154. Make $1 Million Bringing Joy - Christmas Lights Business

0:00When it comes to business ideas, it pays to think seasonally. Our guest today started a Christmas lights business, which brought in over$1 million during the 2023 holiday season, proving that there's profitable opportunities everywhere you look. This is Ryan Atkinson, and you're listening to the Upfit Podcast, where we uncover how great businesses are built and the secrets to replicating their success. J.C. Chanozowski owns a successful pressure washing business, but saw a golden opportunity during the offseason. Inspired by his love of Christmas lights and the desire to give back to his community, he created Patriot Illumination, which quickly took off in a small market of just 300 ,000 people.

0:37In today's episode, JC shares how to start a Christmas light business from nothing, what you need for a successful seasonal business, and how giving back is essential for his team during the holiday season. JC, I am so, so excited for today's episode. Thank you so, so much for being here today. Ryan, thank you, man. I just got off Santa's sleigh and I'm ready to talk Christmas with you. I was going to say, I have to comment I love for all the listeners. not watching. He's rocking like a great little suit here, Mr. Christmas. I love the holiday spirit. But let's rewind the clock back a few years.

1:06You were running your pressure washing business and roughly eight years ago, decided to start a Christmas lights business. How did you decide to make that pivot and why? Yeah. It wasn't my thought or my idea. I wish I thought about this even sooner, but I was actually at a pressure washing convention in October 2016 with my dad and we're just walking around browsing through the vendors and I saw a wreath lit up which said we hang Christmas lights and I have a passion for Christmas since I was a kid we grew up very poor you know Christmas for us was getting in the car in New York with my parents and my sister and just going house to house back in the 80s I'm gonna date myself now and looking at all the Clark Griswolds back in the day so like that was just something that got me excited every year I became Clark Griswold as I got older and I put lights on my house.

1:52And when I saw the sign, they said, we hang Christmas lights. I'm like, what's this all about? And they're like, yeah, you can make money hanging Christmas lights. I'm like, there's no way anybody's going to pay me to hang Christmas lights. Everybody loves doing it, right? They're like, no, nobody actually likes doing it. You're a little weird, but we're going to help you be weird with us and make money doing it. So it all started there. And I was full-time Navy at the time, part-time pressure washing. And now to become a part-time Christmas light installer with no training, no knowledge other than you can do this.

2:21I bought some lights and put some lights up at my house and voila, the lights were hung. I didn't fall off the roof and the house looked incredible. And I told my dad, I'm like, this is it, we're going to do it. And that was the spark or the start of my Christmas light journey. So 2018, or excuse me, that was 16, you know, it's still seeds all part-time. I was part-time 17, 18, was really starting to get busy with it. And then 19, 2019 was when I went all in on both my companies. I got a coach, went full-time pressure washing, full-time Christmas light installer. And the rest is history, man. It's like when you find something that you're passionate about, it's no longer work.

3:01And that was the Christmas light industry for me. And I love what we do. It's not only an incredible feeling for me to be able to hang lights, but for the community and for the kids that are out there that can't afford the lights like I did, now they get to go see our work. I absolutely love that. And I resonate so much. I also love Christmas. I will be listening to like Christmas lo-fi beats, like starting in August and September. It's like, it's just a special time. Yes. But I want to ask a little bit more, what does Christmas lighting like entail here? Are you just stringing lights on houses and trees?

3:30Are you also doing like outdoor decorations? What is your guys' operation look like? Yeah. So we like to consider this like a Christmas light experience for our customers. It's an all-inclusive service, and we're providing them. We're giving them the happiness back of the holiday decorating. We hit them a lot of their pain points about getting the lights out of the attic or the garage. They're broken. They're tangled. They got to put them up. Half of them don't work, anything like that. So we start off with a free in-person estimate or a virtual estimate to figure out why they want their lights on.

3:58Is it the first Christmas or last Christmas? They want to be the Griswold so they don't like the neighbors. Figure out why they want their lights on. Nobody needs Christmas lights on. They want their lights on. So we want to get in that emotional connection with the client. And then we're going to install brand new commercial grade LED Christmas lights. We custom cut them to fit their house. So it's an exact blueprint out of their house to roofline. And we do it all. We tell them that your imagination is our limit along with your budget. But if they can dream it, we can believe it and make it happen.

