Jim Garland's Blog

Article published by The Washington Post  – Thomas Heathon Monday, April 12, 2010

Compound interest. Discounted cash flow. Return on investment. Understanding these concepts helped transform the way I look at the world.

Jim Garland, a 41-year-old entrepreneur who runs a 60-employee Dulles company that cleans and details corporate jets, offered another insight, and it struck a chord with me.

He believes in the law of averages.

Garland came by the concept about 1992, when he was a 20-something with an economics degree from Radford University. He lived in Fairfax County, waiting on tables at night and knocking on the doors of dental and veterinary offices by day. At the time, he was working for a medical supplies company selling badges that measure radiation emitted from X-ray machines.

“It was all cold calls,” Garland recalled. “That’s where I cut my teeth: getting used to people saying ‘no’ and slamming a door in your face. It’s a wake-up call. But it taught me the law of averages. For every 100 doors I knocked on, I sold to about 10 offices.”

The job lasted less than a year, but the lesson stayed with him as he went on to start a boat-cleaning business out of the back of his car that grew into Sharp Details, his Dulles-based, multistate corporate-aircraft-cleaning company that grosses about $3.5 million a year.

His story suggests that if you just work hard enough and push the numbers, the law of averages will kick in and the results will come.

Garland never wanted an indoor job. Preferring life outdoors, he scaled a fence at Prince William Marine on the Occoquan River back in 1991 and plastered dozens of boats with fliers, offering to clean the watercraft.

“The marina owner called me and asked how I got in there. I said, ‘I climbed your fence,’ ” Garland said. “He must have been impressed, because he called me in and said, ‘You need insurance, you need to make sure you are bonded and you need a business license.’ ”

Garland called his car insurance company to get coverage for the boat company. He got his business license, and he was off.

“I probably cleaned 30 boats that first season, about a boat a day at $10 a foot,” he said. “Mostly exterior, from the waterline up. I probably made $10,000 that first year.”

That winter, he took the job with the medical supplies company owned by one of his boat clients.

The following spring, he was back at the boat-cleaning business, which he named Barnacle Jim’s Boat Service. He and his brother, who later left the business, invested in a van and an electric water-pressure soaper. The equipment allowed them to expand into auto detailing. They could also be mobile, cleaning cars at offices and homes and setting up tents where they could work at a single location all day. To boost business, Garland spent $500 to advertise in the Yellow Pages.

He estimated that the business grossed $50,000 in 1992.

By 1994, revenue doubled and they were paying themselves salaries.

Garland made mistakes as the business grew, hiring employees who weren’t screened properly. Some didn’t show up. Some stole customers to set up their own businesses. Others did a bad job. One guy disappeared for a week with the van.

“I was looking for a warm body and not a decent employee,” Garland said. “Experience has taught me . . . to ask for referrals and hire people you know.”

A big break came in 1994, when a customer in the car-detailing business said her father was unhappy with the company that was cleaning a fleet of corporate jets he managed at Reagan National Airport. She asked Garland if he would be interested in meeting her dad.

“Sure,” said Garland, who had five employees and was earning about $20,000 a year running the cleaning business.

Cleaning jets was more expensive and complicated than boats and cars. You had to know what to touch and what not to touch. Special supplies were necessary because the skin of an aircraft can be sensitive. Sharp Details needed a lift to clean hard-to-reach places.

A small Learjet might run $150 for an interior cleaning, while a 737 Boeing Business Jet might cost up to $20,000 and take eight employees a week, working all day.

Garland didn’t know what to charge, so the company followed its predecessor and got $700 a month for three aircraft. “It was a good deal” for the jet manager, Garland said. He charges double that now.

Soon there was more jet business, and Garland stopped cleaning boats in 1994. The firm started growing. Garland would visit airport hangars in Richmond and Delaware, where big companies and wealthy individuals parked their corporate aircraft. It was cold-calling all over again.

Sharp Details won a five-year Federal Aviation Administration contract in 1996 that provided a guaranteed $50,000 annual revenue stream. It turned a $100,000 business into a $150,000 business overnight. It also gave the business instant credibility, and other aircraft owners and managers came calling. A Delaware company hired Sharp Details to clean their jets. By 1998, Garland was renting space at Washington and Delaware airport hangars, where the business was cleaning four planes a month.

Garland quit waiting tables. Within a year, he sold the car business for $30,000 to go full bore into aircraft.

In 1998, he won a contract to clean three giant C-5 cargo jets a week at Dover Air Force Base. It was a five-year contract, bringing in about $120,000 a year and calling for 15 full-time employees earning $12 to $14 an hour. The company kept the contract for nine years, eventually losing it to a competitor that underbid Sharp by 4 percent, crushing an already slim margin.

“That’s when I stopped doing government contracting,” said Garland. “I can’t operate on margins that thin.”

Revenues grew during the boom of the past decade, and by 2008 Sharp was grossing $3.5 million. But the profits kept stalling because of an inability to control expenses.

So he bit the bullet and hired a manager to run the business so Garland could devote himself to selling full time.

It worked. Although revenue was down to $3.3 million last year, largely because of a public backlash against corporate jet travel, Garland believes 2010 will bring an upswing.

Garland won’t discuss Sharp Detail’s profit, but I estimate he takes a low-six-figure income after expenses. He lives in Alexandria, and his new management team has given him enough time to write a book. It’s titled “The Practical Guide to Exceptional Living,” about how he went from the trunk of his car to a $3.5 million business.

Now his trunk is attached to a Lexus, which transports Garland to his cold calls in style.

He earned it.

Source:  The Washington Post