12 simple ways to grow your car detailing business

These are 12 simple ways to grow your car detailing business.

• Focus on limited services initially.
• Understand marketing is crucial for business growth.
• Communicate value clearly to customers.
• Prioritize customer experience over everything.
• Don't chase every new tool or trend.
• Focus on your bigger picture goals.

Now, I've been able to take my detailing business from zero to over $20,000 per month within a year using these 12 simple ways.

Okay, so stay until the very end because the 12th one is one of the most important.

Okay. So number one is when you're first starting out, don't offer every service you can think of. That's right, Gabe. You tell them how it's done. Try and focus on just offering one or maybe two services and really hone in on those two services.

Trying to open up for complicated IT by offering five or six or seven different services is just going to confuse you. It's also going to confuse the customer.

Okay. Customers get something called decision fatigue when they have too many services to choose from. They often will just choose none. No. Or they'll just go for the easiest or cheapest option.

So when you're first starting out, make it really simple for yourself by offering just one or two different services. When I first started, I would only offer a basic full detail service. So it was a full interior detail plus an exterior wash and some sort of sealant, some sort of paint protection, three to six-month paint protection to add some value to the client, to the customer.

Okay. It only needs to be a full detail service. This is one of the most popular services. And then as you get more skilled, as you get more business, you can start to expand your services and start to offer more services like paint correction, ceramic coating, and engine bay detailing.

Number two, marketing is just as important as actually detailing the cars. Okay. So when I first started out, I just thought, you know, if I did a good job, customers would keep coming, right? No, it's not. And it wasn't until I realized that it's not actually about the job that I do, although that plays a part. It's more about the marketing and the messaging that I put out there to get customers in the door.

Because if you don't have customers, then you don't have a business, right? That's right. If you just think doing a good job is going to attract more and more customers, then you need to think again because it is not how it works. Although word of mouth is very powerful and doing a good job will often mean that person will refer you to another person, which is good. But in order to really scale, in order to really grow, you need to focus on marketing.

What you say to your customers and how you say it is really crucial to how they interpret your business and whether or not they want to use your services and the value that you perceive. Okay?

Another really important point is value is just a perception until they actually use your services. Okay? So they always say, you know, don't judge a book by its cover, but that's exactly what we do as human beings. We judge people and businesses by what they look like, okay?

So if your business looks kind of, you know, like average, if you're just working on average cars, you're doing disaster details, you know, you're dealing with people in the lower demographic, then that's going to resonate with other people that are similar to those sorts of clients or that sort of marketing, right? So really think about your marketing, what you're saying within your marketing and your messaging and really start to learn and hone in on those skills and you'll start to grow your business.

Okay? So number three is focus on the results and not the tools you use, not the brands you use and not even the process that you use necessarily. I mean, everyone has a different process, right? There's a million ways to skin a cat and none of them are the most perfect way. What works for someone may not work for someone else.

You got it dude. Everything can work, but not everything can work for everyone. So the most important thing to focus on is the result that you actually get for the customer. They don't care about what tools you use. They don't care about how you actually get them that result. They just want to know they're going to have a clean car that is protected, okay?

They don't care if you have a $100 APC or a $10 APC; to them, it's all the same. They just want to ensure they get a great result.

So if you start focusing on the result as opposed to the tools and equipment and brands and even the process, then you're going to start to think about the customer first as opposed to yourself because it's a customer-first business that we're actually building. If the customer doesn't value what you're doing, then why are you doing it?

Here I come. The customer doesn't see value in a $1000 ceramic coating as opposed to a $100 ceramic coating Even if they did the same thing, then why are you investing in that tool or product?

Okay, not saying there is a difference between them or whether there is or there isn't. It's just an analogy that I'm giving you. Okay? There needs to be value for the customer.

If it's value for the customer and they can see the value, then it's valuable for you. If not, there's no point in doing it. You're just increasing your margins, your cost margins, and that's not how you build profitable businesses.

Okay? Number four is don't compete on price alone. Right? Often when you start out, especially for me when I first started out, I was looking at other competitors in the space, and it was going, oh, if I just charge a little bit less than them, you know, then I'm going to pick up more business than there. Well, that is entirely false, simply because when you start undercutting the market, what typically happens is you start dealing with customers who don't value the work that you do.

And they are the ones that complain. They are the ones that hunt for bargains. They are the ones that leave negative reviews. Those aren't the customers you want to deal with. Another reason is you're actually hindering the entire industry by undercutting the market.

Okay? Because if everyone starts competing on price, then what's going to happen? Everyone's just going to try to underprice the next business, and then the whole industry just starts coming down, right? We don't want to do that. We want to have integrity within this business and value the work that we do.

