193. How He Turned $500 Into a $100K Business Before 19

0:00Most 18-year-olds are thinking about college, roommates, and dorm life. but not Zach Osborne. When life threw him a curveball, he didn't just survive, he built. With no safety net, no formal business training, and just an auto loan to his name, Zach launched Z Exteriors at a pure necessity. What started as a power washing and gutter cleaning in high school exploded into a six-figure business in just eight months. No marketing budget, no investor help, just grit, hustle, and a relentless commitment to figuring out as he went. I moved out at 18 years old with absolutely no financial support and little to no money in the bank Within eight months.

0:38I was able to build a$100 ,000 business I always just thought it was silly to go to college for four years to run a business If you spend those four years actually running and starting a business, I just personally think you're gonna learn more You really don't need that much capital to start I started with a$500 pressure washer a little toyota tacoma and my phone and with only a couple weeks of advertising I was able to snowball the business and grow it very quickly I'm Ryan Atkinson and you're listening to Help The Podcast where we uncover the secrets of building and running successful businesses.

1:07Today, I am so excited to welcome Zach to the podcast to talk a little bit more about Z Exteriors. He's going to give a lot of actual advice. I love hearing these stories. So Zach, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, yeah. No, of course. Thank you so much for having me. I'm definitely looking forward to the conversation. This is the first time I've ever done something like this. I'm excited. It's going to be good. You're going to give us a lot of actual tips, but before we do that, let's talk about early entrepreneurship and let's rewind before power washing, before the revenue back to where it really all started because you were flipping fidget spinners and computers in high school.

1:38I want to talk about your mindset there. I mean, where do you think that entrepreneurial mindset came from? Yeah. So honestly, I really couldn't tell you where it came from. I think it just not to say that I naturally had it or anything like that. Maybe it was something I observed, but it started when I was in like sixth grade. So that's when the fidget spinner started. It was this big fad. There was this one dude who's an eighth grader and I saw he was 3D printing the fidget spinners and selling them. It was a big thing. It was on the news. And I was like, how did he do that? So I was, I looked into it a little more and I saw people were 3D printing them and all that.

2:05And I was like, well, I don't have enough money to buy a 3D printer. So I just started posting everything in my Snapchat account, like a million of them and just priced it twice as much. And I would order them and give it to people at school. And that was definitely like the foundation of when I was like, wow, so I can make money by not working a job. That's a great realization, especially to have it at such a young age. I feel like every entrepreneur has like a moment where they're like, oh, I can not work for someone. I can work for myself. And that sounded like it was for you. Fast forward a little bit because you moved out at 18 and started a business.

2:34I mean, that's a huge move in itself. I mean, what happened in that moment? And like, how did you really get like pushed to like entrepreneurship full time that at such a young age, 18 years old? I mean, we're talking teenager. Yeah, no, 100%. It's definitely a crazy story. So I'd always been pretty good in school. You know, I always hated it. Like, you know, my senior high school, I went to school less than I was in school. I almost got kicked out of school. I got a call one time. Hey, if you don't come in tomorrow, like we have to expel you because you have so many absences in a row. Like we can't even have you in our school.

3:01And I was like, okay, well that's terrible. But anyways, so one night I was filling out my common application. It was my senior year. It was, you know, I was getting ready for it. This was probably like, I want to say December. Cause I was still wrestling at the time and I'm filling it out. And just something, I was just like, I felt fraudulent doing it. I was like, I know for a fact, I don't want to do this. My parents are not going to be able to afford it. I'm going to take on all this debt and it's not even what I want to do. So that's why I was like, like, okay, I'm going to take a gap year.

3:25And that was kind of the original idea. Fast forward two, three months, my wrestling season ended. And that's when I was like, okay, it's time to go hard because in order to participate in sports in Virginia, you have to have at least five classes, but I only needed two to graduate. So as soon as that season ended, I dropped all three classes and I just went straight to it. The moving out part was unfortunate circumstances. It's, you know, I didn't have anything against my dad or vice versa. Just a line of events happened. And I moved out 10 days after I turned 18, I moved in with one of my buddies and I was renting a room And at that point I was like, all right, well, it's either I do this now or I have no other option.

