Dr. Shine

[drshine]

I am a 15 year old sophmore in high school. I started mowing lawns around the neighborhood a few years ago, and on a camp trip a fill-in managed to do a horrible job and lose my customers trust. I started thinking of other businesses a teenager like me could start. I decided to do auto cleaning and detailing. For about a year I have been trying to get this started. My first phone call was yesterday and I recieved another today. Tomorrow, I will detailing my first car. I will try to post some before and after pictures. Don`t be too critical. Wish me luck. I would also like anybodys input for how a teenager could succed in this business field. Thanks.

Russell
aka. Dr. Shine

[joyriide1113]

first off welcome to the board. pretty friendly place. now u say u will be doing a detail. what procedures do u have in mind exactly?

im also a teenager (turning 18 in november) and i`m practically in love with my hobby. i dont really try to do it as a profession, but i do do it occasionally for money. i normally do 1-2 details a week. mainly for neighbors or people i meet at my hangout. i tend to charge atleast 30 dollars an hour to try and justify my efforts on something that isnt mine at the end of the day, so i bank in a good 250-300 bucks a weekend when i do 2 cars. a lot of my cusotmers are return customers, so it all depends on how well u do the job. again, i dont do it as a profession, but if u`re looking for some work i dont see the problem in u doing it, as long as u keep up good attitude, service, ect.

[themightytimmah]

I`m 18 as well, I`ve done well through word of mouth, and keeping my personal car as a showcar. Obviously, your age is going to prove an issue, but one thing that has really helped me out is having professional looking business cards. I could send you the .psd blank that I built mine off of if you are interested, send me a PM.

Heres what the final cards looked like (2 sided, the white is back, colored is front)
http://www.geocities.com/timmah68/OCDMAIN.jpg

[tpgsr]

What i see as your biggest barrier to entry is cost of startup. I am assuming that you will just be a weekend warrior, and nothing will be to legit. If you want it to be more legit, then you will have to get your business registered, a sales tax id, an EIN, and INSURANCE!

The second barrier to entry is flexibility. Since you are still in HS, what do you do if a customer needs to have a car detailed between 9-3pm?

Not saying that it can`t be done, I know plenty of guys who have done pretty well for themselves (myself included, but i do it Full time x2, and i am 22, and out of college). 6 of my employees are HS students, all seniors, but they attend school during the day, and work for me from 3-8 5 days/week, and it seems that they can get alot of work done after school. Maybe you could look into finding a partner, that way you are able to finish a full detail after school between the two of you.

It will take alot of work, but if you are passionate, determined, and driven to succede, you could do very well for yourself. Make sure you spend a few $ on marketing, dont be cheap; it will be made up by the customers that you gain in the end.


Good-luck
Mike

[zainoshine]

What i see as your biggest barrier to entry is cost of startup. I am assuming that you will just be a weekend warrior, and nothing will be to legit. If you want it to be more legit, then you will have to get your business registered, a sales tax id, an EIN, and INSURANCE!

The second barrier to entry is flexibility. Since you are still in HS, what do you do if a customer needs to have a car detailed between 9-3pm?

Not saying that it can`t be done, I know plenty of guys who have done pretty well for themselves (myself included, but i do it Full time x2, and i am 22, and out of college). 6 of my employees are HS students, all seniors, but they attend school during the day, and work for me from 3-8 5 days/week, and it seems that they can get alot of work done after school. Maybe you could look into finding a partner, that way you are able to finish a full detail after school between the two of you.

It will take alot of work, but if you are passionate, determined, and driven to succede, you could do very well for yourself. Make sure you spend a few $ on marketing, dont be cheap; it will be made up by the customers that you gain in the end.


Good-luck
Mike


Nicely put.

I`m 15 as well and do low-volume detailing, only 1-2 a weekend, enough to keep me occupied because I have a lot going on at school. However, I`ve been detailing my families cars for quite some time now and made sure that I had almost perfected and really became seasoned with the processes/products before letting loose on client`s vehicles. It`s much easier to go from detailing as a hobby to detailing as a job then to just start detailing as a job without any experience. So I suggest you throughly research everything that this hobby entails and involves (I spent 4 months researching before I even did my first detail on my Mom`s car!), then take care of the business end, which you`ll find many great articles on detailing as a business on this forum, Meguiar`s Online.com, and Autopia.org. If you can`t deliver exceptional quality and service, then you are doing a disservice to the customer by not providing the best.

I`m working on getting insurance myself, even though I only do 1-2 cars a weekend; I think it`s now necessary that word is spreading and the vehicles I`m working on are no longer my dad`s co-workers, and with summer rolling around it`s possible that I could see more work during the week.

You`ll need substantial capital if you want to do a good job and be able to handle many conditions of vehicles. But it`s process>product in the end, so just make sure the experience is there, and really enjoy what you do. The results will follow.

As far as advertising, if your still in school I don`t think you should do too much advertising because you may not be able to handle all of the work, and you will only be doing this after school and on weekends. I keep my advertising very low key, only handing out fliers and my website address out to people who are interested, not just strangers. Business cards do add a nice touch of professionalism as well.

Good Luck!
Carl

[drshine]

I just want to say to everbody thanks. I detail a Rav4, I know not a great car. But I made 70 dollars in a little oved 2 hours.

[zainoshine]

So what was your process/product?

[Cam07]

Hey man,
I`m 15 as well and I`ve been detailing cars for about 2 years. I started doing it a lot during last summer. I would do about 10 or 11 in a week. Right now I’m just doing it on Saturdays. Anyways, the best thing that that I’ve seen work for advertising as they said is word of mouth. I started out with few products and a vacuum, now I have a closet full of stuff, a shampoo machine and a PC. I got some business cards from www.GotPrint.com and they have helped a lot. If you do a good job, the people will come. Good luck!

Cameron