Right? So charge more than your competitors because it's actually helping them, right? It's lifting the whole market as a whole. Okay? So if more car detailers are increasing their prices, considering they're still doing valuable work, then the industry as a whole starts to become on this higher pedestal, right?

And we all start to have higher profit margins. So we can actually help each other out by pricing our services and our business at better prices. Higher quality prices. Another reason is you just have better quality customers, all right? People that are willing to pay a couple thousand dollars for a detail. They don't ask about price. They don't question price. They don't leave negative reviews. They're happy to have their car.

They value the work that we do. They're happy to leave their car with us for a couple of days if necessary. And it's just a much smoother transaction with these kinds of customers, as opposed to customers who, you know, they want to try and knock you down dollar off dollar detail. It's like, ha, come on, you know why? Like, I don't want to deal with that, like have your $10, you know what I mean? Like, there's no way I'm doing hundred dollar details.

I want to focus on higher price services, higher profit margins and deal with customers that I actually want to deal with that value my work.

Number five is sticking with one marketing channel when you're first starting now. So when I first started my business, I was like, oh, I need to do Google Ads. Oh, I need to do Facebook ads. Oh, I need to post on social media every day. Oh, I need to build a website.

Oh, I need to build these profiles online. I need go door knocking. I need printing business car flyers. So many different ways to market your business. Okay? But if you think you need to do all of them, you're going to become overwhelmed.

And then what ultimately happens is you just sit on the couch and you go, I'll do it tomorrow. Ah, you know, next week, you know, and then that tomorrow, next week never actually comes, okay? Because we've just caused overwhelming amount of, you know, we're just overwhelming ourselves.

Okay? So we want to make it simple. I highly recommend you stick to one marketing channel at the very start. If you're going to focus on a Google business profile. Focus on a Google business profile, okay? Get that up and running.

Once that's, you know, got a bunch of reviews, you've updated it, then move on to the next one. Ok, I'm going to start posting, you know, maybe four or three times a week on Instagram and Facebook. Because you can do simultaneously, you can post on both, right?

And it's like, okay, now once you've started to generate some traction on social media, then it's like, okay, I'm going to look into some paid advertising now, right? Maybe I'll start with meta ads, or maybe I'll start with Google Ads. The rule of thumb is just to stick with one marketing channel, okay? And then start to expand as you go. Similar to the services.

Don't try to do everything at once. Like the saying goes, if you try to catch two rabbits, you end up catching none. Okay, so go for one.

All right, so I just want to say if you want to learn how to take your car detailing business from under $10,000 per month, or maybe you're just starting to over 10,000, you know, potentially $20,000 and beyond per month. Then I've got a free video in the description below to free tr.

It basically just explains my story how I went from zero to over 20k per month within a year. I kind of break it down for you; it's an all-in-one. So go check that out.

Yeah. Maybe potentially we could work together in the future if you wanted some more sort of one-on-one support, we could do something like that. Okay, so just check that out below.

All right, so number seven is prioritize clear communication and customer experience. Okay. If you can communicate the value that your service offers clearly, punctually and you know, concisely, then the customer is going to have a better understanding of what you actually do.

Yes, definitely. If you can deliver an exceptional customer experience, they're going to keep coming back and they're going to tell all their friends about you.

Okay. It's more important to deliver a better customer experience than it is to do an incredible job on their car. Okay. It's not like that's not important, but I would rather go above and beyond with the customer experience, the one-on-one connection and relationship that I build with the customer as opposed to spending an extra hour vacuuming up some dog care.

It's more important you build that rapport and that customer relationship than it is you spend more time on their car. Because at the end of the day, this is a service business, meaning we are a people-to-people business offering a service. We're never gonna be hundred percent perfection, okay?

It's more like the customer values come into your workplace, come to, you know, you going to them. If you're a mobile detailer, they value dealing with you, right?

As the business owner, the business themselves, they just value dealing with your business.

Right. They don't necessarily, you know, everyone can do a similar job. Okay. How you stand out is how you build the relationship with that customer. That's what keeps them coming back.

That's how you can really start to grow a community. Business is sort of changing in a way that's more important to build community because everyone has a car detailing business these days. It's similar to like restaurants or cafes, right?

Think about going to a cafe. There's a million cafes around. Okay? But you go to a particular cafe because it's a good vibe, it's a good culture. You can meet people you know there, you know, it's a good place to network. Okay.

And they do good food to top it off, food and coffee to top it off. But it really is a community and the culture that they're building. Same with our car detailing businesses. If we can build that sort of community, that culture and a vibe that the customers experience when they use our services, you're going to retain that customer for a much longer period of time, okay?

Okay. So number eight is to develop systems and processes within your business, okay? Without systems or processes, your business is just going to become a mess and fall apart, okay?

