First customers in appliance repair
The first five jobs come from people who already trust you, priced fairly, never free: free work trains people to value you at zero. Announce: "I've started an appliance repair business serving [town]. Washers, dryers, fridges, ovens, dishwashers. Licensed and insured, I come to you. If something's acting up, message me and I'll tell you honestly whether it's worth fixing." Two engines: a Google Business Profile plus a one-page site whose form collects appliance, brand, model number, and symptom; and the review engine: ask while the fixed machine hums, then text the review link. Answer every review. Landlords and property managers are the volume accounts; platforms fill week one but own the client. The machine is first customers and the reputation machine, on top of the first-ten method.
Pricing in appliance repair
The service call fee runs $75-125, and the dominant structure is the credited diagnostic: charged, then applied to the repair if the customer proceeds. Say it at booking: "The diagnostic visit is ninety-five dollars, and that's credited toward the repair if you go ahead. Most repairs we complete run somewhere between one and two hundred fifty dollars total. I'll quote you the exact number before any work starts." Flat rate beats time and materials (field labor averages $54 an hour): your growing speed becomes your margin, not the customer's discount. Parts are sold, not passed through: markup runs 30-100 percent, tiered, cheap parts high and expensive boards low. Completed repairs most often run $108-251; live in the upper half on jobs you finish in one visit. The trade's most profitable phrase is "don't fix this": when a quote approaches half the cost of a comparable new machine, replacement wins, and the honest verdict buys the next decade of calls. The stack is pricing the service call; the logic under it is the pricing method.
Rules in appliance repair
Lighter than most trades, with one federal line. Most appliance repairs require no trade license; the exceptions (California's repair dealer registration, New York City's dealer license) are settled by one call to your state consumer affairs office. General liability runs $35-55 a month, averaging $81, with $1M-2M standard. The federal line: EPA Section 608 certification for any work that opens a sealed refrigeration system. Type I (household machines under five pounds of refrigerant) is an open-book test at $10-25, and most refrigerator repairs never open the sealed system. Deliberately venting refrigerant is a federal violation for anyone, certified or not. On gas: your menu includes the machine, not the building's gas line. All of it is in legal setup and the refrigerant line, inside the legal setup framework.
Money in appliance repair
The rhythm: buy Monday, get paid Thursday. diagnose, put an $85 part on your card, complete Thursday, collect $235, floating hundreds of parts dollars across a busy week. Two rules: never order a part you have not proven failed, and keep even a $500 parts float. Track completed calls, average ticket, effective hourly rate, and callback rate. The trap week: twenty calls at a $160 average ticket and 40 percent blended margin is $1,280 of gross profit over fifty hours, which is $23 an hour before tax and insurance, less than the $47,170 median employee wage. Revenue flatters you; the hourly rate does not. Warranty networks pay flat rates of $75-100 with no extra for repeat trips; a $120 job needing a $50 part is $70 before the fuel. Track the rate by job source. The math is the honest money math and callbacks, warranty traps, and hard truths, on top of the money system.
First hire in appliance repair
Fully loaded employment cost runs 1.25 to 1.4 times the base wage once payroll taxes and workers' comp land, so the first technician only works when the calendar is overflowing, not merely full. The technicians you hire will mostly be made, not found, trained by you on your method; routing and dispatch are a different craft from diagnosis. Going deeper frames it; the first-hire module prices it.
Everything here is condensed from the full course, which adds the diagnostic method, parts logistics, and the first thirty days.