Speaker 1I just signed a $30,000 contract for this fall. Spring break, we cleared $12,000 in one week, nine to noon. So you're done in the afternoon, right? That's like three hours of work. Keep it simple, stupid. If you want to go all in, you can make a ton of money pretty simply. For those who wanted to make three grand a month, this is easy. So in March to July, $50,600. Wow. It was basically like eight, eight, and then we hit a 12, then we hit a 16. It just kept scaling up and up and up.
Speaker 2I need to have a gong in here because every time I discover a business that you really could start with no money, I just want to be like, bing, we found one. You know, it is a business you could start with nothing. Facebook post, that was it.
Speaker 1No pictures, no nothing.
Speaker 2Meet Mike. He's 50, got laid off after 20 years. And one night at 3.30 in the morning, he wrote a Facebook post from his garage. No photos, no website, no price. And that post became a $50,000 business in five months flat. Moms pay him 75 bucks an hour. Per kid, the state of Florida pays him within 24 hours. And he just signed a $30,000 contract for two hours every Friday. His startup costs were under $450. And really, he collects money up front. So he could have started this with no money. And you can too. And by the end of this episode, you're going to know exactly how to copy him this weekend. I'm going to show you the exact post in a few minutes. And halfway through this episode, he's going to give you the one sentence that got a tool company to send him $5,000 of free gear. And at the end, I'm going to give you the one word that turned a side hustle into real contracts. And also, this whole thing, this whole business exists because Mike watches the channel and he was inspired by it. So please enjoy. Why don't you start by telling us who you are and what you do?
Speaker 1Mike Herod here. I'm the owner of Voskill. We're a trade school. And also, we teach shop classes to 7 to 18-year-olds based in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Speaker 2How long did it take you to go from last day on the job to launching this? How much time elapsed there?
Speaker 1So last corporate W2C, W2 check was in March of 25. And then we got our first paying customer the week of Thanksgiving. But I had the idea. The idea to first customer was seven days for the shop classes.
Speaker 2Wow. Okay. So eight months, give or take, from your last paycheck to when you launched. But you didn't spend that whole time launching. You spent one week.
Speaker 1No, the whole time was, you know, basically five months licking my wounds, you know, trying to find work. And then finally coming to the realization that we are going to open a school in a second, yada, yada, yada. And then Thanksgiving, it was taking so long. I'm like, we got to pay the bills.
Speaker 2So one Facebook post. How do you mean you didn't have the idea for seven days before?
Speaker 1Yeah. So the original is the trade school, which is, you know, HVAC, electrical, and low voltage. That's the original. Okay, okay. So your woodworking business is not a trade school. No, no, no, no. I saw all of these like bounce houses and a friend of ours sells girl TPs for birthday parties. I'm like, there's nothing for the boys. Like nothing. So yeah, Thanksgiving week, I was like, we need money and Facebook post. Um, woodworking birthday parties.
Speaker 2Yeah, that was it. No, no pictures. No, nothing. Did you ever do anything with the trade school application or at all? No, it's still in there. We finally got approved this July. Okay. So you are going to go through the trade school. It's going to be a different business, but it's going to be fed by the woodworking business. By the woodworking. Yep. Beautiful. Okay. So you had the idea on what? November 20th?
Speaker 1Something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2And you posted seven days later or you open?
Speaker 1No, I posted like that day. And then we had parties. We used events, classes. I think at the time we called them woodworking events, um, booked that following week. All right.
Speaker 2So you post about it and you just posted on your personal Facebook profile. I did.
Speaker 1And I don't hardly use Facebook just because you don't have a ton of followers.
Speaker 2You're not an influencer. You just your personal Facebook.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Okay. And what happened? What were the comments like?
Speaker 1Um, how old do you have to be? Yeah. How old do you have to be? Um, how much and when and where basically kind of thing. Okay. And, um, I think I put, I think I put homeschool parent, we're a homeschool family, even though my kids are 18 and 23. Um, but I think we put homeschool on it. I pretty much, I think we did a hundred percent on that one, but homeschool on it. And, um, yeah, we did in the first couple of ones were in people's backyards. We took a folding table, whatever tools I had, we pulled the table out. Um, I have pictures. I have a big board over here with all the pictures and I've got little six year olds using hand saws, right? And 14 to 15. Year olds using jigsaws and parasols and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2Okay. So are you just like thinking up the answers to these questions as you're typing them? You're like, how old do you have to be? Like, I don't know, uh, five to 15. You're like, how much is it? Oh shoot. Yeah. How much is it? Is that kind of how it went? Exactly.
Speaker 1It was because I had nobody to pull from. Yeah. You know? So, you know, I, I, I play with AI all the time, so I'm like, okay. And I think it was so happening so fast then I was just like, okay, first we did six, six plus. Like six to, you know, 18. And then, and then I realized quickly, you can't have a six year old and a 12 year old in the same class. They're just two different, they're too advanced. So what, um, today, what are your age groups? What are your categories? So now we, we split them into seven to nine because that kind of seems a sweet spot. And then 10, 10 plus.
Speaker 2Okay. So just two.
Speaker 1It's just true. I really want to lop off the little ones just because they're just, they're, they're, I'm not doing the kind of mentoring I want to do. I want to do with the little ones. They're fun. They have a blast. Right. But I'd rather, you know, teach the older ones, but the men, the little ones, man, it's like shooting ducks in a barrel. Like these moms call all the time. Yep.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1Yep.
