23d • General discussion
Reclaim’d — Year-End Reality Check (5 Months In)
Reclaim’d didn’t “have a year.”
It had five months of real-world pressure testing—and that matters more.
Here’s the straight data, no fluff:
$50,000 in revenue
62 jobs completed
$800 average ticket
Built without a full seasonal cycle
Built while learning in public
Built while breaking things
If you annualize that blindly, you’ll lie to yourself.
If you analyze it correctly, you’ll realize the foundation is solid.
The Seasonality Smacked Us in the Mouth (Good)
August was the best month.
Momentum, demand, confidence.
September was the worst.
Not because the business “failed”—but because reality showed up:
Summer ended. Holidays crept in. Decision-making slowed
Booked jobs declined exactly when you’d expect them to
December still closed $7,000, which tells me something important:
The business doesn’t disappear. It compresses.
Spring and summer aren’t a hope—they’re a pattern waiting to be exploited.
Mistakes Were Made (On Purpose, If I’m Honest)
Let’s get this out of the way:
Bad hires happened
I hire fast and fire faster. That saved me from long-term damage. Anyone who brags about “never hiring wrong” hasn’t hired enough.
Pricing early jobs sucked
Not because the market was wrong—because efficiency wasn’t there yet.
4-hour jobs turned into 5–6
Margins leaked quietly
We paid for education in labor hours
Systems worked… but weren’t sharp
They held. They didn’t collapse.
But “holding” isn’t the same as “clear.”
That’s the difference between survival systems and scale systems.
The Real Pivot: What We Actually Sell
Here’s the moment the business grew up:
Reclaim’d does not sell cleanouts.
We sell relief.
Relief from:
Decision fatigue
Shame about clutter
Overwhelm
“I’ll get to it someday” guilt
The truck, the labor, the hauling—that’s just the delivery mechanism.
Once that clicked, pricing started to make sense.
The Pricing Shift That Had to Happen
We’re changing the structure on purpose:
Organizing = add-on
Hauling = add-on
Cleanout ≠ everything bundled by default
Why?
Because bundling everything:
Underbids complex jobs
Trains clients to expect the moon
Punishes efficiency instead of rewarding it
Clear pricing doesn’t scare good clients.
It scares bad expectations.
Good.
What I’m Saying “No” To in 2026
This matters more than what I’m chasing.
❌ Small gigs
❌ Low-impact jobs that bleed time
❌ Fixing problems with manpower instead of systems
❌ Chaos disguised as “being busy”
Small jobs were the silent killer this year.
They don’t look dangerous. They are.
The Non-Negotiable Going Forward
If there’s one rule I’m not breaking again:
I fix problems with systems, not people.
Throwing bodies at broken processes is how businesses die tired.
Planning.
Logistics.
Efficiency.
Those aren’t “back office” concerns in this business—they are the business.
And here’s the part that scares non-serious people:
If you don’t respect planning and logistics,
this business will absolutely own your life.
That’s not a threat. That’s a warning.
Final Thought
Reclaim’d isn’t fragile.
But it’s not forgiving either.
This year wasn’t about looking successful.
It was about becoming dangerous with clarity.
If you’re building something similar and this sounds heavy—that’s good.
It should.
The people who last are the ones who respect the weight early.
More to come.
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Reclaim’d — Year-End Reality Check (5 Months In)
