How can a mobile auto detailing business go from a small one unit operation and expand into a large business without opening a detail shop and putting in a full-on facility? Every mobile detailer wishes to make more money and expand their business, and even if they are in a big market like Atlanta or in a major city's suburb areas, it's difficult to understand if you do not pay attention to the details.Not long ago, someone asked me how our company grew in size. You see, before retirement, I was in the auto-detailing and mobile car washing business. So, perhaps I can explain how to expand and grow in this sector. Now let's say you are running a company in the Atlanta Suburbs South West of the city? Well, let me explain what we did back in the 1980's in the Los Angeles Suburbs. Originally when we really started to grow and realize this was over 25-years ago. We divided our company into 2-business models. One was geared towards fleet business, such as Detailing for trucking companies, delivery companies, auto auctions, dealership, etc. The other was door-to-door high-end detailing at office buildings and homes. We did a lot of looking at our customer base to find synergies. For instance, a hair salon might have many ladies that came in on Thursdays for perms; their husbands might own construction companies, work for a bottling company or in the automotive sector. Next, we printed flyers and targeted office buildings that had lots of high paid employees, professionals and executives, your basic BMW and Mercedes Crowd. Peach Tree and Douglasville is filled with them there in GA. We then worked extremely hard to cluster our clients to keep from wasting time in travel. Then we hired independent contractors to service the routes charging them $50 per day to use our equipment in their pickup trucks and $50.00 to service our routes. This worked well and saved us from abuse of equipment, because they owned their own trucks. We just kept building that way until we took over 1/4 of the market in the suburbs of LA. Then 10-years later we franchised. Simple strategy really, but it worked. After some 27-years of 17-hour days, we had franchised in some 23-states. Most of today's entrepreneurs do not have that level of hard work ethic in them. So, it's doubtful they will be able to mimic our level of success in the same time period, but it can be done. We built our company from scratch and expanded out of the profits, it can be done, although, I imagine it will be harder today due to increased regulations, too many lawyers, and poor employee work ethic.
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