Low start up business ideas

[crosseyedlion]

Hi all

Going for a complete change in lifestyle and hopping off the contractor gravy train. I'm finishing my current position in August and plan to work for myself again. The only problem is what to do....

I have a total of £2-3k to spend on start up (very low, I know) but can do my own website & marketing. I have additional working capital to weather the initial quiet times. I have a single garage and triple garage sized store room I can dedicate to it (although not able to operate anything too conspicuous from it).

The requirement is to make at least £100 per day, 5 days a week. Low start up cost, some retraining is ok, but it has to be less than a months worth.
I live in a fairly affluent part of a fairly big city, bordering the peak district - so a good audience for many services.

I've been working through my ideas, but I'm wondering if i'm missing something? - none of them seem to make use of my workspace at home.
I have an engineering degree and used to be a mechanic - but sometimes the obscure sounding businesses are the best.

- window cleaning - no experience but training available - pay seems limited?

- mobile mechanic - experienced, with most of the tools still - used to have my own garage

- mobile valeting - experienced - again, like window cleaning - pay seems limited.

- car sales - I'd have to take on premises and stock - biggest outlay and risk by far (it seems) - however most appealing long term prospect if it works.

- dog walking - I adore dogs, have plenty of experience with them and live in an ideal location to offer this.

- Handyman - Again, enough experience for most requirements, wouldn't take on anything I wasn't comfortable with. Although in my city (Sheffield) many when asked seem to consider £100 a day top money for one (!!!).

Any thoughts? What would you do? - small, simple, low risk business...

[crosseyedlion]

DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted.

At present I'm a Vehicle Durability Test Engineer (Contractor). Nothing like it nearer so ordinarily I'd relocate nearer to work (145 mile round trip) - but long term I want to be my own boss again anyway. That and I love living in Sheffield, my OH and I have a good life there.

£100 a day is the minimum, I would expect to grow from there. Being poorer and working for yourself beats working for a large corporate any time for me.

[crosseyedlion]

Dan_M5 said:

If you think there is low money in some of those ideas i suggest you look into them more

I'm just going off the going rates locally. Which I've looked into, willing to be proven wrong though.

The amazing thing is the discrepancy in rates between handymen in Sheffield and handymen in the South East. Really shocked me. There's a lot of very council-cash in hand types flying under the HMRC radar. That's not my style.

[crosseyedlion]

jeremyc said:

Bicycle repairs, second hand sales and hire?

Is there a significant cycling/mountain biking scene in the Peak District you could serve? Maybe offer mobile repairs/recovery as a differentiator?

Excellent suggestion and one I hadn't really thought of or looked into. From a quick Google, its going on the list!

[crosseyedlion]

Frimley111R said:

If you love dags () then that sounds like a good one but does it mean walking a ton of them in bad weather picking up poo all the way?

Car sales is easy to get into, you don't need anything to start other than the money to buy a car. Do that once or twice and see how you go. You can trade from home too if you like.

Random thought but there are always these people on the web who tell you how you can make a lot of money doing what they say, they can't all be bullstters.

Car sales for me would be tricky, I would really need to find a pitch. Living in a ground floor flat (which we own) with its own parking, but nothing I could sell cars from on anything more than occasionally.

I do have the advantage of being able to fix anything on a car, so profit margins may be larger than many dealers whilst volumes low.

[crosseyedlion]

BoRED S2upid said:

How is window cleaning limited? £100 a day is 10 houses a day 50 a week and is 10-20 minutes work per house our window cleaner certainly isn’t scratching around with his superbike and 2 works vans.

I don’t see car valeting as a goer myself everyone is doing it at every supermarket or disused scrap of land.

Everyone needs a reliable handyman.

What about a combination of businesses window cleaner plus seasonal businesses cycle hire or a chimney sweep I’ve alwats thought cycle hire would be an easy one if you had the space to store the bikes it wouldn’t cost too much to start they don’t need to be all singing carbon bikes just reliable and safe.