3:59I want to go back to the five classes going down to like two or three, as you said, I think is, that's a great tidbit right there. Great story right there. When you did drop those classes though, like, did you have a business idea in mind or you just like, I'll figure it out? I want to really zoom in on that part. Yeah. Yeah, of course. So I did not have one in mind originally, to be honest, I was actually taking a class called entrepreneurship. It was a dual enrollment class and I'm in there and I'm talking to her and you know, At this point, I was flipping cars, flipping dirt bikes. I was just trying to make money any way possible.

4:27I saw some TikTok videos, though, showing power washing. That's what really got me into it. And then I had one leaf season during my senior year where it really went well. I posted, I advertised, and I got a lot of customers. And that's when I was like, okay, this could be the path I take. And it's one thing led to another. And I just started adding other services on. And it became to the point where I'm like, wow, I'm basically a home service company. And that's where the name comes from, Z's Exteriors. It's, you know, we do all things exterior. That's so great. So let's talk about taking that leap into like really going full time with ZXTeries.

4:57I mean, what were those first exact first steps you took to launch it in high school, which I think is just mind blowing to me and like kudos to you for being able to do that. What were those exact first steps? You're like, OK, I got to go get a customer now. Talk to us about that. And what can people take away from that? Well, so in my opinion, the first step you should take is just do as much research as you possibly can. I'm very detail oriented. So as much as I obviously went in there with no idea what I was doing, you know, obviously, but I watched as many videos as I could. That is definitely the first step.

5:25I wanted to see if it was something I was even going to enjoy. Once I watched the videos, I saw the potential and how much money all these people were making. I kind of just wrote out a list, basically like business operations, but that's not what I thought it was. It was just Zach's plan basically. And I outlined how much money I need X, Y, Z. What are the steps? What do I need? Do I need an LLC? What's an EIN? And I just went through everything I need to figure out before I can really do this. And I I was doing this throughout the wrestling season. So January and February, and that's what made it.

5:52So in March, I was able to go so hard at it is I was prepared as much as possible. And that kind of gives you confidence to, you know, if you just go in there, you have no clue what you're doing, no matter what, it's going to be scary. But if you at least prepared yourself as much as you can, you're going to be a lot more confident and confidence is king when it comes to running a business because your confidence will seep through. Let's dive into starting like a pressure washing business or as the exteriors here, I mean, what kind of equipment did you start with and like how much did it cost you to get going?

6:20Starting again, would you use that same equipment? Would love to hear that. Definitely our listeners take note of everything I was actually going to say here. So the first thing I started with was a$500 pressure washer I bought off Amazon. Throughout the first like two years of me starting the business or year and a half, I had been working in a bounce house place. I just saved up all the money I got from that, bought the power washer. And the first steps was I was just asking my grandma, my mom, my dad, had everybody I knew to power wash their driveway, power wash their house. And I wasn't even charging them.

6:46I was just like, before I go and try to find a customer, let me at least figure out how to do this. So I think that is 100 % the first step anyone should take once you're actually at the point where you save the money up and you have the equipment is do work for friends and family and build some before and after pictures as well as some referrals. Looking back on it, I honestly don't regret buying that as my first piece of equipment. Power washing, you get a very good return on investment. You know, if a power washer costs you 500 bucks, power washing a house costs 500. So you could pay it off in a couple of jobs.

7:16So it has a really good ROI, of course. I want to ask, so you were going to like your grandma, you said like friends, were you charging them? If you were like, how much would you charge them? And like, what are you pricing now? Like talk to us about pricing as all that. Yeah. Yeah. So when I first started for my grandma and stuff, I would do it for free, but you know, my grandma is the sweetest lady you'll ever meet. So of course she gave me money, Same with my dad and everything. And I think they kind of just like boiled it down to an hourly rate, but I don't remember what I got for it because I didn't charge it.

7:42Once I started doing like friends of family members and whatnot, not people like directly my family, that's when I started to charge. And I did it more off a time-based system. You know, everyone online was saying to charge 125 an hour for power washing. I was like, okay, that's what I'm going to do. So I would look at something, think about how long it would take, multiply by 125. And that's what I was charging. So looking back on it, I probably should charge a little less because I was not that good. But when you compare it to the pricing now, we charge significantly more than that. We no longer do an hourly rate.