4:26So anything from greenery to ground lights, to trees, to spritchers, to roof lighting, it's all inclusive. Put it on a timer. Hassle free, maintenance free. If anything goes wrong, we're back taking care for them within 24 to 48 hours. And then the best part is in January, when it's nice and cold out, they're not on the ladders taking the lights down. We're out there with our elves taking everything down for them and storing it in our warehouse. So you guys are storing this in your own warehouse, all the lights. The customers aren't actually having to do this. Right, right. So we offer a rental package, if you will, where we'll rent the lights to them, bring it back.

4:57And then we hope that we give them the best experience so they come back year over year. And then when we come back every year, it just gets a little bit easier for our team because the initial install was done to custom fit it. And now the second year, it just goes up a little bit smoother and they're just as happy as the first year. I absolutely love that. So let's peel this back a little bit because our listeners, they're hungry. They love this type of stuff. This is the first time I've actually interviewed someone on this show with this idea particularly. So let's talk about pricing. You talked about estimates before.

5:24Obviously, this ranges. There's a number of factors. But what's a ballpark range? How are you pricing this product? Yeah, absolutely. So our average ticket for residential clients is around$2 ,000. And a typical package would be like a front roof line, maybe wrapping some columns and putting a 48-inch wreath with a bow up. That usually gets you right around that$2 ,000 mark. It's going to be different across the nation. Some places are a little bit lower. Some places are higher. I know some guys that won't even start hanging lights until they get$5 ,000. So it really just depends on the market you are and the value you're able to provide to the clients.

5:58And again, we talked about that Christmas light experience that we want to deliver. We are the area's highest rated Christmas light company. And that all starts with the initial phone call. So they know that when they're on the phone with our staff, that they're going to get taken care of. A lot of guys go out there and they say, well, this is an easy industry to jump into right away. Let me go do this. And it may be easy, but again, you're playing with emotions now when it comes to Christmas. And the last thing you want to do is just go hang lights up and get an epic fail like Clark Griswold and National Lampoons.

6:27And the lights aren't working, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I feel like providing a great experience, of course, with any businesses needed, but especially for this. And it sounds like you guys, with the warehouse where you guys are taking in, storing it, it sounds like it's a very good opportunity for repeat business in a way if you do provide a great experience for them. Yeah, that's why the rental package is important if you're starting a Christmas light business to do the rental model versus a sale model. Because with the rental, the lights come back to us. And in order for us to put the lights up next year, you need to use our services again.

6:56If not, we'll rotate those lights and put them elsewhere. But yeah, it's just it's a great business model for repeat business. Absolutely. Where are you guys getting your lights from? Are these lights from Amazon, Target? Are they lights from specific locations? Where are you guys sourcing your lights from? Yeah, absolutely. You'll never see us at a big box store picking up any lights. We're all commercial grade LED lights. So we're getting them from quality distributors. Lights for decorators is one of the ones that we use here that's closest to us. And, you know, as you're building out your business, you want to find a reputable distributor that has great customer service because you want to be taken care of as well as your customer, but also has a very good shipping timeframe.

7:33In the crystallite industry, time is money. We only have a very short period to put lights off. So if we're waiting three, four, five days to get product and we only have 53 days to hang lights from October 1st to December 15th, roughly that ballpark, time is so crucial. So finding somebody that's local to you and there's tons of great companies out there and we use a lot of them, because you never know, somebody might have a specialty product that we need or somebody might run out of product. So it's great to have multiple vendors that you source from, but find somebody that knows the industry and can help provide you value as well too.

8:06That's a really good tidbit. People should find someone local because you need these lights quick. And you said it's about a 53-day season or so. Of course, give and take there. With this being such a seasonal and unique business, is there a need for this in every geographic location or does it depend? If so, what would someone look like to determine if it's a good fit or not? Yeah. I mean, Christmas is everywhere. It's not hidden in any corner of the United States, as far as I know. So we're in a very, I won't say very rural area, but I think we're up to like 400 ,000 mark, 450, somewhere around there.

