This 20-Year-Old Makes $100K with Christmas Lights

0:00 How does this 20-year-old make more in weeks than what many make in a year? We're two weeks in, and we've already passed $45,000 this season. No way! And the crazy part is he's still a full-time student. My business journey started after watching an Uplift video. Wow, that's encouraging to hear. Watch as Nathan reveals three common mistakes that could sink your business before you even get started. This can turn running a business into an absolute nightmare, really. But good news is there are a couple things we can do to avoid it. Forget paid ads; this could easily flood your business with more customers than you'd know what to do with. Everyone is so obsessed with digital marketing they forget that it exists. This can easily bring 10x to your business, and I've seen it time and time again.

0:45 By the end of this video, you'll have the exact blueprint on how to start your own Christmas light business for under $500. Alright, Nathan, pleasure to meet you, pleasure before we get into your story, talk about how you make what most of the us make in a year in a week; tell us what you do, what are we doing here as well? Yeah... so my name is Nathan Popa with PDX Holiday Lighting. We put Christmas lights on houses and we do it like nobody else, and you know, we put quality behind it. We make homes Look beautiful, so out of all the industries here in Portland why Christmas lights? I did soft washing throughout the year and during the winter it gets slow; people don't want to clean their roofs. Their gutters are already cleaned out, and I had some people ask me, 'You know, hey, do you want to do our lights for us?' So I said , 'I'll go ahead and do it.' It keeps me busy during the winter, and as business grew, I was like, 'Wow, it really keeps me busy during the winter!' So we

1:32 doubled down, kept pushing at it, and it's just been a great thing to do during the season. Kind of a natural progression, I hear. Because we've interviewed other pressure washing Companies which do Christmas lights right, we just didn't focus on it like we are today but I wonder why people just naturally assume you would do their Christmas lights. We're up on the roof, I think that's what it is-they're like, 'Man, you're there if we're paying him to be on the roof maybe he'll go and clip in a couple of Christmas lights for us.' Anyways, and you know you never thought about it, never was an idea until someone just asked and said, 'Can you do it?' Yeah, someone asked me and I tried it for the first time. I said, 'That's not that bad' -I kind of threw myself out there with pricing. I didn't know what to charge. People were saying yes. From there, I just moved my pieces in a strategic way to make sure I can keep growing and doubling down on what's working, that's awesome, so uh, I believe we have a job site to go to too, so let's get moving, Paul.

2:17 Wow, so you'll bulb everything here, I was thinking like Home Depot stuff, lights are on the wire, yeah, or the bulbs are on the wire, bulbs are on the wire. So, what we do we have the bulbs and then we have the clips, and we go ahead and we just screw it in. So if you want to go ahead and try that out, it's a massive clip, though, it is a big clip, but they're sturdy, they're meant to last a long time. Am I doing it right? Yep, just like that, so the bulb. Holds it in place so if I put the clip this way, how is it going? Oh, so it goes like this on the gutter so it clips them like this on the gutter and then on the house that's going to be on the inside of the gutter that slides under the shingle. So, and we can also flip these clips to make sure that it's secure to the shingle. I'm curious why you're buying your own lights? I'm kind of shocked, I thought everything comes pre-made, that's what a lot of people think. Paul, and the reason why we do this is we can really customize what we're doing on the roof. We can choose from all the colors that we have,

3:03 yeah, and we can really make the lights unique and We use commercial-grade products. Yeah, you'll see we have a loose wire right here, yeah, you know, no connection, no connectors. We do all the connectors, all the extension plugs, males, females, on site. The reason why higher-quality lights that way we can guarantee the work and quality that we do and give people service free of charge, which is something that we add on to that premium pricing that we'll talk about. Awesome! So this is the roll, what uh, how many feet are we talking in each one? Yeah, so they come if you want to try to lift that up, they're pretty heavy, I mean, I work out, you know, there you go, feels like five pounds, they come in them Come in, a thousand foot stringers, yeah, and what does this cost you, Nathan? Yes, so that cost us right around three hundred dollars. So we pay three hundred dollars for a thousand feet; we give the absolute best quality lights, and that comes at a price. Let's go check out your office and continue the

3:49 conversation. Let's do it, come on in-this is it, this is the fancy office, nothing crazy as you can see, but definitely gets done. Let's talk about the beginning of the business and did it become a success right off the bat? Help us understand the revenue that you were generating up to today. Yeah, so it was definitely a slow start getting into The swing of things, we ended up doing right around $60, 000 give or take last year all together in revenue, which was amazing but it was definitely a slow start. Starting from when to when, yeah so we started about the middle of October. Got it? I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have any mentors and I think the first job I quoted was twelve hundred because I didn't want to do it. I really didn't want to do it but it had like some weird archways and like I had no idea what I was doing so I was like, 'I just threw out a

