Transcription
What's up, nerds? This video is going to be the first of a multi-video free course on how to get a Christmas light business from zero all the way to over $800,000 in a season. That's what my business did. And so, what I'm going to do is I'm going to break down this completely free YouTube course from start to finish from zero, never having hanged a Christmas light in your life, all the way up to the different steps of revenue and profit in the business and what you need to build along the way. So, this video you're watching right now is going to be the intro on how to get started.
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If you have an existing Christmas light business and you don't want to see all the boring where to get your website, where to get your lights, all that stuff, you can skip forward a little bit, but you probably will get a few good vendors that you might not have used in the past by watching this. If you're a new business, start here and go through each individual video of this as they're going to build on each other. So, let's start from completely step one zero.
If you're doing a Christmas light business and you're starting from scratch, you're not hanging lights from Home Depot. You're not hanging lights from Lowe's and Walmart. You're going to buy commercial-grade product. You're going to learn how to install commercial-grade product using a bunch of other resources that I'll link on YouTube. This is going to be building the business. So, let's start.
If you've never had a Christmas light business in your life, step one is you need to buy a starter pack from Christmas light contractors. I'll link them in the bio here. I'll link them in the description. I speak at a lot of their trainings. I speak at a lot of their on their live streams on Facebook, YouTube, all that jazz. It's a really good company that's run by really good ethical dudes and that's where I buy the majority of my product as well.
First thing you're going to do is you're going to go and you're going to buy a starter pack and you're going to find a house near where you're at and actually install a dummy house. I don't care if it's your house. I don't care if it's a friend or neighbor. All you're going to do is buy the starter pack. I'll link it right here. And then you're just going to install a roof line. And then as you get going, you'll start going from there. So step one, just buy the $200 starter pack, whatever it is, $150, I don't even know. And just learn the basics. I don't want you buying a website. I don't want you doing uh SEO. I don't want you doing all that stuff until you've installed lights on a house and you don't hate it. Because spoiler alert, when I did it my first year, I didn't even realize I was afraid of heights until I actually started installing a house. And because I didn't know I was afraid of heights, I had to just get over it by installing a couple houses. Then by like house four or five, I didn't even care. But some of you might be more afraid of it or you just hate the business model entirely. So, I don't want you spending a bunch of money getting it started if you haven't even done the basics of installing a house with commercial grade products. So, that's step one.
Now, you've installed a house, you've done all that jazz. Let's go to step two, which would be the most logical step in the series here, which would be you need to at least somewhat look like a business that even does anything remotely close to quality work. So, you're going to need to get a website. You're going to need to get a social media page. You're going to need to get a logo. So, there's cheap ways and then there's paid ways. Depending on how much capital you're coming in with, that's going to determine the route you go. So, let's start with just getting the phone to ring.
The easiest, cheapest way to do it is you need a phone number. I don't recommend using your personal phone number starting from scratch. You can either a go get like a VIP phone number off of like Zoom. You can get a Google Voice number completely for free and have a separate phone number that's just your Christmas light phone number. or you can go crazy and you can get SnipyLad. It's like $97 a month. It'll act like your CRM and your phone and you can get a custom phone number for there. I don't care what you do. But the first step, you're going to want to get a phone number.
After that first step, then you're going to want to get a website. When you get a website, I like to use 180 sites. If you go on my website, you can see it. It's valleychasight.com. It's very easy to see. Like I don't put a lot of effort into it. The 180 sites made a good website. It converts. I'm happy with it. So 180 sites will do that. They're going to be somewhere between like $150 and $250 a month. I don't know what their pricing is now. I bought it a long time ago. But instead of making you pay upfront like a couple thousand like a lot of other website companies, they'll actually let you break it down into monthly payments, which I think is really good for new starting businesses.
So, you've got a phone number, you've got a website, you're going to make your Instagram and Facebook pages, all that jazz. Name it whatever you want. I don't care. Usually, and a good best practice would be try to incorporate the location that you're actually doing the Christmas lights in into your name. If I could go back and rename my business, I would have incorporated Scottsdale into my name because when people are searching Scottsdale Christmas lights or Scottsdale Christmas light companies and your name is Scottsdale Christmas Light Pros, you're going to probably rank higher in results quicker because that keyword they're searching is in your name. That's something that I don't have because I can't go back and change my name and rebrand everything. But if you're starting from scratch, that's a great idea.
So after that, you're going to go through all the processes. You're going to do all of that jazz, getting websites, social medias, all that jazz. You're going to go on the federal government's website and you're going to buy an EIN. It's an employer identification number. That's for the IRS to know that you're an actual legitimate business. I'll link that in the description as well, but I'm sure you can just Google it as well. And then you're going to want to go to your state's local corporation commission and actually get what most states will call like the articles of organization or a business license. And so just Google it. I'm not going to link because there's 50 states in the US and more territories and stuff in Canada and I know some of you Canadians watch this. You're just going to Google like all the compliance things you need to get your business started. So that's the boring stuff. We get it out of the way.
