Success Tips for Starting and Marketing a Motorcycle Detailing Business

Speaker A: Calling all detailers for just guiding every grind, helping detailers make more money one show at a time.

Speaker B: Hey everybody, I got Pete here from Bike Works. How's it going Pete?

Speaker C: It's going good.

Speaker B: Excellent, excellent. Can you tell me a little about where you're located and uh, how you got started in this business?

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm Loc. I'm located in the greater San Francisco east bay area, about 30 minutes east of San, uh, Francisco. Located in Contra Costa county, based in Concord, California. That area and how I got started, I, it seems kind of funny but I was just, I was um, just bored one day it was uh, I think it was like around a February or March of 2011 and I was looking online for products to clean my motorcycle and I came across one of these think tank bloggers. It, it just was titled how to start a Motorcycle Detailing Business. And then I read that and there was a part 2. Is starting a motorcycle detailing business a good idea? And I kind of just thought, hey, I can do that. And I was already, I was already working at the time. I was living up in Jackson in the, in the Sierra foothills area, uh, not too far from Lodi there, Mark. And it was kind of interesting. I was working at the casino at the time. I already had a full time job so I just kind of, just started. I thought, nah, be kind of cool. Part time job, you know. You know, I like keeping my motorcycle clean so I'll keep other, other people's motorcycles clean. And it kind of started at that. Then um, that was in um, April 1st of 2011. And then come November 22nd of 2011 I got laid off at the casino. And I said okay, well let's see what I can do here. I got, I'm going to have to see if I can maybe possibly do this full time. See where this uh, detailing business can go. Mainly focusing on motorcycles of course. So then I moved back to the Bay Area just to, just to get into a bigger market. I, I got some customers up in the Jackson area and was doing okay through a local motorcycle shop, but I just needed to get into a bigger area. Just need to be around more people. So um.

Speaker B: Right, right. So I don't, I can't remember when we first met. It's gotta be in that timeframe somewhere.

Speaker C: It was right around, I was looking, I was researching coatings. I remember, I want to say it was, it was close. It was close right around that area. It's about 2000, 13, 13 or 14. And I came across some coatings and I, and Then I saw on Facebook, I saw a pearl nano and I filled out some information, and that's when you reached out to me. And then we had quite a long conversation about coatings and everything, because that was just when I was starting to get getting into coatings a little bit, because I was getting some requests for coatings for some customers, and I'm like, well, I better figure this one out.

Speaker B: So, great. So your core business is motorcycles. Do you do some cars?

Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah. It works out to be about. I do probably now we're about 75% motorcycles, 25% cars. So.

Speaker B: Great, great, great. And are you doing full details, paint enhancements? Are you doing, uh, you know, you have a shop, Are you working out of your house? What do you have going on?

Speaker C: I'm fully mobile, so everything, everything I do is mobile. You know, I toyed around with, you know. You know, like, a lot of people start out mobile. They have the goal of getting a shop and everything, you know, which is cool. But the feedback from my motorcycle customers, they love the fact that I am mobile. So I gotta stay with. I gotta stay with the mobile. You know, I gotta go with what, you know, customers like and everything.

Speaker B: So how do you deal with the weather? I mean, now that it's winter, you know, it's a little rough. Are you going and working in their garage? You're not. Obviously not working outside under a tent in the middle of, you know, SF winter.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's, um, that's crazy thing. Like most mobile detailers, the biggest thing that affects you is. Is the rain, for sure, range. But as far as with the motorcycles, I do, I do all motorcycles. I do everything waterless. So I'm able to work in garages and, and that's not a problem. And, and for a lot of customers, I do do that. So there's, there's been a lot of times I'm in a garage and it's storming outside pretty good.

Speaker B: But one.

Speaker C: But one of the things I, One of the things I found out is that the customers, the, the motorcyclists, they don't, they don't like having their motorcycles detailed and them not being. Wanting to ride it. I think they don't like the fact of looking at a freshly, uh, detailed motorcycle with sitting in the garage and they can't go out and ride it. So that's part of the thing where I gotta wait for the weather to be good. Yeah.

Speaker B: Okay, well, how do people find you?