4:35 number', I'm like, 'I can do it for $12, 000' and he said, 'Done, let's do it'. And then at that moment it kind of clicked for me and I was like Wait, someone's willing to pay that much money for Christmas lights, and then where are you at today? Yeah, so far we're right at 50, 000 in the last pretty much two or three weeks. Wow, our goal is 125 this year, so hopefully we'll hit that 125 um k mark. So that's the plan for this year. Help us understand what the startup costs look like; what's the bare minimum to get started? Yeah, it's definitely low in this industry. I mean, with 500 bucks you can get your first job. All you need is a ladder so that's the majority of the cost and then buy myself some ratchet straps, make it work with whatever vehicle I got, and then I'd go and just start door-to-door. knocking offer your services for a little bit of a

5:20 discount and once you get that job ask for a deposit you know a 20 deposit go and buy the material install it take your check have more liquid money that you can go and invest in marketing i'm gonna pretend i'm a potential customer i call it and you're at your office right let's focus and emphasize the closing aspect of your business right all right yeah so the first thing i do say if someone calls them like kate this is nathan with pdx holiday lighting they tell me that they saw a sign they saw my ads they saw whatever it is the first thing i say is hey just so you know we're not the Cheapest client, our prices start at 800 with an average of $12, 000. We do everything in between. We provide the lights, custom cut them, service them free of charge, take them down and store them under one price. Are you interested? Heck yeah, I'm interested! One guy just gave me a five thousand dollar bid, you're 800 bucks bro, let's do business. Yeah, so our prices start at $800.

6:06 So, what we can do for you? Let's go ahead and schedule another time for me to come out or we can schedule a Zoom call for me to hop on, take a look at your house and explore some options that we can do for you. You know, we're definitely not the cheapest, we're probably up like Probably one of the more expensive companies here, and there's a reason for that: it's the value that you provide behind the company. And just being confident once they say yes to that, I know that I have them in my grasp, and then I can explain the price we use and everything that comes with it. And once they see that it better explains everything, along with our design estimate that we give them, and our automations, and everything that we have set in the back end of the business, they see: 'Oh, this is a professional company. Let's go for it.' Alright, Nathan hit sixty-seven thousand dollars in his first two months of installation, can. Success really come that quickly or is it just a lucky break? So, leave your thoughts in the comments below as we'll

6:52 be asking Nathan the same question later on in the interview so this is the trailer, this is MoneyMaker, pretty cool, simple looking, I love the wrap though, what did it cost you as far as the wrap and what kind of results are you seeing when it comes to branding it like this? Yeah, so the wrap was right around $2, 500, so we just wanted something that looked a little bit more premium, um, that's why we went with the black and gold. Let's go back to the beginning: how are you getting customers initially when you just first started? And what's your advice to entrepreneurs just getting going? I had a little bit of an advantage because I can reach out to some old clients, but if I had to do it from scratch, which I pretty much did, it was just knocking on doors, you know. I bought some leads for $100, and I bought a pack of 250. Started putting them out, knocking on every single house I saw that I wanted to do and you'll get a lot of no's but after I did, you know maybe 100 door knocks,

7:38 one person said yes. From that neighbor, I got another neighbor who posted me on Facebook, and then that went out, and then you know it kept growing from there. Okay, what do you think is very important about hearing no's? What do you say to that, yeah because most people just get turned off by it they get their feelings hurt every time I hear a no it's a new data new data point for me so I'm saying okay, why are they saying no? What demographic are they, yeah and you know what career are they in and that way I can make a list and compile who my ideal client is because once you find your ideal client you can tailor all your services towards the 10 that pay 80% of your revenue. So, find what works in your area because it's different everywhere and double down on it. Blitz time with Nathan, you ready? Let's go! Alright, how early? do you start bookings for christmas lights yeah so we start bookings in august okay what's the most

8:25 challenging type of probably the houses on the lake here their roofs are any steep roof is really tough for us how do you unwind after a long day of installations yeah day in devotions day with family staying away from from social media and from the devices what's the coldest weather you've worked in while installing lights probably last year in december it was maybe 17 degrees that's miserable it was rough with no trailer what's the biggest purchase you made once you had some money coming in probably the truck and trailer That's awesome, how many homes do you typically decorate in a day? Yeah, we try to be right around two or three. We can do up to four once the once the season ramps up. How big is the crew on that? You and two other people? Just me and one guy? Oh, we're quick. Um, how long is it a typical workday for you during the busy season? Okay, yeah, with the four houses,

9:11 say yeah, four houses, that's us installing, but after I get back home, I'm doing you know refining my ads, I'm making sure reviews are in play, I'm doing my estimates, so I probably wake up at seven, stop work around eight or nine o'clock. Most memorable reaction from a client? Oh man, probably a client That we out and we surprised them with the garage, they were having a pretty tough time in life, and we said, 'Let's just give them some more lights.' So that's awesome, they really appreciated it. They gave us hugs; they gave us you know, cookies, apple cider. It was awesome, big smile! What's one thing you wish you started sooner? Yeah, definitely putting God first in the company, that's definitely my biggest thing. But other than that, Christmas lights, there you go. Last but not least, what's the most rewarding thing about running your own business? Having time to go and spend time with family, get on vacations, and everything outside of The busy season,