8:08We do everything based off of like square footage. Obviously, there's a few other factors, but we are able to get a higher ticket price and a higher hourly rate when we don't try to boil it down to how long it's going to take. Most people spend months, sometimes years, just thinking about starting a business. But what if you could do it in just 10 days? That's exactly what the 10-day business launch plan is designed for. It's a step-by-step roadmap that takes you from idea to real operational business in just 10 days. Click the link in the description below and get ready with your business.

9:03that is when I bought my Chevy the reason why I did that was I was just so tired of having an unreliable truck I had bought like three trucks prior to that and one of my trucks the Tundra I bought it for eight thousand dollars and then I put like 10k into it and I sold it for seven so I was like this is not worth it at all anymore and that's when my first lesson hit where it's like buy once cry once although it was a lot of money it's made me a lot of money so it works out in the end I mean how much money were you making in those very first months I am asking this question for the listeners because someone might be like okay i'm hearing 500 power wash i've got 500 saved i can do that i'm hearing 125 an hour i mean that just mastered like a very good roi first you know three months four months what were you guys doing in revenue so it would be hard to give you a number for that if we're talking about before the wrestling season ended i wasn't really taking it seriously i wasn't tracking it i would have like three of my friends come work for me you know 15 an hour whatever it was we were just blowing leaves you know it wasn't as in depth and And when I was doing the power washing, once again, it was kind of more of a side hustle.

9:59But when I started at the end of wrestling season, I had done the research. I was as prepared as I could be. March, we did 10 ,000 that first month. And we kept that up throughout the rest of the year. And that's where you get that 100 ,000 in eight months. We did that. March was the first 10K right off the bat. Now, that was... Now, one thing I do want to say about that is at this point, I had already bought some other equipment. So we were doing mulching jobs, but it's all basic stuff. I would have the mulch delivered and we would use a$45 pitchfork and a$150 wheelbarrow. and you do not need a lot of money to start doing, you know, the lawn care side at all.

10:30So you're doing$10 ,000 in your very first month. Of course, it's more than power washing, but$10 ,000 in your first month and kind of the months after that as well, then. Right off. I, you know, it's so funny because I would track it. I had this whiteboard and I would write out, you know, every single thing. And I tracked every single number we did. And I remember the first month it was like 10.4 K is what we did. I mean, what's going through your mind when you see 10.4 K? I was ecstatic. I couldn't believe it, to be honest with you, because I'd been thinking about it for so long. And like we were talking about before, I was really dedicated to wrestling, but it got to the point where I was so pumped to start this business.

11:04I didn't even care about states. I didn't care about anything. I just wanted to be over with, drop these classes, get to work. So when I saw 10K, it was really like, I'm making the right decision. You know what I mean? And I'm doing it, and I'm just going to keep doing it kind of thing. Well, let's jump back to that customer acquisition, especially on a budget here. So you guys did about 10.4 in that very first month. If someone's sitting down, crossing you, and they're very interested in this, what advice would you give to a listener right now saying, here's how to go get your first customer?

11:31Yeah. So the very first thing I would do now, this is somewhat age-based. So if you're in my boat and you're 18 years old, 17 years old, you can really use the fact that you're young to kind of pull on the heartstrings a little bit as, you know, as messed up as that may come off of. People love seeing someone that's young and hardworking. so whenever they see the post and you're telling them your age, they eat it up. So I would 100 % of the time at first, all I was doing, next door, Facebook group posts. Those two, and I still do that to this day, even though the business is significantly bigger than it was, we still do this because it's free.

12:03All we would do is, hey everyone, my name is Zach. I just graduated Colgan High School. I decided to start my own business. This is the services we offer and I would have comments, hearts, shares, likes, and that's where we really acquired our first customers. down the line, we went way more towards door hangers. That is a big staple. But of course, I had to save up some money to buy the door hangers. And obviously, I didn't know about door hangers at first, but I want to say we probably did our first door hanger campaign in May of 2023. And I've been doing that ever since as well. Yeah, that's what I absolutely love.