Speaker C: They find me. The, uh, platform that has worked the best for me has Been Google. It's one thing I learned is a lot of these motorcyclists, they're master Googlers. I had uh, so the point once I said figured out how to get on uh, the Google business thing, that that's been the biggest platform that's worked for me. They just, I always ask my customers you know, uh, how'd you hear about me? They said I just did a Google search. I Googled motorcycle detailing near me and you know I pop up. So I'm always trying to optimize that. There's a link to my website on that too. Plus uh, there you know, and then plus the social you know, platforms like Facebook works here and there, you know. Cause I post all my stuff on Facebook and I get messages here and there through Facebook. Same thing with Instagram. They, they all work. I'll run ads here and there too. They all work. Work to a certain degree. But the Google platform has been the one that's worked the best.

Speaker B: Ray, how about a blog or a YouTube channel?

Speaker C: I've been toying around with maybe possibly doing a YouTube channel and I'm thinking about starting to do that for sure. Have not done a blog. I might try to set that up a blog on my website though.

Speaker B: That's something that possible. Yes. YouTube is I think very important to uh, to start up and then consistency seems to be the number one contributing factors to success. If you I'm going to do a uh, just to say I'm going to do a YouTube channel. Commit to once a day, twice a week, once a week, even once a month. If they see that you're doing once a month even they will reward you with more people seeing it in your areas. But in, and I've been doing a lot of research on uh, YouTube as well. Occasional channels seem to be doing uh, I mean entertainment channel is number one but there's a lot of competition with, with entertainment And I have talked with uh, uh, Evan and in, in uh, in New York and Jay in Hawaii and his best videos were them just messing around, sliding in with the roller chair and wearing a wig and doing funny things like that. Don't know if that equates into more customers coming in the shop but educational wise is. And we just, just talked with Jeff uh, Mallory about this is the. They don't understand the time, effort and pain that you go through to clean a car and detail a car or a bike and all the small little details when you show them how you polish a car for five, six hours. That's why it costs $1,200 for a paint correction and coatings. And uh, it's not the coating that's so expensive, it's the time and effort. So when you show people the before, during and after and the testimonials and, and those kind of things and you're posting them on your channel and then here's the reason why I use this product for this problem and, or here's your problem. Your car's dirty, you went through the scratch and slap and now it's swirled and this is how I fix it. And I'm going to show you step by step. And then you could do this on your own or you can call me and I'll do it for you. Those kind of videos, those educational and problem solving videos seem to do very well. And you don't have to be a full time YouTuber even though some people have quit their full time job and they're doing this full time. But that took five years to get to that level when nobody but your aunt and your, and your, your cousin has seen the last hundred videos. Now it, it pops and you actually are getting some traction. I highly recommend doing all that. But going back to Facebook and Instagram, the daily take the video before, during and after posting it. We have a 25% discount if you get in between here and the New Year's, whatever. You always have a, some kind of call to action. Those kind of things work. Problem, solution, call to action. The other thing that I, and um, I'll just touch on very quickly is, is there's a whole format here is find a problem, you're the solution, or you have the solution and then uh, a call to action at the very end. So those are the things. It sounds a little car salesman like, but you have to ask for the business or they're like, okay, that was great. Now I know how they do paint. Correction. Who was that guy again? No, you got to have, you have to be branding your, your brand and your personal brand all at the same time. So that's my, that's my pitch on your YouTube channel.

Speaker C: Absolutely. I've heard good things about detailers who have done YouTube channels, you know, so I'm going to try to get started in that for sure. But yeah, it makes complete sense to me.

Speaker B: Great, great. And you said you were doing Facebook ads. How often are you doing ads and what are you saying on those ads?

Speaker C: Well, I'll do uh, Facebook ads a couple times a year. I, I probably honestly should do them more. And uh, you know, I just post I post an ad, you know, uh, showing a good picture of a motorcycle that I've detailed. Like a lot of times I'll boost the post and see what kind of results that gets. And then I'll also do like an ad targeting a certain area. Important thing is, is you want to make sure, you know, people got to make sure they target the ads in a certain area. Because I'll tell you, and especially this happens on Instagram a lot is I'll get detailers in my feed from Miami, New York, Texas, I mean, you name it. And I'm just, well, these people in other states aren't going to pay you.

Speaker B: No.

