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Curriculum · Finance
Bretton and Dan recap the first six-month roadmap and the jump from side hustle to full-time operation — burn rate, cash runway, seasonality, channel elasticity, and the recurring revenue that keeps you off the failure list.
“A thousand moving companies fail every year, and almost none of them fail because the work dried up. They fail because they ran out of cash in a slow February. Build the runway before you quit the day job.
— Bretton & Dan, LocalMovers.com
Hit the milestone: congratulate yourself, audit the gear kit you've accumulated, and realign with the strategic vision you set in Episode 1.
Save 3–6 months of personal living expenses — rent/mortgage, food, car payments — before going full-time. The runway is what lets you survive the lean months.
Know your burn rate. If a partnership needs $8K to cover personal bills at a 30% margin, that's roughly $25K in monthly revenue just to break even on life.
Plan for feast and famine: summer revenue can jump 1.5–2x before dipping hard in winter. Budget the peak to carry the trough.
Test whether a channel is elastic — if you double spend on Facebook or mailers, do results double, or have you hit a plateau? Spend where the curve still climbs.
Aim for ~50% of revenue from recurring sources — being the go-to mover for local realtors and property managers beats chasing one-off jobs forever.
Low costs and a healthy cash buffer in the bank are the difference between the thousand companies that fail each year and the ones that reach scale.