12:35When I was doing my first entrepreneurial ventures, I was like 20 years old, 21. And every time I'd pulled the, you know, I'm 21 years old, Like, can you help me out type of thing? It's a great strategy, but all of our listeners aren't 21. So, you know, 18, whatever. Let's jump to that door hanging strategy then. What exactly are like door hangers? How much do they cost? Talk to us about that strategy. Give us a nice breakdown of that. Yeah, yeah. So door hangers can be very effective. You have to do it in a certain way. It's called my neighborhood takeover method. This is kind of what we do for like all of our big neighborhoods.

13:06So the door hangers is the first step to the neighborhood takeover method. and it's a very cheap option. You can buy like 4 ,000 door hangers for I wanna say around$600 and they're these big ones, they're double-sided so they got your stuff on the front and on the back. On average, we get around a two to 3 % return. So if you put 100 out, you should get two to three leads and it's almost guaranteed. It's not like Facebook advertisement where you can make errors in your copy and your video. It's consistent. As long as that logo and your design on it looks good, if you hammer those out, you are 100 % going to get leads.

13:41So that is definitely one of the easiest ways you can start with advertising. And like I said, it's pretty low budget. While 600 sounds like a lot, you just get such a high return. It's not a lot in the scheme of things. Yeah. And so you said, you know, if you hand out a hundred, you'll get two to three, you know, leads, which I mean, that's about a two to 3 % conversion rate. Let's talk about like the ROI on that though. Like what is the ROI on like a campaign like that? If those three people actually turn into customers, I mean, talk to us about that. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. So let's say, let's just do an ROI on a hundred door hangers.

14:09Let's just say and bump it down just for the fun of it. It's at 2 % instead of the 3%. Depending on what services we're talking about, whether it's power washing or landscaping, it kind of varies because power washing is a little bit lower ticket. But with power washing, our average ticket is$550. So if we land two jobs, that's$1 ,100. And I spent 680 for 4 ,000 door hangers. Yeah, that's an incredible ROI to have here. My ears are perking up. I know listeners will be as well. Let's talk about that strategy more in depth. You said make it visually pleasing. So you have the logo, you have the copy, Is there an offer on there?

14:40Like really tell us what this playbook is. Yeah. So our door hangers are very detailed. So we like to have before and afters. And that's why I was saying you should get the larger ones. They have these small ones. You just can't fit as much. So on these big door hangers, we have before and after pictures. Like for example, the power washing one, we got the phone number on there. When you flip it over, it's going to list more of our services. And on the bottom is really the key feature. It has a QR code. It says, scan this, upload a picture and you receive a 15 % discount. So that has helped us get a lot more of the customers to actually convert is that discount, you know, that people love getting money off their stuff.

15:14Yeah, that's what I think is super important. Some of the best marketing campaigns I've ever ran, they always have a promo, like you can't just run and like hope it works, like have some sort of promo, have some sort of offer. And if you need to tweak it, I mean, definitely do. I think that's like one of the best ways to do that. Let's talk about hitting, you know, you did$10 ,000, you did$100 ,000 in your first like eight months or so, but let's talk about hitting like$300 ,000 in revenue so quickly. Obviously things change from a hundred thousand to 200 ,000, 200 ,000 to 300 ,000. What really drove you guys to go from that a hundred thousand dollar mark to$300 ,000?

15:49So I think the biggest difference, you know, when you compare the growth of my business versus another business is just how much we spent on advertising. I have never been scared to advertise. And, you know, I talk to other business owners all the time. You know, I do another business, which is like digital marketing and that's the door hangers, yard signs, whatever. And constantly I see people who are making 10K a month, 15K a month, and they're shocked at the price of$500 worth of yard signs,$500 worth of door hangers on a thousand dollar website. And they can't even fathom spending that much money on it, but then they spend$5 ,000 on a power washer,$5 ,000 on a trailer.

16:23So I think that's one factor that a lot of, especially home service business owners overlook is if you advertise, your revenue increases. There's no ifs and ands. If you're not advertising versus if you are advertising, you're going to make more money. It's simple as that, really. What advertising channels have worked well for you? Were you guys running Google ads, Facebook ads? What were some of those best advertising channels that worked for you? Yeah. So I would say the absolute best while also being the absolute worst are the Facebook ads. So I probably spent about$10 ,000 on Facebook ads before I finally figured it out.

