Difficulties You Faced Starting Out

The difficulty most people will always have is employees. I have some great employees now, but have gone through many before them.
 
Hopefully three years down the line I can hire a couple of people. I tried this last summer and this guy could not get right for nothing.
 
JohnKleven said:
The difficulty most people will always have is employees. I have some great employees now, but have gone through many before them.
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This is a big one. I went through a few periods where I refused to hire someone because the bad taste left from certain employees. Finally have some trust built with my current team and its a big difference.
 
toyotaguy said:
do you want to knock out 3-5 simple details a day, or one full paint correction? decide what end of the market you want to tackle and go for it. You may get some cross market happening, but I would assume little.



I am selling my extractor now because I rarely do interiors anymore (don't advertise it) and folex can work on those that i do do. I have my business focused on paint correction, with little emphasis on interior work beyond the basics...no carpet shampooing



oh and pricing....price yourself a little lower to gain clients, but not too low. Or advertise it as a "special". I made the mistake of doing stuff at ridiculously low pricing when I started out and now that I charge the normal rate, about double what I was, I have lost a bunch of the 1st clients I ever had because they were used to the "$100 full detail."
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I ran into this exact same problem. I was charging $100-140 for FULL details ( 80-90% correction, cleaning under the hood and interiors) andhad alot of customers then when I started charing $300-400 a year later most of those first customers where like..."The last time you did my vehicle you only charged me this...!"



I still think today the troubles I face is getting customers (which I mean staying book 5 days a week every week!). There are so many mobile people out there that its alot fo competition to compete with.
 
Here in Buffalo, NY there are not many mobile guys....I could probably count them all on one hand. I have ran into customers that go to their favorite car wash/detail shop and swear up and down you're not doing the job right. Once I've educated those customers on what auto detailing is they don't mind paying what I charge to work on their cars. I face much competition from a major car wash and detail shop and from the mom and pop car washes. One of the mom and pop car washes took one of my flyers and tailored the format of my flyer to match their prices and services. I didn't get offended by that, but I did get offended when the joker said I'm over charging people.
 
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