Speaker C: You know, so very important to when

Speaker B: you boost the post to hyper focus. We just talked about this with Jeff on the last podcast episode. Hyper focus on your Persona. So your, your target market. You know, these are lawyer bikers that have a dirty bike. You know, I don't know, whatever your best customer is, you want to have more of those. So uh, you focus that and then their, their interests and their, and then their vicinity. You know, a 20 mile radius, a 50 mile radius, a uh, 10 mile radius, whatever, how far you want to travel. And then you can focus on that Persona and those people, that country club membership guys and the Corvette guys and the, and the Harley guys. You can focus hyper focus with Facebook and Instagram on just those people and not shotgun it out to everybody else that don't care. They never wash their car even if it was dirty.

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker B: That's important.

Speaker C: And then, um, I'll say, I'll say something like, you know, running a special, get your motor, you know, springtime special, get your motorcycle detailed. You know, we're the top, top area experts in motorcycle motorcycle detailing. You know, get your motorcycle detailed by a detailer who, who owns and rides and operates motorcycles also, that kind of thing. So okay, I want to.

Speaker B: Because people's attention span is super, super short. You got to, you know, maybe even there's a suggestion. Even dirty bike, we got the solution. You know, they have a problem, you have the solution. So you know, schedule here so something as simple as that. I mean people are just like, they just glance. Okay, let me CL. Real quick and let me schedule this out. So great, great, great. How about some tips or tricks? Any tools that you use to do some of these things? How do you clean the little parts on a motorcycle? I have no idea. I mean, I've never really done a, uh, complete detail on a bike. It seems a little hard.

Speaker C: Yeah, one of, one of the things that I Start when I first started was Ash. I was doing an Internet search just on motorcycle detailing in general when I started to do it. And it was kind of like a nationwide search. And one of the things is there wasn't, you know, you had a lot of detailers out there obviously, and then not really anybody who specialized in motorcycles that I saw. So I came across this one site called chopper detailing.com. so this is back in 2011 when I started. And this is a guy who's out of Savannah, Georgia and he, he did some sort of big, uh, he ran some sort of big communication company. He kind of did the detailing on the side out of the shop. And so he showcased the products that he used. And he did everything waterless too. But his main focus was on cut these custom choppers, which at the time was still pretty big. And so I kind of just adopted. It made sense to me. I read his whole process and it made sense to me. So that's kind of how I got started. I emailed him back and forth a few times too. So there was this products, uh, good foaming cleaner that I liked by Honda called Honda Spray Cleaner and ordered that started messing around with that. That was pretty good. But the thing was is there was these little tools. They were called pimp sticks. Kind of a funny name. Sky MPS S T I X X X And so I went to that website and what it is is it came in this, uh, little case and there were these like tools. There was like a long stick, a short stick, and they have these little heads that you screw on. So for instance, there's one that's kind of like uh, the size of a popsicle stick. And then there's another head that's like a pointed one, a point, which is what I use like 90% of the time. And that helps me get into the tight areas. You wrap a microfiber towel around it, spray the surface. Like you can get into the engine fins really good with these little pointed areas. I can corner things really good. And then you got to kind of sort of get creative with your hands. Like, oh, have a towel around my fingers and kind of get into certain crazy little areas. So a little experimenting with that and it, you know, it took a little bit, but I got this process down pretty quick. So, you know, a lot of people say, well, doing things, you know, waterless, it's going to take a lot longer. Well, not necessarily. Once you get good at it and you get a good process down and you stick with your process, you'd be surprised how fast you can get stuff done, you know, with the waterless approach.

Speaker B: Right, right, right. Okay, great, great. And then the ceramic side is working great on bikes and also cars.

Speaker C: Yeah. So the coatings. More and more motorcyclists been asking about ceramic coatings. And so I'll get the, I'll get those here and there. You know, obviously, with the paint correction, cars too, here and there. That's the only little bit of thing is, um, this year, just economy a little bit. Businesses. The part of my business that has been down is, is the bigger ticket items like the paint corrections and the ceramic coatings have been down a little bit just this year. So sometimes, sometimes, um, I charge. I, you know, I charge accordingly for these prices and for ceramic coatings and some, for some people kind of shocks them, I guess.

