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From Mark Ford, founder, Palm Beach Research Group: I get my nails done at the office. It’s not because Jeremy Piven had his done on Entourage. It’s to save time—which is money, right?
Joy, my manicurist, has a regular job in a hotel salon. But she likes working on me because she likes to move around and I pay her well. (It’s worth it to me.)
So I asked Joy if she was doing “mobile” work for anyone else. She wasn’t, she said. But she was thinking about it.
The next time I saw her, she told me she had put a $5 ad on Facebook and it had brought her three new clients. If one of those clients stayed with her for just six months, I figured that $5 ad would give her $550 in extra business—which is a return of 10,900%!
I told her what an accomplishment that was and advised her to do it again.
She did my nails this morning. I asked her about it. She had thrown caution to the wind, she told me, spending $50.
Her return? Ten new clients!
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I asked her how many of them were going to be ongoing customers. She said at least a third—possibly half. If she spends another couple hundred dollars and has the same level of response, she’ll have more customers than she can possibly handle.
And these customers are paying more. I asked her about that. She said she was doing only manicure-pedicure jobs and was charging $60 to $70—plus, she gets $10 to $20 extra if the job is more than five minutes from her home.
The bottom line is that as a mobile manicurist, she’s making over $50 per hour.
That’s not a fortune, but it’s not bad. Working full time, you’re talking about $100,000 per year. Only 4.9% of women earned over $100,000 per year in 2015, according to the U.S. Census. And what about all those women working in those little shops that sell manicures for $20? They are lucky to get paid minimum wage.
Since I’m happy to pay Joy $70 to come to my office, I assumed that most of her clients were people like me: busy businessmen who were afraid to be seen in a nail shop and preferred the safety and efficiency (you can have phone meetings while they work) of the office. I was surprised to learn that all of the 10 people who answered her ads were women.
Half of them were affluent stay-at-home moms who didn’t feel they had time to stop at a nail shop and older affluent women who saw home service as a luxury.
During her recent visit, we brainstormed other marketing strategies: catering to weddings and bridal showers and other functions where women might enjoy the luxury of on-site work.
I told Joy that if I were she, I’d turn her service business into something that has equity. Find an unemployed or underemployed manicurist as good and friendly as she is and send them out to the customers Joy can’t service. We talked about what Joy’s cut would be, how she could ensure that her workers wouldn’t steal clients from her, and other business concerns.
“Just think,” I said. “A year from now, you could be making $200,000 per year as CEO of your own mobile beauty service, working from your home, having your nails done by one of your employees while you book new customers on the phone.”
Joy’s experience exemplifies two things I like about service businesses. They are relatively easy and cheap to start. And if you hit the right niche in a market, you can grow what I call a self-employment company into a true entrepreneurial business with equity.
Service businesses tend to grow steadily during good times and survive during bad times, so long as you provide excellent service. And if you do provide great service, the marketing challenge is usually simple and cheap, which has been the case with Joy.
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In my late teens and early 20s, my friend Peter and I had three small businesses: a housepainting company, a carpentry service, and a pool installation business. But there are other great service businesses you can start at minimal cost: lawn care and gardening and tree trimming if you like to work outside, carpet cleaning, plant maintenance, and office cleaning if you prefer to stay indoors, and mentoring, coaching, and tutoring if you have special talents…
No matter what service business you’re interested in trying, the key to success is to establish strong relationships with customers who can afford to pay what you want to make. Even if you’re just starting out, I recommend growing your customer base by doing these four things:
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Empathize with customer problems and shape your service accordingly.
Only by putting yourself in your customers’ shoes—taking the time to figure out not only their wants and needs, but also their worries, fears, and hopes—can you develop products or services that will truly help them. Joy solves a problem for her customers by saving them the hassle of going to the salon.
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The narrower the niche, the more profitable the market.
Customers will believe that you genuinely care about them when they have a reasonable basis for that belief. By specializing in delivering a product or service that is aimed directly at them, you take an immediate step in that direction. Joy’s decision to do “mobile” manicuring narrowed her niche to affluent people willing to pay more. Nearly every service business has this opportunity—even landscaping and massage therapy.
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Make your promotional messages personal.
Building close relationships with customers is all about communicating on a personal level (as it is with family and friends). That’s true of any direct contact you may have with your customers in person or over the phone—and it’s just as true of the indirect contact you have with them in your marketing materials. Even if it’s a flier or a Facebook ad.
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Ask for referrals.
Once your customer likes you (and you will know it because they will say so), ask them for referrals. Most of the business Peter and I got from our service businesses came from customers who wanted to help us out.
I love the potential of Joy’s little business. In fact, if I hadn’t promised my wife a hundred times I would not get into any more businesses, I’d offer to become her partner.
I’ve got all sorts of exciting ideas about how to grow her new venture. Once she has a loyal customer base, she can offer other services like haircuts, facials, massage therapy—and then hire employees to do the work for her. The sky’s the limit!
Reeves’ Note: Joy’s foray into entrepreneurship generates what Mark calls “subversive income.” It’s the fastest—and most reliable—method we’ve encountered to make a million dollars or more, even in a bad economy.
Mark has been studying “subversive income” secrets for more than 30 years… and he’s generated a very substantial multimillion-dollar fortune from them. If you have a willingness to invest a small amount of time and keep an open mind, click here to learn how you, too, can earn money the “subversive income” way.
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