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The Solar Cleanse

Suns out, suds out… While everyone was watching the Super Bowl, I was crafting side hustles for you guys (while also watching the Taylor Swift Bowl). A friend of mine asked about ghost biz, and was curious if I had any ideas for him.

Of course, you know I have all the best ideas here but wanted to think of something fresh for you guys.

Solar panels are hot. VERY hot. Currently only 4/100 American households have solar panels, but this is expected to rise 4x in the next 10 years!

I love a good ancillary business you can tack onto a hot trend, think:

• Phone covers for iPhones

• Jibbitz for Crocs

• XXXL underwear for your mom 🔥 😂 

For solar, it’s solar panel cleaning. I love this idea for so many reasons. You can operate this from home, there’s already contractors available in this market, and your market cap will 4x.

So let’s see how to build could build a solar cleaning company and how many rays (err dollars) we can soak up.

The MVP (Getting your first customer)

No sunscreen needed… Testing an idea is a must before committing (commitment issues 🙋‍♀️) . Luckily this is something you can test for less than $50 and from the comfort of your own home.

So here’s what I would do:

1. Open Google Maps in your neighborhood

2. Find the houses with solar panels (like this 👇)

   

3. Click on the houses with solar panels to find their addresses

4. Make a google sheet of all the addresses in your area

5. Create a flyer on Canva and create a door flyer Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) campaign with USPS

6. Have them send the flyers for ~$.20 ea to 100 of the addresses you found on maps (all in $20)

7. Create a free landing page on Carrd to point the flyers to and register inbound leads.

Did you get at least 1 inquiry? Congrats this $20 campaign just paid for itself!

We have now proven our idea. Handshakes for all 🤝 

• Square for accepting my customer payments

• Build all my sites no code on Dorik

• I write this newsletter and earn money on Beehiiv 

Getting Your Next 100 Customers

Where the sun don’t shine… Look at you starting your solar cleaning empire. Now get back to work! We have sales to close.

I’d start by getting some roofers, window washers, and decorative light hanger guys on contract and landing out their hourly wages.

This will help us deliver quotes to leads, which we can start to automate quickly (but more on this later)

🚨 Estimating the time it takes for these guys to clean panels is crucial. Once you can nail stuff down like:

• type of roof

• number of panels

• type of cleaning solution

• location/stories/height of roof

All of these will play a part in your quote estimation.

But I haven’t even arrived to the best part yet…

This can all be (nearly) automated 💻

We can:

1. Hire a VA (virtual assistant) to find homes on maps and send DM (direct mail) to solar powered homes

2. Automate quotes by creating an intake form that immediately spits out a quote based on questions you have.

3. Have these hot leads immediately sent to contractors

4. Automate payments once contractor has completed work (income from client, expense for contractor)

5. Automate followups for reviews and every 6mo cleanings

Once you get this thing going, you’ll rarely have to leave your house. This is also a very sellable business once you get your recurring revenue numbers up!

Viability:

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

Sun is shinin… This is one of my favorite ideas. I wrote about it before and estimate someone could bring in half a million bucks if they lived in AZ.

Be sure to get insurance and hire contractors with insurance as what goes up, must come down 🙈

(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 👋