Taylor Shore’s Gutter Business

When Taylor Shore started his gutter installation business called High Point Gutter, he previously worked for a gutter business himself. He worked on that, while he worked on his side hustle, which is also a gutter business.

He wasted no weekends and made the neccessary sacrifice to build himself a company working 2 days a week. Now he is making 4.4 million a year, with the decision to retire when he wants.

A Desire For Freedom

Taylor worked his job and worked on his high point gutter business. He has 3 daughters and another coming. He loves having children, what can you say. However, that comes at a price.

Children are not cheap, they cost a Ferrari to be raised up to 18 years old. Working at a gutter business making wage money, you won’t have much left, when you’re too old to retire.

He thought ahead, and work the hours no one wants to work, and build his empire now making 4.4m a year.

He learned majority of his skills from his current job, and use that to build his business. This is how you climb success, you work at something, and you work your way up. You don’t have to expect you boss to give you a promotion, you can promote yourself, and there is no better way to upgrade yourself.

Building His Company

Taylor believe in hard work, he believe where you lack in brains you can compensate with grit. This is a good philosophy to run your business by, although I do believe this guy is smarter than most people, personally.

His shift was simple, initially he worked weekends. and then work at his main job on weekdays. This is a good idea as I know some people that quit their job to build a business.

Now A business can only be called a business if you’re profiting. If you not profiting, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

I had a friend that quit his job to start a Ecommerce business, thinking he can be the next drop shipping guru. Simply said, he turned into a unemployed guy with a bullet in his foot.

Humble beginning

He started with $500, and borrowed a van to carry tools. I’ve always preached, most businesses can start with little money. This guy was ahead of the game in 2016, and started his business by buying a ladder, and a safety harness.

He started with cleaning gutters, and eventually moved up to installing gutters and maintaining it.

He was learning the business side of things from YouTube. This is why I think he is smart, because he keeps learning. A lot of “professional” I know just keep doing the same thing as long as it earns them money. Taylor on the other hand works and learn new business strategies. It’s no wonder why he is making 4.4m, and managing ads that cost 30k a month.

Scaling His Gutter Business

He began learning how business works, he didn’t made it complicated, he focus on creating a problem and solving that problem and moving on to the next problem.

He is closely aligned with his profit margins, to make sure he can save as much money as he can, instead of wasting it on doing extra work.

Training Gutter Workers

He took the time to build a small training facility to train his workers. This is good, A lot of business owners I know just train workers on the job, but the best training I’ve seen are when they do both, training the work with and without customers.

Gutter work is also dangerous, so it also makes sense to train workers before they fall off of someone’s rooftop.

The Power of Customer Relationships

Taylor started with knocking doors, and here’s the thing with gutter business, when you found a customer. They usually will call you back, and it happens with 30% of customers, which is substantially high.

He also use a clever strategy to get near perfect reviews from his customers. He send a survey to customers to ask for a 5 star review, before the service.

Customers are encouraged to give 5 stars because they don’t want to risk souring the relationship with the company, so they just give the stars, and hope they do the job as well as they advertised, pure genius.

Problems With A Gutter Business

He would typically quote the wrong price without acknowledging the cost. Back then he would be basically working for free, so now he learned to overprice instead of underpricing his service.

With business taxes, operations, and other slew of business cost, you have to be careful with your pricing. Taylor recommends at least 50% gross profit margins.

He Said It Was A Mistake, I Disagree

When Taylor was still working in his job, while his business was taking off, he decided to tell his boss. He didn’t tell him what it was exactly, he told his boss that it was a cleaning business.

He claimed that his boss was mad because he lied about what business it was. Here’s the issue, he chose to lie to protect his current job, it makes sense.

He wanted to grow his boss’s company, but his boss at the time was complacent, and didn’t want to scale. Taylor made the decision to start his own gutter company, so he can do as he please, which is to scale.

Chuck said be honest, which is true, you should be honest, but you also don’t have to put yourself in that position, and just keep your mouth shut for your own good.

Family

He believed he worked too much, and missed out on family time. He’d be so busy, he would work 15 hours a day few times a week. His wife had to bring the kids to his workplace, so he can hang out with them.

Key Takeaways for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

If you’re inspired by Taylor Shore’s journey, here are some simple advice.

Work on your free time, don’t spend your weekend binging on a television show. I never see the appeal in watching tv series, it’s a fictional story that takes way too much of your time.

I had a friend that keeps grilling me to watch Breaking Bad. When I decided to keel over to watch the show, it was mediocre, I give it a 4 out of 10. Eight years later he doesn’t remember the details of the show, he also doesn’t remember telling me to watch it.

That goes to show how pointless TV shows are, and you should just spend your time doing something productive with your free time.