How I Work 5 Months A Year (And Spend The Rest On What I Want)

Making enough money in 5 months to support myself for the entire year and be able to spend the rest of the time doing what I want is fairly simple.

I have a seasonal business. And there’s a few routes you can go but I picked probably the most common option and did window cleaning. There’s like 20 others you could pick if you wanted to start one too.

The way I landed on my business was by first looking into:

• Cost of starting

• How hard it is to start

• Profits

• How hard it is to scale

I didn’t have much money to my name at the time so buying a brush, squeegee, cloths and a pole sounded like a gift from god. And it’s not hard to knock on a door, give a fair deal and clean some windows for me. The profit wasn’t bad either, I spend 25% of the price on someone else cleaning and then if someone else sells it, another 25% on that. And everyone who works with me is able to make good money especially they perform well so it ticked all boxes for me.

A few of my friends do lawn mowing because it opens up potential for quicker recurring revenue (1-2 weeks instead of 1-2 years.) Or pressure washing because it’s higher ticket and easier to sell to commercial buildings.

And the thing is with seasonal businesses is that the demand for these boosts in the months where it’s applicable so it makes up for the off seasons (as long as you do it right) so when the off season comes I can spend it doing something else. (btw it’s not just doing fuck all, you should spend it productively.)

The only thing is you really need to work hard, because the downside is also the upside, 7 months with no income is a lot. So honestly just working year round and always having money come in is smarter in my opinion. Personally I just enjoy the cycle I get to go through.

And main reason I went this route is because I have this condition that lowers my hands blood flow in the cold, so I’d rather do online business (indoors) for the winter but still be a business owner.

With getting customers, in essence I do ads, and door knocking to get my customers, each deal is usually between $150-300 a sale. And at the height of the season we had 4-5 deals every day so it’s pretty good. And if you do it as a one man team you can profit almost all of it. If you have others working with you you can spend anywhere from 8% (if you’re a scammer) to 50% on payroll and and extra 10% for cost of business.

If you do it right, it’s more profitable to work with others, and give up some of the pie because the money is in the scale— There’s no one out there with millions to their name who’ve done it as one person. I’m sure there’s a few exceptions but it’s way harder without others’s.

If the people you hire and work with can either do the work properly (sell and fulfill) it makes sense to give up a chunk of each deal because then you free up your time as well as you lower the stress you have to deal with. If someone can bring you an extra 5 deals a week, that saves you so many hours of sales, as well as if someone can fulfill a service for you that can free up hours of work as well as a lot of physical energy which can be spent producing money for your business via sales and brand marketing.

On top of that more people/friends of yours can have an income.

But you could also go the solo route, when I went back to school after my first summer of business, I decided to do it by myself because everyone else had school. And profiting all the money is pretty nice, but it’s harder to do the work and be motivated without others.

When you’ve also done it for long enough (like me) you’ll have built a list of all the customers and their info. So you already have a number or email of everyone who got it done so you don’t need to spend as much time on outreach as each year progresses.

And when I have my off months or free’d up time from building a list I don’t spend that off time jerking off or wasting time, I spend it on a project, something I like or something that has bigger potential.

For me it’s mainly Youtube, if you’ve been watching me for a while you would have noticed that during the winter I posted a lot and then during the summer I posted not as much. And that’s because of the seasons.

Another thing I focus on is my body, I’m working out 10x harder now. As well as kinda just self improvement, by lowering my time spent on useless things and spending more time on important things, like learning about business, sales, marketing, etc.

And when this season ends I still spend time on all of these but it’s significantly less, because now it’s money season. So I start by emailing everyone saying thank you for the prior year and asking if we can help again this year, next I set up the ads and get straight to (my favourite) hitting the doors. And the main goal every year is to help out more people as well as get more money in the bank.

And the #1 way to scale and get more money in your account is by having a product/service that continues to get better.

So to recap the way I work 5 months a year and stay g for the other 7 is by:

• Offering a seasonal service— Be it summer or winter, christmas lights, window cleaning, landscaping, etc.

• Working with others (the money is in the scale) — if you’re a good leader/teacher and the people you work with aren’t arrogant it works out

• Spending my off time productively and setting myself up for the next season. —Because your only cap in business is the knowledge you have

This is essentially how I’d sum up my entire year and how I’d explain the basics to someone trying to replicate me or even learn some lessons that can help out in your business.

Regardless of if you do the same business model as me, it's important to see how others go about running in business and their decisions.

Thank you for reading and enjoy the rest of your day:)

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