Speaker 2So you think there could be a business of someone only doing the little ones?
Speaker 1Oh yeah. Completely. In fact, when we started hosting them, when, when we started doing shop classes here in our trade school in the back office, before we got open, we did spring break and summer camps. We cleared 30,000.
Speaker 2Holy cow. Okay. All right. So let's go back to day. So you answer a ton of comments and questions and then, um, what day was your first class and who all was there and what did you charge?
Speaker 1I think the first one I stole from you, we did it for free. So yeah, that first, that first couple of weeks, um, at between Thanksgiving and Christmas was yet two free ones. And then we got a lot more inquiries and my wife's like, no, there's something here they can pay. Um, and then from that, we only, we only do paying ones.
Speaker 2In that original post, did you say that it would be free or you didn't and you just decided to make the first couple of free?
Speaker 1Yeah. I think we did do it free. I think I did. Yeah. I think I did do it free. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2I think I pulled it right out of your playbook. Yeah.
Speaker 1Looking back, that was an important part of it. I think so too. Yeah. Because I had no social proof. I didn't have pictures. I didn't have videos. Now I had 10,000 pictures of kids. Yeah. Yeah. Videos.
Speaker 2It's eat and Google reviews and yada, yada, yada. Um, was, was the inspiration for that partly from the guy I interviewed who has the line striping business?
Speaker 1No, actually it kind of, it woke me up in the middle of the night that week before Thanksgiving. Like I remember sitting in my garage at like 3:30 in the morning brainstorming this out. I think you had just done a video of the RC guy, the RC digger.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1Oh, and he did his first for free. Okay. Yup. Yeah. And I was like, man, I still, I'm tempted by that. Yeah. Shiny scrolls in there. But, um, I think that that's kind of like, like there's something here for, for, you know, that, that we can help the, the, the kids and it's not so much. And then later we did a gig. Oh, I didn't put that in my numbers. And then, so I need to go back December. We did a five. It was a father son build right for 38 pairs. So little kids in their, in their, in their dads. So 38 and it was a buck 50 a head for a buck 50 for the couple or for no. Yeah. For the pair. Okay. So basically per kid. So it was a 150 times 38 kids. However much that was. Yeah.
Speaker 2I don't know. Is that like five grand already? A five grand.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah. Jeez. Yeah. Okay. And that was your first month or no?
Speaker 1That was in December. Yeah. So yeah, it was a father son. So I went to the book. She heard about the free ones. Hey, can you do a father son event? I said, sure. And what really kind of got my brain running of all the dads. So plus 30, only two of them had touched a power tool in their life. Whoa. And these are guys. And a 38. Not even like a drill? Not even a drill.
Speaker 2Like they hadn't touched anything.
Speaker 1That is wild. And I'm like, okay, I've heard the trade problem is bad, but to never touch a drill in your life. And we're not talking big drills. We're talking little 12 bolts.
Speaker 2Yeah. And these guys are like 30, 40s ages.
Speaker 1Yep. Holy cow. Young kids. Young boys. Young boys. Yeah. That one, we did a three hour event and we did, which is why it was a buck 50 a piece. It was three hours. And then they built these little robots. They built these little dudes here.
Speaker 2Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 1Right? Yeah. I bet. I bet. I bet I've built 500 of these so far.
Speaker 2Where did you come up with that? Like, why are you going to build a robot? Where did that come from?
Speaker 1I don't know. I think I was poking around on Etsy one day and this goofy little wooden robot. And then I kept modifying and modifying. So basically I prep the bodies and then the kids cut the feet and the hands and they, they screwed through the eyes up. Okay. And that's for the little ones. Like they, they eat that. And mom's pays 75 bucks to build one of these all day long.
Speaker 2And you don't get that job unless you like get mass exposure by doing a free event. Cause that's where that lead came from.
Speaker 1Right? Yeah. And we're not, I mean the, the free mints were like one with like six kids and one with like five. We're not talking thousands. Yeah. Like it was these random small. Yeah. The homeschool community is so niche. So I tell people all the time, I'm like this, this business and homeschooling, once you get in, you're, you're set. You're in. Cause they all tell. Yup.
Speaker 2They all talk. Yeah. Half of our students are repeat students. How many, um, how many events did you have that first November, December?
Speaker 1So the father, son event, the two free ones, the father, son event, and then the two over here at the small group between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Speaker 2Okay. So November revenue was 800 ish. Yup. Yeah.