16:55My first really successful campaign with Facebook ads was aeration season. We got like 46 customers at about$4 per lead. So it boiled down to less than$200 in ad spend. And that's 46 customers. The average ticket for aeration for us at the time was like maybe 280. So it really wasn't a high ticket service, but one job paid off the entire campaign. And then we have 45 other customers that we can reach out to. What was kind of like part of that campaign or like walk us through that one? Yep. So that campaign, it's a 15 second video. That's about how all my Facebook ads, are it has a hook at the beginning, call to action in the middle, call to action at the end.

17:31So I can actually probably say this bar for bar because I had to say it so many times, but it's like, we will aerate any yard under 10 ,000 square feet for$149 if you schedule by October 13th. If you pair the aeration with seeding, you're going to have lush green grass year round. And then the ending was like, click get quote or whatever the button was at the time. And it had a high quality video of me with my polo on walking behind an aerator, walking behind a seed spreader. I've recorded it in my grandma's front yard. And that was when I was like, holy crap. I mean, I've had never gotten that amount of leads from one given advertisement in my entire life.

18:07So that's what really opened my eyes to a Facebook advertisement. Oh man, that's so, so cool. That's a great breakdown. So listeners, rewind that and play that again because Zach literally just gave him how to do it right. Let's talk about profit margins though. What are you guys running about profit margin wise, revenue percentage wise? We'd love to hear that. So year one, we did probably negative$60 ,000 if you are incorporating the purchase price of my Chevy. So that means all the money I made, I put right back towards it. And then the loan on top of it caused me to have a deficit. So that carried over into this year, but not including that.

18:39Last year, we profit around 140. Now, a lot of that I put into other businesses. So unfortunately, I don't have it sitting in my pocket, but that's what Z's was at the end of the year on the P &L. And then this year we are going to do way more than that. Last month, we profited just over 25 ,000. The month before that, it was just below 25 ,000. So I think within six months, we'll have profited more than we did last year. That is so amazing. Congratulations on that. Thank you. That's a sound business model right there. But what has helped you keep like costs so low and like margins so high? So the way I always explain it, and I don't know if I just have OCD, but I am very into tune with my money.

19:15So I track every single expense on an Excel sheet so I can see at the end of the day what my margin was, how much am I profiting per guy? Who's profiting me the most money? You know, I can break down every single thing about the business's finances. So when there's something that's going wrong, I'm not sitting here guessing, uh, where did that 5 ,000 go? This is that I can sit there, go through it and I can target. we're not profiting enough off the power washing because we've been buying bleach from this store and it's too expensive or whatever it is. So whenever those things do come up, I'm able to adjust quickly and find a solution.

19:45A question that like really comes to mind with me is like when I think a lot about like home service companies, it usually is people that aren't 18. Let's put it that way. Like, why do you think that like the trades, like the unsexy businesses, like don't get more attention from young people? I think honestly, it's just like a cultural thing. I don't know what it is. You know, everybody is geared towards college. You know, your whole life you're growing up from all of elementary school, middle school, high school, get a college degree, get a college degree. And even when you're really in class and we're talking blue collar, it's never like, oh, that's a good option.

20:16It's like, oh, that's an option. You know, it's like always looked down upon. And also, I think a lot of people are just scared to get their hands dirty. They would rather not do that. I think with TikTok and Instagram, it has been shifting a little bit. I see a lot more younger people than I saw when I was 18 at the time, gearing towards blue collar, but there is definitely a giant deficit in the blue collar field. Yeah, yeah. I think there's a really good opportunity for people to get into this space, just because I don't know what the stats are, but you do have a lot of older people that are starting to retire that have built up businesses like this.

20:46It's a really great opportunity for someone to come in, provide some, you know, modern marketing practices in a sense. But let's wrap up with some practical, like real world advice, wanting to follow into your footsteps. What would you say is like the absolute minimum someone needs to start a landscaping or exterior business today? I would say the absolute minimum. I mean, you need to have probably like$500 to buy some basic equipment and then you need to learn how to take a deposit from a customer. I mean, the amount of times I got a deposit from a customer and then went and bought the piece of equipment I needed to complete the job.