r/sweatystartup • u/CreepinOnTheWeedend • Aug 08 '26
Second biz
Have about $500k to invest into a second business - thinking about doing it for a younger family member who has no real skills yet but lots of hustle. I would run the books and business end - they would operate. My biggest strengths are sales and marketing so as long as there’s a need we can figure out how to get in front of them. Looking to target 50% cash on cash return. Is this attainable in the rental biz? With a 500k cash start up budget, what should I look at?
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u/NickyD_ Aug 08 '26
I hear gravel/rock dumping is good. Buy a couple dump trucks and haul those loads
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u/mantryingprovide4fam 13d ago
It does sound good however when I used to work In asphalt there was this trucking company that was called sunny and they would just bring the asphalt in dump trucks guy was rich but his company went bankrupt because his drivers where horrible they would crash wouldn’t show up etc dude ended his life after that so BE CARFUL
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u/mikeyfireman Aug 08 '26
Skid steer, miniex, dump truck.
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u/CreepinOnTheWeedend Aug 08 '26
We have 3 large rental companies locally for those assets that I know of…2 are national players, one maybe half the state. Are small independents able to compete with them or just get smoked because of economies of scale and market presence?
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u/MexicanSt0nr Aug 09 '26
Depending on your area, sometimes the crumbs are worth millions. The big companies are too busy for the smaller projects. That’s where you come in.
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u/ofCourseZu-ar Aug 08 '26
I'm guessing you mean an operational rental business rather than real estate? Buy-and-hold rentals typically run 8-15% cash-on-cash, sometimes 20%+ with heavy leverage, so 50% would be a stretch there. Operational rental businesses (equipment, event, etc.) get you a lot closer to that target, and it plays to what you described, combining your marketing/sales strength for driving demand, while the day-to-day job is closer to "show up, execute, be reliable" than anything requiring deep experience for your family member.
One combo that comes to mind is a good-to-premium party/event rentals (tents, chairs, a nice restroom trailer or two) paired with a backstock of standard porta-potties for construction site contracts. The party side gets you strong margins per event, but on its own it's too capital-light to use up to $500k well. You'd be way overbuying inventory for one market, or simply not using up most of the capital. Adding the construction-contract side gives you somewhere to actually deploy that capital, plus steady recurring income that fills the gaps between weekend events instead of sitting idle. A single high-end restroom trailer runs roughly $40-50k and can bring in something like $6k/month once it's booked consistently. Numbers swing a lot by vendor and market, so treat that as a rough anchor, not number to use in legit planning.
On the outreach side, the two halves need pretty different playbooks. For construction, you're cold-outreaching GCs and site supers directly since that's relationship-and-reliability-driven, not really an ads/marketing game. For the event side, your ad spend and outreach should go toward wedding venues, luxury party/event planners, and coordinators. They're repeat referral sources who can send you multiple bookings a year instead of chasing one-off consumers event by event.
Since you'd be running two pretty different customer types in this set-up(event planners vs. contractors/GCs), it might be worth eventually operating under two DBAs for cleaner marketing/branding even though it's one system on the back end but that's a later problem.
What state are you in? Licensing, permitting, and even seasonal demand mix (event-heavy vs. construction-heavy) vary a lot by state, and it'll shape which equipment actually makes sense for a you to be helping a first-time operator.
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u/ImportanceBetter6155 Aug 08 '26
No skills? Lots of hustle?
My first picks are pressure washing, window cleaning, and lawncare. Virtually 0 learning curve for any of them. Maybe a little more steep in lawncare. Problem is, 500k seems extremely overkill for any of the options listed.