Speaker 1Six grand because of the father, son, plus the two little ones. Okay. Um, and then a little bit in January. a couple shows or classes in january um and then another and then another big one we did yeah and then i did 25 22 2200 2500 we did one with the foster community um they brought their foster the local foster kids in and we did a two-hour class just teach them how to again they made they made i don't have them here i'll send them all the pictures these little brain teasers okay 550 cord a nut and a washer and a one by four piece of block like we're not building pianos i tell the kids all the time we're not building robots or pianos yeah you know satellites so yeah that was that was where we did 22 and i kind of paused it in march because we're looking at doing the spring breaks people kept asking you to do spring breaks so then we did the spring break camps here in our site and then then paused it a little bit a little bit and then did uh summer camps um and then i just signed i think this is what got molly to really uh buy on i just signed a thirty thousand dollar contract for this fall we already started it whoa what kind of contract so 14 weeks for 40 students every friday for two hours homeschool students and it's like a it's like a co-op it's a big co-op i kind of think it's a private school
Speaker 2but it's a big drop-off co-op okay thirty thousand dollars for 14 weeks how many days like one day per week or one every friday for two hours okay so it comes to that one's about 55 a head per week well i mean that's over a thousand bucks an hour oh yeah not not including like prep time but
Speaker 1yeah yeah it's about 50 i think we cleared 19 the revenue is 1900 per week um i play i pay me and my wife and my my youngest son christian he's 18 and i pay him and our youth pastor and a buddy of mine that that worked up you know 150 bucks cash and they go help us we load up seven tables six kids per table folding tables with um plywood tops on them because i learned the first time i didn't have you try to clamp some of those those plastic tables they don't hold so then i had to engineer put a piece of plywood on top and clamp to that and then it works okay and then we roll out the miter saws and stations and then they spend two hours making a mess yeah um they built cornhole they just finished um the cornhole boards and then this week we're getting ready to start um pvc pvc builds because it's not just woodworking it's basically kind of shop skills um so yeah in fact i got to call her this week to see if she wants to do january too because she wants to do another build in january what will you make in profit on that thirty thousand so that great question so by the time i get to the end of the month i'm gonna pay because i can do 10 students no problem like we slowly built the toolkit up and i can talk about tools later if you want to but with that one we're going to clear by time we bought the extra tools and paid headcount and materials we'll clear 10 on our end wow we'll make real money when we do
Speaker 2the one in january yeah and what so let's say 33 on this thirty thousand dollar contract what are your net margins on like your average one-off class so look so an
Speaker 1like a class with the young ones to say it's 10 10 kids they're seven to nine right i charge more for the seven to nine years because it takes more oversight so the per hours like my little ones i charge 75 an hour my older ones i charge 50 an hour so for example if we did a one-hour class for 10 little ones so it's you know what 750 dollars um i'm about 150 dollars in cogs wow
Speaker 2cost of goods sold so 600 profit on a 750 dollar class yeah yeah because
Speaker 1the only thing that's out the door is a little bit of lumber glue screws paint that kind of stuff the tools and stuff once you buy them you recycle them every every let's talk about tools what what
Speaker 2tools did you have in the beginning and what tools do you have now so at the beginning i had
Speaker 1um again the basic basic wood stuff jigsaw miter saws all that kind of stuff um i over engineered it the first time like i bought ridiculously too much stuff because i just i didn't know what i didn't know now basically because i got a buddy that's thinking about doing the same thing here basically to spin off a pretty decent program is about 425 and that'll that'll get you enough equipment for six kits and it just scales like if you do a 12 and you need two bundles or you know let's go because basically i kind of bundled my kits by number of kids around the table a table holds six kids so that's basically that i mean we're talking this is sorry this is
Speaker 2like a six foot plastic folding table from costco the lifetime tables okay with a half inch piece
Speaker 1of plywood i used to do three quarters two dang heavy so then i did half inch plywood on top of it and then put a little track so it doesn't wiggle and then um two miter boxes from harbor freight they're 25 bucks um six tape measures these are expensive because when i found the first time i'd buy harbor freight ones they don't have the fractions on them these kids don't know how to roll so when you get the milwaukees they have the one eighth one quarter so it's a lot of you so i learned that that's a little more expensive it's 100 bucks six speed square from harbor freight 55 screwdrivers sanding these it's so cool like you go to amazon these yellow sanding mice that looks like a mouse your computer and the sand and the sand that sits on the bottom yeah it's super cool the kids eat up a couple clamps so all in your 425 for just hand tools and you make that back on your first class oh easily now this is assuming that a guy's got like a miter saw to take a six inch stick and cut into a bunch of 20 inch sticks right assuming he does if not then he's kind of by hand which isn't a big deal you can do it and then for the older ones this is where it kind of gets expensive this is why for the fall project if we do another one as well really some some good money is it's about forty one hundred dollars in power tools wow for six well it's because this is two things number one i started with milwaukee because that's what we had for the trade school right and they're in their sponsor i cold called them they said yes i couldn't believe it right so what did you ask them i said hey i'm starting a trade school would you sponsor trades or tools because i kind of figured out sponsor as in given to me for free yeah yeah like i think about like five thousand dollars so far and who did you call i just cold called a guy on linkedin who worked at milwaukee who worked in milwaukee yep and he's like sure yeah i emailed him in and uh he called me i remember i was sitting at the home depot aisle and he's like because well i'd been in corporate america so i kind of figured out what what the total lifetime value of a milwaukee customer is and i put that in a pitch i'm like i know these guys spend between 30 to 45 000 throughout their career you want to get them at 18 let's talk so they did so brilliant that's why to do that yeah i just want to bottom you don't know what you don't know i mean i just i figured the worst i can get is a no so yeah the power tools are expensive but and and i i struggle with this for when we get because we haven't had more contracts coming up in the future is that yes they're expensive but when i looked at the other brands like the harbor freight brands they're too heavy for the kids because they're full big full-size milwaukee makes these little 12s right little tiny guys which work perfect for the kids they're small enough they can and they have tons of power and they they're under that buy one cry once without a doubt yeah yeah you know but you get them on sale you know you get them on father's day sales or black