I am working on starting a pressure wash business in Florida. My plan is to start out small as a side hustle, and eventually work my way to full time. I plan on starting with a 4gpm washer and a surface cleaner, staying away from chemicals until I get more experience. I am going to start by advertising door to door with flyers and word of mouth, since I have some older family members in town that can spread the word around their neighborhoods.
What I am debating currently is whether or not I should get an LLC and insurance before starting the work. Or would it be better to first get some small cash paying jobs, see if I can build up some sort of clientele/schedule and then get official? Any advice is appreciated.
If you do the paperwork yourself, LLCs can be ~$100 to form - not sure about Florida. But that depends on whether you’re willing to be your own registered agent and expose your mailing address. If you need to pay someone as your registered agent, write your operating agreement, etc, that can be $500-$900 not including the insurance. You may also have minimum required taxes each year. BTW: don’t trust those review sites that say agencies will form LLCs for you for $150ish, they’re totally off.
LLCs are a great way to protect your personal assets, but they can be expensive to form *unless* you handle it all yourself.
Are you fully confident this business will work out? How much do you expect to make, and what’s your risk tolerance with your initial clientele while you’re just starting out? These are all important considerations.
There’s cheap RAs like Northwest RA that cost like 40$ per year.
The investment is so small that I just do it. It pays out in hundreds of ways with almost no downsides, there’s only downsides if you planned on tax evading I guess.