52 Handyman Business Ideas & Opportunities (2023)

The founders are childhood best friends from small-town America (South Carolina). We took different paths after college and approximately 9 years later, reunited in North Carolina. I (Clifton) was recruited from Florida to work for a Mortgage Company in Raleigh, NC and Wesley was already established here (Raleigh) working for a major building materials manufacturer (James Hardie). After the housing crisis, the Mortgage Company went bankrupt and I (Clifton) found myself without a job. I then founded a Residential/Commercial/Cleaning Company (still in operations today, Managed by my wife, Mary Ann) and grew that business from $0 - $500K rapidly.

Surround yourself with POSITIVE people.

Then, Wes and I were talking about the possibility of starting a siding/exterior remodeling company since most of the contractors were retreating after the recession and the ones that remained, didn’t focus on the customer, but rather, only on the transaction.

I started Bio-One Inc. over two decades ago.

Bio-One is the nation's leader in Crime & Trauma Scene Cleaning with over 90 franchised to date and growing. Bio-One isn’t like any other business you get into, it’s not all about profit.

Let me explain a bit more. When a suicide, homicide or an undiscovered dead body is found, there are many people who get called to the incident. The police, coroner/medical examiner, fire department, detectives and the last responders are companies like mine, Bio-One the crime scene cleaners. Not all scenes we clean are crimes, but the term crime scene cleaner gives some mental picture of what gets done. We clean and remediate what is commonly left behind from EMT’s, police, fire departments and coroners to name a few.

I didn’t exactly come up with the initial idea for this company because this is a franchise which means for me that I license out the name “Skinny Wimp Moving”. However, because it was the first franchise location I was able to be in a prime decision-making seat and guinea pig for all ideas enabling me to test out theories on marketing and customer service which have no become standard across the brand.

Put yourself out there and ask for their business. Sure be conscious that you may get rejected but don’t be afraid to ask more than once. It won’t work every time but it will work 100% more than not trying at all.

We realized people simply don’t want a moving company that sucks. So we asked ourselves what can we do to make the stressful experience of moving suck a little less and the answers we came up with and stuck to were very common sense:

Since I was a kid I have always had a sense of wonder about the world and the mechanisms behind it. Whether it be a jet engine or a windshield wiper-I have thought about the creative process behind these things since I was 10 years old.

I drew houses as a kid. My dad grew up in a home designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, it was a solar home and it had an odd features. One example is, the entire back wall that was about 100 feet long and 15 feet high comprised of windows that all opened. In front, there were functioning levers that had fans which would draw airflow in and out.

Growing up I thought I wanted to be a pilot. I was described in high school by a classmate as “poetic” which I found offensive. I tried a hand in many things; managing a farm and pre-school, which were two businesses I inherited. This type of work wasn’t for me.

When I was in college, I was involved in a lot of extracurricular activities and always working. When I graduated, frankly, I became bored after work. My mom owned a housekeeping company when I was younger and I thought that would be a good idea, so I created a housekeeping company and hired her and my aunt to work it. My brother, Matt, and I would talk about creating different businesses together since he was out of the Marines and we’d go back and forth between things like home health, more housekeeping, or even a landscaping company, but we never really could agree on one.

The most important thing you can do is communicate - who does what, set due dates that you all agree on, hold each other accountable, and create consequences for failures.

During this time, Matt started working for one of our competitors in the Roanoke valley and used his GI Bill to get certified through the Chimney Safety Institute of America (CSIA), which is the main chimney/dryer vent education association in the USA. After a while, Matt helped his friend Billy get a job at the same company. They noticed some shady practices, their paychecks bouncing, and their ideas to help grow the business were cast aside by the owner. They made it through the burn season (the busiest time in the industry) but that following summer they were let go.

Hi, I’m Bill Spohn, President, CEO, and majority owner of TruTech Tools, LTD. Eric Preston is my trusted business partner. Our business continues to grow as we complement each other's personalities so well. TruTech is one of the largest online stores in the niche market of tools and test instruments for Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration (HVAC/R) Technicians. We are also the major supplier to a smaller market of technicians that do energy audits and assess building performance, including indoor air quality. We serve customers in the US and Canada.