friday sales and you know you're and basically like a drill and a driver what i do on my power tools and i overdo them i do two kids per two students per set of power tools you could probably do three and stretch it more right so like three drills and three drivers it's a combo for 1500 bucks uh you say driving me like an impact driver yeah a little impact and a little and a screw gun okay and then um three jig saws um and then three nailers like little pin nails 18 gauge nailers is 4100 um but again most of these guys have like when i first started i grabbed whatever tools i had a couple rigids i had some some uh a couple milwaukees i borrowed some from my son my youngest son grabbed some of his tools so the very first ones we just took whatever we could yeah you know now i know the only only my 13 and plus touch the power school tools extensively i've done whole classes where they don't touch a power tool they're so happy doing the hand saws which blew my mind they love they love the power tools they love the power tools they love the power tools they love the power tools they love the power tools they love the power tools they love the power tools they love taking a 12 inch board and cut it down to five inches and then they cut it down to three inches and two inches and then the last couple times i started bringing a scrap box just because i have all this scrap lumber and last friday like hey mr mike we're done can we you know what do you want me to do i'm like i was like there's just and i guess one i either i said or one of the students said i said if you want to go grab something on the scrap bin oh my gosh you thought it was christmas like these kids dove into this big bucket full of scrap pieces that was thrown away they're hammering them together they're screwing them together they're gluing them clamping them cutting and they're coming out these crazy ideas and i just sit back and make
Speaker 2sure they don't cut their fingers off you know is that not the most gratifying thing in the world to see i'm telling you dude it fills my curiosity for the first time i have never seen and i've seen
Speaker 1it many times one example this this student he's probably 12 maybe 10 or 12 he built a little squirrel house feeder looks like it looks like a picnic table it's made of cedar and it's it wasn't hard but it was pretty pretty difficult for him and he spent about three minutes when he's finally done just holding it and turning it around flipping it he just kept flipping it and you could just see like his pride growing these kids have never touched anything and they're afraid to break everything so we have these big posters we set up that you know mistakes are at the end quitting this like i want you to make mistakes then let's figure it out you know um since then there's been three other guys that are doing a similar thing since we started locally
Speaker 2or locally country okay locally and are they are they growing the pie or are they competing directly
Speaker 1now they're growing their pie they're different areas and um one of them he's leaning more into the the metal melgy which i can't do um the other one he's still trying trying to find his feet um but what i've heard from parents that have done the especially some of the other ones is i'm so anal on safety like they we have safety posters safety glasses you know we don't play that um where do you get the posters i just canva and went to office max and kind of printed okay yep you know asked you know chat gpt now i'm addicted to claude so i'm like okay what should this poster or you know you know just google safety posters and then kind of get some ideas have you had any
Speaker 2accidents nope wow praise god nothing what about insurance i know i already know that was easy i
Speaker 1thought that'd be hard it's just our regular business insurance regular business insurance for our suite and he covers you say for the trade school you mean okay yeah i pay like 95 a month
Speaker 2wow all right so we've talked about tools so milwaukee just sent you a box of four thousand
Speaker 1worth of tools yeah over no a couple different times send me some tools send me some packouts send me some tape measures you know talk to this vendor they'll send you a little more yeah like sprinkled in over you know several months not so much for the trade students or the the shop class more for the trade school okay yeah i just reused them if someone were to
Speaker 2start this and initially only start it for the six to nine year olds what is the total startup cost required 450 500 450 and that's assuming you don't have anything like that's assuming you
Speaker 1don't even have a miter saw or a square yeah you know so if you start at zero and i think even you borrow somebody's folding table so it goes from 3 425 to 325 you borrow somebody's table right and then everybody's got screwdrivers like who doesn't have a screwdriver so you don't need those so maybe you need to clamp some tape measures the minor boxes you can easily do a a class for less
Speaker 2than 300 well let's bring it down even more how about people paying up front like deposits oh i don't go to the front they pay up front so theoretically could you collect money for this class use that money to
Speaker 1go spend the 300 500 yeah you could book them yeah yeah you could you could um do a simple square thing and and uh some of url they pay full out and then um and use that three to five seven hundred dollars to front load your first set of tools and then from there you're just
Speaker 2repeating i need to have a gong in here because every time i discover a business that you really could start with no money i just want to be like bing we found one you know because it's like it's even an asterisk like you post to your facebook friends you send a stripe link you get them to pay as they should you should collect deposits up front no matter what whether you're brand new or not you use the money to go buy the tools of course you're going to need some expertise hopefully you already have that just some around the house garage expertise maybe you watch some youtube videos but it is a business you could start with with nothing yeah and and the the
Speaker 1amount of times i'm like the moms the moms like my wife is like all you talk to is women on facebook i'm like they're thick they're the customers sorry babe they pay the bills yeah like there was a thing but i hear every single class you built that you built that like they're just amazed and they're like caddies i mean again it's just fun woodworking stuff um now we're getting the attention of um private schools hey can you help us spin up a woodworking class um you know more more of the the um the foster community i think but really really i think what really kind of game changed it was here in florida we have step up which is a like a scholarship program so if you pull your kids out of public school the state will split the cost with you or something like that um we became a vendor so the parents don't pay us if they're in that that homeschool private school scholarship program from the state oh beautiful they register on our line for the class right or book it and then they put a code in that zeroes out the cart and then they go to their step up page find us on step up and the state pays us within 24 hours after i hit send last i checked the government isn't too price
Speaker 2sensitive either they're not yep yep um what what was again what do you think happened with shop class in the first place that was my favorite class in high school and are they surely they're not as common anymore right
