Small Town Beginner Made $50K in His First 2 Months (No Experience)⏐Ep. #254

- I had seven jobs and my revenue was 46,825. - Whoa! - I'm showing up to these quotes in my mini van. (laughs) It's a beat up mini van too. - You knew nothing about this industry going into it. You heard my podcast to join some Facebook groups and your first two months you've done just under $50,000 in sales. - Yeah, exactly, yeah. - That's incredible. - The playbook's working. - All right, almost exactly a year ago, I had a guy on the pod named Cinco. Cinco started a line striping business in Waco, Texas and he was crushing it. It was one of my best episodes ever. If you're on Spotify or listening to audio only, that's gonna be episode number 99 that went live on December 2nd, 2024. And then just a week or two ago, I found a guy named Hunter in Springfield, Missouri that started a line striping business. And what do you know? He got inspired to start this business based on that episode. So this is kind of another stump grinding situation all over again. But Hunter leveled it up a notch and his business is crushing it even more. He's done $50,000 very profitably his first two months without any knowledge or experience in the field. So of course, I asked him, how are you finding customers? How do you start this business? And how can people copy you? Please enjoy. So Hunter, why don't you tell us who you are and what you do? - Yeah, great. Thanks for having me on, Chris. My name's Hunter Shenork. I run 417 striping and ceiling. And it's a small seal coating, crack filling, striping business in Springfield, Missouri. - And how long ago did you start this? - I started this in September. My first job was September 27th. - Of 2025? - Of 2025, yep, yep. I had the idea or I first started looking into it back in May. So it took me a few months to pull the trigger. But it's been active for just a couple of months, so. - So two full months you've been active? - Correct. - And what is your revenue to date? What did your monthly revenue look like for your first two months? - I'll go September 27th, my first job to October 31st. So just over a month. First month, I had four jobs and my revenue was 22,874. - Holy crap, from four jobs. Those are big jobs. - Yeah, and that's something that I liked about the industry was, was it is a little, a little bit of a bigger ticket. And then in November, I had seven jobs and my revenue was 46,825. So we had a big jump, yeah. - You had almost twice as many jobs and your average job size went up as well. - Yep. - So, Andre, I don't know if you know this, but I'm an expert in industry 'cause I spoke to Cinco a year ago about his business. So clearly, I know everything. I know those are good numbers. Just kidding. I don't know anything about this industry, which is why we're talking. - That's what kickstarted this though was your, was your inner, your podcast with Cinco. And I thought, man, that's a great idea. And I'm sure we'll talk about it, but I thought, I thought I would be 100% in striping and it's turned out to be, I like the seal coding aspect a lot more, but. - Isn't that beautiful? Like the business never ends up where it starts. And that's how it should be. And that means you're flexible enough to go with the energy and to go where the product market fit is the most. - Yeah, sure. - So, I'm gonna get into how you acquired those customers. That's a key part of this. I wanna talk about your equipment, where you found the machine, what type of machine, et cetera. But before we go there, what made you flip from primarily line striping to primarily seal coding? And before you even answer that, let me interrupt myself. What is seal coding? - Yeah, so seal coding is, you've got some old asphalt think of parking lot, but also a driveway. And over time, you just have, it gets worn down. So it starts to fade. It turns a lighter shade of gray. You start to get some cracks developing. And so seal coding is where you are applying, whether it's by squeegee or by spraying, just a thin, super thin layer of asphalt to resurface it, make it look nice and hopefully prevent more cracks forming. - And those videos are so satisfying. - Yeah, it's fun. - Watching people do that. - Yep, yeah, very fun to watch. - So, what was it about my episode with Cinco that got you interested in this industry? - In terms of background, I was selling, I had run a small marketing agency and we had put it on the marketplace to sell. And we were getting some good amount of interest. And then in May, it started to, we were in talks trying to finalize an LOI and everything. And that was for me a point of, okay, I know this isn't gonna be forever. It's gonna be self-sold. What do I do next? And so I was binging a lot of your content, actually. And just trying to figure out, okay, what's a good idea? I wanna do something in the service space, blue collar services, home services. I liked that it was a lot of B to B. In my experience, that seems to be better customers. I don't think that always holds true, but in general, they're gonna pay without complaining as much or just they're used to paying more. And then I also like that it's a higher ticket item. So powerwashing, that's great, but doing 500 bucks. Yeah, we're