Lots of good advice there. I wasn't sure on the pay for window cleaners - realistically (unless the houses where very close) you'd get 2 in per hour. Once the admin & marketing is factored in £20 an hour as a limit seems a bit...limited. I appreciate I could be very wrong, will look into it more - it's my least researched plan thus far.

A combination of businesses is probably where i'm going to end up. But I'd rather give 1 my full attention.

[crosseyedlion]

48k said:

instead of valeting what about actual car detailing? Fewer customers but higher charge per customer.

Surely tricky to attract enough well paying custom without premises?

[crosseyedlion]

andyb28 said:

The guy who cleans my office windows drives a very nice m3.
Obviously is a very cash rich job, not sure how much of it goes through the books, but he certainly seems to be doing well.

Equally, the mobile valet that does my cars, does a fantastic job and because of that gets repeat business from me. His van holds a water tank for his pressure washer. My car looks like new every time he has been.

He charges £80 for my s3 and £90 for my defender, for a full valet inside and out, more for full detailing.
Lots of local dealers use him too, so he is up to his eyeballs in work.

There's quite a lot of crossover in facilities (Water tank in van and pure water system). Maybe this could be a good combination to do both - with careful marketing/management

[crosseyedlion]

Thanks all for your help.

Regarding matched betting, I've done that in fits and starts for years. Its absolutely not a sustainable income and misses the point of building a business. When the doors are closed you have nothing.

I've decided to stick to what I know, not the cheapest or easiest of options but setting up as a mobile mechanic - with the view to getting premises once busy enough.

Operating mostly from a van Its going to be hard, freezing and wet much of the year and income levels limited - but I know cars. Looking to focus more on vehicle inspections and sourcing where possible too. I'd also like to get my trailer licence and offer race support (I have 4 years experience running a TVR in the Tuscan challenge and more recently a T400 in Global Endurance Legends).

Wish me luck...

[crosseyedlion]

Shnozz said:

Given your background have you considered (even as a secondary sideline) a service akin to Rob Ingleby? Have a look at his website but as far back as I can remember he was the go to man to just go around inspecting TVRs for prospective buyers and then sending them a report on the subject matter.

Absolutely. Inspections are something I will be offering. TVR's are something of a speciality actually, The bulk of my mechanic experience has been working for a well known TVR Specialist.

Edited by crosseyedlion on Thursday 2nd August 09:37

[crosseyedlion]

InitialDave said:

Not to be a miserable bugger, but what's the insurance situation with this sort of stuff? Not just the typical mechanic "you worked on it and now it's buggered" disagreements, but with the inspections, how do you cover yourself for scenarios along the lines of "you told me this was a solid car, but it needs three grand spending on it"?

Being extremely thorough with records, photos and videos and being upfront with the customer in writing regarding your own limitations in inspecting is about the only effective insurance against this.

[crosseyedlion]

Frimley111R said:

User name said:

bearman68 said:

moustachebandit said:

What about servicing & repairs for classics?

Surprisingly under serviced market, generally affluent customer base, not time driven and classics are usually significantly easier to work on than moderns.

This. Need welding skills,fitting skills and time.
We get them all the time, and I bloody hate them. I try desperately not to do them, and customers are really insistent that I do. I really hate doing classic stuff. You need something called 'Imperial' spanner sizes. Whatever they are?? <shiver>

I've thought about this in the past, I definitely wouldn't want to have premises, so mobile, which does tend to limit the job size,
then I have to think, ok so I'm going to need at LEAST 2-3 jobs a day at £50 an hour to be worth bothering, which is unlikely.

As an "on the side" business it might work...

Plus you'll either be getting rained on, cooked on someone's drive or frozen or blown away while you're doing it all.

I can't wait!

[crosseyedlion]

WolfieBot said:

48k said:

WolfieBot said:

48k said:

£40 isn't going to pay the mortgage though.

Oh good point. I won't bother with it anymore then.

Sounds like it's escaped your notice but this thread is titled "low start up business ideas" and the OP is looking for low start up business ideas that will make him £100 per day five days per week. Matched betting is neither a low start up business idea nor a sustainable long term income for someone looking for a lifestyle change like the OP is.

