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.
I’m assuming you have no employees, because if you do, the answer is obvious.
So the question here is, will you have a brand for your business or will you use your name and face? If the former, do the LLC approach, if not then you may skip the LLC.
If you don’t have a brand, and you still want an LLC for other reasaons, don’t even sweat it, you can just go with a combination of Name, INITIALS, LOCATION, INDUSTRY and industry,“JD Miami Pressure Washing LLC”, if you end up developing another differnt or shorter brand, or you want to pivot industries, you just do a dba or another LLC, no worries.
Another question is, who will your clients be, businesses or residential customers? If you plan on cleaning businesses, do the LLC, if not, you can skip the LLC.
Another question, do you plan to expand? Or is this just an experimental thing that you plan as you go? if you plan to expand, do the LLC, if not you may skip it.
Another question is, how neat are you or do you want to be with your finances? If you want to be neat, do the LLC and open a business bank account, if not you may skip it.
Another question is how do you want to take payments? If always cash, you may skip the LLC, if you want to take credit cards, do the LLC and open a merchant account with your bank to swipe cards.
Just in general there’s so many advantages to having an LLC that you might as well just do it in 1 or 2 days and move on to the next thing, never get stuck on the first steps, blaze through them.