9:56 it's definitely nice that's awesome. There you go! Will rates rise or fall this month? Will inflation go up? Are we in a bull or bear market? Stop second guessing yourself and dealing with uncertainty alone. Over 40, 000 businesses have eliminated the guesswork and future-proofed their businesses with NetSuite by Oracle. NetSuite streamlines your accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one fluid platform. No need to look at different spreadsheets and reports. You can finally have the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions with real-time insights and forecasting. You'd get the data you need to make the best outcomes for your business, in other words, this may be the crystal ball most entrepreneurs are

10:42 looking for. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at Netsuite. com. The guide is free to you at Netsuite. com. com let's talk about the most powerful marketing strategy and where you're getting the biggest roi yeah so the biggest roi is definitely coming from yard signs the roi on a sign you're paying two dollars a sign that one sign can give you a twelve hundred dollar job and um yeah you don't need many signs to you know pay back what you paid in sign so definitely roi best is with yard signs very inexpensive but how do you get it up

11:28 on somebody's yard just knock on the door and ask yeah so what we do is every time we finish an install we go ahead and give them a little bit of a discount we'll say hey customer we'll give you 50 off if you want to keep our sign here for a month or two weeks whatever it may be and other than that we just put them you know around the city check your regulations with the State, see where you're allowed to put them for us. We have a lot of places that we're allowed to just nail into the posts and then those bring us calls all right so how much are you spending on ads and marketing on a monthly basis? And by the way, if you have a sign, a door hanging or show um, we were flying to us yeah they were right around the corner okay keep them simple you know. We hang Christmas lights let me see this yeah go for it. Last year we spent you know right around three thousand dollars on our marketing for that season for the whole season yeah and this year we're doing right around three thousand dollars a month so we're pretty. Much doubling down, and if so,

12:14 you know a little bit more on that, that's awesome, yeah, I mean, depends on how much you gotta spend to make right, you gotta spend to make, and keep it simple. Earlier we talked about some of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs can make, right? So, we're going to go back to it real quick and tell us what it is and how can we avoid it. For me personally, I think it was being confident in your pricing and also being confident in the service you're providing. If you're not confident, you're not going to be able to sell, and if you're not selling, you're going to undercut yourself, and that just leads to a wave of just Bad things for your business, heard it before, so basically you're saying undervaluing yourself as an entrepreneur as you're starting out, right? To get more business, you're like, 'Let me just be the cheapest.' Don't do that. And I learned that pretty quickly and that's why we switched our model to just telling people, 'Hey, we're not the cheapest. Are you interested? Yes or no if not we hang up, that's it.' I try to keep my phone calls under

12:59 30 seconds if they're not interested so it's pretty ruthless but when you have 20-30 calls coming in a day you don't have time for that. So let's say you do call me and you say, 'Hey Paul, by the way we're' not the cheapest where does the conversation go from there yeah so it goes you know one of three ways uh either the client's pretty respectful about it they're like hey that's not our price range and i say no problem have a good day okay they either cuss me off or they yell at me or friends oh man all the time they'll threaten to leave me a bad review for being crazy about my pricing or they'll accept and be like nathan you know that does sound within our range can we talk about what you provide and a little bit more about your uh your product and service and then that's when we'll go and we'll actually give them packages we'll Do a design and actually start selling the process on getting lights on their home if you're loving the bright ideas from this episode, make sure to hit that like and subscribe button

13:44 we've got a lot more illuminating ideas coming your way be sure to not be left out in the dark let's take a look on the inside Nathan. And then show us the setup here. This is it. What would you hope you would have had sooner? Probably a good hot glue gun, an electric hot glue gun. I was using a corded one up until now. So having something you can just slap a battery on, on the job, if you ever need to touch some stuff up, that's probably been like a cool gadget or a good tool that-What are you using this for? To actually glue certain areas of-So gluing like certain areas, like either to the windows or on brick, or if you need to secure a light somewhere. Holds well? Holds well. We have gorilla glue, hot glue strips. So definitely does the job for us. On that note, do a lot of people just leave their lights for the whole year or is that not an option? Yeah. So we don't even give them that option.

14:31 I mean, with us leasing the lights to them, it's a full rental. So they have their lights up until January 1st or whatever, the first week of January. You come back, take them down. All right, who helped you build this setup? If not your dad, yeah. I actually bought this trailer with shelves already in it. There was a general contractor's trailer that already had the stuff already in it. Inside. So I went ahead, took everything off, made some shelves and-what else is important as far as like must-have, as far as trailer, good, smooth operation, show up, get the job done, get out of there. Yeah. Obviously you have all the lights in here, right? We just lock this up again. Lock this up and we-different colors and everything. Different colors. We got red, blue, green, multi-color, white. Yeah. Everything you need, we got in here. So there's definitely a lot of things that are good to have, but definitely having a trailer,

