It started when I was over at my friend’s house that he bought a few years ago. It is in one of those new fancy schmancy townhome developments that have tripled their home value in the past few years... His house came with all the best home appliances like smart wifi systems, kitchen sink that you can turn off by waving at it and, most importantly, a tankless water heater.
Tankless water heaters are seen as better because they last longer, use less electricity and you can have on-demand hot water every second. The downsides are that they are 3x more expensive than the traditional big tanks people usually have in their basements, and they need to be maintained every 12 months. Little particulates from the water can get coated on the inside and damage or clog it.
I was talking with my friend, and he was telling me about how he had to go and buy a bunch of tools to clean his tankless water heater. After he watched a few videos, it was a pretty simple process, and it would be a pretty simple business. People need to have their heaters flushed, and they need to pay about $75-$100 in materials to do it themselves... so they would probably pay $100 to have someone else come do it, right?
He is busy running a thriving concrete table business on Etsy (called Crete and Steel, look it up) and wouldn’t have time for it, so he handed it over to me. Here’s how I made $500 in the first week.
Researched a good name that would have good SEO or at least got the simple message across. I went with Flush My Tankless— pretty straightforward, nothing fancy.
I searched around for a little bit to see if it was being used on the internet. Got a free Google Gmail account.
Went over to NameCheap and bought a domain for $12. Got the 2 month free trial for the professional email which would be $3 a month.
Did a bunch of research on what would be the best landing page and was shocked to see that so many of them have exorbitant monthly subscriptions. I ended up going with Namecheap’s “Stellar” web hosting with access to cPanel with its web builder ($3 a month). The web builder is a pretty great no code solution for $3, definitely cheaper if you code yourself, but I was going for rapid testing.
Signed up for a few tracking analytics to see traffic; Google Analytics, Google My Business, and Hotjar.
I next needed a way for people to schedule me to come to their house for an appointment. I originally was going to go with Calendly but was very pleased when I found the Square has a free appointment software when you only have one user. I struggled with a few things getting it set up, but they have very helpful customer service (only calls, no chat) and I figured things out.
Now, awareness. I probably could have gone with Facebook ads or Google or some paid internet method, but I decided to go the old fashion way and make some flyers. I used Canva to design up some flyers and throw on a QR code and came up with a simple flyer. I’m no designer, but after some fiddling, I was pretty happy with it. Also used my Google Voice number on the flyer, so I was a little more anonymous.
I got them printed at PrintRunner because they had the best prices, $0.02 a flyer. I ordered 2000 for about $45. Did not have the best shipping time, though. I also ordered 200 at $0.13 each from FedEx with next day printing for about $20. I know, I know. It doesn’t makes sense to but 200 for half the price of 2000 but I wasn’t trying to wait a week to get started.
All this time, I watched a bunch of Youtube videos of actual plumbers teaching you how to do it. I would have had to have bought the necessary tools to do the flushing and that would have been about $75 but my friend let me borrow his. I did also have to buy a 5 gallon bucket ($5), a wrench ($7), double-sided tape (for flyers) ($2.50), and a gallon of white vinegar ($2.67).
So now I was ready to offer the Tankless Water Heater Flushing as a service (TWHFaaS). Up until this point I spent maybe a day or two of research and tech building and spent $97.17.
My wife and I did a bit of research and cold calling housing developments asking if their homes had tankless water heaters installed and made a list of neighborhoods.
On a Saturday afternoon, we went out for an hour and handed out 250 flyers. Not going to lie, I did not like it. Every other house has a Ring doorbell now and I knew some people would just hate that I am walking up to their door. But it’s the Hustle. You have to push through it.
We went home and I twiddled my thumbs for a few hours and then I got a phone call! Not through the sign up link I labored on... but I’ll take it! It was an old man and we scheduled a time for me to come on Monday!
The beauty of tankless water heater flushing is that it is incredibly easy. You set up the flushing (takes about 10 minutes) let it run for an hour at which point I can go out into my car and work on other things. Then come back and take it all down (5 minutes). So, $100 for about 15 minutes of work and the only expense of ($3) vinegar and the cost of marketing.
My wife and I went out a few days later and posted up flyers again for about 2.5 hours, about 400 flyers. Quickly got 4 more appointments.
Convinced my cousins to come post up more flyers and in return I buy them lunch. 6 people, 750 flyers per hour for 3 hours. More appointments flooded in.
So now I am averaging about 3-4 appointments a day. I am now posting on Craigslist and FB groups to find more people to hand out flyers. I’m thinking paying $0.10 a flyer, so about $12.50 an hour? So far no bites. But it is all a numbers game.
I get a consistent 1% return from flyers. So, 20 appointments ($2000) for every batch of 2000 flyers ($50). I’m now looking to expand more flyer posters and maybe even hire someone out at $40-50 per appointment to keep going. My area has unlimited new developments so I wont run out for a while. If I do, I have everyone’s information and I’ll just wait 12 months from now to offer a flushing again!
