Niche Twins - Blue-collar cheat code 👷

Before we turned 18, landscaping made up Mike and I's entire job resume.

More accurately; pulling weeds, raking leaves and digging holes.

We started out as employees, until one summer we decided to go off on our own.

And sure, "Donovan Landscaping" didn't last long. But as kids, we learned more about business in that one summer, than we had in all the other summers combined.

We learned how to generate leads by knocking on doors and handing out flyers.

We learned how to properly price a job (after first getting fleeced more times than I care to admit).

We even learned how to hire (i.e. pay a friend or two to come along for the bigger jobs).

It was hard work. And I loved it.

But that was a long time ago.

There's an old saying - "If you work with your mind, rest with your hands".

In essence, if your stuck behind a computer screen for the majority of your day like I am now, you quickly discover that hours of yard work feels more like rest than it does work.

And for good reason. It's like you're letting you brain breathe or something. A healthy reset.

This might, at least partially, explain my growing obsession with blue-collar businesses.

And the more I've dug in, the more I'm convinced that starting a home service business is a cheat code right now for aspiring first-time entrepreneurs.

We're talking landscaping, junk removal, power washing, window washing, painting, moving, cleaning...the list goes on.

First, these businesses aren't sexy so they're largely overlooked by an entire generation.

Second, these businesses aren't capital intensive, so there's an incredibly low barrier to entry.

And third, most of the incumbents aren't tech savvy.

And this is where the magic happens. Blue-collar content creation. Applying the infinite leverage of the internet.

Here are a few of my favorite entrepreneurs who are all at different stages of executing this exact playbook...

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Kirk & Jacob McKinney

I recently chatted with Kirk on the phone for nearly an hour and a half. I left that conversation genuinely thinking "this kid is going to take over the world".

In 2021, these teenage brothers started a Massachusetts based junk removal service called "Junk Teens".

At the time, Kirk was 17 and Jacob was just 15 years old.

They got their start by saving up enough cash bagging groceries to go 50/50 on a $4,000 beat up old pickup truck.

They then used that old truck to go around and take on just about any work they could find - junk removal, moving, landscaping, tree work - you name it.

In their first 12 months they cleared $120,000 in revenue.

By rolling 100% of their year 1 profits back into their business, they were able to buy a much needed dump truck.

The result?

In year 2, they cleared $460,000 in revenue.

What's incredible to me is these kids were able to reach these numbers almost entirely through organic lead generation.

Really basic stuff - like asking current customers for referrals, having customers post on Facebook and Next Door on their behalf and putting up inexpensive yard signs.

It wasn't until 2023 that the brothers started significantly investing in paid ads, bought a warehouse and expanded their team.

And it's all paid off. In year 3, they cleared $910,000 in revenue!

The business is on a rocketship, with plans to expand to a second location in the near future.

But what's perhaps most interesting to me is as Junk Teens has been growing, Kirk and Jacob have also been steadily growing their social media presence.

As of today, they have over 160,000 followers on TikTok and they're approaching 65,000 followers on Instagram.

Kirk now plans to go full time on content, while Jacob handles more of the day to day operations.

Junk Teens is clearly already crushing it by every metric.

But if I had to guess, I'd say their content related revenue (and opportunities that come out of it) will dwarf their company's service revenue over the coming years...and it won't even be close.

Brandon Downer & Carter Smith

Brandon and Carter easily have some of the best branding in the home service game.

After getting laid off from their jobs in 2020, the pair started Austin, TX based "Pink's Window Cleaning" and never looked back.

Pink's isn't your typical window cleaning company in one simple, but insanely impactful way - they've gone all out on their "1950s body shop mechanic meets the milk-man” uniforms.

With this seemingly trivial decision, they've built a highly recognizable brand, quickly.

Now, after just three years in business, they're already offering franchising opportunities to take the company nationwide.

They're even selling a ton of merch on their online store - for a window cleaning business!

Nick Huber

In many ways Nick Huber is the pacesetter for blue-collar content creators everywhere.

His journey has been well documented on Twitter @SweatyStartup and elsewhere - but here's a summary...

At 13 years old (!!), Nick's dad helped him secure a contract to mow 7 commercial properties in Southern Indiana.

By the time he headed to Cornell University, he had saved up about $40,000 and more importantly had he learned how to run a small business.

During his junior year at Cornell he put his apartment up on Craigslist, hoping to find someone to lease it to for the summer.

No one rented it.

But one person did reach out - a parent of one of the students offering Nick $150 to store her son's stuff at his apartment.

It was a lightbulb moment.

He quickly put flyers all over campus advertising "pickup and delivery student storage".

The phone started ringing...and it never stopped ringing. Storage Squad Student Storage was born.

Over the next few years he would go on to expand to 25 campuses. But the service business was hard, stressful and challenging to scale.

So in 2016, while running the student storage company on the side, he took his profits and decided to build a self-storage facility in Ithaca, New York.

Eventually Nick would sell Storage Squad Student Storage for $1.75M in 2020, while continuing to snatch up self-storage facilities on the east coast.

At this point, he was already a success by every measure.

But here's what put him over the top - in early 2020 he got active on Twitter and started sharing his journey.

In doing so, he's grown an audience of over 350,000 followers and he's met a ton of investors along the way. Through these new connections, he was able to buy $50M worth of self-storage facilities with Bolt Storage in 2021.

Fast forward to today, and Nick's growing personal brand has led to his involvement and part ownership of over 10 different companies.

These companies netted him $400k of personal profit...in February alone.

I'll end this week's blue-collar love letter with a recent tweet from Nick that really says it all:

"The powerful thing about my personal brand: I can attract insanely good operators and talent and bring them into my organization. And my customers are right here reading this text."

Have a weekend! ✌️

Keith

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