Speaker 1they're not they're not they're they're they're like you know i'm 50 so when i was in high school in the late era in middle school in the 80s yeah everybody had it we had all the way through high school i think it's like everything else and mike road talks about this at length is 90s we started pushing everybody towards college like you had to go to college and i did too i have two degrees i had a ton of student debt you know um i was talking to a public school this weekend about the trades i'm like you know college isn't for everybody there's a lot of paths in there i think we just we drank the kool-aid for college and thought it was for everyone and it's not and i tell i have parents ask me all the time about their their kids going to college versus trades and stuff and i'm like especially with ai man if you're not doing a stem degree don't even look at college yeah like if you get medical or something that required engineering medical totally get it you know but a marketing or a history of college is not for everybody it's not for everybody it's not for everybody it's not for everybody it's not for everybody it's not for everybody it's not for everybody it's not for everybody history or uh mba you know what i can do at clot i built my entire now we have an app i built it all with clod code listen to you and a couple other guys just figuring it out i built my own experience none none you know um it does all my marketing for me helps me figure out post it helps me do the the messaging for the poster it helps me come up with the project ideas i mean it goes it goes squirrelly you know if you don't yeah check it it'll it'll go down a rabbit hole um but yeah i think it was they just and now you've got a whole almost generation and a half they've never touched a tool and they're so afraid it's going to hurt them and cut off their fingers yeah like if you just do it simple it's not and
Speaker 2safely you'll have fun and they all do yeah and i mean table saws are the the expensive thing and you're you're probably not even messing with it no i say they're expensive they're the dangerous
Speaker 1thing you're not messing with it yeah none of my students have touched it my miter saw or my table saw okay uh this is for me to take big sticks and little sticks what a scam now that i think of it
Speaker 2like colleges and universities spent in the 90s and they're not even messing with it and they're not even messing with it and they're not even messing with it and they're not even messing with it in 2000s like preaching you got to go to college you got to go to college meanwhile they're jacking tuition up 10 a year every year they're like artificially creating this demand and then pumping their prices up and it's never been less relevant or needful than ever yep what a scam yeah
Speaker 1in my my my industry i i stepped i was in construction and landscaping in the 90s and then went into project management and then um went into sustainability which is the greening side of it um because i believe that to me it's not a scam it's not a scam it's not a scam it's not a scam to me sustainability is is biblically focused you know good stewards of the environment you know treat your neighbor as you love yourself and then be a good financial steward it has nothing to do with politics if you look at it biblically it's grounded in scripture i could point to the scripture to it obviously i was a closet in my industry i kept that very close to chest you know um did some great things love my career right but again 180 000 of student loans and now i'm running a trade school and teaching shop classes yeah yeah um okay what about um what about growing your business what about growing your business what about growing your girls are any girls in your class half of them it's almost half not full half so probably i'd say 35 to 45 percent are girls that's shocking to me it is and they crush it like my girls crush it yeah they crush it why do they crush it like because i always tell these boys too because i have a class with with mix i'm like all right guys who do you think is going to do better the girls or the boys because the boys are all ego they raise their hands i'm like nope the girls and they all like their shoulders shrink you know and i'm like all right girls why do you think you'll do better than the boys and they all like we'll listen i go yep you'll listen you know they're pretty and they're starting to get more girls in the trades very tension focused we joke the house may not be built on time but at least it'll be built perfect right um so yeah over half of them are girls no and we've done skateboards like we built skateboards one time that's cool laminated maple together and built steak that was a huge success wow and that was a that was a five hundred dollar class per student wow and you got trucks and wheels and everything parents bought the trucks and wheels i just supplied the maple and the forms wow so i was out 60 70 dollars per student and a class would run four or five
Speaker 2hundred all right let's run through your your numbers to date so it's been almost a year 800 the first month 6 000 the next month yep then start in january and go to today so january i
Speaker 1wasn't doing as many wood shops out was about 800 february i did a couple it was 2200 because we had the big foster thing then when we switched to in-house which again it's a different model if i didn't have a big foster then it would be a different model if i didn't have a big foster it's like my like in march to july i made 50 grand but that's because we had the classes here in our commercial spot everything else is mobile we take the shop to them right so you kind of got to kind of slice the numbers apart if you really want to but you know somebody could do this completely remotely like completely mobile like you don't need to have a commercial space yeah right there's a couple other ones um they do it out of the garage they do it at the parks like they'll go set up every saturday at a park they'll go set up every saturday at a park they'll go set up every day you know um you know so there's several different ways to to line it you don't need to have the the commercial spot i don't do as many mobiles the only mobiles i do now are big mobiles you know 30 40 30 plus long long bills long programs full semesters um because i need to
Speaker 2focus on the trade school and i imagine just a pickup truck or a van is everything if we do 40
Speaker 1students everything fits in in a in a f-250 super duty wow okay yeah um all right let me see so how
Speaker 2how far are you traveling like what does your radius look like when you do the mobile stuff
Speaker 1um the little ones if it's less than if it's 10 like we'll cap it at 10 usually we won't go further than 30 minutes from the house um the big the big contracts will stretch it up to 45 that's about it what i'd like to do is find other guys in those areas and basically let them run that cluster that zone we'll use the same brand that we've built right but again they become satellite shop teachers and then they run their own and do a profit share and then they run their own and then they run their own it's just it's really hard to find guys that want to do it because they're working full time or you know whatever um or they're just intimidated by tools or whatever but i think at some point
Speaker 2that's what i'd like to do your numbers are misleading in a good way because you say oh 800 in january 2200 in february you're only that's only like one or two events right yeah that's like three hours of work yep like very much in side hustle territory i interrupted you what what were your numbers and i know it's kind of murky but just add them all together between march and january and then you're like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm like oh
