Yes, having employees is the way to making bigger money, but the difference between their pay and what you charge the customer is not what you pocket...there`s overhead.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to have your own business. But going from what you are doing now to a fixed location with employees is like buying an airplane and trying to fly it with no lessons. Have you detailed enough cars to be able to handle anything that comes in your door? Have you detailed enough cars to be able to tell your $8 helper what to do on any car that comes in your door and instruct them accurately enough to leave them alone while you are working on another car, helping customers, answering the phone, talking to the insurance broker, paying your bills, placing ads, etc. etc. etc.?
I remember a member wanting to debadge his trunk lid and his badge had mounting holes and he asked for advice on how to fill them. Accumulator suggested that he get someone to weld them up and sand them down flush...but his advice was to find someone who was experienced at doing that, and by experienced he didn`t mean 5 or 10 times, he meant hundreds of times. Just like if you went to a dentist, you wouldn`t want to be the first guy he ever put a filling into, or the 10th, or even the hundredth. You`d want someone who could do it in his sleep.
You don`t want to be the shop owner who never polished a refinished panel before the picky customer`s who you burned through, and is going to trash talk you to the whole town.
I`m not clear why you are saying you just graduated high school but you`ve got a year of CC...my advice is to go to school and keep being "semi-professional" until you are done with school...at which point maybe you`ll be ready to be a professional detailer on more than one level.
Our departed buddy Relaited kept harping on the differences between being a "businessman" and a "technician". If you are going to run a few-man business, you need to be both, and good at both. I guarantee if you walk around the areas you are thinking of for businesses, and walk in and talk to some business owners, you`re not going to find any (that stayed in business) who graduated HS and started their business the next week, month, or year. They worked for someone etc. until they were journeymen (look that one up). I don`t know if they still have voc in school, but none of the auto mechanics, carpenters, machinists you are graduating with (if there are any...who works with their hands anymore) are planning on opening up their own garage, contracting business, or machine shop this year (if they have their feet on the ground).
Sorry, it`s late and it`s a pet peeve of mine about people who work at something just long enough to know enough to make themselves dangerous and then hang a shingle. And no offense, I remember the night you joined here, and 4 months of reading Autopia and polishing a few more cars doesn`t make you ready to run a fixed-base detailing shop. You`ve got relatives in business, you should be able to get this advice from them...or maybe you already did and that`s why you`d like a different answer here. I was young and impetuous once, too
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