Speaker B: Yeah, yes, yes, yes. But then, so what I tell people is if they're not going to spend, I'm not spending two grand with you, no matter what. I'm like, all right, no problem. You're going to let them walk out the door or are you going to have another option for them? So that's where the paint enhancement, you know, the one step and maybe a coating like my Easy coat, you know, it's a, it's a three to five year and versus the five plus year of the XV2. So don't let them walk out the door. I just remembered I had the $500 package. Well, I could spend 500 bucks. So now you got them and you know, let me get you an Uber home and then we'll, we'll tell you when your car is ready or your bike is ready later on or I can even show up and, and do this in your garage. So always have an option. If, uh, if some of these people are just not going to buy your number one package, have a lower grade package, or I tell people the good, better, best. So here's the good. It doesn't take a lot of time. You want them in this better one, but then the best is out of this world. It's a $10,000, you know, paint correction that no one's ever going to order. But it sure makes the middle one look good, is how that works.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I do have a couple of, uh, options for them. So if they don't bite on that first option with the coding and correction, we got option B and option C with.

Speaker B: Great, great. Some people don't have that. Some people only have one and that's it. You either you want this or you can go home. I'm like, no, no, no, that's not how this works. It's all about solving problems. And not everybody has the same pocketbooks or.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, I'm. I'm with you on that. I'm with you on that, Dave. Like, I, uh, don't like to have a whole big menu. You know, you see some detailers, they get this big menu. I like to keep things simple, especially when it comes to motorcycles. So I do, um. I'm with you. I don't want to let a customer walk out the door because they don't want to spend a thousand bucks or, you know.

Speaker B: Right. But you can't overwhelm them with. With information. And here you pick. I'm, like, looking at this menu going, forget it. I'll just go down to Johnny, wreck my ride down the street and, uh, just let him do it. How do you like that? Johnny, wreck my ride.

Speaker C: That's good.

Speaker B: So, and then people get, you know, paralyzed with too many things. So good, better, best. Which one do you want? You know, is that today, tomorrow, cash, check, you know, just give them simple little questions and you'll get it going. So if. And if they're. And if they're giving you a bunch of problems, you know, you're the professional. You know, you can agree to disagree and move on your merry way, but not everybody's your customer. But if they did drive all the way across town or they did call you and take and got on your schedule, and so maybe there's a way to work it. I'm probably digging myself a hole here. But anyways, you know what I'm talking about? About, right?

Speaker C: Oh, absolutely.

Speaker B: Great, Great. So moving on to the next part is, is what kind of advice you would give a, uh, up and coming detailer or even a seasoned vet?

Speaker C: Vice. Um, one of. One of the things that I had to realize is not everybody. It took me a little bit to kind of figure this out, but not everybody appreciates the service. You know, not everybody with the sports car is going to be your customer. Not everybody with an exotic car, just like not everybody with a custom motorcycle or custom Harley is going to be my customer. I had to learn that. I kind of had to learn that a little bit. The other thing, too, is when you're first.

Speaker B: So why do you say that? Why do you say that? So, uh, are you saying that they're contacting you or when you contact them, you just assume they have a motorcycle, that they would want their car or motorcycle to be detailed, and they're saying, no, I'll just do it myself. Where is that coming from?

Speaker C: That's coming from. So what I started doing is I, um, my uncle rode with a riding group and a, in a motorcycle club. So they used to have like a poker run. So what I did is I had a little vendor set up with my little booth there, you know, with my banner, my, um, my pop up. And so what I used to do, what I started out doing was said, well, instead of just handing out, we can do some demonstrations there. Like, um, I would do quick once over details for the guys coming in and charge them like 40 bucks for a quick once over detail. You know, spend about a half hour on the bike. And there was a lot of people that gravitated towards that. Then they asked me like, how much would it cost? You know, come out there and then I would just go up to random people at the events, handle my business card, tell them what I do. And that's. So that's kind of where that was coming from.

Speaker B: And some people said yes and some people said get away from me.

Speaker C: Yep, that's it. Yeah, some, some people just like. So not every, not every motorcyclist is going to appre. To appreciate the service even though, because I was kind of thinking, you know, hey, you know, there's nobody that I see that specializes in motorcycles like I do. And also too, I, uh, I own motorcycles. I'm an avid rider. So it's not like, you know, so I, uh. That lends a lot of credibility to what I'm doing. And not everybody, not everybody bites on that.

Speaker B: What is your, your experience? Be been with niching. You know, when you say detailing, we'll clean everything. You know, Ian is doing combines and planes and forklifts and trucks and cars. I mean, you're doing bikes and cars, but you're mainly doing bikes. Some people do snowmobiles or something or niching and micro niching. What, what has your experience been with that?