Speaker 1- So in March to July, so spring through summer, summer they were all here fifty thousand six hundred in all of those months combined wow and was it like growing was it yeah it was it was basically like eight eight and then then we hit a 12 then we hit a 16 it just kept scaling up and up and up um you know we get a lot of a lot of questions about winter winter breaks are huge like i think spring break we cleared 12 12 000 in one week um only teaching morning classes we're not all day like we're teaching a three-hour class in the morning that's it like that's that we stop um same with summer classes we ran summer camps we went um three day and five day summer camps they were from nine to noon so you're done in the afternoon right and they were three to four hundred dollars uh it's three hundred dollars for a three-day camp five hundred dollars for a five-day camp for three hours what would you say
Speaker 2the profit per year ceiling is for someone wanting to do this and not have any employees if you if
Speaker 1you did it with in purely mobile not not a commercial space so basically nights and weekends there's no reason why you couldn't with a decent hustle say you filled a whole saturday and a sunday afternoon you could clear probably 1500 on a saturday maybe do another 600 on a sunday right so that's what two grand so maybe conservative say you did two weekends a month so that's you're talking four grand a month
Speaker 2part in your spare time in your full-time job yep yep yep um what about what happens when the exhaust your immediate network or that's what i thought too so as if that ever happened because it just it's a word of mouth it just becomes a word of mouth it is it becomes word of mouth and
Speaker 1like we're in three homeschool groups one's got 9 000 one's got 5 000 i forget what the other one is and they're everywhere every community has homeschool groups like you know and all these moms talk to each other they all know each other they all talk to each other very tight-knit group um we've done probably i want to say say on the low side 500 students since thanksgiving it's been the low side we haven't even scratched the surface of just one homeschool group of 9 000 moms right and there's new kids obviously aging up and aging out consistently so you're always getting new new students you know and then what what's interesting is that then we started getting asked for hey can you do an adult diy class can you teach me how to drywall can you teach me how to hang a microwave or fix a door like we get the idea of how to hang a microwave or fix a door like we get the idea of we did a mother mother daughter uh made it may may build i think it's like 500 600 on the weekend they melted a little flower pots that's cool yeah and then we did a father son one for father's day they made the american flag the wooden american flag um and it's like 300 a head so we sold eight
Speaker 2or ten of those you know jeez you're just throwing around these numbers like oh three grand there three grand in an afternoon you're building this with scale in mind and most people like they could or they could they could get cheaper rent you get a much smaller place for 500 a month i've rented a place in huntsville alabama for 500 a month it was 500 square feet and it would have been great for
Speaker 1something like this what i did learn and i think that's true too if they wanted to go all in what i found out in talking to moms as soon as they saw our space it put us on another level yeah okay because they're like and it's interesting because i i my wife had explained to me i'm like i don't understand why this is why they like the space so much she was honey it feels safe when it's in somebody's garage and they're like oh my god i'm gonna go to the bathroom and i'm gonna go to the or in their backyard on a folding table it just doesn't quite feel as safe but if you have a commercial space they know somebody's vetted you and you know so and so forth but yeah you're right if i was to do it again i'd rent uh you know they do those math tutoring places and strip we're in a strip mall i'd rent a small thousand square foot strip mall completely open it up expose ceilings and beams kind of like that rc guy like he does for his rc tracks you don't need a bunch
Speaker 2of build out no you need to make it code compliant you need a bathroom that's handicapped accessible yep um make sure you got lights on the fire alarms you can even do this in like a shared maker space like or a shared warehouse or those contractor garages where it's like 1500 square feet you know like a 30 by 60 foot space um or a closed trailer like i i think version 3.0 is we
Speaker 1get a big 36 foot and closed trailer right wrap it all the tools are in it and it's got bat wings that open up and you pull up to the park or corporate events or whatever because you can do corporate events too i mean people have asked about corporate events you know you roll up and everybody has fun building stuff instead of having a part a girl's pottery barn thing you have a guy's you know woodwork yeah well it reminds me of those video game trailers yeah and the basketball guy the guy that does the best basketball guy yep yep same thing just woodworking what have all of your marketing methods been to date me figuring it out by mistakes it's all been facebook i mean i probably spent maybe 200 in facebook ad just for me getting desperate between you know classes and life they never work because i don't know what i don't know um but you know listening to you and others posting consistently like i have to post every single day these moms are super busy right um i just post i just post pictures all the time you know and now we've kind of gotten our voice so we're basically what we're really trying to do is really it's a it's a missions kingdom work through tools and training that's kind of what i feel drawn to do but what the kind of more tactical stand is like really confidence like giving the kids confidence they don't have and that confidence leads to responsibility and ultimately to servant leadership is kind of where I'm hoping they'll go as we go through the trade school. But the confidence is, I'm telling you, it fills your tank. It fills my tank every time. That's exhausting. I mean, I have a new respect for teachers. Oh, sure. Yeah. Tell me
Speaker 2about pricing. So I imagine if you post organically and you get eight moms together who have 12 kids combined, you're charging each of them per head. But if someone comes to you and says, hey, I'm in charge of this homeschool group, you're charging the homeschool group or a synagogue directly per
Speaker 1head? I do. I do. And basically, I step down the pricing. It's not $50 an hour. And basically, tear it down. Now, our big ones is 30 kids minimum. And the 40 kids maximum in our current system. And basically, like, OK, how long do you want? And then just figure out a pricing system from there. I know the one we're doing now, they added a markup on top of it. So there is still a wiggle room. To the parents. Because nobody does this. These parents have no place to take their kids to teach
Speaker 2them how to woodwork. Now, you said $50 an hour. Is that like, let's say there's only five kids. Where do you start per hour per kid? And then what do you scale that down to as you go to 50 kids or
Speaker 130 kids? Oh, honestly, I kind of keep the 50. Let's see, 50 and 75 for the little ones, right? Yeah. We've only got a couple of the bigger ones, the 25 plus. So I usually keep it at 50, 75 for the two. So I usually keep it at 50, 75 for the two. And then when you get to the B2B model, which is very lucrative, that's where you're getting a $30,000 contracts and all that kind of stuff. Then it's a different price structure. So then I'm just like, OK, two hours, you know, just kind of, I just basically back calculate it and kind of threw something against the wall. It's stuck. And that's what I'm going to use going forward.