less, right? A couple hundred bucks here and there, you really have to get a lot of jobs. All right, so you heard the episode, what were your next steps? It just kind of percolated a little in my mind. I wasn't in a big rush. Luckily, I connected with this guy who does striping in Utah. Well, we were part of some golf group on X, and I just reached out to him. We had a little conversation. He's been super helpful. That's what really convinced me, okay, this is a great industry. I've heard it from two people now. There's a lot of potential here. So honestly though, after that, my next step was just get this company sold. And so it was kind of put on pause for a few months. And in those few months, the biggest thing I did was just join some of the Facebook groups. For line striping and seal coding? For line striping. At this point in time, seal coding, I knew nothing was not on my radar. I thought a hundred percent line striping. Yeah, just tried to learn a little bit about the equipment, what everyone in the industry was doing. And then in July, I ended up buying my first machine. And that's when my business sold, but there was a little bit of a transition period, took a little bit of time off, and then really, really got going in September. What did that first job look like, both from a revenue perspective and a profit perspective, and like logistically, like how did you perform it? How did you learn what to do? What was it like? Yeah, I just made a Facebook post in my town's Facebook page. I said, hey, I want to give back. What's a good business that I can do some lines for free? Completely free, no strings attached. I just, I mean, I can't put it on my driveway, right? Yep, yep. And the paint's relatively expensive. So I wanted it to go to a good cause. Yeah. Please don't suggest Walmart. I can't afford that. Maybe a sandwich shop? Yeah. So, well, and my town's really small. So it's a town of 3,000. There's not many businesses at all. Sorry, what town is this? It's called Rogersville. It's just outside Springfield. Okay, and then Springfield is like 170,000 people, greater Springfield, 450,000 people, right? Yeah. Give her a tip. Rogersville, okay, 4,300 according to Google. One thing I always like to say, we don't have a stoplight in town. But yeah, there's not a lot of businesses. So I got a lot of great comments and awareness from that Facebook post. And I ended up just working with a nonprofit in town. Yeah, there's a lot of green on that map, right? Yeah, so I worked with this nonprofit in town. Super small place. They do a lot of good. And I striped five lines. Okay, that's a small job, right? Super small. I mean, they didn't, so they didn't have lines there to begin with because it was too small. You know, a lot of people it's a minimum charge of like 500 bucks and they're not going to pay that for five lines. Yeah. So it took me probably two hours to do this, which looking back that was way too long. Oh, I mean, it's a mile from my house. It should have taken me 10 minutes. Okay, yeah. Max. It's okay. And yeah, so it was a struggle. And I did it in the dark too, which was harder than I expected for my first job. Would you be able to tell me the name of the nonprofit? Yeah, it's safe haven. Safe. I want to pull it up on Google Earth, right there, right? Yep. All right, so we'll see if the image is updated. This image is from 2025. It doesn't say the month, so it might be. Was it this building right here? Correct, yeah. So it was just like three parking spots, basically? Five. Okay, oh, five lines. Yeah. Big difference, right? Oh, there it is. That's fresh. One to the left, so it doesn't look like it was up there. Okay. Oh, there it is. Yep. So they needed it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's super great people. I wish I knew what I knew now. I could have done better, whatever. But they got five lines. I had some experience. And I should say before I did this, I went to a parking lot. And I just filled up my machine with water. And I just sprayed water to at least feel of pushing it and lining it all up. That's smart. Which Facebook page was it? Rogersville Residence. So it was a group? Correct. Yep. Would it be okay if I pull up the post or do you think it's not visible to me? I could probably pull it up. I don't know if it would be the bottom one. Yeah, that one. It's private, so I won't be able to see it. I just wanted people to like visualize. All right. Some people in here. It's a private Facebook group. Every town has at least one of these. It looks like you have at least two, Rogersville 2, Rogersville Residence Uncensored, etc. I just want people to see how approachable this is. Like, you don't live in too small of a city. You have a Facebook group at least one. And the fact that you did it for free is genius. Did you tell people like, I'm an idiot. I don't know what I'm doing. I want to practice where you're just like, I want to do some good. I want to paint some lines. You're assuming that this is your business, you've done this a hundred times. Yeah. And in retrospect, I wish I would have taken that approach and said, this is new for me. I just want some practice. I'll even take two or three lots. And instead, I was trying to, because