Expanding your business requires you to take a good hard look at your business (checking under the hood). You need to ask yourself. What am I making money at in my business and what isn’t making a lot of money? It requires coordination with all aspects of your business. It requires a look at your schedule and where inefficiencies lay, if any. Just expanding is easy. Anyone can go out and buy a new truck. If you are expanding for ego sake, that’s ok as long as you understand that it is your primary objective. If your ego is that important to you go out and buy a sports car for yourself, but realize why you are doing it. If you are trying to satisfy your ego, great. Just don’t fool yourself.

If you buy an additional auto detailing rig or car wash truck, remember you will:

Have to pay to train a new manager

Have to hire a crewmember

Have more incidental expenses such as: water, gas, supplies, insurance, etc.

Double your labor costs

Have additional insurance and truck payments

Have to spend more time in sales the next two months

If we look at this carefully, you see the trap. Let us say you have signed up some fleet accounts which will pay a good chunk of change each month, but you know you will have to bill them and it is quite likely that they will in fact take up to 30 days to pay the invoice; meaning you will have to do the work for 30 days and then wait an additional 30 days to get paid. It would be a different scenario if you had thirty percent more personal cars to wash at office buildings and you were getting four to eight calls a day which you didn’t have time to service, because that is instant cash money and positive cash flow. Then you would definitely need another mobile detailing rig or car wash truck.

What about other factors, such as seasonal changes? You see, daylight savings time might end and if you think you had problems getting to the four to eight extra calls a day, just think about losing one hour a day of daylight on top of that. If you started to think about expansion on September first then the fleet account’s cash flow would catch up by let’s say November 10th and the personal car’s money would cover you until then. November 10th is before rainy season in most sunny states, but what if you live in Washington, Oregon, Northern CA where the rainy season begins on or around October fifteenth?

You need to ask for help with things you are unsure of or step back and be honest with your motivation for expansion and the reality of your small business. You must duplicate your second mobile auto detailing rig or car wash truck to exactly match your first. This way your manager of your second unit understands where everything is. If not allow him or her to run your first unit and you take the new unit to run. Our advise on this subject may not be what you expect to hear or even what you want to hear, but you need to audit the true position you are in before you expand your business.

Our advice is based upon twenty years of experience in our industry. An industry, which I myself helped create and is still redefining on a daily basis. Think before you expand.
EzineArticles Expert Author Lance Winslow

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

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