15:16 living here in Portland, it rains a lot and bulbing the lights out of, you know, just a plastic bin on the bed of your truck, definitely isn't ideal. So once we were able to have, you know, a cover over our head, it definitely made operations for me and my staff a lot easier and more smooth sailing. Now for somebody who didn't install Christmas lights ever before, I mean, I've done it a little bit, but not on a commercial grand scale. Yeah. What's a good tip on just figuring out how to do it right? Any tips, tricks that you can share with us? What do you say? I'd say using your resources online. I mean, YouTube, UpFlip, all these videos, it's such a good resource. And honestly, just reaching out to people that you want to kind of be like. So that's what I did. I reached out to people that were in the same position that I wanted myself to be in. I reached out to them, networked with them and learned from there. But you guys are more than welcome to reach out

16:01 to me. I can help you guys out, whatever you guys need help with, Facebook, the ads, the Google, getting started. I'm more than happy to help you out. Careful now, you know? You have a million people reach out to you. Unless you're from my area. All right, do you come from money? Give us a little background on where you come from and who influenced you, who inspired you to do what you're doing? What are you doing today? Yeah, my parents worked really hard to make sure that I had everything I needed. But when it came to starting a business or anything I did on the side, that was all me. My parents came here, were immigrants from Romania. They came here with $2, 000 in a suitcase. So pretty much nothing with the dream to raise up their kids properly, put them in school. So they started working boot-to-boot. And then yeah, 15 years later of hard work, they each opened their own companies and they're doing well. And that drove me to work hard like they did. And my dad's definitely a huge influence on me

16:48 because the way he provides me and provides for his family and learned everything from scratch, it gives me no excuse to do some research on Google or YouTube or UpFlip and learn how to do something, take action and just send it. That's awesome. How early did you start working with your father? Yeah, so I was doing like little side gigs, probably like 13, 14 years old, giving him the hammer, holding him the light, pretty much the normal thing. But the moment I turned 16, I started working at Panera Bread. And then after that, I went to Walmart and then I went to an outdoor sporting store. And then I was like, man, retail stuff is not for me. I'm making 10 bucks an hour. So I picked up some landscaping with my friend. We started landscaping at first and I was a junior in high school. Wow. The money was okay. We made a couple grand in that summer,

17:33 which was good for me. But then I saw one of the UpFlip videos that you did on Steven with Northwest Soft Wash. And I was like, man, it can't be that easy. So I used his, I mean, it is, yeah. I mean, you just have to-Not without hard work. Hard work, yeah. So, I mean, I used the pressure washer that we use for our car. It's a little Ryobi pressure washer. And I did, I just knocked on doors, put up little printout papers that I did at home. And after that, you know, put a couple hundred out. I got one call back from this elderly lady. I did her deck for $150. It took me like five hours. And then I did the neighbor's house for 150 bucks. And then the moment I did that, I went and I bought a gas pressure washer. All right, so as far as like installing, learning on YouTube and things like that, any tips, tricks you can share with us when it comes to installing, maybe something that you've learned? Yeah, I think the biggest trick would honestly be,

18:20 buy yourself one of these GFI protectors. Pretty much what it does is if you cut a wire that's live, or you make, you know, two males on a wire and you plug it in, you're not blowing up their fuse box or, you know, catching a fire. This will take the damage for you. So definitely spend the 30 bucks, get yourself a couple of these and never forget to use it. Actually behind you, something that we love using is using like fishing vests. And what we do is we put a lot of our equipment in here. We put a lot of our plugs. So we pop these on. And that way we don't have to go down the ladder, come back up, get plugs. So it's literally just a fishing vest that you can pop on. There you go. And it holds our pliers, our plugs, our wire. Sweet. So, you have another business, the pressure washing. I'm curious, give us a quick snapshot of the revenue that you're generating there. And then if you had to choose, Christmas lights or pressure washing, which one would be only one and why?

19:07 Yeah, that's the question. Let's take these things inside while we're here. But I think I would definitely choose the Christmas light side of things. I think we do a little bit more, a little bit over six figures with pressure washing, Christmas lights. It's such a fast-moving season and it's like so many moving parts and I love that. So seeing the money come in so fast, you know, you have your guys doing stuff. People are happy, reviews are coming in. It's just, yeah, Christmas lights, hands down. All right, before we talk about your incredible margins in a little bit, I want to know about the overhead that you have to run this business as you start middle of October, wrapping up middle of December. I'm guessing very minimal. Yeah, overhead is definitely minimal. Luckily, I live with my parents and run everything in house. So we don't have a shop to pay for utilities. So we pretty much have our lights that we buy in bulk, at least a good amount of them ahead of time to

19:53 be prepared. We have our app and then yeah, payroll. That's it. Your app's a few hundred bucks, payroll obviously, temp, you know, for a couple months there. How much inventory do you have sitting normally before, well, especially like 24 seasons right? How much do you have in stock feet-wise or how do you measure it? Yeah, so I typically like to have on hand right around 5, 000 feet. And you know, most of that's warm white bulbs. So we'll get 3, 000 warm white bulbs to make sure that we can have that. And then we'll have some red and green multicolor, but we try to be around 5, 000. And then we obviously slim down during the season. And as we see the season picking up, we keep buying as it picks up, but it's always nice to have a little bit of cushion to sit on. Entrepreneurs like Nathan are living proof of how one idea can change everything. That's why we at UpFlip spent over a hundred hours