I thought people voted on the businesses and I thought, okay, I can contact all of these who are voted on and try to pitch them and actually make some money from it. Which I think is a good idea, a good marketing idea, but I should have been a little bit more upfront and straightforward and just said, hey, this is new to me. I'm going to take my time and do a good job. But there's a little bit of a learning curve. It's not hard. It's my first time though. So that is one thing I wish I would have done. And in fact, I did get some quotes out of it. But because I was still holding myself out as this is my business, this is what we do, I didn't get any of the jobs. Why do you think that is? I think it's because I didn't have the answers to everything and I should have just, and they asked questions. They would have been more lenient if you were like, hey, full disclosure guys, I don't know what I'm doing. Which is why I'm not charging. But I also want to do good for the community. This is perfectly free, you have nothing to lose. If it looks ugly, I'll remove it. I'll fix it, right? If you go into it with that, then people will have, maybe have more grace on these sales calls. You know what I'm saying? Oh, 100%. And that's, and so I did switch my approach. But from, from this initial, initial outreach, yeah, I did not, did not lead to any money unfortunately. So for those of listening, it's time to give back. I love Rogersville. I've lived here for one year now and I want to give back. Who here has a parking lot that needs a refresh will provide free striping, painting all the lines, handicapped spots, et cetera, comment with the business you think needs it most and we'll coordinate with the one that gets the most votes. Community park, 69% Taco Bell, 1% no love for Taco Bell, yeah, you know, they're publicly traded. Henderson Lodge, 7% library, 10% street from parks out to trailer parks, 0% for love of things, 193 self Marshall, 7% and safe haven, new Rogersville, now Rogersville, 6%. So you can see, I mean, almost 200 votes, it got some decent. Oh, I didn't see that. Holy cow. There were seven comments. So 5% of the town voted on your, your poll. That's crazy. You should run for mayor. So the community was, I, I reached out to them. I was supposed to meet with the town manager. He ended up, you know, he stood me up and he apologized and we set up a different time and something else happened. So, so it just, you know, I wasn't in a rush, but it took a couple of weeks and I'm like, forget it. We're just going to go with, with option number two. You mean to say you had a hard time coordinating with the local government? That sounds shocking. Exactly. Exactly. They wanted that you were trying to offer free services too. I know. We, we don't want to talk trash. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we talked on the phone. Great guy. He was really busy at the time, but it just, it, it did not end up happening. So maybe, maybe next year, yeah, I did safe haven. So that's the story there. That was, that was the first week of September. And then I went door to door in Springfield for some, so I, I, I did that. I had one job under my belt, took some before and after pictures. And then I went door to door in Springfield trying to get more business. I think I spent two afternoons doing that, and it was just terrible. I learned a lot, but no one, no one likes it. I, I really struggled to, to reach the actual business owners. It was usually just some $15 an hour person managing, managing the store or the, the cash register. And so it just went nowhere. So you're telling people to give them hope that you don't have to go door to door to be successful in this business? No. And, and I think, I mean, I think Sinko did, and that's part of what, what inspired me to do it. But that's not who I am. I'm not, I'm not very good at that. Well, there's more ways to win than one, you know? Yeah. Yeah. What does the process look like for striping for sale coding? Like, if you could get all the business in the world, but you had to choose either striping or sale coding, which would you choose and why? 100% sale coding. So, so one, sale coding is a bigger ticket for, for these churches when we're doing like a $1,500 or $2,000 striping job, we're, we're doing a 10 to $20,000 sale coding job. So it's, it's basically 10 X. Wow. So, so that's one number two is it's simpler, the, the material costs are higher, but the actual equipment is, is actually cheaper, I would say, it's just easier to run. I cannot tell you how many issues I've had with my striping equipment. And, and part of that's on me just because I bought it used, but it's been a headache. And, and so I did, I did go from one machine to two machines recently, which I never expected to do at this point in time, but, but I just felt like I had to because it's been such a headache when, when some, a machine goes out and it's Saturday, and I say, Hey, Pastor, you're a lot's not going to be done, we'll put down some temporary lines, but it's not going to look great for your services tomorrow. And I know they, they've been super nice, but I would hate to be thinking, okay, I just spent $10,000, and you're telling me, it's not even going to