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Last week, I talked about why a home service business is the best type of business to start in 2023.

In fact, it's becoming increasingly likely that a home service business will be the next business that I build.

For the last month, I've been researching successful home service businesses to better understand how they operate.

I went into it thinking that building a home service business meant that you either had to do the labor yourself or hire a team of employees to handle it (neither of which sounds all that appealing to me).

But then I discovered a third option that is waaaay better.

I call it the Automated Home Service Business.

The Automated Home Service Business

While researching home service businesses, I stumbled upon a small corner of Twitter dedicated to these automated home service businesses.

It turns out there are hundreds of people building local home service businesses without ever stepping foot inside a customer's home.

Instead, they focus on building marketing systems that attract new customers and then they outsource the labor to local independent contractors.

So if you were starting an automated window cleaning business, you would need to do two things:

1. Find customers
2. Find independent contractors that have their own equipment and already know how to clean windows.

Let's take a look at both of these things.

Finding Home Service Customers

Getting customers is actually the easy part because there is a huge demand for high-quality home service businesses.

First, you'll build a website that explains your services and gives people the ability to book an appointment.

Then you start driving traffic to your website. To do this you can:

• Run paid Ads (Google LSA, Facebook, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, etc)
• Promote your business by posting regular comments on the NextDoor neighborhood app and in your local Facebook groups.
• Set up a Google Business Profile to help you rank in Google
• Knock on doors and hand out flyers
• Cold call or cold email businesses that could use your services
• Network with strategic partners that could be a source of leads

Your goal will be to test out a variety of marketing tactics until you find the ones that work best for your niche and your location.

Then, you just double down on whatever is working.

Finding Home Service Laborers

Finding high-quality independent contractors is going to be a bit more tricky. You need to find experienced window cleaners with their own equipment and they must be willing to work for less than what you charge the customer.

Ideally, you want to do a 50/50 revenue split with your contractors.

So if you charge a customer $500 to clean their windows, you'd need to find a contractor willing to do the work for $250.

To make this work you have to do two things:

1) Charge premium prices for your services
2) Find window cleaners that charge below-market rates

In order to charge premium prices, you'll need to answer your phone when people call and you'll need to provide exceptional customer service. People will gladly pay for quality and convenience.

To find cleaners, I'd recommend following this advice from automated home service business wizard, Sergio Silesky.

To summarize what Sergio says, you will post on NextDoor and in local Facebook groups asking if anybody has a great window cleaner that they would recommend.

When you do this you'll get people recommending window cleaners and you'll get window cleaners reaching out to you directly.

Contact all of those cleaners and ask them about their experience, availability, and pricing.

If they seem like a good fit, ask if they'd be interested in helping out with some of your window cleaning jobs. 

Explain that you'll send them a steady stream of customers and you'll also handle all of the customer service, scheduling, and billing. All they have to do is clean the windows and they'll make the same amount of money per job as they do now.

Putting It All Together

Now that you have a team of window cleaners and a stream of customers, your job is to answer phones, play matchmaker, and make sure your customers are getting 5-star service.

There are a many tools that will make all of this easier but the most important one will be your CRM/booking software. 

The tool that I hear about the most is called BookingKoala.

With BookingKoala, your customers can get instant estimates on your website, schedule services, and submit payments online.

BookingKoala also helps you onboard and manage your independent contractors and send marketing campaigns to past customers. 

In the coming weeks, I'll dive more into the specifics of how to set all of this up, but I just wanted to give you a little glimpse into the world of automated home service businesses.

It's been super fun learning about all of the people that are building these businesses while working a full-time job or traveling the world.

And the cool part is that you can get started for less than $1,000 and you really only need to put in 5-10 hours of work per week once you get the ball rolling a bit.

No employees, equipment, or supplies needed.

All you have to worry about is getting the customers, keeping them happy, and then finding a team of reliable independent contractors.



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