Hannah Baker graduated college at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, heading straight into a well-paying position as a software developer. She enjoys her work supporting corporate infrastructure automation for a Fortune 500 company.
Within a year of graduation, however, Baker, 26, knew she probably wasn’t cut out for a 9-to-5 for her whole career. Working remotely, she had never spent time in a cubicle or wrangled with co-workers. But she knew she wanted to own a company, not just work in it, so she started actively seeking other options.
She had spent a gap year between high school and college working with Habitat for Humanity, picking up a lot of construction and manual labor skills. She found that working outside and managing multiple simultaneous tasks appealing, but wasn’t sure what kind of business would allow her to do all that.
A few things were certain: Baker was a digital native, had low tolerance for inefficiency, and wanted something she could ease into slowly, while maintaining the security of her day job until her startup was self-sustaining. She found what she was looking for in the portable sanitation industry. The restroom trailer business, Philadelphia Event Rentals of North Wales, Pennsylvania, was born.
Baker felt confident she could run the business from the administrative end, even without having actually done such work. To her, finding her niche would be about delivering the best customer service in a commodity-based business.
BECOMING AN ENTREPRENEUR
“I had a pretty good idea of how service-based businesses could be improved; anything from getting the roof done to calling a plumber or painter,” she says. “They all kind of benefit from the same type of improvements, and I knew what those were.”
After all, she had already done it in her Habitat work at age 18. “It was probably one of the best experiences I had. It was a really big shift. I had basically been in school my entire life, and it was my first time really being outside, not having as much structure.”
That experience was critical to her belief that she could tackle entrepreneurship. “Yes, we built houses, but we also engaged the corporate volunteers who donated the funds to build. It was a big confidence-boosting time for me, to really not know a ton about what I was doing, but fake it till you make it, in a sense.”
The Habitat work also immersed her in on-site troubleshooting and dealing with common issues encountered while coordinating work at construction sites. Baker believes many of the problems could have been avoided if the projects had been better planned, communicated and scheduled.
“In construction, there are endless delays and billing problems, just because really … no one talks to each other,” she says. “So when I started the restroom trailer business, I really wanted to focus on giving the customer all the information they could want, at the appropriate time.”
To Baker, it’s all about being prepared and using the right tools to streamline processes. “Being able to pay on time and putting out a yearly price schedule that doesn’t change. Making sure there are multiple forms of contact so there’s no last-minute delivery delays, or working with the other vendors who come on site.”
THE RIGHT TRAILER
Baker knew what she wanted when searching for her first restroom trailer. She chose her setup by looking at the average-size wedding in the Philadelphia area, around 120 people.
“My main market is weddings and backyard parties right now. A two-stall would have been too small for most weddings, and a four-stall would have been too big and expensive for backyard parties and smaller weddings.”
Ultimately, she settled on a three-station ECO model from Lang Specialty Trailers. It features a three-season package, hot and cold water, air conditioning, white china toilets, sinks and countertops.
She plans to add two other trailers in the near future, as demand increases. “I keep track of all double-booking and customer requests. Most likely, I’ll get either a two-stall for smaller events, another three-stall because it’s the most requested, or a five-stall for festivals and disaster relief projects.”
She believes she’ll be able to have the two additional trailers and quit her day job in about two years. “I’ve determined that at three trailers, I would supplant my 9-to-5 income, as well as cover the incidentals of being an entrepreneur — health care and the rest of it — full time.”
Philadelphia Event Rentals doesn’t do its own pumping. To start with, she uses a paid dumpsite used by over-the-road big rigs and recreational vehicles. By midseason, she expects to have found a location for a holding tank to collect waste and have it pumped as needed. Her goals for the time being are buying more trailers, finding secure storage for equipment and minimizing dumping costs.
To fund her planned fleet expansion and space rentals, Baker has applied for Contractor status through SAM, or System for Award Management. A SAM registration is required for any entity to bid on and get paid for federal contracts or to receive federal funds. In addition, she applied for the Pennsylvania state contract system. “I’m hoping to increase income substantially by being listed as a woman-owned business and minority-owned business. Hopefully, using those contracts will really pick that up.”
MARKET TO WIN
The hub of all of Baker’s marketing and order-taking is her website. She doesn’t take phone orders, which eliminates her need to constantly be on the phone while she’s at her day job, and automates the process.
“You have to have a website. It needs to have your keywords, pictures and contact information. It needs to build trust with your customers, especially as a new company,” she says. “They’re giving you significant money for a restroom, so it needs to be very professional.”
She estimates that 85% of her customers come to her through Google Ads. Because the ads have a set price, she knows the cost of driving someone to her website and getting someone to submit a quote request for a restroom trailer. She knows the marketing price she’s paying to get a booking and create a new customer.
“For anyone new starting out, Google Analytics will help them save a lot of time and a lot of money, and learn more about their customer more quickly,” she says.
For administration and marketing, Baker uses Google Workspace, whose plans provide a custom business email and include collaboration tools like Gmail, Calendar, Meet, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms and Sites. Her favorite tool there is Google My Business. “You can just sign up in your Google Workspace. That’s how you put your local business on Google Maps, and you can manage the reviews and pictures and all that.”
Entrepreneurs who are bootstrapping with limited funds, she says, will find Google Voice perfect for creating a business-specific phone number that doesn’t cost any money. “Mine also doesn’t ring to my personal phone. I didn’t want to put my personal cellphone on my website.” It helps her keep her business and personal calls separate, but the number can be forwarded.
The last two tools Baker uses are fairly new.
“I’ve been using keyword planning through Semrush, which basically just tells me what customers are searching for, so I can use those words on my website. And I’ve actually been writing blog articles using ChatGPT,” which is a popular, if controversial, artificial intelligence bot.
SemRush shows her which pages her competitors are ranking for, what traffic they’re getting, and which keywords people are clicking on. “So I’m using those keywords in my website copy, and in my Google Ads, to lower the price per click,” she says. “Then I’m feeding that into ChatGPT, so I can increase the amount of customers I’m getting through organic search.
ALWAYS READY
Baker says the most important trait for a modern entrepreneur is resourcefulness.
“If you’re resourceful, you will find a way to make things happen. Every week, I run into problems I did not anticipate, and I don’t know how to solve. I have no one to ask how to fix them, yet they all get fixed,” she says. “It’s just being able to locate sources for finding answers and asking for help, because there are answers out there for everything.”