20:38 compiling a powerful report of 137 most profitable businesses that you can start right now. Once you see what's inside, you will wonder how we're giving it away for free. So don't miss out. Grab your copy by clicking the link in the description below while it's still free. All right, where are we going next, my friend? We're going to the job site. How far away? We're about 20 minutes out. We're going to be in Lake Oswego. Nice. It's one of our higher income areas that we service and it'll be a fun job. We'll have a good time. Let's get to work. I'll follow you. All right, as we're hiding in the shade here, this is a typical project we have, right? Yeah, yes sir. We're just a regular two-story home doing everything in the front, roofline and gutter line. You're not limited to a certain size house, to a small house, to a large house. Like you look at anything?

21:24 Absolutely not, yeah. I mean, if we can put lights on it, we'll do it. You know, we can do trees. We don't do them often, but we can do them. We do stake lighting around the garage, around the windows. We'll do absolutely anything you can envision. Even if we don't know how to do it, we'll find out how and we'll figure it out. What do we have here? Are we actually dressing up in something or what's the deal? So this is our Santa suit. So it is pretty early in the season. So we haven't had the chance to fully take advantage of this, but now that it is almost November, we're going to start suiting up. What do I get to wear it? I'll be putting you in it. You'll be Santa Paul. There we go. So, I mean, what inspired you to wear this stuff? Like, what kind of reactions are you getting from people? Is it part of your brand or how important is this? The biggest thing that we use this for is our advertising online. So, a lot of my Facebook ads and a lot of the posts I do, we have the full Santa suit actually on,

22:09 and that really grabs the attention. We always wore these Santa hats. Okay. And the reactions that we've got, you know, just from the Santa hats were always amazing. It's like, man, you made my granddaughter's day or we love the festivity. But sometimes you're too early and people are like , 'Why is he wearing a Santa hat in October?' The elves get to work early on. I tell them, 'I'm like Santa shaved his beard and lost some weight this year.' There you go. So this has been early on or day one. I mean, it's just interesting to see how these little things, especially in this kind of business, make a huge difference. Yeah, the Santa hats, especially. You've been wearing the Santa hats from day one, honestly, as just a way to keep our ears warm. Yeah. People love them. So we just said, 'Let's just make it our thing.' All right, guys, give us a second here. Oh, oh, oh. Welcome. As we continue the conversation.

22:55 All right. Do you recall your biggest job? Yeah, so. How did you close it too? That's the most important thing. Yeah, so my biggest job was probably a job that we did this season. And that was a right around a $5, 000 job. We do have a $16, 000 job in the books for November. So that will be our biggest job. Our biggest commercial job is right around $5, 000 doing a assisted living facility, which was great. But yeah, these big jobs are always fun. The way to close them, I mean, answering the phone. Honestly, they find you either organically or they find you even from signs. And just answer the phone right away and just having confidence and going out there. If you see it's a bigger home, go out there, meet with the person, shake their hand, explain what you do in person. Don't just give them a phone call and give them all the information over there.

23:41 You never show up like this though, do you? Unfortunately, at the estimates, I don't, but I always wear the Santa hat. I think this might scare them away a little bit though. Alright, well, as much as I love this, I wanna transition out of it so that we can-Get to work. Get to work. Let's do it. What's the most important part of your customer experience and how do you keep them happy? Yeah, I do a couple of things along the way to just kind of stand off from everybody else. One of the things I do is I give them a full design rendering of their house and what that looks like. That's unique. And clients love seeing that. It makes them excited about the project. And another thing we do is, like, gift baskets-some candy cane, some hot chocolate, whatever it may be. They're seeing that you care about them and it's more than just an install. It's like a relationship. What about the neighbors? Anything? Yeah, neighbors get baskets too. Really? Yeah, everybody gets baskets.

24:26 Good way of marketing, 100%. What is your strategy for finding help? It's a short season, may not be the right fit for everybody. Some people want a full-time gig. Here, they show up for a month or two, they do the job and then they're off to other things. That's it. Honestly, I'd reach out to friends and family first. And if you don't know a friend that does it, maybe they have another friend that's open to doing it. And as long as you find people that are already pretty hardworking or they're doing something on their own, you know that they have that potential, make sure you pay them good, teach them what they need to know, and they'll be good workers for you. Do you mind sharing what you're paying your guys? Yeah, so right around $25 an hour. And I mean, we give a lot of incentives, Christmas bonus, Thanksgiving bonus. We give a couple hundred dollars here, a couple hundred dollars there. So it's probably closer to 35 or 40. All right, well, I wanna help you get this house tidied up.

