This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Burgess Heberer, a 37-year-old business owner, based in Santa Claus, Indiana. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I loved my old job. I worked on infant formulas and children’s nutritional products, and really believed in what I was doing. But I could also see that the corporate ladder structure was holding me and my family back from our financial goals.
When I decided to leave my job to pursue my side hustle full-time, I’d been working as a research and development operations scientist. However, this past June, my wife and I celebrated five years in business doing exterior home cleaning.
I still don’t take a weekly paycheck or a salary from our business, but my family is better off in all regards.
I quickly learned I could replace my 9-to-5 salary with my side hustle
After my wife and I replaced our roof about a decade ago, I started to learn about exterior home cleaning. During the COVID pandemic, when I had more time on my hands, we started exploring the idea of doing it ourselves. We bought some equipment to test things out.
When we first started, we followed online guides and did jobs for my in-laws. Then we started doing jobs for neighbors and people in town. I saw how many jobs I already had scheduled and knew what our pricing was for each type of job. It quickly became pretty clear that I could make my salary doing this.
As soon as word spread, things took off. I officially left my job in July 2020.
A grant helped us expand the business
In our second year in business, we applied for a grant at Jobber, which we use as our home servicing software. The grant gave us a $10,000 injection early on, allowing us to take the next step: growing the business rather than just hoping it survives.
We started expanding into other services, such as exterior window cleaning. This led us into a more expensive market because we could reach much larger houses and commercial buildings.
There are seven full-time people on our crew, and I have a couple of part-time guys who are either college students or semi-retired.
We target revenue between $15,000 and $20,000 a week
The amount we make varies because some jobs are larger than others.
Typically, a crew can complete two average-sized jobs a day, which would be a house, driveway, and its windows. Since everything’s based on square footage, it’s pretty accurate to know our revenue that week and plan accordingly. We use that as a metric to guide us.
We can do $25,000 a week with all hands on deck, but it just depends. The bulk of our business is residential, but we also have commercial clients, specialty customers, theme parks, food processing facilities, and universities. We go to some customers yearly, and others we do quarterly.
Being a two-income household gave me the flexibility to pursue starting a full-time business
I don’t know that I would’ve done this without my wife’s income, which was our safety net. We still have our insurance through her job teaching middle school music.
My wife handles most of our payroll, scheduling, and customer quoting. She aims to teach for 15 years before semi-retiring. After that, she’ll continue working part-time for our business.
To financially prepare for the transition, we cut back on vacations and waited to make home renovations. Things we had budgeted for got put to the side, and I knew I’d lose my 401(k) gains and all the other things that come along with a corporate job. It was definitely a huge risk.
Learning to balance being my own boss has been a big adjustment
Before, we lived almost exclusively off my wife’s salary, but now the business revenue covers some of our personal bills and finances.
I still don’t take paychecks. Rather than getting a salary with a weekly check, I preferred to reinvest that money back in the business. Last year, we generated over $630,000 in revenue. We’d like to reach at least $1 million in revenue before I start carving out a guaranteed monthly paycheck.
I put pressure on myself because I’m trying to meet my own goals, which I think is sometimes harder than trying to impress a boss. At home in the evenings, we’re always talking business, so there’s no clock out.
Owning the business allowed me to do things I never got to do before, like take my daughter to school drop-off. While my wife and I work more than we did before, the flexibility is unlike it has ever been.
Do you have a career pivot story to share? Contact this reporter, Agnes Applegate, at [email protected].
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