Hope this helps someone out there. All the information and ideas are out there, you just have to work for them a little bit. These gurus out here are trying to profit off of people’s insecurity and feelings of inadequacy. I am just a normal guy and I made this work and you can make your thing work, too.
Tankless water heaters are seen as better because they last longer, use less electricity and you can have on-demand hot water every second. The downsides are that they are 3x more expensive than the traditional big tanks people usually have in their basements, and they need to be maintained every 12 months. Little particulates from the water can get coated on the inside and damage or clog it.
I was talking with my friend, and he was telling me about how he had to go and buy a bunch of tools to clean his tankless water heater. After he watched a few videos, it was a pretty simple process, and it would be a pretty simple business. People need to have their heaters flushed, and they need to pay about $75-$100 in materials to do it themselves... so they would probably pay $100 to have someone else come do it, right?
He is busy running a thriving concrete table business on Etsy (called Crete and Steel, look it up) and wouldn’t have time for it, so he handed it over to me. Here’s how I made $500 in the first week.
Researched a good name that would have good SEO or at least got the simple message across. I went with Flush My Tankless— pretty straightforward, nothing fancy.
I searched around for a little bit to see if it was being used on the internet. Got a free Google Gmail account.
Went over to NameCheap and bought a domain for $12. Got the 2 month free trial for the professional email which would be $3 a month.
Did a bunch of research on what would be the best landing page and was shocked to see that so many of them have exorbitant monthly subscriptions. I ended up going with Namecheap’s “Stellar” web hosting with access to cPanel with its web builder ($3 a month). The web builder is a pretty great no code solution for $3, definitely cheaper if you code yourself, but I was going for rapid testing.
Signed up for a few tracking analytics to see traffic; Google Analytics, Google My Business, and Hotjar.
I next needed a way for people to schedule me to come to their house for an appointment. I originally was going to go with Calendly but was very pleased when I found the Square has a free appointment software when you only have one user. I struggled with a few things getting it set up, but they have very helpful customer service (only calls, no chat) and I figured things out.
Now, awareness. I probably could have gone with Facebook ads or Google or some paid internet method, but I decided to go the old fashion way and make some flyers. I used Canva to design up some flyers and throw on a QR code and came up with a simple flyer. I’m no designer, but after some fiddling, I was pretty happy with it. Also used my Google Voice number on the flyer, so I was a little more anonymous.
I got them printed at PrintRunner because they had the best prices, $0.02 a flyer. I ordered 2000 for about $45. Did not have the best shipping time, though. I also ordered 200 at $0.13 each from FedEx with next day printing for about $20. I know, I know. It doesn’t makes sense to but 200 for half the price of 2000 but I wasn’t trying to wait a week to get started.
All this time, I watched a bunch of Youtube videos of actual plumbers teaching you how to do it. I would have had to have bought the necessary tools to do the flushing and that would have been about $75 but my friend let me borrow his. I did also have to buy a 5 gallon bucket ($5), a wrench ($7), double-sided tape (for flyers) ($2.50), and a gallon of white vinegar ($2.67).
So now I was ready to offer the Tankless Water Heater Flushing as a service (TWHFaaS). Up until this point I spent maybe a day or two of research and tech building and spent $97.17.
My wife and I did a bit of research and cold calling housing developments asking if their homes had tankless water heaters installed and made a list of neighborhoods.
On a Saturday afternoon, we went out for an hour and handed out 250 flyers. Not going to lie, I did not like it. Every other house has a Ring doorbell now and I knew some people would just hate that I am walking up to their door. But it’s the Hustle. You have to push through it.
We went home and I twiddled my thumbs for a few hours and then I got a phone call! Not through the sign up link I labored on... but I’ll take it! It was an old man and we scheduled a time for me to come on Monday!
The beauty of tankless water heater flushing is that it is incredibly easy. You set up the flushing (takes about 10 minutes) let it run for an hour at which point I can go out into my car and work on other things. Then come back and take it all down (5 minutes). So, $100 for about 15 minutes of work and the only expense of ($3) vinegar and the cost of marketing.
My wife and I went out a few days later and posted up flyers again for about 2.5 hours, about 400 flyers. Quickly got 4 more appointments.
Convinced my cousins to come post up more flyers and in return I buy them lunch. 6 people, 750 flyers per hour for 3 hours. More appointments flooded in.
So now I am averaging about 3-4 appointments a day. I am now posting on Craigslist and FB groups to find more people to hand out flyers. I’m thinking paying $0.10 a flyer, so about $12.50 an hour? So far no bites. But it is all a numbers game.
I get a consistent 1% return from flyers. So, 20 appointments ($2000) for every batch of 2000 flyers ($50). I’m now looking to expand more flyer posters and maybe even hire someone out at $40-50 per appointment to keep going. My area has unlimited new developments so I wont run out for a while. If I do, I have everyone’s information and I’ll just wait 12 months from now to offer a flushing again!
Hope this helps someone out there. All the information and ideas are out there, you just have to work for them a little bit. These gurus out here are trying to profit off of people’s insecurity and feelings of inadequacy. I am just a normal guy and I made this work and you can make your thing work, too.