Lessons from a mobile detailer with $3,000 in monthly revenue
Survivorship bias plagues the internet, showcasing only the most wildly successful businesses. Success stories provide little value to aspiring entrepreneurs. Brink Insider is here to change that by highlighting the stories of unsuccessful ventures and sharing those lessons with other entrepreneurs who appreciate the difficulty of building a successful company.
For Brink Insider’s first interview, we spoke with McLean, founder of Camel City Detailing — a mobile car detailing company. Within a few months, this company built up a loyal and recurring base of customers. This wasn’t easy, however, and they are still troubled by issues in marketing and team management.
Now for the fast stats on Camel City Detailing:
Location: North Carolina, USA
Estmated Monthly Revenue: $3,000
Time in Operation: Aug 2019 — Sep 2020
Founders & Employees: 2 founders
Product: Mobile Car Detailing
Biggest Struggle: Poor Team Communication
Tell me a little background on your business. What do you do, how did you come up with the idea, and how did you get started?
My business was called Camel City Detailing and we were a mobile car detailing service. When I started the business, I had just finished my freshman year of high school, it was myself and two others and we split all profits. We thought it’d be a good business to get into because the risk is low to get involved. We started it during the summer and it became a seasonal business.
When we started, we went straight to Advance Autos and bought all the basic supplies we needed to clean a car. It was hardly even detailing, mostly a car wash with vacuuming. We had a duffel bag of supplies that we would be bringing to each client’s house. We had a pressure washer that one of my friends had that had been sitting in a shed for forever that we could use.
For our first trip to Advance Autos, I actually remember spending $180 on supplies. After that, we went door to door with flyers asking if people would be interested; of course, a few people hired us just because they support young people working, but that’s when we were able to improve on our detailing skills. We kept adding clients to our list and when summer rolled back around each year we would let them know we are back in business.
During my junior year of high school, we actually started to work throughout the school year. We hired people and had an actual functioning way to bring in profit. We had trained employees who we would pay by the hour that we’d send out to each job site.
What would you say the biggest hurdle you faced when you were actually starting this business?
Our biggest hurdle was trying to manage the number of jobs we got. We worked incredibly hard to get our name out there, but the downside was that we were unorganized. We didn’t have a way of tracking potential clients or anything, we just had a Gmail account and a Google Calendar for our appointments. In a business, you have to spread responsibilities across everyone.
Everyone involved did all of the same jobs; we all detailed cars, we all answered emails and phone calls, we all managed the Facebook page, etc. The way we eventually were able to get past that point was through hiring employees. Hiring employees made everything flow so much easier, including scheduling appointments, handling money, managing clients, etc.
As the business owner, I moved from doing every job to working only a few every week and ensuring quality control. This allowed me more time to use more efficient marketing strategies like through social media ads and also through Google.
How did you keep customers returning? What was the approximate breakdown between new customers and repeat ones?
The way we kept customers returning was a mix of quality and customer service. We believed in what we were selling and consistently tried to improve what we had. People were impressed and that’s what made people come back.
Our customer service was meant to get to know our clients; we connected with them. We showed them the progress of the business and what we were doing in order to make our service higher quality. People love to know what’s going on and to see progress, especially in small businesses.
In terms of new customers and repeat customers, I’m not aware of the ratio but if I had to guess, I would say 65% repeat customers and people that found out about us through word of mouth, and 35% of new customers that found us through Google and Facebook ads.
What are some recurring issues that you’ve had in the past that if you addressed would make everything run much more smoothly?
I would say our communication with employees, especially in regards to scheduling appointments. It seems like we always scrambled to find people who could show up to jobs. I wish we had a better system to find out if we’d need to send another person or if someone wouldn’t be available. Also, we would always run into minor issues such as running out of products, power washers breaking, things like that.
Another problem is that we never were able to find out the average amount of money we lost per job from what we had to spend on supplies. In other words, we didn’t know how much of a product we’d use during a job. We didn’t know how many jobs a single bottle of wax would last.
What resources were most helpful to you when starting your business and learning how to run it?
Facebook and Google advertisements were extremely helpful to get our name out there and gain clients. We were getting more than double the money back that we put into advertisements. Also, making connections with other entrepreneurs was super helpful.
We went to a business incubator event where we met a few people who were able to give us some advice and connect us with other people. I would say that knowing how to market and building connections are some of the most important things when starting a small business.
If you had to start over, what would you do differently?
I wish I had recognized the demand for the service I was offering. Realistically, there were tons of people looking for high-quality car details, much more than I had expected. This is something I did not realize due to our lack of strategic marketing. If I had recognized that earlier and hired more people while properly marketing our service, we would have made much more money earlier on.
I also wish we posted more often on social media. This is the easiest way to keep your business on their mind. The type of posts you put up also can strongly influence your reputation.
What kind of advice would you give to someone who wants to start their own mobile detailing business or a company with a similar business model?
The best advice I can give is to believe in the product or service you are selling. Aim for the top quality service or product, and don’t settle for anything lower than that. Settling for low quality is one of the quickest ways to demotivate yourself. If you want to start a business, find something that you will care about and something you always want to improve.
Thank you for taking the time to share your experiences running a mobile detailing business with us.
If you like our content, you can sign up for our free newsletter by heading to our website, brinkinsider.com.
You can also support us on Patreon, which will help us increase our content production.
Cheers.