look good or it's not done. I'm telling you, that's, that's business 101. I, well, I would imagine there's a lot more moving parts, literally. There's a lot more precision in the striping equipment, there's more that can go wrong, more variables, right? Yeah, there's a ton of variables, yep. How does the equipment cost compare between the two? You said it was more expensive on the striping side? You can deck out both of them and, and pay a lot of money. I, I paid, I paid 2300 for my first stripper, it's nothing, nothing, right? You did that back in two jobs, yeah, but if you were going to buy it new or buy, buy an upgraded version, you're talking like $10,000, I, I actually did rent one for, for a weekend, and their, their setup was 25,000 for just this striping machine, for seal coating. I know people who are doing this out of a big, a big plastic drum. It's just freaking dumping out some tar and spreading it around with the squeegee. Am I oversimplifying it? No, exactly, yeah, yeah, and, and, and if you don't tell the EPA, yeah, exactly. If, if you want to get a, you know, a basic setup, new 3,000, 4,000, put it on a trailer, say 10,000, all in max. Oh my gosh. Okay. All right. So your first few jobs, you do for the first month, seven the next month. What do your profit margins look like on all these jobs? So on striping, my first few jobs, it was just me, I actually did, I don't remember how many jobs I did out of my minivan, where I, I was loading it up, seats are down, and it, it just fit with an inch to clear. But it was just me, paint, paint would average about like 20% of, of the, of the job. And then I'm pocketing the other 75 or 80%. And you're doing everything yourself. No employees at this point. No, just me. Yeah. Now where we're at with seal coding, the material costs a lot more. So the profit margins are lower, but I would say even after labor, still 30 to 40%. So you knew nothing about this industry going into it. You heard my podcast, you started doing some research, you joined some Facebook groups, you posted in your local Facebook group saying, I'll do a job for free. On your first two months, you've done just under $50,000 in sales, and about $20,000 in net profit, which would have been about $30,000 in net profit had you not subbed out those first jobs. Do I have all that right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's incredible. I mean, I interview a lot of business owners on this podcast and that's, that's way up there when it comes to amount of money earned in what amount of time. That's incredible. And in a small town nonetheless. We talked some more about customer acquisition. So what does your website look like? What does your Google business profile look like? How much are you worried or concerned about the little things as far as web presence or paid ads or any of that is concerned? Yeah. So I have not been at all my website. I paid some guy overseas, 200 bucks to build it. I've worked with him in the past. He's a great developer. He did a good job. I did not give him content to work with. We spun up some images with AI and just got something live. It's, I don't even know if anybody goes to it, but they at least know that I have a domain. You know, it's even better than a perfect website, $50,000 in sales and tumors. Yeah. Exactly. It's a wintertime project. We're going to, we're going to update it. We're going to make it look good. It's great. There's nothing. Yeah, that's not the point. It hasn't caught me. Yeah. This year, we got to $5,000 or sorry, we got to $500,000 in revenue and we never had a website ever. Like, it's just, it's situational dependent, but like, and that was the biggest sales was, yeah, I didn't want to have an excuse to say, this is why I'm not, I haven't done door to door. I haven't done the emails. And there were a few times in this process where I just had to say, okay, forget it, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not ready. But just do it. I'm never going to be ready. Listen, Beehive has always been the best newsletter platform for monetization. Their ad network and their analytics are unmatched, but they just had their biggest update ever and it's something that all digital creators have to hear about. It's not just newsletters anymore. 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So switch over at beehive.com/chris and use the code Chris 30 to get 30% off your first three months. That's beehive.com/chris. So I don't have a Google business profile. Google for some reason labeled me as they they've suspended me. I'm working through that. It's a pain. I might just rename the company. I don't know, but but it's not live yet. That's frustrating. And so the next thing I did was just an email, an email campaign. I paid someone on upward five or six bucks to compile a list of all the churches in Springfield. When we were thinking about moving here, the one negative thing about spring, well, there were a couple negative things. One of the negative things about Springfield was there's so many churches and it's like a religious revival every weekend here, which I'm like, okay, that's great. That sounds like a great place to raise a family. And so there was there was over 300 churches in