Welcome to Ghost Business 👻 Your weekly Tuesday email, where we turn $1 into thousands building these weird but simple side hustles

The Parking Lot Car Wash

Goin to the car wash… Except you’re not? This idea isn’t groundbreaking or new. But it’s simple and would make money. We like money.

People spend on average 1-3 hours at Costco. If you’re lucky, you’ll escape with ONLY spending $300 and a hot dog. But time is money. So why not get some other errands done, while you do your errands.

Meet the Park n Wash.

It’s so easy, this is how it works: People park their car, pay for a wash, come out to a clean car after they’re done shopping.

No AI. No Crypto. No SEO. No nothin.

Side story: Washing cars is how I got my start into side hustles. In fourth grade, I would go around the neighborhoods with a cart washing peoples cars. $5 outside wash, $5 inside. For an easy 10 bucks, you could have some kid wash your car while you watch tv. Folks couldn’t get the money out of their wallets and into my hands fast enough.

So how would we go about setting this up and how much could we make in the process?

The MVP (Getting your first customer)

Start small… So Costco is the biggest store in the world right? Let’s not start there, let’s start at a boutique grocery stores and small strip malls. This is a good way to test/prove the concept without massive overhead.

Hit up the manager of a small store and ask if you could hang some fliers and offer your services for car cleaning.

To start this would cost less than $50 for supplies and often stores have a water hose hook up you can use to fill a bucket.

Because people pay for convenience, I would charge $20 for a clean. Your market will let you know if this is too little or too much.

• Square for accepting my customer payments

• Build all my sites no code on Dorik

Getting Your Next 100 Customers

Bigger, better, electric?… Let’s say the small store works. Nice! You have regular customers getting a clean while they shop, so now what?

Time to go big(ger).

We have a ton of options to increase sales and expand.

Increase sales:

• Offer wheel and wax treatment

• Environmentally friendly cleaning products

• Accessories like scents, etc.

• Offer interior detail services

Expansion:

• Electric cars have to sit for up to 45 just to charge, hit up electric charging stations

• Go to bigger stores

• Malls, bowling alleys, airports anywhere people will leave their cars for hours at a time

Cleaning the outside of a car in 15 minutes and charging around $20/car will net you $80/hr. You can hire someone for $20/hr to do this work and pocket the rest.

Getting 20 cars/day 3 days/week will net you $1200/week or $4800/mo!

Viability:

1 [building spaceships] 🚀 to 5 [easy peasy] 😊 

Easy suds… This is as easy as it comes. Light manual labor, low up front cost and can all be started (and operated) over a weekend.

It will take some sales skills to get on the friendly side of the store management. But hey, if Girl Scouts can do it, so can you!

(As usual each business will have it’s own setbacks, and it’s all about the execution and consistency rather than just having the idea 😉)

It’s a great day to be great!

Love, Mike 👋