Speaker 2So call it. I think there's room. Yeah. So call it 50, 50 bucks per. Hour per kid at the older ages, 75 per hour per kid at the younger ages. And as you scale up, you can bring it down. But you're saying you don't really need to most of the time because you're not competing.
Speaker 1Yeah, you're not competing. OK. Yeah. And I'll learn more the next six months. We get more of these these larger commercial B2B customers, private schools. We got we're getting plugged into the public schools. We do public schools, too. I think that's the trailer wrapped, you know, the whole the whole inch a lot. I think that'll be super cool. Yeah. But yeah, it could be. And that's that's what I was really saying. I think this could be something that I just like I just want to make an extra thousand dollars on a weekend. Take the tools I already got and make some smiles. It's that type of business. If you want to go all in the world, your oyster, your ocean, you can you can make a ton of money pretty simply, you know. But yeah, just for those who wanted to make two to three grand a month, this is easy.
Speaker 2Do you have like a acronym or a framework or something that you use?
Speaker 1It's learn, build, lead. So learn it, learn it, learn a skill, whatever it is, build with it and then lead others to it. That's kind of like the mantra, but not from like a business standpoint. I can I don't really have, you know, I guess post cut cash.
Speaker 2PC, PC, post, collect, host, right? Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. I mean, it really is.
Speaker 1Yeah. That would be cool to have a good acronym. That'd be kind of cool.
Speaker 2Yeah. Well, I like that post, collect, host, like post to Facebook, collect the money or even just the first one might be free. Right. Collect the reservations. Yeah. And then host it.
Speaker 1Because you do need to do a couple of them just to kind of get your feet wet and to get some pictures. Yeah. Yeah. Once you get the pictures and then if you want to go all in, then do a Facebook page. We did a Facebook page and then then we did a Google profile because we needed them for the trade school. But yeah, all of our reviews, if you look at all of our reviews for Facebook and Google are for the shop students.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1And I ask them flat out.
Speaker 2Yeah. Once you get pictures and videos, it just becomes easy mode.
Speaker 1And one thing I did learn is make sure to respect the the parents that don't want their kids posted. And that that that's I'm like, OK, so we had to like at first we used to put name tags on their shirt so I could call them by their name. Now I put them on the workstation because it's easier to go in and scratch them out. Right. And then we have all the parents sign a waiver, obviously. And then within that says, hey, we can pose. And most I mean, 99 percent of the time the parents don't care. I've had a few of them say, hey, like, well, I could put emoji on their face. Like, OK, that's fine. So I just put emoji. I'm their face. OK. OK. But there's so many pictures. You don't have to worry about it. I mean, there's right.
Speaker 2You know, if someone were to start this, like what is what are some non-negotiables that they need to do? Or what would step one be? Or what advice do you have for someone starting this from nothing?
Speaker 1Draw the line in a sandwich safety and don't move an inch. Safety glasses, don't even play with that. Because it takes one injury to wreck it. The whole business. Yeah, the whole business. Yeah. So, like, you know, number one, eye protection. Like, we have posters everywhere. We have posters on the site. They don't touch the table without eye protection. Right? And then I kind of have a persona, Mr. Mike. I have a little shop apron that's got all, like, my stuff in it. Right? And it's got eye protection. A big Velcro says eye protection. Yeah, definitely a hard line to safety. Keep it simple, stupid. Like, you don't have to build these elaborate steps tools.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1They like making totes and flags and bird feeders. And another thing, we used to go cheap on the wood. We'd buy the cheaper. And we're just because to save money. Now, we're like, no, we buy the really nice high-grade pine. It's got no knots in it. It costs more, but it's just a better experience for them. And they don't have to paint or stain it. They're happy going home with raw wood. Yeah. All day long. Yep.
Speaker 2I like the idea of going to Etsy and just sorting by, like, most sold, most popular. Both, like, physical things you could buy and then just copying that. And then plans. Like, I bought chicken coop plans and shed plans from Etsy. Like, 15 bucks. You could use those forever.
Speaker 1That's how I got my American flag plant. $9 off Etsy. Came with two file sizes. And then I went to Amazon and bought the star, what's it called? The stencil. The star stencil. With a jigsaw? Yeah. It's a metal. And they rattle can it. Like, it doesn't need to be complex. We're not talking routers or fancy joiner. We're talking, like, we're putting butt joints and screws. And I don't do nails. That's another thing. Don't do nails. I do everything with screws.
Speaker 2That's in Injury City, right?