You're welcome.

Well god forbid a thread might take a detour from the original title!

It didn't escape my notice. I was just defending the naive statement of it being a mugs game.

I'm well aware it's not going to pay off the mortgage or change my lifestyle but that doesn't change the fact that it's easy money to make on the side, in the evenings or on lunch breaks, which can easily add up to the bank needed for some of these low start-up business ideas.

Cheers

I'd appreciate if you didn't keep hijacking the thread with cr@ppy matched betting. It doesn't fit my requirements, I've done it before and it isn't sustainable, by now we're pretty much all aware of it too.

Give it a rest. It stinks of scam. It isn't but it stinks of it because it's a bit crummy and fragile.

[crosseyedlion]

I thought you where all worthy of an update.

So 'ALW Automotive Services' is now a thing, offering a mobile mechanic and carbon cleaning service. Total start up cost £2.5k - that covers marketing, t-shirts, website, van, painting the van, carbon cleaning machine, random tools I didn't already have.

Got myself a Transit connect for 1k, looked a bit tatty so I plastidipped it on the driveway - much smarter now and ready for sign writing.




I've been advertising through Facebook and hitting Sheffields business networking groups hard in the past week. To quite a bit of success! Everyone seems to want to know a good mechanic. I set myself a low target of £1k in labour/carbon cleans for September, with the bookings I have I'm 90% of the way there already!

The hard work has just begun really, but its been great fun setting it up. And nice to have some happy customers already...

[crosseyedlion]

48k said:

Got any "before" pics of the van? It looks very smart.
Best of luck with the business, please keep this thread updated with your ups and downs I'm sure it will be an interesting read.

Thanks all for your support and kind words!

This is the van before:




I'd love to keep you all updated on here, but I'm wary of being perceived to be advertising, so really walking a fine line now. I may have to have a chat with the admins as I'd love to keep you in the loop but need some do's & don'ts. It'd be nice to have some other small business threads on PH too.

This week (week 3) is shaping up to be excellent, I fixed someones broken spring today so they could get to work tomorrow and have quite a few bookings now! I'll hit my £100 per day (labour hours sold, average) target this week - which is a brilliant feeling. And I've got plenty of room for more.

About the carbon cleaning. Even though I had good results on my car, and anecdotally there's leagues of people who swear by it - the engineer in me was always a little skeptical/confused. And thinking that is fine.
What I will say is- the van had a cold start misfire until you gave it a blip of revs, with noticeable blue smoke wafting around until then. The carbon cleaner has fixed it! Its smoother, perfect cold start, feels peppier etc... (all the cliches...although its true in this case!).

In essence its an extremely simple machine, just a beefy hydrogen generator. To the point where I've decided not to market it yet and improve the machine instead. I may end up manufacturing them eventually (so you're allowed to take anything I say about it with a massive pinch of salt). It must burn off just enough carbon from multiple areas of the engine to allow the ECU to properly compensate for any deviations from original designs & tolerances. But it absolutely does something.

I'm hoping to rent somewhere like Blyton park for a day and do some before/after testing with data logging to prove/disprove the skeptics in 2019. If I can gather some figures myself in a controlled fashion, that'll be the ultimate marketing tool! But the bread and butter for now is the Mobile Mechanic'ing. None of the fun stuff would really be viable to do in my old job (I didn't have the time or energy)

Mostly though, I feel full of energy, the bags under my eyes have gone and my health is improving. This was a brilliant decision.

[crosseyedlion]

Also, forgot to mention.

The stunning thing so far is...customers seem to think I'm some sort of wizard. I'm doing nothing extraordinary, I'm just doing the job and paying attention to the process from initial contact through to completion with professionalism. Literally just doing the job. And it makes me stand out apparently.

This industry is in a terrible state.

