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This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features 20-year-old college student Jacob Shaidle, founder of Ontario-based grill cleaning company Shaidle Cleaning. Answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Courtesy of Shaidle Cleaning. Jacob Shaidle.
What was your main job or occupation when you started your side business?
I was a 15-year-old high school student when I started my part-time job, Shaidle Cleaning. I've always liked physical work, so this was a natural fit. Before starting my business at the age of 14, I worked full-time on a tree farm during the summer, but when my parents told me I needed to finance my college education, I wanted to earn more than minimum wage to ensure I could cover tuition pay. I was shocked to learn how expensive school really was! Today I am a full-time university student during the school year and a full-time entrepreneur in the summer. I plan to pursue Shaidle Cleaning full-time after I graduate.
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When did you start your side business and where did you find the inspiration for it?
I started Shaidle Cleaning in the summer of 2021. My mother asked me to clean our grill at home and suggested I hit the road after doing such a good job. My parents mentioned that I made more money cleaning neighbors' grills than I did at the tree farm. I would never have thought of starting a grill cleaning business if they hadn't suggested it to me!
What were some of the first steps you took to get your side business off the ground?
I needed the right cleaning products to get Shaidle Cleaning going. Luckily, I already had a pressure washer at home from my dad and spent $400 on other equipment (100% of my savings at the time). That first summer of business, I packed everything into two grocery bags and walked about a half-mile around my house to clean the grills—since I didn't have a driver's license or a car, walking was my only option. By the second summer, I made enough money to buy my own car, which allowed me to expand my service area and double my sales.
Related: She Started a Creative Side Hustle That Made $100,000 in 10 Months — Now She Makes Up to $10 Million a Year: 'Find Your Niche'
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced while building your side business and how did you overcome them?
My three biggest challenges in the company were ensuring great quality even after hiring employees, maintaining a great online presence, and managing such a large number of customers. In my opinion, to ensure the quality of service, good and well-planned training was very important. But even more important was hiring hard-working, passionate people – people who had similar goals and mindsets to me and could work toward a common goal. Having a great team has been the driving factor in our company's success.
Maintaining a great online presence is a real challenge when you're a small business competing with all of these “sharks” who have more customers and spend more money on advertising than us. With the help of my friend Aran Giffen, we were able to build a great online presence and educate people about the history, our youth, our passion and drive, rather than the actual service we provide. We want to make it clear that we are all students with the goal of helping other students, and that is how we present ourselves.
Finally, going from serving 100 clients per summer to over 700 was a huge leap. As an owner, I want to have one-on-one conversations with every customer, get them excited about the service, and make sure they have the best experience every time. Unfortunately, I just don't have enough time in the day for that. Instead, I leveraged the great personalities of my own employees to message, follow up, and keep their customers happy. We also simplified customer management with Jobber, which automatically saves all of our customers' information, sends automated messages and organizes everything for me as the owner.
How long did it take for you to achieve consistent monthly sales? How much did the side hustle make?
Since this is a seasonal business, every summer I work hard to increase my sales from the previous season. In my first two months of operation in 2021, I made $5,000. The following summer, when I had my car, I doubled my sales to $10,000. These were two-month summers in grades 11 and 12. In my first university summer, I reached $10,000 my first month and ended the summer with about $30,000.
This summer, which was my fourth summer in business, we did $100,000 in sales in 75 days and ended the summer with total sales of around $150,000. As a one-man operation, it wasn't too much of a challenge to generate consistent income during the summer. That's because I usually knock on the door for a day or two to fill my schedule for the week. Last year we had a total of seven technicians and 20 people, so it was much more difficult to keep revenue constant. We had to quickly learn how to train employees, manage our sales team, and handle hundreds of other customers. My best friend, Aran Giffen, has been a huge help in keeping revenue consistent by managing our website, reach and online ads.
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What does growth look like now?
I was able to grow my one-man side business into a thriving business that has allowed me to employ dozens of high school and university students and help them self-fund their education. With a growing, passionate and hard-working team, we ultimately aim to achieve seven-figure sales. Automation is a big part of scaling a business. By partnering with Jobber last summer, we recently automated our customer communications, which has helped us tremendously. This partnership has allowed us to expand our customer base to 1,000 grill cleanings and six-figure sales this year. Before Jobber, I spent a lot of my time scheduling cleaning appointments and manually sending clients reminder messages about their appointments – it took up most of my day. Jobber completely handles this by allowing clients to book their appointments online, automating reminder messages and sending invoices at the end of our service, giving me more time to focus on growing the business. Without this partnership, we would not have been able to achieve six-figure sales or hire employees.
What do you enjoy most about this part-time job?
By far, the best part about owning Shaidle Cleaning was allowing my employees to pay their college and college expenses. I am so proud of my team and happy with what we have achieved so far and I sincerely want only the best for them. We are building a company around hard-working, dedicated and passionate students, and I value their work and dedication more than anything else. My business is so much more than just cleaning grills – we create a close-knit community of students and help them develop and grow as people.
Related: As a recent graduate at People magazine, she started a t-shirt side business. It resulted in a DM from Levi's and $400 million.
What advice do you have for others hoping to start successful side hustles of their own?
Find great people to surround yourself with. I used to think pursuing my big dreams on my own would be great – more rewarding, more efficient and more impressive. But I was completely wrong. One of my favorite parts of my job is meeting new people who can help and support me in different ways. Gathering a group of people around a single goal and leading them all to success is much more rewarding than doing it alone. It's much quicker to build on the amazing knowledge of others to get ahead in business, and it's more impressive to stick to the plan with the people around you than to climb the mountain alone and leave people behind.
With this message I would like to mention four very important people who have helped me do amazing things in business. Aran Giffen, Brendan Quinlan and my parents. Aran was in his third year and was one of Shaidle Cleaning's greatest assets. Brendan has served as my mentor for just over a year and has given me more knowledge, skills and advice than anyone else in business. Along with my mother and father, who have always been by my side and encouraged me no matter what, and who have had the pleasure of watching this grow since the very first barbecue, I am forever grateful to these people and only want to continue with them grow.
This article is part of our ongoing Young Entrepreneur® series, where we highlight the stories, challenges and successes of a young entrepreneur.
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