How Finish Line Towing & Auto Repair Earns $5 Million in Annual Revenue

Hello Moneymint community

Welcome to our weekly newsletter, where we bring you inspiring stories of success and financial abundance from people all around the world. Each week, we'll feature profiles of individuals who have achieved remarkable success in their careers and businesses, as well as expert insights and practical tips on how to increase your own wealth and prosperity. We hope you'll find these stories and advice both motivating and useful as you work towards your own goals of success and financial security.

In this week’s newsletter, we will talk about:

• BI-Company providing Financial Data sold for $200 million

• Towing Business Earns $5 Million Annual Revenue

These stories are huge sources of inspiration if you want to establish yourself by doing things you love. So, let’s begin!

1. BI-Company providing Financial Data sold for $200 million

ProfitWell is an USA-based company that is responsible for giving BI solutions for growth and scaling of businesses with profit-motive. Their main aim is to provide accurate financial data that aids the companies and lessens their pricing problems. There are three paid products available that can be purchased at customized prices: Retain, Recognized, and Price Intelligently.

Patrick Campbell, the founder, didn’t want to work under others and do something big himself. He wanted to earn independently. Based on his background and skills, he decided to do something with pricing schemes of big companies, and thus opened his first company - Price Intelligently. However, this required technical knowledge, that didn’t suit Patrick. Also, it wasn’t very customer-friendly. However, a positive aspect of working with this stuff was gathering knowledge about the market and understanding their customer base. Besides, a decent amount of revenue was also earned – around $130K in six months.

However, the idea of building a freestanding program was eating away at Patrick, until a close encounter with a client gave him an idea. It was to create a program that could collect real-time financial data for companies. Though the first product was earning half a million dollars in a year, there was no external investment, and the team of ProfitWell had to sacrifice a lot of luxuries to sustain the business. They had to delay the launch of the product by some time, however due to rising competition, couldn’t afford losing much time.

Patrick didn’t want to lose customers by introducing paid products, and thus went for a freemium model, where customers would be offered paid versions if the basic ones couldn’t solve their problems. Though this model slowed the growth and didn’t earn much revenue, it was worthwhile. While the initial product now earns annual revenue of more than $6 million, the other products collectively make $1 million revenue in a year.

Patrick is now doing well and has sold his company to Paddle for $200 million to increase the scale and revenue of his product. He still sticks to his idea of being reserved – choosing between a luxurious life or further investment in the company. Selecting your aim and sticking to it is the most important thing for scaling a business. Also, Patrick dedicates a lot of time in reading books – of different categories and different genres. Afterall, what could be better than gaining new knowledge and applying them to develop your business?

2. Towing Business earns $5 million Annual Revenue

Finish Line Towing & Auto Repair is a Wisconsin-based business that assists people on roads by providing services like towing, parking assistance, tire changes, etc. They currently own around 50 trucks that are responsible for such contractual work. Different prices are charged depending on the types of service availed by the customer.

Johnny Van, President and Owner, was never a bright student, however, he learnt a lot of things from his parents. Though he didn’t want to take charge of his father’s towing business, he went through much struggle in the corporate world. After getting fired, he and his brother finally decided to take loans and launch a similar but bigger towing company – and this is how FLT came into existence.

Though the investment was low, it wasn’t very easy for the two brothers, and both had to go through a lot of hardships to sustain the business. Insurance cost also took up a lot of their earnings. Finally, the business became successful due to many small but valuable things – like taking care of the customers’ wants and expressing concern for them. Execution matters the most! Also, promotion on Facebook, Google Maps, working on SEO, etc. helped in further growth and marketing. Currently, Finish Line Towing & Auto Repair earns sales revenue of around $5 million in a year.

Patrick is currently doing quite well in the business. He is now looking forward to further growing his business in different part of Wisconsin and Illinois.

These stories show you that you should never give up on your passion – even if you have to undergo sacrifice and hardship. At the end, after getting success, it becomes worth everything.

News Bites

1. Repo Rate increased by RBI to 6.5%

The rate at which RBI gives loan to commercial banks, or the repo rate, was hiked by 25 basis points to 6.5%. This was done by the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India to control retail inflation. All external benchmark linked loans are expected to become costlier after this.

A 5.3% retail inflation is now expected in FY24, along with GDP growth rate of 6.4%. The voting resulted in a 4:2 majority for the policy change. Also, to ensure inflation remain fixed in the given range and growth still occurs, withdrawal of accommodation was supported.

This policy will cause commercial lending rates to rise, along with interest rates for EMIs, home loans and personal loans. 43.6% of gross loans are now linked to the new repo rate. Marginal cost of funds-based lending rates will also rise, leading to inflation coming in control of RBI. Though the inflation rate is now 6.5%, it is still not as per the RBI’s requirement. The forecasted inflation rate for FY24 is 5.3%.

The Sensex was higher by 0.43% (261 points) at 60,547.32, and NSE Nifty by 96 points at 17,817 at 10.55 a.m., on February 8, 2023. “This (hike) is known to the market and is unlikely to have any meaningful impact on the market. The important trends impacting markets globally are the developments in the US economy and rate action by the Fed,” stated V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

2. Zomato faces Rs 347 crore Loss but 75% Sales Rise in December Quarter

Zomato experienced further loss of Rs 347 crore in December quarter, compared to Rs 251 crore in the previous quarter. Contradictorily, gross revenues rose by 75% to Rs 1,948 crore.

Looking at its performance independently, the company has actually done well – with net profit rising 5 times to Rs 62 crore, compared to the loss of Rs 99.3 crore in the previous year. Standalone revenue has increased by 26.5% on-year to the aforementioned figure. Adjusted revenue rose by 66% YoY to Rs 2,363 crore, causing a 30% growth in the business.

Without adding Blinkit’s numbers, Zomato showed positive operating level in January and operating loss of Rs 38 crore. The quick commercial business Blinkit earned a revenue of Rs 300 crore in December quarter – a rise from Rs 142 crore in September quarter, resulting in a strong YoY growth.

“We have seen an industry-wide slowdown in the food delivery business since late October (post the festival of Diwali). This trend has been seen across the country but more so in the top 8 cities,” the company said. “It remains a challenging demand environment, but we are seeing green shoots of demand coming back in recent weeks, which makes us believe that the worst may be behind us,” it said.

Zomato is hopeful of approaching the break-even point by September quarter in FY24. “The current slowdown in demand was unexpected, which is impacting the growth in food delivery profits. Despite that, we think we are in a good position to meet our profitability goal,” said Akshant Goyal, the CFO of the company.

3. Bitcoin resumes having Bold Moves on Weekends

Bitcoin has again started its tradition of introducing bold moves in weekends – like on 5^th February, Sunday, it gained 3.4%, and on the previous Saturday, it rose by 5.5%. Bitcoin is like any other regular token, that is traded on all days of the week at every point of time. When other assets are not traded, Bitcoin continues to advance and being traded.

A hypothesis behind such bold weekends is thin liquidity, so that price fluctuations on large orders are sharper and more elastic. “Liquidity has been thinner for Bitcoin recently, with traders and investors staying on the sidelines and hodlers hodling,” says Noelle Acheson, author of the Crypto Is Macro Now newsletter.

“Since the beginning of the year, volatility has picked up — still not at ‘normal’ levels, but getting there,” she said. “This should herald the return of the weekend phenomenon, with lower weekend liquidity leading to stronger moves as traders and investors tentatively come back into the market.”