HarrytheCarGeek

I got laid off March 2009. Been in the Car business for over 19 years then. They gave me 6,200 in severance pay. Took that money and with a bunch of prayers opened my own business. I want to say it was harder than I thought, but in reality it was much easier than running my old bosses' shops. Cheap rent but not on a high traffic location. $1,500 month. per mo. Insurance $1,000.00 Mechanic $3,150 no overtime... My pay $3,425 Utilities $800 Service Guides- $300 Misc/Tools $500 Licenses/legal fees. $200 Tax set aside $150 About $11,000 in expenses per mo. Took than number and double it $22,000 per month and made that my target revenue. That meant I had to sell about $5,500 Per week. Or 80 bill hours at $69. Notice I had not factored my parts sales and mark up into the plan, bear with me for the marketing info... At 22K month sales I was projecting $264K sales for the year. I took that figure and planned on spending 6% of gross sales into marketing expenses. That would be about 16k per year in advertizing. That Worked out to about $1,350 per month in advertizing. Now, knowing my marketing budget I have stuck to it religiously. Taking my monthly budget, I have flyers printed and passed out every other week. I have sponsored a local magazine that runs a full page ad of my shop in it and I help the editor in distributing it. I have a gentleman that runs ads on google for me and my shop comes on top when doing local searches... results - three years plus later About 50K in sales per mo. and looking to move to a much larger building.... 2 mechanics, a helper/tire guy, and me.

BayMaster. Simple and fast. -http://www.bay-master.com/index.html