8:38We're just a booming town in Wilmington. You got some cities that got millions of people. So if we can do it in a small area, sometimes you might have to travel a little bit further to get to a bigger city if your population's very limited over there. But yeah, I haven't seen one area of the US that Christmas is not a thing. Yeah. I don't want to put you on the spot here, but it's Christmas lights in Minnesota where it snows a lot. Are people hanging up Christmas lights more in Minnesota compared to like Arizona where it doesn't snow or would someone be shocked that it's actually different? Now, you know, I would have thought that the Northeast would be bigger too because I grew up in New York and, you know, I think statistically it's about the same across the US.

9:16The only difference is the Northeast, they start way earlier than we do or like Minnesota. They're starting in August and they got to get those lights up because they never know what's going to come in November and they can have a couple of feet of snow. For us, we don't get snow. If we get snow, it's, I mean, the world might be ending over here where we are right on the beach. So the only thing is like their season's a little bit different, but most guys are starting doing the installs. I'd say late September, early October, November is going to be your busiest season because that's typically when everybody wants the lights up after Halloween and before Thanksgiving.

9:47So that 24 day range somewhere around there is typically the busiest season for most guys. How do you guys prepare for that? Because basically what it's to me, it's like an Amazon, like Black Friday type of thing where like they're preparing. So how do you guys prepare for this busy season? Let's just say we're late October, early November. What do you guys do? We try and explain to them and we got, you know, office staff coming in and we have seasonal employees and we try and say, hey, this is going to be unlike anything you've ever seen before. You know, as far as call volume, like we'll stay busy with calls up until October, but November 1st, once Halloween's over, it's like everybody's switch flipped and now they're Christmas mode and they want Christmas lights.

10:21but we're very proactive throughout the year trying to get everything ready. There's a lot of things to think about, logistics, inventory, training. We'll start ramping up our training towards the end of September and we'll get it bringing a lot of seasonal employees. Right now we have a staff of about six or seven and we'll probably get to about 18 and that'll be mostly seasonal employees. So trying to find rock stars that are highly motivated and can do a great job installing lights in a short period of time isn't the easiest thing to do but year over year, we've had great success and that falls back on a company culture.

10:54If you give them a great culture to work for, it doesn't matter if they're working for a month or five months, they're gonna love being there and love wanting to work for you. But training is so essential in this because again, we talked about time is money and we need our teams to be super efficient. And if they're not trained up well, well, that day just got smaller revenue wise. So we want them to be like the industry experts in five days, ready to get out there and provide that best service experience for our clients. So we really, really, the last few years have just spent investing more time on training on the front end to reduce any callbacks or issues throughout the season.

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12:06Check it out in the link below. So what was your guys' revenue like for Christmas lights? Let's say in 2023, what did you guys do and what would you guys expect for 2024? So 2023, we did 1.2 million, just a little bit right over there. Thank you. It was ugly. I'm going to lie. You know, trying to do that much in three months, it can be hard, but we did it. And this year, we're actually going to scale back a little bit. We're not really trying to have a tremendous growth this year. We're really going to focus on retaining our current customers and referral marketing, because we know that if they're referred by our current customer, they're likely to trust us already and want to spend money with us.

12:40But yeah, so I think if we still do right around 1 million this year, we'll be above the target that we're expecting. But, you know, a million in a small market in a short time with 18 guys, it's a great accomplishment. It's a phenomenal accomplishment. Let me reemphasize that. $1.2 million within three months is insane. And you did say it was a little bit challenging. What were some of those challenges with that much revenue? And so honestly, such a short amount of time. That is crazy. Yeah. You know, it's again, we go back to that Christmas light experience. We want to make everybody happy. We have such a short period amount of time doing it.

13:12So the days get longer for the guys. You know, it's getting darker earlier. So they're working five, six days a week, maybe 12, 14, 15 hour days. So trying to keep the morale of the culture going and then keep the customers happy too, because things get missed. And it's unfortunate. We try and do the best we can, but knowing at the end of the day that we have the best interest in not only the clients, but our team to keep everybody alive. And I tell everybody, you know, there's no Christmas light that's worth your life or being injured. So safety is a big talking point for us because they are on ladders.