Springfield that I emailed. So 150, 175,000 people in the city. And I, I've done a little bit of cold email before. It's hard. No six less ever before. And this one just popped off. I think I think I was getting like five or seven percent response rate. She's from and and this is in a campaign. This is just one email. And I would say two thirds of the emails were to info at the church name. Catch all. Catch all addresses which are not going on any specific, right? Like, dude, like three hours ago, I taught a tutorial on cold email and I said, delete the catchalls. Don't even mess with them. Now, like, it's context dependent, right? And I still would have said that based on what I was teaching them about, like the industry. But if I were doing this, I would have done the same thing because that's all I know. You're telling me, keep them in there, baby. Well, and I know they're not as high quality, but, but where I'm, I'm not blasting it out to millions or even thousands, it's like, just hit them all. It's worth a shot. Did you scrub the emails first to validate them? Make sure they're still active. Wow. Okay. And no follow-ups. No. No. All the magic in the follow-up. Yeah. Well, it got busy fast. Good. Yeah. So, so I did not. And I, and it was a little bit strategic as well, because I knew that I, there was a lot to learn. I didn't know what my pricing should be. I didn't know. I wanted to test some different email language. I wanted to hit these people up this coming spring to say, okay, here's a new offer. Here's something else. So I, so I will be emailing them again, but yeah, not, it was one and done here. Okay. 300 churches, let's talk like as exact as you can remember on these numbers. How many did you email and then how many responses did you get? Five to seven percent of what? I wish I had pulled these exact numbers. I, let's, let's say seven percent responded. So that's, you know, and it might have even been a little bit higher now that I'm thinking about it, because I've, I've done about 20 quotes. Wow. And I would say half of the people who responded said, thanks for emailing. Talk to me next year. Good luck on your business. God bless all that, but, but it wasn't an actual quote. So that, if we say 40, we're talking like 12 percent response rate. Wow. Yeah. And then half of those led to actual quotes. And, and I should say at this time, I'm pretty frugal. I, I don't want to put a lot of money into something until I know it's going to work. And so I'm showing up to these quotes in my mini van and, uh, you know, it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't look, well, and it's, it's a beat up mini van too. It's, it's, it's had a better life in the past. So, so I'm showing up. It's not super professional. I, I didn't even have a business card day one. I, I just had a printout that I was handing out. Yeah. The response was great. And, and I realized pretty quickly that the people who wanted a quote on just using satellite, give them a quote fast because part of my thesis was, okay, if I can give a quote to them fast, they're more likely to book, but that's not the case in this part, in this situation. And I think it's mostly because I was doing outbound. They weren't reaching out to me. If they were reaching out to me, they were probably, we already in the market, but, but, uh, in this case, the framework, yeah, I, I realized I needed to be there in person. They needed to see that I'm not some drugie or local, yeah, yeah, I'm local. And it's a church, especially like it's like the most local type of organization there is. And I, I should say too, just show that I'm a person because there's a lot of scams out there. These are older, it's an older generation for the most part running the churches. And so they, they want to make that face-to-face connection. Yeah. And your close rate, like all else equal, your close rate is always going to be higher in person, regardless of industry. Yeah. Regardless of vehicle, although I, I have heard it since, since I upgraded to a truck, my close rate has increased. That makes sense because it's like, whoa, dude, like you're laying down this permanent paint on my parking lot that everyone in the world is going to see. You're not signaling to me that you know what you're doing in a van. Yeah. Exactly. Yep. All right. So 12% response rate, give or take, you only email churches to start. Yeah. And I don't, I don't recall exactly where that idea came from. I know I bought a couple other lists as well. I bought one for a property managers for commercial real estate agents, but yeah, I only emailed the churches. What, what did you pay for that list? Each one was like five or six bucks. Each email or each list? Each list. So, so I bought, I bought a couple, but yeah, for those 300, it was literally six bucks. So you return on ad spend, it was like a thousand X. It's not even, it's just stupid. Yeah. It's crazy. So of the seven plus four of the 11 jobs you did, you did the first two months, were they all churches? So I did three Taco Bells. And that was someone that I knew I, I reached out to him and franchisee. Yeah. Yep. He owned all three. Yeah. So, but, but everything else was a church. So all of your jobs came from cold email or