One of the best ways to get more customers is just to send an email out to existing customers or your list of emails to say, hey, running a promotion this week. If you're interested in getting your car detailed, let us know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You'll be surprised at how many people respond to that email. Okay? Or how many people become interested in getting their car detailed again. It's much easier to get an existing customer to use your services again than it is to try to get a new customer.

So by developing systems and processes within your business, using things like a CRM customer relations management system where you can send ongoing emails, educational marketing messages and things like that, you will be able to retain customers and keep customers coming back, okay?

And now systems and processes don't just relate to marketing, okay? They also relate to the actual work you do. Fulfillment. Everything needs to be systematized within your business so that you can find the bottlenecks, okay?

If something's going wrong, you need to be able to pinpoint what it is that's causing that particular thing to go wrong. You're getting bad reviews. Why are you getting bad reviews?

Does it come down to the job you're doing or is it something else? You're not getting reviews at all. Why are you not getting reviews at all?

Okay? Are you not sending out a follow-up message or an email? Or maybe you're not getting any work? Why are you not getting any work? There's a reason as to why you're not getting work.

Maybe you're not getting leads coming into your business. Why is that happening? You need to be able to systematize every process within your business, okay?

So that basically someone else from the outside can come into your business, look at a document or a video and understand exactly how to do a certain task within your business.

Okay? Anything from sending an email. How often do you send an email out to your list and what does that email say? Or how do you detail a wheel?

Right? If you're going to hire staff, they need to know how to detail a wheel. But do you have a system for detailing a wheel? Do you do it the same every single time and only change it if you want to test something new?

Right? To see if you can become more efficient and more effective? Having a system and a process for every single part of your business is super important and you can use software to help you do that and obviously using videos and documents to document all of your systems within your business.

Okay. Number nine. And this is something that I'm guilty of my, myself and it's shiny object syndrome. Okay? Always trying to chase the next best thing.

Oh, there's a new tool on the market, let's buy it. You know, there's a new coating brand out there. Let's buy it. You know, I need to buy all the tools and equipment and it's just like you don't. No, no, no.

Stop trying to chase the next best thing and just focus on what you have and what you can do with the results you have. Yes, it's good to research and understand trends or new technology or new things that are coming, but don't let it distract you from what is most important for your business right now.

I guarantee the most important thing for your business right now is getting more customers in the door, making more money. Because is buying that new tool or bit of technology or ceramic coating really going to make you more money? Because if it's not, if it's not a direct return on investment, then is it really important for you right now?

Maybe you can wait until later. Maybe you can spend your money on more marketing. Maybe you can spend your money doing other things. Maybe you can spend your time out there networking, collaborating with other local businesses to generate more business.

Okay. Because the early stages of business, the most important thing you can be doing is essentially hustling. You really do just need to be in that hustle mindset.

We're a community, local community-based business. Meaning we have to be a part of our community. We have to network with other businesses, other people in our community. Show that we are an active member in our community and people will trust you.

People, you will build authority with people and people will begin to use your services. Okay, so I kind of went on around, but like, basically what I'm getting at is don't try and chase the next best thing. You know, know, shiny object syndrome is a real thing and it can be distracting from the task at hand or the real needle movers that are actually going to push your business forward.

Focusing on what's going to push your business forward, generate more cash flow, generate more customers. That's most important for your business.

Okay. All right, number 10. Okay. I kind of touched on this earlier, but customer service is more important than the detailing work you do. Okay? Like I said before, it's all about the customer experience.

Okay? If you can deliver exceptional customer experience, they're going to keep coming back. Okay, so how do you do this? How can you have better customer service than, you know, the guy down the road?

Okay, well, it's simple. Be punctual, have integrity. Speak with manners. Don't swear in front of the customer. Okay? Be polite, greet them with their first name. Using their first name in sentences when talking to them can really make a smile on someone's face.

People love when you use their first name. Boy. I want you guys to do a little test. Next time you're speaking to someone, I want you to actively use their first name in conversation and see how their eyes light up.

Okay? I'm telling you now, people love it when they hear their first name. A very simple tip, but if you can use people's first names actively in conversation when you're speaking to them, they're going to really admire you.

They'll lower their guard a little more. They'll open up to you. Okay? It's just a trust connection that you'll build. It's as simple as like, hey, John, how's it going? Or like, John, that's a really nice car. Or like, so this is what I think we can do for you today, John.

Okay? Just using their first name subtly in conversation with them. Don't overdo it, all right? Don't seem awkward. All good. Don't say John. Hey, John. So is that good? John. Sweet John. You know, you want it to come across natural and authentic.

Okay. Now I literally am filming this on a new day because I realized I forgot number eight. Don't know if you picked up on that, but I'm wearing new clothes and number 11.

