First customers in handyman work
The first five jobs come from people who already know you. The launch message goes to a warm fifty (neighbors, former coworkers, the school group chat): one honest paragraph naming the small jobs contractors don't want, sent at full price. At every finished job, leave door hangers at the two doors beside you and across the street; those neighbors share the house age and just watched your van for two hours. Google Business Profile plus the driveway review ask ("Would you take thirty seconds to leave me a Google review?") is the engine. Agents and property managers are the referrer lane: "I do the small repairs that need to happen before photos or move-in... keep my number." Platforms are a capped supplement, Thumbtack at roughly $5 to $20 a lead and Angi at $15 to $100, and one documented operator spent $2,533 on Angi ads over eight months to gross $1,240. Scripts in first customers and platform leads, on top of the first-ten method.
Pricing in handyman work
Three numbers, one card. Call-out minimum $75 to $150 with the first hour folded in. Hourly $50 to $80 solo, $75 to $125 for company services. Flat rates $150 to $600 for predictable jobs: ceiling fan install $110 to $440, TV mounting $330 to $440 in a high-cost metro, door adjustment $85 to $240. Set each flat rate from your honest worst-case time, quote the not-to-exceed cap ("$180 with materials, I won't go over $260 without calling you first"), and mark materials up 10 to 30 percent, said out loud. Price at or near your local middle from day one; the cheapest clients are the hardest clients. The walk-through and delivery are in the pricing lesson; the logic under it is the pricing method.
Rules in handyman work
Twenty minutes on your state's contractor board's handyman exemption page before the first job. Some states require nothing, some want registration, many cap unlicensed work at a dollar threshold; California's cap is now $1,000 combined labor and materials, with no employees, no permits, and no specialty trades under the exemption. Advertise "faucet replacement," never "plumbing services." General liability runs about $50 to $80 a month; sole prop first, LLC when the money is real ($35 to $500 to file). One-page agreement every job, change orders quoted before work starts. Taught in licenses, boundaries, and paper and the service menu lesson, inside the legal setup framework.
Money in handyman work
The trap: a 40-hour week holds about 20 to 25 billable hours. Price against the effective rate, not the sticker: 22 billed hours at $75 across a 45-hour week is about $37 an hour. Set aside roughly 30 percent of every payment for taxes and feed about 10 percent of each ticket back into gear. Payment due at completion, card reader in the driveway; material-heavy jobs take a deposit of about half the materials cost. Three accounts (business, tax set-aside, personal), a mileage log, and photographed receipts from week one. The month-shape math is the honest money lesson; the wiring is the money system.
First hire in handyman work
The trade's consensus growth failure is expansion: nobody else has the owner's quality control, and one post-mortem owner spent thousands fixing subcontractors' mistakes. If you hire, hire slow: a helper first, on your jobs, with your tools, at a wage that attracts work you would sign, with a quality-check ritual before you leave every site. Hard truths names the pattern; the first-hire module prices the decision.
Everything here is condensed from the full course, which walks the whole 30-day launch.