Hey y’all- I currently own a bookkeeping firm (which consists of just me) that is netting me a couple hundred thousand a year. I’m also a realtor and will do about $70k this year with that business.
I’m considering buying some sort of franchise or service based business like a flooring company (because of the real estate contacts I now have). Obviously I don’t know anything about these businesses but I feel like I could learn and expand pretty quickly. I just really feel like business ownership in some sort of trade is the way to go in order to expand my “portfolio”.
Am I crazy?
How is a single person book keeping business making a couple hundred thousand a year? How much work is involved in that? I imagine with all that money you’re book keeping like 20 hours a day lol
Expand portfolio or replace bookkeeping? Are thinking flooring because it just came to mind or do you see an opportunity to snag leads from RE contacts?
If you had your own crew and you were sales and supervisor, what would be avg gross after labor? You would need a pickup truck of course. Aha! So that’s the reason! ;)
Expanding business. Based on replies I’ve gotten, I should have been more clear. I will continue to run my bookkeeping firm and do the real estate part time. The leads from the RE business would be fairly lucrative plus the relationships I’ve formed with builders. I would be outsourcing the actual day to day work for the flooring company (the business I’m looking at buying actually has all that in place already). I would just manage from a higher level.
But in reality I probably just want a pickup truck 🤪
If you know bookkeeping, you can run any business. Every industry has financial markets to track. Employees can manage hitting those numbers with your guidance
Why not a staging or photography business. Or some other services that you pay for as a realtor. Then you can offer a complete package. Or at least you’re paying yourself instead of someone else. There might also be tax benefits. One business pays the other etc.
I assume you work alone in home office and do one-on-one with folks looking to buy a home, condo, property, etc.
Most retail service businesses are contact sport. My A/C guy has a fleet of vehicles, 8 technicians, office personal, and warehouse.
He puts in 50 to 60 hours a week. That was after working his ass off for years to build the business.
I’m not sure how you could make room in your current portfolio for a service business.
Even if you could make time, there is notion of best fit to consider.
Are your personal traits a good match with the characteristics of the business under consideration?
For example, service businesses require personal selling, canvassing, SOP’s, QA/QC, inventory management, customer service, hiring and training, payroll, scheduling, etc.
Not to mention financial goals and objectives.
You are doing close to $300K. You might have to sell $2.0 million worth of flooring to make that much.
Even more with a franchise because it takes royalty of six to eight percent off the top.
My two cents: when you say “obviously I don’t know anything about these businesses “ kind of tells me you need to be very careful here. If you are looking to expand into complimentary businesses, you could look at other options, like maybe media. You could advertise your own real estate stuff and bookkeeping. Or a cleaning service, idk but installing flooring is pretty specialized and I would ask where the technical expertise is coming from to run the company. Just a thought, if you decide to take it on, good for you. Sounds very ambitious.
Can I jump in an ask an unrelated question? How much should a bookkeeper cost (USA)? I need my books cleaned up (6 month old biz). They aren’t bad, just not great.
I will echo others here. If you invested in bringing additional bookkeepers on, you could move into business management, which is where you are trying to get to. This gives you the advantage of already knowing the industry. I assume bookkeeping as a business is far more lucrative than most others you are considering.
Once you have your new staff in place, use your in-house talent, licenses and connections and start a property management business.
You’re crazy.
“Should I kill this goose I have that lays golden eggs… so I can crawl on all fours and wreck my knees and back.”
Again… terrible idea.
I apologize I should have been more specific. I have no intention of getting rid of the bookkeeping or real estate business. I am considering buying the flooring business that already has sales and management/installation subcontractors in place.
Wtf are you insane? You will have to work like an animal to take home half as much.
You have won! Stop trying stupid shit you know nothing about.
flooring installation tends to align with the product. depending on the market and house vs condo that work itself contractor likes to make something on top – not sure how the margins will be – maybe too thin to be meaningful
My thought would be to staff up in the businesses you understand and stay away from Construction work where you can lose your ass if you don’t manage it right.
Acquire a strategic partner business to what you’ve already got in place. Hop on ChatGPT or Claude and ask for a list of strategic businesses to your real estate or CPA company and start with one of those types of companies. Education companies are fantastic. If you could do some type of profitable education company around real estate or CPA work, bingo.
Lmaoo, running a trades company (I do) is NOTHING like those other 2
In the Trades, you have to hire out, trust, and inevitably, fix shit, alot. You also have to deal with pissy or shady clients who pretend something is wrong and refuse to pay. Dealing with subs can be a nightmare too, esp early on. You don’t just hang out at a home depot and find quality staff lol.
I would NOT recommend to you.
Someone starting out or with low income, absolutely can be worth getting into. You have no idea how much work you’re setting yourself up for, which will likely result in a net loss as your other businesses will suffer TREMENDOUSLY as a trades based biz sucks up 98% of your time and energy
Very helpful. Thank you!