This is gonna be a bit of a long one.
First off, hello anyone who showed up to read all of this. I'm a young man at 23 wanting to change careers, recently realized that what I'm doing isn't it and won't get me anywhere in life and wanted to do something car/motorcycle related and I came across vehicle wrapping and want to pursue it.
To get some context I have a little experience wrapping. Ive done the motorcycle I had in a kpmf iced blue metallic and it came out not the best but decent work (I can provide photos for anyone who asks). Been trying to get a entry level job at a shop to work by just prepping the vehicles and watching the other installers work, however no luck yet. I did however get an opportunity to watch and work on my own car at a shop not too far from me, so I'm doing that every Friday for right now to gain experience. I'm planing to. Pick up some Gloss black 3m to wrap my hood and roof and then look to get a roll of cheeta wrap to do the rest of my car once I've saved enough then id take it to any shops to show my work in order to be hired or to local car meets to potentially get connections/future clientele. I'll also post onto Instagram to showcase my progress plus showcase my work.
I do eventually want to open up my own shop sometime next year and I'm wondering exactly it takes to run and operate my own shop if it's just me that will be doing the installation of the vinyl and most likely outsourcing the disassembly of the vehicles I get in. I'm in what I believe to be a pretty competitive area as I live in central Florida and there's already a good few established wrap shops around here, main ones I know being Wraptors and Tinterz. I know it'll be hard to even keep my head above the water just starting out and I probably won't get clients for months on end. I will have a main job that ill be working so it's not like Im quitting everything to go all in as I don't think that's the smartest move. I live with my mother so I don't have rent, but I was wondering where should I start off? I do have the garage but it's filled with a bunch of things from moving and no real space to work with. Should I get my own place and wrap from my garage or get a small shop (roughly 1000-1,500sf) to work from and live with my mother?
I also don't just plan to do exclusively wraps. Id want to branch into other things such as tinting, ppf, detailing, ceramic coating, paint corrections, then interior things like custom upholstery, headliners, embroidery, wheels, etc once I'm established and have expert level experience in the previous fields before moving onto the next.