When you’re first getting into detailing, you should expect this to be a grind. That is just the truth. I don’t sugarcoat it because I lived it.
When I started, my life basically looked like this:
I was waking up around 6 a.m., getting all my chemicals ready, filling bottles, checking my launcher, loading up the van, all that stuff. That took maybe 30 minutes to an hour every morning. I’d hit my first appointment around 8:30 or 9, and then I would detail straight through the day until 6 or 7.
That was every day. I did that six days a week. Sunday was my only day off. I’d go to church, hang out with friends, and that was it.
So early on, if you want to grow fast and actually build up to real income, you should expect to be putting in 50 to 60 hours a week, especially if you’re doing this full time.
Now, once you get the basics down, start getting regular customers, and especially once you bring on an employee you can trust, your hours naturally go down. That’s when you start freeing up time and your job shifts from doing every detail yourself to building systems, documenting processes, and figuring out how to scale.
But in the beginning, yes, it’s work. You get better, you get faster, you start charging more, and eventually you’re not killing yourself. But early on, it’s very much a “roll up your sleeves and grind” season.
If you put in the work, you can absolutely build something real with this.
If you are trying to figure out the minimum hours you need to put into detailing to actually make money, here is the honest version based on exactly what I’ve seen and how I explain it to people.
If you just want to do this part time, the low end is literally weekends only. I told Ben that people who have a full time job Monday through Friday can still pull off around 3k a month just working Saturdays and Sundays.
That’s usually one detail per day at 300 to 500 dollars. So if you can give this two days a week, you can realistically make part time income.