13:41They are on roofs. They're doing around nighttime stuff. They have weather that can play. Not so much the cold here. We get down to the 40s, I'd say. Maybe a little bit more rain than cold. But all these different things can play into the season, get interrupted or distracted for various reasons. So, again, it's about having a core leadership and very highly motivated people to keep the energy going throughout the whole season when they're exhausted. Talking about the light at the end of the tunnel. Like, we're almost there. We're almost there. We're almost there. Get through this. And then we get to have some fun.

14:10I absolutely love that. And I want to be an idea farm a little bit here because you're pairing this with pressure washing. And besides like pressure washing, do you think there's any other type of business that would pair nicely with Christmas lights like hangings? Yeah. Any ideas that come to mind? Oh, long care is a great one. The floor coating is a good one. We're doing landscape lighting as well, too, you know, because it's a great transition for those guys. So really, we're just trying to find those guys in the areas that slow down in the wintertime. So instead of laying off your entire team for three or four months and trying to bring them back or put them on employment, now we brought them through to january the end of january so you get them on busy another four months possibly five if you want to get into february in the colder climates where you can't really take lights down till i know some guys that can't get lights down till march april just because they still have snow up there but yeah and the seasonal uh industries out there that see that slow that lull in the uh the winter time and i want to ask based off of that because according to our polls more than 50 percent of people are afraid of starting a business because of the fear of failure.

15:11If they're sitting down talking to you, what advice would you give to them? Just do it. I mean, the longer I waited, the more regret I had. And you just got to execute. And when you do it, go all in. And it's okay to fail. I mean, we failed along the way many, many times. And we're going to fail again. But just having the right mentality and a winning culture, a winning team, you're going to overcome any challenges. So there's no wrong time to get started unless it's December 25th. That's really going to be a horrible time to start a Christmas night visit. But I coached a guy last year personally, and I don't think he hung his first light until November 3rd.

15:46And he did right around$215 ,000. Yeah, it was, I mean, you want to talk about somebody that went all in and had the resources to do it? He did. And he, I mean, just blew the numbers out of the water. It's absolutely incredible to see it. So don't think that it's September. It's too late. It's October. It's too late. I mean, just get out there and do it. My first year, I wanted to make sure this is something that I was good at. I didn't want to do something okay. I wanted to make sure we're doing it at a high level. And that's why the first year we went very slow. We did four houses and then we did 25 and then we did 75.

16:18And then that's when 2019, we went all in and jumped to, I think it was$250 ,000 in revenue in 2019. And then fast forward to 1.2. What you just said as well, someone started on November 3rd, their first year ever doing it, and they did$215 ,000 in revenue. That is mind-blowing. But you did say one thing there, that they did have the resources to do it. Can you clarify? Did they have capital resources to do it? Or what did you mean by that? Yeah, it was capital. And he ended up doing a subcontractor model. He was a painter. So he had a lot of people. And people are usually going to be the biggest limiting factor.

16:55Sales, I find, can be very easy with the right salesperson. So getting the jobs is not always the hardest part. It's getting the people to do the jobs. And I see a lot of guys out there that just get so caught up and so busy that they got to turn their leads off and stop doing estimates. So it's just a matter of having the capacity to do the work. And he had the capacity. So I love that. And I want to stick to that sales component right there. Because can we, again, let's run back that clock. How did you land your first customer? Were you tapping into your pressure washing clients? If yes, how should someone else consider starting with no list to tap into?

17:30No, it really wasn't our pressure washing clients. Now, we do have some that cross over. But surprisingly enough, somebody who spends$4 ,000 on a Christmas light install is reluctant to spend$800 on a house wash. So it's really not the same. But social media was probably the kicker for us because, again, 2016, I didn't know what I was doing. And I just put it out on social media that we're dealing this. and our first client that we installed in 2016 is still a client today with us, which is pretty incredible. But yeah, social media is big, branding. I got the jacket on. I have at least eight or nine Christmas light jackets that I wear year round.