a friend. Yep. Beautiful. And you haven't even tried cold emailing any other industry for all. You know, transmission and muffler shops have a 20% response rate. Like who knows? Yeah. I'm sure some will be better. Yeah. I would think most would be worse, because 12% is great, but it can't be the best. Like, statistically speaking, there's too many other industries to try. I will say one reason I did go for churches is because most of them have a pretty good size lot. And I didn't want to show up to another one like safe haven where it's okay. I would have to charge you 500 bucks to do those five lines. That's just fun. That's not great for you. It's not going to be great for me. How price sensitive are churches compared to like a Taco Bell? Honestly, I, I don't know. I would say from, from the conversations I've had most churches have, want to be wise with their money, but they also have fun set aside because this is something that they have to do every three, four or five years. So they're ready to spend it. So how big is an average church parking lot? How do you price stuff out? So most of the church parking lots that I've done have been around 200 parking stalls. So my first actual job that I did, I think I charged 450 per line and then 10 to $20 per stencil. So I would do $20 for a blue and white handicap and then $10 for a parking or a directional arrow. How do you land on that price? It's, these Facebook groups have been super helpful to me. So I saw some info there. I think Cinco shared some pricing info as well and, and honestly, a huge resource has just been AI just asking whether it's GROC or chat GPT, what, what I should be at. I have to think that most business owners or pastors in this case don't really know what a fair price is for this because it's such an infrequent service. Is that the case or do they kind of have a ballpark in mind? I think a lot of them ended up getting additional quotes. This is why October revenue was so low, but November was fantastic is because it, they have to present it to their board. They have, they have pretty, they have a process to go through, to go through before anything gets approved. It's a sales cycle. Yeah, yeah. And that's something I wish I had realized before I contacted them first because it was a slow few weeks getting, getting started. Those 11 jobs, you're not counting the first free one, right? Or you are? No, I'm not. Okay. So those 11 jobs, you basically close eight because the Taco Bells were three locations, right? Seven churches and four Taco Bells or what was it? Eight churches and three Taco Bells. Okay. So you've closed nine jobs, basically. One was your friend, eight were strangers. You've quoted 20, right? I'm trying to get to what your close rate is. We're talking like 40, 50 percent. Yeah. Yep. That's pretty good, especially for such a high-ticket item. Yeah, I've been really happy. And again, it's just, it's just a longer sales cycle. I'm really excited for the spring though because so I'm, I'm done here for the winter right now. We are, we are shut down as of a week ago, but I'm going to hit it hard. I've got, I've got around 200,000 in quotes that I've already given out that I'm going to be following up on. And I think I'll get a lot of them for the spring. So your average job size is like, we're talking like seven grand, somewhere like that. Yeah. It's, it's a little misleading just because we've had, I would say my average striping only job is between one and two thousand dollars. And then. Yeah. Seal coding is a big ticket. All right. Tell me what happened during that first job that turned you on to seal coding. Yeah. And so let me backtrack just a second and say, when we're talking about my close rate, my close rate could have been higher, but I show up to these jobs and, and I think my email is pretty straightforward. I said, we do striping. I'm going to give you a discount for striping services. And I got, you know, all these people saying, hey, give me a quote, well, I go to meet them in person. And they say, Oh, I wanted a quote for striping and ceiling. No one won. And you're like, what's ceiling? Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And so I know some of those jobs, those early quotes I, I lost out on because I was like, yeah, I don't do that. You know, I can get you a quote. But honestly, it's, I just do the striping. And in my mind, it's like, okay, that's great. And in their mind, they're thinking X, let's get the next guy because I need both. I don't need this one, which what a great lesson in being willing to be flexible because it's like focus, focus, focus, focus on one thing. What if you don't? Like where would you be today? If you're like, no, I only do striping because that's what I'm focusing on. I want to be the best in the world at striping. And that is there, there's many ways to win. I'll go to my grave saying that, right? But like you were like, let's try seal coding and then it's like, holy crap, this is the whole business. Yeah, there, there's a market for just striping. And, and I think now that I'm a few months in, I, I would say that if you, if you just want to do striping, forget outreach to church, forget, well, and I'll add it one more caveat here. But