Let's just go straight into actually processing and actually doing a job. So, if you have no customers and you don't have an existing home service business with a clientele to market to, the next logical step is going to be the free stuff, which is going to be word of mouth. So, you're going to have your brand, you're going to have your website, you're going to have all that jazz. You're now going to want to get a logo so that when you go onto websites and you go on to Facebook groups, Next Door, everything like that, you're going to actually look like a reputable business. You can go the ultra cheap way, go into chatgpt, and you can have it generate you a logo and just use that. Or you can go to a different paid avenue. You can go on Fiverr and get a logo there. If you've got a little bit more capital, you can go to like some of the actual brand like like logo design, branding, marketing agencies where you'll pay anywhere between a hundred bucks and $10,000 for a full brand kit. Wherever you're at in your business, you can go do that that way. I'll link some of the ones that I like to use in the description.
So, we'll keep going. So, this is just the basic blueprint of the business, right? The stuff that's just the most basic. Now, you're going to make the decision when you want to get insurance, all that jazz. You can go on Next Insurance. You can go on uh all these other different things. You can go to your local broker. I'm not going to link them because to be honest with you, the one that I have is just in Arizona, and they can't like go do insurance for Christmas light businesses in California, and they can't go do it in Nevada, and they can't go do it in Alaska. So, you're going to have to find that on your own. But, you need at least general liability insurance, even if you're going to do it yourself. And then eventually as you start getting employees, you're going to need workman's comp. You're going to need commercial vehicle if you're going to like big uh commercial installs or anything like that jazz. But if you're just starting from zero, that's going to be a good start.
After you do all that, to get you up to speed, we've got a website. We've got social media pages, Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, YouTube, all that jazz. You can make those completely free. You got your logo, whether you got it on Fiverr, whether you paid someone or you went on ChatGpt, you did all that. Now you have your website on 180 sites. You've got your snipy lead phone number. You've got all that jazz. The next logical step is going to be now that you've installed a job on a dummy house, whether it's your house or someone else's, you're going to get photos of that house at night. You're going to get it at multiple angles. Here's a fun tip. When you buy the starter pack, buy a different color as well because maybe you installed it all in warm white, but now you want to show a photo of some multicolor, some red and warm white, some different colors like that. All you have to do is swap the bulbs and take different pictures. So now it's going to look like when you're posting in the Facebook groups, you're not just posting one house. You're going to post a house that you did in warm white. And then you're going to post the same house, but it's warm, white, and red. And you're going to post the same house and it's multicolor, or warm, white, red, and green, or whatever colors you want. And the point of this is when you're going on Facebook next door, sending it to friends and family, whatever else, you're going to want to have a little bit of what we call like proof or social proof, meaning you've actually done this on a house before.
So once you do that, now you've got you've become an expert on installing the lights. You know you want to get into this. You've got the baseline of your website, all of that jazz down, everything like that. Now you actually have a Christmas light business. This is a really important distinction that I want to make sure you guys all see. You're not a business owner. It's not like this random moment where like the the business owner conglomerate knights you as a business owner. You're a business owner the second you decide that you're going to hang Christmas lights and take money from it. It's not this like random moment where you get nighted or something like that. So, you're a business owner now. Whether you like it or not, whether this is your first thing, you've had it before, you're a business owner. So start acting like it. You need to go out and eat what you kill.
So you've got the baseline here. You've got everything you need. The last thing that I would recommend if you're starting this business from scratch after you've got the EIN and the state documents and everything like that, you can go get a business bank account. Do not operate the business out of your personal checking account. Get a business bank account because when you get a CRM, like whether you're using Jobber or something like that, you're going to want to actually have a business bank account to process credit cards, process everything, and have it dump into an account. So, you need to act like a business. So, go get a business bank account. I recommend doing it at your local credit union. You can go get a Chase business account. You can go get a Wells Fargo one. All that jazz. But, I always like using the local credit unions. I don't know why. Maybe it's because it's more local business. That's just what I like to do.
So, now you've got a bank account. Now, the next step would be get on Jobber, get on House Call Pro, get on something like that. I use Jobber. I'll link it in the description. That's what I like actually build my quotes on. Send them to customers, collect payment, and then schedule jobs on the calendar through. And so, you're probably going to want that as well. So, now that's like the basic breakdown of all the systems and processes you need in your business. If you're going to pay people, eventually you'll need like a payroll system like Gusto or ADP or Paychecks or something like that. But for the sake of starting here from scratch, let's just go from there.
So, in a matter of how long this video has been, 12, 13 minutes, you have the entire baseline structure of what you need to start. Every single thing that I said here, you can probably get fully done for less than $1,000 on the cheap side. Or if you want to invest in something and not trade your time and just pay someone else to do it, it'll creep up a little bit more. So, that's the baseline here. In this next video, we're going to go over customer acquisition and actually marketing and getting going from there.