I founded the company with Jim Bergmann, Jr, and his dad, Jim Sr. (who passed in 2016). The business was intended as a retirement “hobby” for Jim Sr. as both his son and I had full-time jobs. After I bought them out (with Eric noted above) in 2014, we have continued to have a great relationship with Jim Jr. and have continued to build each others’ businesses. The interesting thing is, I have always worked remotely (100 miles away) from the majority of the staff at the offices/warehouse.

I studied finance in college and started covering internet stocks like Amazon on Wall Street. This really opened up the world of e-commerce to me. At the same time, my parents were running a shop that sold vacuum cleaners along with accessories but it wasn’t doing very well. I started helping them out with their business and took it online while still working crazy banker hours.

When I was let go in 2009 after the crash, I was ecstatic - this was my chance for a whole new beginning in e-commerce. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I helped expand the business, first on Volusion then selling on eBay, and then finally Amazon. Ultimately, I realized I didn’t want to be a reseller-- I wanted to have my own brand. That was the genesis of Think Crucial.

The key is to start small and stay scrappy. Don’t put the cart before the horse - source or create a product customers need, package it right, and sell it. As you grow (and only then), add more.

As a runner I was experiencing a need for a more secure, more convenient option for my valuables and gear at road races. Scratching my own itch, I launched the service with a focus solely on running events in New England.

Utilizing my connections with other runners and syncing up with event organizers, we tested the concept for 8 months with a locker trailer before bringing the trucks on the road and rebranding as The Mobile Locker Co.

The initial launch with the locker trailer was self-funded from my personal savings. This allowed us to test our systems with minimal overhead and also gather real world feedback on the concept. Luckily, it was well received and we were able to secure funding to get our first two trucks on the road from personal connections through my two initial sweat-equity partners.

My partner and I worked for a family-owned company for many years and helped to grow it to become a very large player in the industry. As often happens the owners eventually decided to sell the company to a huge corporation. My partner and I decided that working for a huge corporation was not going to be a good fit for ourselves and decided to go out on our own.

My partner has a background in IT and I have a background in sourcing, marketing, and purchasing. With both of us having over 20 years’ experience in our fields and the addition of a few key players we felt we had all of the pieces needed to be successful. The two of us along with a financial partner started Magnus in August of 2017.

We had the knowledge of what products would be successful, where to source them, and how to build a website. Our challenges were putting together a team to build the site and be able to offer superior customer service once we went live. Once we built the site we needed a marketing partner to generate the sales for the site. Little did we know that this piece of the puzzle would be the most difficult.

With a little luck, and a lot of gaming the YouTube algorithm, I was able to experience the viral effects of the internet. It has now been seen by over 25m people through my channel and other media networks.

Taerra Chiba, the owner, and operator of The Practical Diva, is a fully certified and insured home renovation contractor in New York, NY.

She is in charge of both major and minor residential remodels. She also helps homeowners who wish to tackle the process on their own. Taerra can assist with project planning but is also ready to give advice and assistance.

Taerra is an extraordinary lyric soprano and an engaging stage performer with a lovely, agile, warm voice as an opera singer. She is a gentle and experienced instructor. She has formerly taught at the university level and has a private studio in New York City.

She is a student at Southern Virginia University and studied BA in music in 2005. She is interested in various activities, from athletics and choir to theater and Student Government.

She began freelancing as an opera singer in Soprano in 2012. She later offered individual vocal lessons to music majors and nonmajors at Southern Virginia University.

Taerra has a proven track record of growing this side business comfortably. She made roughly $14,000 in her first year, $36,000 in her second year, and is presently making about $4,000 each month.

She acquired more high-quality assignments and revenue with fewer obligations after switching to HomeAdvisor. She began with roughly ten weekly tasks and works 2-4 depending on the workload.