forget outreach to church, forget outreach to property managers, talk to construction companies because you're going to be striping the new lots. And that's about it, at least in this area. And so the caveat is, as Sinkos, Sinkos in Texas, he's in Waikah, yeah, Central Texas. Weatly different. And so I'm, I'm actually going to be doing some jobs in Texas over the winter. They don't need seal coding for the most part. It's, it's a way smaller industry. They're, they're parking lot lines, they though with, with the sun. And so they just have to be redone. It's, it's a standalone service. All right. You tried anything else texting, calling, you've done door to door, you've done email, you talked to your friend with the Taco Bells, have you done or tried anything else to acquire customers? Nothing, as of now. So I, I mentioned doing some jobs in Texas in winter, the playbooks working. I got another list of churches in Texas where my parents live. And I emailed, I think I've emailed the first half of the list. And we're going to get some work from it. We've already got in some quotes and some of them are going to close. Okay. So you've done the same outreach to two different markets entirely. And where the, the metrics from the second, from the Texas campaign, was it better or worse than Springfield? It was, it was a little bit worse. So I think I sent about a hundred emails right around a hundred. And I've done four or five quotes. So I should look a little bit lower, but still like it. It's so good. Yeah. I mean, Hunter, just promise me you'll start following up with these. I know. I know. Please, you're going to triple those numbers. This was in a small town. This was you, you've talked about Picon plantation. That's my, my parents live 10 minutes from there. So you're away. You're an hour out of DFW. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I agree. Yep. Exactly. I need to move closer to DFW and, and things will really blow up. Dude. OK. All right. What about equipment? What did you spend on the equipment? Where'd you buy it from? How did you choose what brand or make them? Yeah. So, so startup costs, I, I, I paid $800 for my stencils. So all the arrows, the letters, the no particles. What do you buy those from? I bought them from one 800 stencil. It had the price on mine. I went solely based off price. I mean, they've, yeah, they're a reputable company, but it worked for me. They, I, I've continued to buy from them. I spent about, oh, and then I spent $2300 on my machine. And that was, that was the extent of my startup costs in my email. I, I would say, hey, I'm licensed and insured. And then before I did my first job, I did buy insurance, but, but I did not have it when I sent the emails. And that was like $230. $3,000. Okay. So all in startup costs were $30,000. Yeah. $30,000. $30,000. What is your ongoing overhead? I pay $29 a month for a, for quote IQ, just to send out quotes. And then insurance. It's $9,250 a month. $93? Yeah. But what about like a gas, like truck insurance, stuff like that? So truck, the advice I got was keep, I actually do want to move it over to, to be a business truck fully. But at this point in time, I still drive more for, for just personal activities. So it's, it's, it's not a commercial policy yet. I think it added $30 to my insurance. Any like crazy stories or headaches from this business yet, something that people could watch out for? So, so one would be just men, yeah, when, when the machine breaks down and you're on a time crunch, it is, it is tough, you know, this, this has not been just a walk in the park. There, there have been some stressful moments. The, the most stressful part, we haven't even talked about crack filling, which has been a really good, a really good addition as well in tandem with seal coating. And so with that, you're, you're just putting some rubberized tar in the cracks to seal them up. And before you do that, you have to clean, clean out the weeds from the cracks and then also run over it with a weed torch, just to heat it up and, and help it seal better, right? I started a fire. I mean, just thinking about it, there's a little bit of PTSD there. That was scary, you know, and in the minute or two, I just thought, man, I just ruined my family's life because the wind was whipping and it started spreading fast. I was, I was 20 feet from, 20 feet from the house, 20 feet from a church. I don't know how it started. I was being really cautious, but some, something that I, some, some piece of grass caught in fire blew over, do a pile of leaves and yeah, it got a fast. So what did you do? How'd you get it out? I threw, I had a couple bags of sand for the project I was using. I threw that on and then think, and we might not be talking. I, you know, I don't know how this would have ended, but thankfully I had a fire extinguisher that I carried with me. Thank you, OSHA, right? So I, I was trying to be compliant and that, that put it out, but it spread fast. Oh my gosh. Just from the time it took to run from, like I noticed it, I run to the truck, I run back and it's big. Yeah. That's incredible. What would you have done differently? Had you, if you were to start this over from scratch today? I would have bought new equipment. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to prove the model, but, but knowing that it's proved, I would have bought new equipment. So that, yeah, just the downtime in the headaches, that would have helped alleviate those. And then I would have hired sooner or faster. I still probably need to be more proactive on this, just because my value, my honestly, the people I have hired, they do it better than I do. I, I am not an OCD details oriented guy and, and the people I've hired, they're amazing. They're snapping their chalk lines, they're measuring everything. They're getting the angles exactly right. And, and I'm like, let's just do it, but, but we want it to be perfect. So I, I should have hired them day one. I can provide way more value, getting the jobs and, and overseeing the work and then actually doing a lot of it, but I like it. How many employees do you have and how do you pay them? Do you pay them like hourly or on a per job basis? All of them are hourly. I will hire a couple full-time guys starting in the spring. And that was part of my delay in hiring too, was it's like, okay, you only have a few weeks before the season ends, just find some part-time guys, pay them hourly, whatever. Yeah. So, so they were just all guys looking to make some extra money on the weekends or in the afternoons. How much per hour and where did you find them? So everyone I've hired has been from just from my church congregation. They were just guys I knew who could work hard, even a couple teenagers too, who could work hard and yeah, I've, I've painted the teenagers 15 bucks an hour and my standard is 25 an hour for the guys, but there have been, there have been a couple times where we've had to work at midnight or later, working to our one or two a.m., and I'll bump it up to 30 or 35 an hour for that. Yeah. So your margins are still killer, even when you pay someone to do it for you? Yeah. What could I have asked you or should I have asked you that I neglected too? I would say like, why, why did you choose it? Why did you choose this business? Yeah. So, so when I was selling the company, I was, I was looking like I said, I binge your content, I was looking at some other options. I thought doing windows in residential homes could be really nice and, and paid ads would crush on that. We had a client who did paid ads for that and they did great. I was also interested in, in doing well drilling. So for new homes or, or existing. That's how I take it. Yeah. I take it. Super cool. Like that, that's one that, that's really interesting to me, but the equipment cost is just insane. It's like a couple hundred thousand to, to really get going. And so I, I like this because it's, it's b2b, it's construction at J sent. And then it's really easy to rank on, on Google. No one, no one is really focused on this market. And so I, I just thought it would be really easy to get work on an ongoing basis just from Google without having to do any marketing. And that was attractive. Do you compete much with others? Like, because there's a few franchise ors that offer this, right? Like, one is famously called We Do Lines, which is a great name. Do you find yourself competing for jobs? No, not, not yet. And I know, I know another one's like one eight hundred striping. And I've talked to some guys there and they do really well. But no, I, I think it's, it's a little bit different because most, most mom and pop stores or church and they want you to do all of the services, not just striping. Okay. So what's next? How do you plan to scale this business? Just more the same. Cold emailing, other markets, wait for the warmer weather. Yeah. Google, Google's going to be huge. So, so my online presence is a big, a big focus for me this winter, just getting that ready to rock and roll for the spring. And then there's, there's a lot of room here. I, I would love to have two crews going in the springtime full time. I think we'll get plenty of jobs. And then, yeah, with, with my parents in Texas, I, I'd love to have some sort of permanent presence there, but that's, that's still in the works. Yeah. Beautiful. Hunter, where can people find you if they want to learn more or just reach out? X is the best, best place. Just, just look at my name, hunter, Shenowork, happy to give back in any way I can help people out and, uh, yeah, reach out if you have questions. And if you're in, uh, North Texas or Missouri and you need some striping or seal coding, 4-1-7-striping dot com, are you ever going to do any residential stuff for seal coding? Possibly. It's a big driveway, maybe a couple thousand bucks for seal coding. So it's, it's not. There's a lot of driveways out there. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, and so if you have down days or whatever, absolutely. And that's where I think ads could come in where it's, hey, book on these days will give you a good deal. Like, let's just, even if we don't make money, let's just pay the crew and, and stay busy. So yeah, I'm sure we will do some, but haven't done any currently, not planning to make it a main focus. Love it. Hunter, thank you. Thanks, Chris. All right. Would you think, please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on the corner office.