So number 11 is ditching limiting beliefs. Okay? Now this all comes down to sort of, if you think it, it will happen. It's sort of like that law of attraction.

Putting energy out is the energy you'll get back. Focusing on something is exactly where your energy will go. And it's exactly the same as, you know, what you believe, right? So if you believe you can't charge $300 for a detail, then guess what? You're not gonna be able to charge $300 for a detail.

But if you believe that you can charge $2,000 for a paint correction, well, guess what? You're going to be able to charge $2,000 for a paint correction. Now I don't know how this works, and without getting too woo-woo on it, there is a psychological law of something that's unexplainable, where you put focus and energy into a particular thing, you will just get what you want from it.

Right? If you truly focus on something or have an attraction, it tends to happen. I want you to do a little test, okay? So the next time you're driving, right, what I want you to do is focus on red cars, okay?

So next time you drive down the road, focus on red cars only. I only want you to notice red cars and then I want you to count how many red cars you see, right? And then something crazy happens in your brain, right, you will only notice red cars.

So you'll get to a point, right, where you're just looking and all you see is red cars; red cars everywhere, okay? Guarantee this happens.

Now maybe you live in a country where they don't produce red cars, you're out of luck. But if you're in a country where they produce multi-color cars like the state of Australia, New Zealand, then you're going to see a lot of red cars.

If you focus on that, it doesn't just work for red, any color. You start focusing on it; your brain switches off every other color and it will only see that particular car.

The same can apply for, you know, the amount of money you want to make in your bank account each month. If you want to make 10k your bank account every month or you want to do 30 cars a month, start focusing on that.

I guarantee if you really put your energy and focus on that, you will achieve that. Okay? Because you start to do every little thing to make that happen.

All right? And this kind of leads into the next one, all right, number 12. And probably one of the most important of them all is to focus on the bigger picture and not just the daily details that you do.

Because if you can have that North Star, right, that goal that you're aiming for, then the little hiccups along the way don't matter because you know you're on the right path towards that North Star.

Okay? So what I want you guys to do is just to write down some goals where you want to get to. We're almost at the end of 2025. We’re almost at the end of 2024. We're coming into 2025. Okay? Let's really start to get clear on the direction where we want to go.

If we have no direction, then we're not going to go anywhere, okay? We need to have direction and focus on the bigger picture. What do you want your business to look like in one year from now? Two years, three years, four years?

Okay, what do you see? How do you see yourself living your life and you know, how do you see your business? It's really important that you can kind of imagine what that looks like and visualize what that looks like.

It is really important. I truly believe in the power of visualization. And if you can visualize that goal and say three years from now what you want your business to look like and what you want your life to look like, you know, and then start doing little things to work towards that North Star, towards that end goal.

Not an end goal, but towards that goal. It's super important, step by step. Because then you can start to really cut out things that aren't contributing to that North Star or that goal you're wanting to achieve.

Eating takeaways, is this really helping me get to that end goal? It's like, well, no, takeaways are generally bad for me. You know, I’m wasting money. I could have saved it on like cooking a home-cooked meal or, you know, maybe it's watching Netflix.

You know, I'm not saying don't watch Netflix and don't eat takeaways, but it's like really start to think about your actions and whether or not they are helping you achieve that end goal that you want to get to or that North Star that you want to get to. Okay?

So start thinking about the bigger picture, okay? It's not about the little details, although they do matter, right? By brick, you will get there, focus on that goal.

And I can assure you, if you can visualize that and you stick to it and you are consistent, you will 100% achieve your goals. And I truly believe that anyone can do this sort of business. Anyone can grow this sort of business.

And I truly believe that business, starting a business, growing a business is one of the most rewarding and beneficial jobs, careers that you can do.

It gives you independence, it gives you the ability to control your life and your income and it has exponential amount of income that you can earn. There is an unlimited amount of wealth out there and it doesn't take much to take a little bit of it, you know, grow and contribute back to the community.

Okay? Become a member, become someone of importance, you know, because this world is going crazy out there. It's just we can't rely on the government to be feeding us. We can't rely on the healthcare system to be giving us the right medicines. You know, we need to essentially build this life up for ourselves, you know, build this business for ourselves.

It gives you the financial freedom, the financial control to really make decisions. It ensures that you can live a life of freedom essentially to have the power of choice.

Maybe you don't want to go to work today. Maybe, you know you want to buy that nice car. Maybe you want to go on that holiday. Maybe you don't want to work with that client.

You know, it gives you the power of choice. Not having to worry about the bills. It's something that's truly uplifting.

That's enough from me today. Hope you enjoyed the video. I hope you got a lot out of it. If you did, please subscribe. Please check out that training video below and see you in the next one.