Hey Yall!

Welcome back to my newsletter covering all things business growth. If you’re new around here, make sure to read my first newsletter to see how the hell I ended up starting a cleaning business.

In todays newsletter, I’m covering:

1. Sales Recap

2. How to go from 0 to 1

3. Heard around the internet

4. Fire tweet of the week

Recap

I started working on the idea roughly in September of 2024, and had my first cleaning job on December 4th.

Officially launched business January of 2025.

In my last newsletter, I set the goal of doing $50k in sales for 2025, or ~$4,166 per month

Here’s what’s happened since devoting my full attention to this…

SALES

*Based on currently booked jobs

Going from 0 to 1

Getting your first customers

This was probably my number one question when starting this business. You’ve decided you want to start a little business. Maybe it’s a side hustle for some extra cash.

But now what?

There’s all the admin stuff you need to do when starting a business, especially if you want to do it legit, which I highly recommend. But today, let’s assume you’ve already done that, and you’re ready to take on your first customer.

The easy answer is…pay for it.

How does that make sense? You’re going to pay…. to get paid?

Yup..it’s called paying for leads. You’re going to create business profiles on Google, Yelp, Meta, Angies List, and Bark. These are ‘Pay to Play’ platforms. In exchange for a certain amount of leads per month, you pay them to contact the lead.

Leads are just that, you still have to pitch them and close these people, so there’s a sales element that can affect your close rate, and your Customer-Acquisition-Cost (CAC).

You also won’t close every lead. My hit rate is about 1 out of every 15 I close. So you need a decent amount of flow to get business.

When first starting out, Yelp and Google are the most useful. In fact, even though I hate Yelp, it’s actually really great at sending you 3-5 leads per week. This will run you about $600 per month. It sounds like a lot, but one of my highest generating customers that’s worth about $2k/month came in through Yelp.

At the beginning, in my opinion, this is totally worth it. Nobody knows who you are, and you NEED momentum. Think of it as a the price to get in the arena.

Another benefit is that you’re going to likely mess up some jobs. And as long as you don’t get any bad reviews, you’re going to gain experience and start learning the business. This is why I think paying for leads is useful.

I preferred this over going to friends and family and trying to sell them jobs, as I wasn’t quite confident that my business could do a good job. Personally, I’d rather mess up with a stranger and give them a discount, then mess up with someone I know. But that’s just me.

A note on Yelp and Google Local Services

You need to have optimized business profiles. They need to be Search-Engine-Optimized (SEO) friendly profiles, so that your ads can perform better. If you’re new to this, you can basically spend months learning SEO, but in a nutshell, you need Google to be able to read your profile, know what exactly you do, and where you do these services. Spend a day learning about this, it’s worth it.

Side note: I called and threatened Yelp that I was going to stop paying for the lack of leads, and they completely optimized my profile, and gave me 2 months of free advertising. After that, I started receiving 3-5 leads per week. And yes, after my 2 months of free leads, I stopped paying for advertising 🤣 eff Yelp.

There’s more tips and tricks, but the goal is to keep things stupid simple around here.

Recap to getting your first customer

1. Yelp / Google Local Service Ads

   1. Optimize your Profiles to include nice pictures and keywords

2. Family and Friends (duhh)

Heard around the internet

Real Estate

Must-listen Pod of the Week

Fire Tweet of the Week 🔥 😎 

I definitely leisure like a european and dream like an american. Not sure I work like an asian 🤣 

If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe. Really Appreciate it.

Cheers,

Dave

PS. Reply to this email giving me your thoughts, questions, and wtf’s. I read every email.