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

Easiest $100k Ever

Going hard in the paint… I love talking to young entrepreneurs and learning what their pain points are and where they are in their journey.

Most people want:

1. Work from home

2. Work few hours

3. Not lift anything heavy

4. Make at least $1k/week

With these constraints, I could spin up a quick business and will show you step by step on how I would grow it.

Disclaimer: There will always be details and issues that will come up that I may not cover, it’s important to realize there will be problems that you’ll have to figure out yourself. And guess what? That’s okay, it’s part of the journey!

So for this side hustle, we’re gunna spin up an interior painting middle man business.

But why interior painting?

• Low skill (can hire almost anyone to do it)

• Inside work (don’t have to fight the weather)

• Recurring revenue is possible

• Many painters have old and outdated marketing (we can beat that)

TLDR; we’re gunna generate sales and hire people to do the work (while we keep the difference). Easy enough? Let’s get started.

The MVP (Getting your first customer)

Painting pains… First I’ll want to figure out what can I charge for this type of service? I would reach out to a handful of painters in the market and get a quote on a job. Figure out what they do to quote you and which questions they ask.

• Is it based on square feet of paint?

• Do you need a ladder?

• Is it multiple rooms?

• Will the paint be supplied or do you need to pickup?

Now that you have an understanding on how to quote, it’s time to get the word out. I'd post in Craigslist, on FB marketplace, NextDoor & in every local FB group. But here’s the secret:

Tell your story!

There’s a huge difference in these two ads on a facebook group:

1. “Hey, I just started a paint company and I’m available to paint your indoor spaces for a good price and quick turn around time. Hit me up for a quote.”

2. “Anyone else staring at their monitor 8 hours and day and think “There’s gotta be a better way?” So I decided it’s time for a change and picked up a paint brush. I started painting the spare room in our house, which turned into painting the neighbors entry way, which turned into painting the apartment complex next door after tenants move out.

   Turns out, I like painting.

   I would love to paint your space. But here’s the deal, since I’m still new in this journey, I’ll give you a fair price and can do quick turn around times (still building out my client base). I’m happy to give you a free quote (before my prices go up 😃 )”

Which one are you getting a quote from?

You’ll want to keep a couple things in mind:

This will be a hired out position so you’ll be looking for people to hire to run these projects. Give yourself some time to get quotes right. Some will be under bid but learn and keep these few and far between.

1. When looking to hire folks. Specifically only hire by the hour with max hour budgets.

2. If someone pulls up in a listen wrapped pickup truck, they’ll charge too much (that will be you in a few months)

This will cap your expenses at break even (you may have to pick up a brush) and will let you know who to keep working with in the future.

Tip: I would follow Ian Cushings model of finding workers ahead of time and getting them a w9 contractor form filled out so they’ll be ready to roll when you start getting new customers

• Square for accepting my customer payments

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Getting Your Next 100 Customers

Broad(er) strokes… Start some targeted outbound sales emails and calls with to businesses. For this example: real estate agents, property managers, maintenance/operations, etc.

Ask them if they’re happy with their current workers and if there’s any projects in the near future to allow you to quote some projects.

Rental “turns” aka when someone moves out and you have to prep the place for someone else moving in, THIS will be your bread and butter here.

Start getting flyers and door hangers printed out to hand out to folks for business.

This is a great time to go legit. Get your business license, insurance, etc as most business customers will want someone license and bonded.

A lot of your early profits will go back into the business for that reason but that’s okay. At least you’ll be breaking even.

This model isn’t new. Folks have been making a killing doing this for yard work, water installation, house cleaners and more.

I featured a guy making $4k/mo profit with house cleaners here.

Viability:

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

Paint me like your profit margins… You’ll have to learn to manage your contractors and customer expectations. As well as learn the jargon and common mistakes people make when starting out this business.

There’s a good chance you’ll eventually need to pick up a brush but hey, at least you’ll be inside 😉 .

(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 👋