Speaker 1It is Injury City. And then I just do the nails or the screws, little sheetrock screws. Don't buy the expensive ones. I buy sheetrock screws in the big buckets all day long, right? Home depots and Lowe's, they always have a scrap bin part all the time. Like, go grab scrap out of there, right? And what I failed early, and I still struggle with this. I'm like, okay, I got to keep coming up with new projects, right? Keep coming up with new projects. But really, I've got 10 projects, Chris, and that'll keep us busy for probably five years.
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, you need new projects if you're teaching the same kids over and over. But if you find a winning project, recycle it.
Speaker 1So what we do is basically for the recurrent – because now we do month-to-month programs basically every week for a month, like every Monday or every Tuesday. And basically, I have a bunch of black totes filled with kits, like a flag kit or a beanbag kit or whatever. And if it's a previous student, I'm like, hey, what do you want to build? I'm like, I want to build a flag. Okay. So I go grab the flag, and they're building a flag, and everybody else is building robots or beanbags or whatever. Yep.
Speaker 2What happens when the kid doesn't finish by the end of the class?
Speaker 1So the first couple of times, yeah, the first couple of times we went long. Because we tried to add paint and glue. I've learned to simplify the project. You'll over-prep the first couple of projects or first couple of shows or classes or events or whatever you want to call them. You'll over-prep. Like, you'll drill more holes than you need to. And Harbor Freight, don't be too prideful with the tools. Go to Harbor Freight. If they're going to break them, they're going to break them. They're going to drop them. They're going to stain them. Yeah, that was for sure.
Speaker 2Anything else I should have asked you but neglected to? About? About the business? Do you have, like, a carpentry background, or are you just, like, your average dad?
Speaker 4Just an average dad.
Speaker 1I'm one myself. Yeah. It's funny. The only reason I kind of got into woodworking was we bought a house in Maryland, and my wife wanted a new kitchen. I got priced, like, $300,000 or $400,000. I'm like, I'm not paying $300,000 for boxes, for cabinets. So I hopped on YouTube and built her entire kitchen off YouTube. Wow. And now I can hold my own. But, again, don't keep it simple. We're talking 90-degree squares, screws, and glue. It's not hard. It's not hard. Yeah. But do not be – don't be surprised when you leave tired but, like, on fire because the kids are so much fun to build with. They are just an absolute blast, you know? And now I think I'm going to do full just scrap bin. I'm going to throw a whole scrap bin in. Once they learn the safety – and I always start with safety. These are the five rules of the shop. Like, we have a mantra, respect first, safety always. That's the mantra. Every time I have a class, I start with that and eye protection. And then teach them how to do this stuff, obviously. And then I'm like, okay, here's a bin. Go have fun. And, man. It's like wildfire. It's like you put a whole plate of cookies out.
Speaker 2You should upcharge for that. I should. I mean, you, like, say, hey, show them, like, a quick 15-second clip of what they do. And you're like, hey, for an extra $10 per head, I'll add the scrap pile.
Speaker 1Yeah. It is. And it's funny, too, because the scraps are from a previous class. Sure. It's free. Yeah. It just – I'm going to throw it away anyway. Yep.
Speaker 2Yeah. That's amazing.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Do you ever post to Facebook groups or to Facebook Marketplace?
Speaker 1I think you could do Marketplace. But there's so much gold in the home – oh, and not just homeschool group, mom's groups. Like, moms of Palm Beach County or moms of Austin, Texas or whatever, right? Yeah. You could just post to those groups. And, again, we're not videos. We're talking a static image, right? Woodworking or shop class, kids build confidence, message me for details. That's it. No price. Don't put anything in a price, right? And then all the price goes on your Facebook page. Because they don't read that stuff. I mean, that's another thing I learned. They don't read their website. But anyway, they don't read your Facebook page. They all want you to tell you they're, you know, right there over the phone.
Speaker 2I feel like you're underselling the genius of that post. Kids build confidence. Is that what you said? Like, you're not selling the steak. You're selling the sizzle. You're selling the outcome, which is confidence. And as a dad of four kids, that is one thing I want them to have more than almost any other thing is confidence.
Speaker 1Yeah. It took us a while to figure that out. It took me a while to figure my voice out. Yeah. You know, to figure out – because it was skills. And then I realized, like, we don't teach woodworking. We help kids gain confidence through tools. Tools and woodworking.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1And it's a blast, man.
Speaker 2Man. It sounds fun. Mike, this has been incredible. Where can people find you or your business if they want to learn more?
Speaker 1Voskill.com, which is vocational skills. I used AI to help us come up with the name.
Speaker 2Voskills. V-O-S-K-I-L-L dot com?
Speaker 1Yeah. Voskills, singular. V-O-S-K-I-L-L dot com.
Speaker 2And then where can we find you? Or should we just go to the website?
Speaker 1Yeah, go to the website. Or we're on Facebook, Instagram. I think it's Voskill Training. V-O-S-K-I-L-L Training. Okay. Yeah, we do woodworking classes and mostly woodworking. That seems to work the best and it's the funnest. That's what I know. Yeah. Beautiful. I'm a huge fan. I'm so thankful for what you do. Thank you, Mike.
Speaker 2I'm thankful for what you're doing. I mean, you're inspiring people here, both locally and nationwide. Hey, guys, if you're still listening to this, it's probably because you haven't had a chance to take your AirPods out. You're still mowing the lawn. You're still driving, what have you. If you're still here with me, I would really, really love and appreciate a five-star review on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. It would mean a lot. If you want to go the extra mile, share this episode with a friend that might have an interest in starting a business. It would mean a ton. Hope you have the best day of your life today.
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