Welcome to Ghost Business - where mediocre business ideas go to launch or die

This week's agenda:

• Nice Cans

• How To Build It

• Viability Score

Nice Cans!

Taking out the garbage sucks. The left over Thai food from last week is finally growing a new ecosystem in your bins and it’s time for a cleaning.

You don’t have a power washer and the pressure from the outside hose ain’t gunna cut it. It’s cold and wet outside and you just need your garbage bins cleaned so you don’t have to train your gag reflex every time you take out the trash.

If I have this issue, others do too.

Turns out this is a serious problem (in Canada). After a quick search on bin cleaning business, several pop up in Canada but not too many here in the US. This signals a strong opportunity for the right person willing to get their hands dirty.

The going rates are $10 per bin/mo.

How much do you want to make doing this? If each house has 2 bins and the average fee is $10/bin/mo, you can easily break this down:

• I want to make $5,000/mo working 3 days a week

• $5,000 = 500 bins/mo

• 4 weeks (in a month) x 3 days a week = 12 working days

• 500 bins / 12 days = 60 bins per day

• If each house has 2 bins, you’re only doing 30 houses a day 🤯 

What would this look like?

Turns out Sparkling Bins is selling the shovels during this gold rush. Their line of products range from the tow attachment ~$60k to a full blown bin cleaning assault truck for ~$200k.

You could offer residential services to start then work your way up to businesses where the real money is. Restaurants, bars, event spaces all have disgusting bins. Sealing the deal on these contracts can guarantee thousands of dollars per month for years to come.

How Would You Build It?

•  One of my favorite terms is an MVP; Minimum Viable Product.

• Your MVP is some cleaning supplies and a rented pressure washer from Lowe’s which comes out to ~$40 a day.

• Buy cleaning supplies for $30; long scrub, all purpose cleaner and some gloves and glasses

• Knock on your neighbors doors; you just need 3 “yes’s” to break even. Get 10 “yes’s” and you can buy your own pressure washer.

• Companies like farming.cards will send out the flyers for you for a small fee; 200 cards for less than a $1 per flyer.

• Your schedule is already set, you look for the garbage pickup days in the neighborhood and have them cleaned right after pickup.

• Save your cash to buy your first truck then your off to the races.

Viability:

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

This will take some elbow grease to get going. You’ll get your hands dirty and you’ll have to put on your sales hat.

But the best part is once you get reoccurring revenue coming in, you have a steady(er) stream of income which makes it much easier to hire your first employee.

With a $200 investment, you can reach hundreds of customers in your neighborhood and can predictably make 6 figures in a short amount of time.

The competition is low and it’s already a proven business in other areas.

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

 👋