25:11 Yeah. And shine, so what do we need to do as far as prep work? Let's start bulbing, start getting the clips ready, and let's get to work. Okay, in the trailer? Yes, sir. Okay. All right, so you got a thousand foot roll over there. Thousand foot rolls. Man, and it looks like it's almost gone, by the way. Yeah, that means we're busy. On average, how many feet are we talking about on each home? Like this one, for example. Yeah, so this one will be anywhere between, you know, 125 to 150 feet. That's kind of our average in terms of, you know, the average length we put on houses. This is a pretty typical install for us where we do just the front facing. And the ridges on the house. So this ticket is right around $1, 600. How long does it take you, I think? So we're probably gonna be here for right about an hour, hour and a half with everything included, not too bad. And your take-home pay is what? Yeah, from that $1, 600, we're probably right around that $1,

25:57 300 mark, $1, 300 $1 200 mark. Yeah, you're running pretty lean now. I would imagine, you guys, once he gets more people on board, more staffing, you gotta pay this and that. Probably closer to a thousand. Yeah, it's gonna be lower than that. But so we're prepping it based on what we've measured already. You've measured it. You've got the bulbs. You've got that. Everything's already measured. So everything we buy is commercial grade. I prefer the circle clips that we use. They're pretty versatile and you can put them on the shingle and you can also put them. So they spin, it’s not, yeah. You can spin them, yeah, so. And this has been proven and tested? Proven and tested, look at that. To not crack? Yes, sir. You can’t crack these bad boys. Can’t crack them. So that’s kind of where we excel a little bit in using higher quality materials. That’s also why we charge a little bit higher. People like the quality and they like that they shine bright and that they don’t break. So what about new jobs? What's the take? Yeah,

26:42 usually for new jobs, we’re anywhere between the one to three hour mark. Obviously there’s some bigger jobs that you know will be on all day. Yep, and what about reinstalls? Yeah, re installs. I'm gonna ask you quite differently. Yeah, the lights are already done. We're already ready to rock and roll. So those ones we can get done anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour. So from this job, this house in January, you're gonna come take it all down and package it with that address on there? Yes, sir. So next year, there's no doing any of this? Nope, everything's labeled, everything's packaged with their name, address, and the cost of the job. Okay, what's the difference between commercial and residential then? What do you make more? Cost-wise, it depends how many you can do a day. So I see things on how many we can do per day, per hour. So for us, residential is kind of where we strike hard. Our prices are pretty high for residential, so that way we're able to charge a good amount and probably make more in residential because we

27:29 can finish three or four houses a day. In terms of commercial, it's a lot of consistent work. We charge less per foot, but you can get it up a lot faster and it's a lot more feet. So personally, I like the residential route. I know there's people in the field that they prefer the commercial route. But if you're busy with residential and you're doing three or four houses a day, nothing can really beat that. So what do we do now? So assuming we've prepped it, we know this is just a square footage. We're gonna go ahead and cut the cable just like that. This end, we can just put on the ground. Don't need to be an electrician to do this. Nope, it's low voltage. So next up, we wanna take our male plug. So there's gonna be two sides to this cable. There's gonna be a ribbed side and there's also gonna be a smooth side. Yeah, I see. It goes right through, you see these prongs? They snip through the wire. Go ahead. Oh man, that's super easy. Pop that down, you take your cap,

28:14 slide that in, it goes in one way and you just wanna close that. Sometimes it's a little tough, so you gotta kinda force it in a little bit. Makes sense, because you gotta punctuate it. That's it? Yeah, and that's it. This is ready to plug in and there's your light. Now that's easy. I thought it was a whole different process. Thanks for showing that. Very simple. So we're hanging these up on the roof. Let's go and get that done. I got you though. I'll be your trampoline. You'll catch me. Yes, sir. This is the easiest roof I've been on so far. So there you go. What sets you guys apart from the competition though? There's how many competitors? Man, I'd say there’s probably a hundred companies or a hundred people that do this. The biggest thing that separates us is the quality of bulbs that we use. I mean, we use LED, so you save money. They’re not incandescent, they don’t get hot and they look better. They don’t fog up or anything. they don’t fog up. Yeah,

29:00 And two, we do a really good job with hiding all the cables, making everything look as clean and professional as possible. And that’s something that a lot of people overlook. And third, we do simple things like peeking the bulbs at the top, making sure our light goes to the end of the gutter. These little, little things is what sets us apart and what people really see value in. If somebody asked you for a step-by-step blueprint on how to get this going right away today, what would that look like, Nathan? Give us a breakdown. Step-by-step, if I had to start from the beginning, so from nothing, first I'd go, I'd door knock, try to get myself one or two jobs, have them pay a deposit on that price. So maybe a 20%, a 10% deposit. And then with that money, go and buy our material, do the job, make sure it's good, put time, make sure it's perfect, get a lot of footage of you installing and a lot of footage of the house after so you can use it for marketing. And then get your check and then put that money

29:47 into marketing and then whatever you have left, more material. Well, literally just go pick a neighborhood, knock on doors, say, I want to put up Christmas lights, worry about the rest later, is what you're saying. Yeah, once you see you've got some jobs coming in, form your LLC, go ahead and get yourself some insurance, get on the roof and get it done. With everything going on, Nathan, in your life, church, school, two businesses, how do you stay motivated? How do you stay focused? Yeah. I think for me personally, it's my faith in God. I think, you know, doing good work, making people happy and just continuing to, you know, try to give his word and push out, you know, what I'm here and what my purpose is in life. I think that's what keeps me going forward. But alongside that, family. You look forward to having a family? Looking forward to future family. That's awesome. And yeah, I want to be able to provide for my kids and make sure that they have everything they need and

