry about that. Most people are fine with this. If anybody says anything like get off my property, you can just move on to the next house. I've talked to several people who have done this idea for other businesses and they've said that they've been able to canvass an entire community without getting kicked out or having any issues whatsoever. Now the next business development idea that you're going to do is, is you're going to take business cards which you can also print by designing on Canva and then having a local print shop print these. You're going to take those business cards to local small businesses. You're going to hand them to somebody there and just say, hey, I'm a new window cleaner in the area who cleans your windows. I'd be happy to do the first job for free just to show you what I could do. And you want to get their cards. You want to ask for the owner's card or the manager's card. The reason why you need that card is you want to be able to follow up with them afterwards. You're going to keep sending follow up messages until they book you or until they tell you to get lost. Now, you may have enough business just from the residential communities where you don't need to go to level two for commercial, but this could be the next step once you get going. Anytime that you're talking to these business owners, if you talk to the manager or the owner and they were actually nice to you, make note of that on the back of the card. When you get back for the day or for the week, go through those and Go back to the people that had good conversations with you and send them a handwritten thank you card. Just sending that card to them through the mail, handwritten is going to stand out and really make it memorable. So next we're going to talk about online presence. You could ignore social media for now. That could be the next level. But in the beginning you definitely want to focus on the Google My business page because that's where you're going to get reviews and that's where you're going to get confirmed by Google. Everybody uses Google to search for service providers, so this is important to do. Now they do have a product for Google, Local business ads or local service business ads. And if you have the ad budget, you could definitely participate in this. But it's not necessary to get going. Now remember, all of this stuff is an asset that you're building and it's really going to get going after a few months. So you've got the website, you've got the door hangers, you've got the Google My business page. Once you start getting customers, you've got reviews, you've got testimonials and you can continue to build on that. You can even offer incentives for people to refer you more business. And all of this stuff gains momentum and that's how you can really get going with this after six months, 12 months down the road. Now, to help come up organically in Google searches on your website, you want to have a blog section and write a 2000 or more word article about window washing. You could title this article something like the ultimate guide to Window Cleaning in your. You want to have pictures in that article, even video if possible. And you want to put in basically a step by step process for how anybody could wash their own windows. You might say to yourself, Neil, why are you telling us to tell the consumer to do this on their own? Don't you want them to hire us? Well, the point is this article is going to be extremely useful to people and they don't want to do it themselves. They just want to know that you know how to do it. Now you might say to yourself, I don't know the first thing about window washing. How am I going to do this business? Well, you can hire someone to do it for you. So what you could do is at the local competitors, you could find someone that works for them that does a great job. You could do your research and figure out who these people are and get in contact with them. Next you could offer them a position with your new company by showing them that you're on the up and come. You've got new technology. This is after you've already set up the website and the Google page and you've kind of got things up and running. From an online presence standpoint, what you could do is offer them a management role or promotion or just simply pay them more. If you really wanted to do it and you trusted the person, you could offer them the potential to be part owner of the company with you and give them some minority ownership. Because people really like to feel like this is their own company, but that person is going to be the expert and they're going to teach the new hires how to do this and they're also going to be the contact for you to get started. In the first few jobs. The next thing you're going to want to do is create a simple two minute video for YouTube. This is just going to be an introduction video introducing yourself, the company and what you guys do for the local community. As far as window washing goes, that will go on YouTube and you want to make sure you put in all the keywords as far as like window washing in your city and state, the communities that you serve, you can put all that stuff in there. Neighborhood names, all that stuff, anything that somebody would Google search, you want it to be either in the actual video or in the description of that video. So basically, when somebody searches for your window washing company or when they search for window washing in your market, you may be the only window washing company in your area with a video on YouTube, you might be the only window washing company in your area with a great article on your blog. So these things are all going to work together to build momentum over time. Now it's very important on your Google My business page that you post regularly. Even if it's just something very basic. You want to post regularly because that helps your Google My business page rank higher than your competitors. You also want to be sure to get reviews. Once you get going, you can give any sort of incentive for people to give you reviews and you can offer them future discounts or whatever you need to do to incentivize people to leave you a high quality review on your Google My business page. Now, as you get momentum, more and more people are going to start to call you. You may not be able to answer all the calls because you're working or you're too busy. It's okay. Just make a really good voicemail greeting and really thank them for reaching out to you. Be grateful for the call and let them know that you're going to get back to them as soon as possible. Another thing that you can do to help is to ask them if it's okay if you can text them back. Many people these days prefer to text rather than deal with somebody on the phone. You could book an entire job through text or you could at least direct them to the site where they could book online. Now, the truth is you're not trying to get a lot calls. You would rather have people just simply book online. That's going to be one of your competitive advantages. For this you can use a tool called Jobber. Jobber is a software platform for service based businesses to enable their customers to book online and pay online. Now, in the beginning, you may want to have all your jobs available on the weekend, depending on what you're doing during the week and depending on your availability to actually manage this process, you can get all of the tools needed from a local Lowe's or Home Depot. Now you'll notice that the supplies that you need to get started are actually not that expensive. Now as you get going, you're definitely going to need more supplies. But I'm just telling you to get started with this first few jobs on those first weekends. It's actually not that expensive. Now the next thing you can do to drive business is to ask your customers if you can leave a yard sign and just tell them, look, we're new to the area and we're really trying to build awareness for our new business and it would be really appreciated if you would let us put the sign in the yard. We will just leave it there for a few days and take it back and it won't be any issues. So next you're going to need to hire more people to do the actual window washing. The best way to do this is not place an ad online, but to rather ask your entire personal network, do they know anybody who's looking for work? The key here is you want to find people who, who are actually looking to work. You'd be surprised at the people that your friends and family can connect you with are gonna be way better than just getting some unknown applicant online and having it blow up in your face. And as you get going, you're going to need to charge more than your competitors. It's okay if you price in line in the beginning, but you can charge more in the future. If somebody's looking for the absolute rock bottom price, they can go elsewhere. Now the key with you is gonna be you provide a excellent service. You make it easier for the customer to do business with you, and people will gladly play a little bit extra for that ability. Many times people are just looking for the simplicity of just getting it done rather than just grinding for the lowest price possible. And again, this is just a numbers game. So there are going to be customers that beat you up on price and you don't need every customer. You're going to have enough people coming in where they will gladly pay your fair price. And as long as you do a great job for them, they'll be happy to continue paying and happy to continue referring you more clients. The other great thing about charging a little bit more is it allows you to pay the employees a little bit more. And when you do that, they do a better job. Right? So you want people to feel valued, you want them to know that they're making more than people that work at other companies. And you want to make that culture really strong and really stress the importance to each employee that the customer service and service level needs to be on point. There's an extreme shortage in so many markets right now of people providing good service on time and making it easy to do business with them. Service based businesses are in high demand right now because we've had such high population growth in certain areas throughout the country. So you may find that you're living in an area where you could start this business or some other service based business and all you have to do is provide good service and better technology and you can take enormous market share. Now I just picked this business as an example because it was super low cost to get started with, but you could apply the same tactics to any other service based business. Now this is a little bit different than the other content that I normally post about making money, but I wanted to give somebody a different idea because this is a huge opportunity that I'm seeing across the country.