18:07I wear them to chamber events. I wear them to the airport. I wear them everywhere I go because it's a conversation starter. They ask like Christmas in June. I'm like, it's Christmas every day for me. And then I started talking about what I do or if I'm going to do the sale and I had the Christmas light jacket on, I already broke that ice barrier of like, this is not a sale. This is fun now. Like, yeah, he's showing up in a Christmas light jacket. I'm thinking about Christmas. I'm excited. So just little things like that will definitely help you build trust and value in a client when you're out there rather than just send them an estimate says$500 to hang lights.

18:40Yeah. What does that sales process look like? We talked about it before, but it sounds like they're getting an estimate. Once the estimate's all good, are you showing up to their house with like the contract? Like here, sign it or like, what are you doing? Yeah, absolutely. We want to try and close on the spot. We love doing in-person estimates. Not only can we build better rapport with the clients and find out why they want the lights to get emotional, figure out if it's the last Christmas first, whatever it is, so we can connect them on a different level. And now while we're there, we can upsell them on more things as well, too, because they might not know.

19:08They think, well, you should hang Christmas lights. That's all you can do. They don't know about the greenery, the garland, the ground lights, spritzers. So we're going to provide them with a lookbook that they can take over and then take that inside. and I'll just say, you know, Ryan, I'm just going to walk around your house real quick, get some measurements. I'm going to do a mock-up design of your house. And then when I'm done, I'll come back and we'll come inside and take a look at that. So then we'll go back inside and I'll reiterate why you wanted those lights on. You know, you just, you're tired of getting out of the ladders.

19:33And, you know, we got the team to do this so you can stay on the ground and watch everything from the ground. Just keep talking to why they want that service on. Again, it's expensive service. So we got to value stack it. You know, we're going to install the lights. We're going to maintain it, put it on timers, take it down, all those little things. and then you got the lookbook and then we're talking about the wreath and we're going to point to the house, say you got the 48-inch wreath up there so they can see it and visualize it. And then when we hand them the estimate, we'd like to get packages.

19:56So we have three packages. We have the Grinch, Buddy the Elf, and Clark Griswold. Nobody wants to be the Grinch. Not everybody can afford the Griswold. So Buddy the Elf is where we're trying to steer them towards. It's a great package for them. Our teams love doing that style package. And then we're trying to sell on the spot. Like, Ryan, now that we've shown you everything, we're going to keep you off the ladder. We've got this amazing package. You love the wreath. You want to see the multicolor lights in your house. Here's the package for X dollars. What do you say? Can we get you on the schedule now?

20:24Get you on the schedule. We collect the 50 % deposit and that's it. And we got you on the schedule. And we'll come back out during the week of, we'll give you like a week of timeframe. So, you know, like the week of October 5th, we'll be out there starting to do the install. And, you know, again, it's all about that experience. So we had the initial phone call, the salesperson, the install team will keep that experience high and exciting. then we'll follow up, make sure everything is good. And then we'll check back in with you and come back in January. Nice. What I love about that is that you are getting really nitty into like pricing strategies and whatnot.

20:54I like that there's three different packages right there, because most of the time people are going to choose that middle package. And if they do, that's a great upsell opportunity to your larger package as well. There's two things. One, they don't know what we're capable of doing. And two, a lot of customers don't understand how much it costs. So they think you're going to hang my lights and it's only going to cost$250. So that's very important when you're going through the initial phone calls with a client and you pre-qualify them is letting them know, hey, our prices start at$750, our average ticket is$2 ,000.

21:25So in their head, at the low end, well, I can afford$750, but Frank next door, his house is pretty cool. And that was about$2 ,000. So at least I know ballpark where I might be at. Yeah. What I love about these types of businesses is when you're working directly on a house, have it be Christmas lights, have it be painting jobs, have it be landscaping, whatever, is the referral marketing strategies can be amazing because it's like, well, that's what the Joneses are doing down the street and that's what I'm going to do. So can you talk to specifically about the referral marketing strategy that you guys use or are planning to deploy here?