[crosseyedlion]

Glasgowrob said:

one thing I will offer in way of advice,


never promise to fit someone in or "i'll get round to it"

always give yourself enough wiggle room in a day if theres any problems arise you can deal with it and still make the next appointment in good time.
it might be tempting to squeeze extra jobs in and its great when things go to plan but when things go wrong you let people down and that is the worst thing any business can do. a customer scorned outweighs a 100 good reviews and feedback.

as you seem to have found though the industry is in a terrible state and the attitude is shocking. be realistic when booking people in and if you do branch out down the line and take staff on experience and skill is not everything, a can do flexible attitude makes or breaks good staff. skills can be taught, experience gained but attitude is something you will struggle to adjust.

That's very wise advice, because those lessons I learnt in my old garage business! Building in lots of extra time into my day, already paying dividends. Yesterday I could finish at 2, today a 2 hour job turned into 4. No big deal.

And about staff, I hired a mid 60s very experienced mechanic in my old business. He was frankly horrendous and one of the reasons for the downfall of the old place. I'd much rather hire on attitude now.

Thank you all for the kind words and advice!

[crosseyedlion]

Tony Angelino said:

Hoofy said:

Tony Angelino said:

ReaperCushions said:

Congrats OP for getting it off the ground. Nice to see a success story in the making actually happen.

Maybe a few others of us can take the baton from you now you are on your way as a way of keeping the thread alive?

My situation is somewhat different, but I'm after similar ideas.

I have around 2 hours per day free right now outside of my regular job that I think I can spend more productively.

I don't have huge amounts of space to store things, or any particular manual skill (Like being a mechanic). My day job is in sales and marketing.

Ideally, it would be something that I could spend those 2 hours a day in front of a computer. I'm also happy to invest some cash so doesn't have to be a super low startup idea.

I don't like the idea of these borderline scams (Matched betting, FX trading, Crypto trading) etc... As I'd like to build a sustainable business that provides some degree of passive income in the future, so a business rather than a second job (Data entry, uber driving etc)

Any bright ideas for internet-based startups you can do at home?

Much the same situation so I am watching too.

If it's a business rather than a second job, I'd think about scalability and how you can take what you can do well and move it into a scalable business that ultimately means you can sit back and sleep while people throw money at you.

Thanks for the reply, neither my Mrs or myself have any particular specific skills - our day jobs are sales and accounts administration. We are competent on computers enough to get by but have no knowledge of programming or design.

Other half works 3 days a week and has a couple of days that she could fill doing something, we are both fairly reasonably accurate and conscientious but probably not enough to do proof reading or anything like that (just waiting now for somebody to pull my posts to bits!). We are both hard working and could be 'trusted' to work alone either for ourselves or for somebody else if one of these 'work from home' jobs actually existed.

If I was you I'd get good at something like Wix or Squarespace, Facebook, Ok at Photography (with a DSLR) and sort out the sea of small businesses run by people who are 'old school'. I've seen countless good businesses (particularly in the process of setting up this) with an online presence that does not reflect them well, in fact doing more damage than good.

And, if anyone is curious. The business is doing really well, still so much to do - which I'm having trouble getting around to due to too much demand. So much so I'm throttling back already so to speak. Last weeks average profit was near £150 a day, this week will be £110 (taking on less work on purpose). Not a lot of money, but fulfills my original criteria for very few hours actual work. Lets hope it continues.

If you're good with people, able to do all the setup inhouse and enjoy networking - setting up a simple service-based business is scarily easy in a city. I'm looking seriously at waste clearance for 2019 actually, and maybe premises for the mechanic's business. but that would mean taking on people...which brings a world of potential problems. It seems a shame to not start more new ventures though, I'm loving the process.

I'm spending lots of time walking the dog and enjoying life right now! I'll start to really ramp it up in a couple of weeks and see where the cracks appear!

[crosseyedlion]

Quick update folks.

The weather's turning but I'm still surviving! Not regretting the decision at all. Have throttled back the business a little to focus on cultivating the customers I want, leaning on my TVR and engineering background, which is starting to work...





I have started looking for premises, may have some exciting news and a proper update soon.

[crosseyedlion]

So Very Cold.