$180K To Clean Parking Lots
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In Today’s Newsletter:
Idea Of The Week: Cleaning Parking Lots
Tweet: New Perspective On Loss
Weekly Recap: Headlines From Around The World
TikTok: MRI Full-Body Scans
Quote of the day:
“Someday is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.” — Tim Ferriss
Idea Of The Week: Cleaning Parking Lots
This idea comes from a podcast I listen to — Side Hustle Nation.
In this episode, the guest (Blademir) started his side hustle with the goal to earn an extra $1,000 a month. Four years later and his parking lot cleaning company is now making over 6-figures!
How he started
Blademir got this idea from reading a blog about 99 side-hustle ideas and thought this one seemed easy to try.
He quickly set up his business as a sole proprietor, opened a business checking account, and started looking for opportunities.
He began by driving around his neighborhood looking for commercial businesses with parking lots. Once he had a few lots picked out, he started hustling.
Blademir would approach the tenants asking for the phone number of the manager in charge of the lot. He would then call the manager and give him his pitch:
“Hi, my name is Blademir, I’m a local vendor in the area and my company specializes in cleaning up litter and debris from parking lots. Are you interested in that type of service?”
This cold-calling technique landed Blademir his first customer, which was a shopping plaza right next to where he lives. It turned out that this manager was also responsible for eight other locations! None of them had a cleaning service provider.
How he priced it
Due to this being Blademir’s first project, he did not know how to price his service when the manager asked for a proposal. So Blademir walked the entire property and timed how long he thought it would take to sweep it.
After walking the lot, he estimated it would take 20 minutes. Then he multiplied that by the number of days the manager wanted him to sweep the lot to get his monthly rate - $500/month. He submitted this proposal to the manager and received a signed reply agreeing to it immediately after.
How he cleaned
Cleaning parking lots is an ideal side hustle because you need empty parking lots. Meaning you have to do this job early in the morning or late at night, thus outside the normal working hours of regular day jobs.
In order to perform the cleaning, Blademir purchased some tools - a blower and a Litter Licker scoop. Almost all commercial lots already have dumpsters onsite, so there was no need for him to transfer the trash anywhere offsite.
He also was able to provide some service add-ons such as cleaning up illegal dumping. If he found something like furniture in the property’s dumpster he would call the property manager and say I will legally throw this out for you at a cost, which all managers gladly pay so they don’t get fined.
How he scaled it
Blademir continued to call on properties and grow his client list. As he gained more parking lots, he also gained more headaches as he was unable to clean all of these lots by himself.
So, he went out and found independent contractors to pick up the slack.
His workflow on scaling this process is smart. Whenever Blademir got a new property, he would do the cleaning on that property for one month. Then he would hire a contractor and train them on how to clean that property and tell them how long it should take them. Then he would pay the contractor 75% of the profit and keep 25% for himself. He soon realized, he can just hire contractors for every property, train and manage them, and just collect my 25% without doing the labor.
How much does he make?
At the time of the podcast, Blademir had 30 parking lots as current customers.
If we go off his first customers numbers of $500/month and mutiply that by 30 parking lots, we can estimate he is making $15,000/month!
That comes out to this side hustle making Blademir $180,000 a year!
I never knew how much money there was in cleaning up trash. The fact he is able to make this much in just his local town shows me the potential for anyone to start this side hustle. Just think how many other opportunities you could branch into from this business as well. Offering snow removal, window cleaning, or just providing leads to other businesses.
If you have some extra time before or after work and are looking for some cash. Call your local commercial properties and see if they need some trash removed.
Let me know what you think about this side hustle in the comments!
Tweet Of The Day: New Perspective On Loss
Weekly News Headlines
It’s live: The NFL launched its own mobile streaming service, NFL+. The app costs $4.99/mo. and offers live games, NFL Network shows, and films from the NFL archives.
Meta-reverse: Meta saw its first YoY quarterly revenue decline in Q2. This comes after it announced $100 price hikes for Quest 2 VR headsets, which surely will sway more people to buy them.
Shopify layoffs: The Canadian e-commerce giant is laying off ~10% of its 10k-person staff, with CEO Tobi Lutke citing a bet on post-pandemic shopping trends that “didn’t pay off.”
After the bell: Apple stock jumped in extended trading after the company beat estimates for sales and profits. CEO Tim Cook expects to accelerate revenue in Q4 despite “pockets of softness,” which sounds like something you’d find in an actual apple.
Trending down: US GDP dropped 0.9% in Q2, marking the second straight quarter in decline. Two consecutive negative quarters have long been considered an unofficial sign of a recession.
Who’s got Spirit? JetBlue, that’s who. The airline agreed to purchase Spirit Airlines for $3.8B in a move that will make it the fifth-largest domestic airline by market share.
TikTok Of The Day: MRI Full-Body Scan
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