Speaker C: It's been pretty good. It's been pretty good because there's just not a lot of people who actually have a lot of experience of detailing motorcycles. And a lot of detailers that I've networked with talk to. They don't want to do motorcycles or b, they don't like them kind of thing. So that's kind of opened up the floodgates for me coming in fingers or something.

Speaker B: They can't get in there. I, I don't know why.

Speaker C: I don't know. I think they kind of just. They look the motorcycle and they, you know, they don't see it the same way I do, you know, with detailing, uh, it, but some they'll just pressure washing, foam cannon, call it a day. Which isn't the best thing to do with motorcycles a lot of times.

Speaker B: Are you saying because of electronics and electrical systems you get water and then it doesn't start and these things. Yeah, or five hours later it's dripping down and causing problems and other things.

Speaker C: Yeah. See especially with a lot of like, like definitely with a lot of those custom choppers, everything's all really open. There's not a lot of housing for the electrical, you know, the wiring harness and everything. So you can cause a lot of problems with if you're going to try to pressure wash a custom motorcycle. Custom shopper. Even the modern day Harleys, you know, they're okay, but the, but the problem is you got these speakers and even though they're waterproof and I remember I got in a uh, discussion years ago with a detailer I was, when uh, I first moved back to the Bay Area, I was kind of helping out this one shop because I figured I better learn how to do cars too. And so we were talking motorcycles and he says, well you know Pete, motorcycles, you know, the modern day motorcycles, you know, they're, they're meant to get wet. I said wet meaning rainwater. Yes. Not pressure washer wet. Huge difference. What happened there? I've had, let's see, I've had three or four detailers out of the blue call me because they detailed, they were detailing a motorcycle and they finished and it wouldn't start. So I had to go through. Uh, two of them had to do because of the stereo wouldn't work and another two, they didn't start but they were a little bit older and they were carbureted.

Speaker B: So water in the carburetor.

Speaker C: So yeah, so there's some like the other.

Speaker B: Another guy I met in Texas, he did a Tesla and he, and he wet sanded a little spot, a brand new Tesla hood and it went through like that and it cost like two grand to get resprayed.

Speaker C: Yeah, you know I've heard some, some crazy stuff with the Tesla paint. Oh, it's not, not, it's definitely not the easiest to work with. So I have a few, I have a few Tesla customers but I've never had to take a polisher to the paint which is good.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's very thin and be care very careful with that. So uh, that's why a lot of them get ppf and then, and um, I'm I'm up here in the Portland area. I'm gonna go visit the shop down the street. They only do PPF encodings on mostly Teslas. And there's another company they used to work for that only does Teslas. I mean, they have five franchises across the country, so they only do Teslas. And, uh, these people broke free and now they have their own shop and they, they'll do any car, but they still mainly do best Teslas. So the niche thing. So great, great, great. How about any other advice? Marketing advice, sales advice, detailing advice for the up and coming guys to help them make more money as well?

Speaker C: Yeah, the biggest, uh, the biggest thing is definitely I like to. Some people like to focus on mainly like one avenue, um, or platform or I kind of like to fire on all cylinders. So that's why I've experimented with the, with the ads. You know, whether it's Facebook, Instagram, like I said before, Google is the best platform. You definitely want to be on Google businesses. I mean, that's free. And then you can run Google Ads at the same time too.

Speaker B: Oh, no.

Speaker C: You know, I kind of like the way I kind, uh, of figured that it made sense to me and it was so simple was after listening to. When I got into listening to Grant, uh, Cardone. And you know, one. One of the things he said is, you know, you got to get out of obscurity. And the famous quote I like from him when he says, if they don't know you, they can't flow you. You know, so you gotta, you gotta get around enough people, run, run all those ads, you know, get on Google. My.

Speaker A: Calling all detailers Gather around the sound A place to learn the secrets that will lift you off the ground Tips and tools and stories shared from shop to shop Helping you grow stronger with each needle is dry Calling all detailers partest Guiding every grind Helping you take hey, let's make more money one show at a time. From the first rinse of the morning to the final shine at night the wisdom in each episode will help you get right Raise your rates with confidence Let your business climb Tune in and keep leveling One detail at a time Calling m all detailers podcasts Guiding every grind Helping detailers make more money One show at a time. In every grind Helping detailers make more money uh, one show at a time.