30:33 for my wife. So that's definitely a big, big factor. Okay, well, if Nathan's story lit a fire under you to make you want to start your own Christmas light business, then make sure to get Nathan's Startup Checklist completely for free. Hit the link in the description below and get your copy right now. All right, well, let's get off the roof. I want to see what Phillip's doing on the ground because you're not only installing lights on the roof, you're also doing it around the landscaping. Yeah, we are. Let's go take a look. Let's go check it out. This looks pretty neat. So you're not only doing roofs. Look how tough that thing is in there. we put them in tough. Man, There you go. Good for you. So this thing ain't going nowhere. Yeah. Is this a separate package as part of the roof or you could throw it all in and? Yeah, I mean, we do our packages. You know, we have a package that we include absolutely everything.

31:19 So that's, you know, us doing the ground lighting, us doing the windows, the garage, the roof. And then we have usually three different packages, what we try to offer. Stake lighting is usually our second package. And then third is with the windows, the garage, and the top of the roofs as well. Do most people just go for the roofs or on average? Yeah, most people just like the roof line. So everything in the front. Probably 30% will do windows and garage as well, just to give it some more. But it's always good to just tailor, ask them what their vision is for their home, then give them what they wanted, give them a little bit more of what they wanted, and then give them everything we can possibly do. Nice. Well, this guy made $67, 000 in a matter of two months. This was your first year last year. This year you expect to be at least double that, right? Which is phenomenal. Can anybody do it now that they're watching you

32:04 and I hope are encouraged by what you're sharing with us? Yeah, I mean, anyone can do it. I mean, if I can do it, anyone can. I mean, I wasn't given anything pretty much. So I started from scratch. I had a $2, 000 truck that I was using. So it was a really lean and mean operation that we were doing, but anyone can do it. I mean, as long as you have that drive. And like I mentioned, really, really long days. It's a short season. Take advantage, work hard, and then referrals really follow. Pressure washing though certainly helped you. Yeah. You had those connections, you had those relationships that then turned into Christmas-like clients. The first year we actually used no pressure washing clients. I think we maybe got-I see. Maybe two, but those were people just seeing our yard signs and calling us again and finding out it was us. I wouldn't say it's a really big advantage. Someone can do $67, 000 their first year, 100%. With your experience so far,

32:50 what do you think is the most common limiting belief that's preventing people from pursuing their own business? They have a nine-to-five, but they have this inner itch. They're like, 'I need to do this.' 'I want to do this,' but they don't. Yeah. What do you think? I mean, I know a lot of people who've been wanting to get into side hustles and honestly, it's starting out. It's going and doing that first job or knocking on that-That's the challenge. The first door. Difficult part. That's the hardest part. And there's a lot of viewers I'm sure that are, they watch all these videos and they still have yet to take action. So the hardest part-You know it's you if you're Just to get out there. listening. I know you're watching because I was that guy. Get out there and you never know until you do your first door, until you do your first job, until you get your first sale. Then you get that, you crave that same feeling. And then, man, that's what motivates you. So instead of like, I would do all the paperwork. I remember starting in real estate.

33:36 You make sure your business cards are perfect. Now I think-You're doing it differently. Now it's like, no, forget all that, right? Go knock on those first 10 doors. People are always-Get that fire lit. Yeah, people are always stuck on their business name. They're like, man, I don't know what business name is. I'm gonna wait like three months until I find a business name to get started. Man, I changed my name pretty much three times from when I started in high school and when I got to the point where I'm Premier Softwash in PDX Holiday Lighting. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. Just get out there. Get out there, do it. You can always change everything later. How do you handle competition in this big market? Especially with a seasonal business? Yeah, for sure. So I think charging a premium, I think the quality of lights that we have, our branding, and then connecting to the actual client. Connecting with the client. I had to repeat that because the last part's like, well, I feel like we all connect with clients.

34:23 Like, what are you doing differently? Can you be more specific? 100%. I mean, a lot of contractors, you know, they get to the job site where they're giving an estimate and they're kind of just lining stuff out, thinking about the money, you know? They're like, we can do a roof line here, but I get out there and I'm like, man, we can go and do a roof line there. Let's pop a wreath there. Lights all around the top. Bring the-Bring them down. We want to center all the lights in the, you know, in the greater scheme of the house. Pathway lights, let's light it up. So I'm there. I'm trying to bring the energy, trying to make them feel special about their home. I'm like, man, with the white on black that you have going on your house, these certain colored lights would definitely make the house pop. It would look rich. It would look modern. There's no way to say no. That's awesome. Especially when you have your kiddo standing right next to me as I'm listening to you. Sometimes I'm talking to the kid. I can imagine their eyes just blow up. Like, daddy, can our house actually look like that? Kids definitely are the-That's amazing.