While he was still a full-time student, Johnny Robinson built OrangeWindowCleaning.com into a $700k/year operation.

One day while hanging out with his friend Sergio, Johnny came up with the idea of the window cleaning business. He first approached door-to-door marketing and approached local stores to offer window cleaning services.

Later, after he discovered digital marketing and how tools and software could help him multiply his client base was when this journey started to take off for real.

His story proves that if you want to start your own business, it doesn’t necessarily take a never-before-seen business idea to have a never-before-seen impact on your life.

Listen to the full podcast on sidehustlenation.libsyn.com ➜

Hello, my name is Brett Burdick and I am the founder (this is the first time I’ve used that term) of Brex International, LLC which is sort of the umbrella company for The Hedgehog business that I’ll be talking about here.

The other products I sell are small stacking accessories that are used to stack two featherboards on top of each other for extra stability when cutting thicker boards on a table saw or band saw. Both products are shown below.

In 2005, Rachael Flanagan founded Mrs Buckét, a business providing industrial cleaning services.

They operate a commercial cleaning company that has won numerous awards. They provide commercial cleaning services and facilities to companies in the public and private sectors.

Mrs Buckét offers commercial building services to facilities in south Wales and Bristol for prestige car showrooms, offices, manufacturing & educational institutions.

When she started out, Rachael was only 18 years old, and she had just £20, which she used to buy a hoover and flyers.

Read the full story on startups.co.uk ➜

Our Z Counterform System for countertops and Z Poolform System for concrete pool coping are the go-to solutions for cast-in-place concrete forms. With a small but dedicated team, we grew this business from an idea to over $12M in revenue in 10 years.

I’m Debbie, and I’m known online as TheFlooringGirl. I have a home décor blog where I blog about flooring, painting, and home décor. It has now become my full-time job.

My site has over 700,000 pageviews/month. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been the key to my success and you can find my SEO ebooks here.

• Debbie Gartner is the founder of The Flooring Girl. Since the company's founding in 2016, she has assisted clients in choosing the appropriate colors and optimizing design layouts for floors.

• Debbie is an expert in online marketing, which includes blogging and content marketing. Through her blogs, she educates customers on the ins and outs of flooring and helped them decide what was best for them.

• Other than flooring solutions, her website also offers guides and resources on care tips, home decor ideas, carpet and painting trends clean, cleaning tips, and so on.

• Debbie had won the Angie’s List Super Service Awards for 7 years in a row.

Read the full story on drewduboff.com ➜

My name is Matt Paskow. I started a mobile auto detailing business called Fresh Look Mobile Auto Detailing which services North County, San Diego.

My name is Billy Westbrook and I reinvented the wiper blade making it more useful for the consumer. My company is called Scrubblade and our wiper blades clean your windshield beyond rain, to remove bugs, dirt and road grime from impairing your vision.

Scrubblade Heavy Duty and Scrubblade Platinum are our two models available today. We believe in keeping our product models available to a minimum, not to confuse the customer with too many options. We landed on the INC 5000 and awarded wiper blade of the year by Frost & Sullivan in 2018. That was a big accomplishment for Scrubblade and me personally.

We are Eugenio Ferrante and Ahmed Nizar, co-founders of Casa Mia Coliving.

Today, we have 150 bedrooms in central Singapore across popular neighborhoods such as River Valley, Tiong Bahru, and Orchard. We have reached an annualized revenue of $2.5M, and we’re growing fast!

While he was still a full-time student, Johnny Robinson built OrangeWindowCleaning.com into a $700k/year operation.

One day while hanging out with his friend Sergio, Johnny came up with the idea of the window cleaning business. He first approached door-to-door marketing and approached local stores to offer window cleaning services.

Later, after he discovered digital marketing and how tools and software could help him multiply his client base was when this journey started to take off for real.

His story proves that if you want to start your own business, it doesn’t necessarily take a never-before-seen business idea to have a never-before-seen impact on your life.

Listen to the full podcast on sidehustlenation.libsyn.com ➜