35:09 The salesperson. Are they? Oh, yeah. What's the hardest lesson that you've learned while building this business? Yeah, I'd probably say time management. You know, having proper systems in place and juggling so many different clients, going from calls to estimates to forgetting about people, saying you were going to call people back. Like, you're losing so much money down the drain every time you have a slip-up or you forget to get back to people. So yeah, definitely having systems in place and managing your time and all your processes. What was the solution? Yeah, so I use an app called Your Leads Keeper. And that does everything A to Z for me. So it pretty much cycles in my opportunities. The moment a lead comes in, it tells me they came in. And then any point in their life cycle, I can see where they are. If I gave them an estimate, if I contacted them, if I forgot to contact them. And in every stage that they're in,

35:54 it sends automations out to make sure that they are followed up with, even if I forget. So you've scaled pretty quickly. What's the biggest challenge with managing growth when it comes to scaling? I think the biggest thing is getting the jobs done. Finding really good help has been pretty tough, and it is tough for a lot of entrepreneurs to find really good people that they can trust. Luckily, I'm a part of a church; we got a lot of hardworking guys who love to work and get out there. So it's been pretty easy. Yeah, it's been pretty easy for me, but definitely managing the growth. We went from doing one job every two days last year to doing two or three jobs a day this year. So it's definitely; we set the treadmill a little faster this year, but you just got to keep up with the right shoes on and that's what you've got to do. Keep running. So you start about mid-October as far as installs, right? Right around the beginning of October. And through what? End of November?

36:40 Yeah, our hard deadline is December 15th. December 15th, okay. As the season comes to an end, our prices start going up because they got a lot of neighbors. They're like, man, my whole neighborhood's lit up. I need it done now. I need it done today. What can you do it for? And they're desperate. I'm the late comer, help me out. That's it. What's your approach to handling negative customer feedback? I'm sure it happens, right? You can't please everyone. Yeah, sometimes happens. Sometimes maybe it's a design that they don't like or maybe the placement's off. They thought it was going to look like something else, but we always, we always guarantee all of our work. So if they don't like something, we'll go back. If we're on the job, we'll change it up for them. We'll make sure that when we leave, they're fully satisfied and we won't leave until they are. Even if that takes, you know, us needing to let the job go, take all the lights off. What about when you do leave and it's two days later, they call and say, hey, you know,

37:26 Nathan, I don't like the way this is actually looking. I've seen it at night. Do you have some kind of program where you're like, absolutely, we'll be out of there and fix it or? Yeah, so in a nutshell, very, very, very few people, I mean, if any, have reached out saying that they didn't like what we do. That's good. We're very clear about our estimating process. And I think that's very important. Showing them design, talking with the client ahead of time, exactly what you're doing and where it is. And then always trying to send a picture of the client right when you're done or walking out with the client and turning the lights on in front of them. Nice, okay. So when you first started, door knocking, door signs was a way of marketing, getting your brand out there. What do you say to those who are really nervous about that kind of an approach, face-to-face and so forth? Yeah, I was definitely nervous too, knocking on doors. I mean, it takes a lot of confidence. You know, you're staring at the door and something, something in you just tells you like, man, don't do it. Don't do it. Never met the person.

38:12 What are they gonna say? They're gonna call the cops on me or they got like a no soliciting sign. It's like all these things, just go and knock at the door. The worst that they can say is no. And if they say no, move on to the next one. And you learn, yeah, you learn from there and you just keep knocking, you keep learning, you refine your pitch, you refine kind of what you do. And then once you can, you know, get to the point where you're connecting with the client, you build that confidence, then you're able to really sell consistently and go from there. Yeah, there's no way to really build confidence unless you get out there and get those no's, right? You can read all the books. You can read all the, watch all the videos. Gotta get out there and get those no's. Be uncomfortable for the first hundred. Yeah, seeking discomfort's really important in this industry. And those no's always build character. So it builds, you know, you build iron skin. So after a month of door knocking,

38:58 you're a way tougher person, guaranteed, than you were at the beginning. Oh yeah, the skin went from here to like this. Yeah, a hundred percent. Bring it on. What do you think the biggest misconception that people may have about running their own business? Yeah, definitely a lot of misconceptions, but I think the biggest one is just expecting your phone to ring. You know, when I made my LLC for my business, you know, once I was done, I was just sitting back, you know, hands in the air. I got my LLC. I'm a business owner, entrepreneur in the bio. Obviously not, but you know, waiting for the phone to ring. No, you're right on. And the phone didn't ring. So you gotta get out there, boots on the ground. You gotta get your marketing on point. You gotta get your presentation, your brand. You gotta make sure everything is set up for success. And then obviously it comes with time. It's gonna take time for you to rank on Google. It's gonna take time for your ads to start,

39:44 you know, nurturing the client and getting to a point where they actually call you. So you gotta put in the work. Calls will come after, but you gotta put in the work everywhere. Do you want another simple side hustle to start tomorrow? You'd be shocked and surprised to learn how much picking up dog poop pays. Check out episode 209 to learn more. Like and subscribe, and we'll see you guys next time. Bye.

40:36 See you guys next time.