How Dryer Vent Doctors Went From a $10K First Month to a $70,000 Commercial Contract

Who is Daniel and what is Dryer Vent Doctors?

Daniel is the owner and founder of Dryer Vent Doctors, which he calls Vent Doctors, a dryer vent cleaning company in Port St. Lucie, Florida. It had been open about two years when he recorded this. The company cleans dryer vents, cleans the dryer itself, replaces hookups and repairs vent piping.

He grew up in South Florida watching his grandfather run an HVAC company, then earned a marketing degree and an MBA. Instead of taking a corporate job, he started a business. He had worked for a company whose brands included dryer vent cleaning, and he saw that most operators in the industry were a single truck and a single technician. Port St. Lucie had over 300,000 people and only two other companies doing the work.

He had, in his words, zero tool experience. “I was the least tool person in my family.”

What went wrong in the first month?

He flooded a customer’s laundry room. Cutting into drywall for the first time, he used a Sawzall instead of an oscillating tool and went straight through a plumbing pipe. Within about two minutes the room was flooded.

The customer turned out to be a former plumber, who shut off the water and told him mistakes happen. Daniel called a plumber friend who fixed the pipe the same day, sucked out the water with a shop vac, and charged nothing. The customer tipped him $50 anyway. “I never made that mistake twice.”

How did Facebook ads bring in $10,000 in the first month?

Daniel had spent 11 months being coached by a mentor who runs a Facebook ad agency for home services, so he launched knowing what to run. The setup he described:

• Placement: the mobile feed only, because that is what his mentor’s testing showed converts best.
• Image: a local photo that stands out. His was himself and his wife holding their baby, with “locally owned and operated.”
• Offer: a discount for the first 40 customers.
• Testing: several offers at $5 or $10 a day, then the budget goes to whichever converts best.

The first month broke $10,000. He said the average company in his industry does not reach that in its first six to eight months.

He also runs Google Ads, but he likes that Facebook reaches people who are not collecting quotes from other companies. “You have to create an ad and an offer so good that they feel stupid if they don’t jump now.”

How does a $197 service become a $500 ticket?

By checking for real problems while he is in the home and explaining them. Daniel said his average stop is about $500, against an industry average of $197, and that his prices are not higher. He offers more:

• Transition hose. He said 90% of the hoses he sees are foil, which the back of the dryer says not to use. He replaces them with a crush-resistant, non-flammable hose.
• Washer hoses. He said 70% of the homes he enters have rubber ones, which can leak and burst. He upgrades them to metal.
• Duct sanitization for odors and bacteria buildup in humid Florida.
• Vent covers and roof jacks. Metal covers keep animals out. He has pulled bunnies, raccoons, snakes and iguanas out of machines.

The customers who buy the full job are the ones who come back. “The customers who spend the most money with us stay with us the longest because they want to maintain that investment.” He said he was walking into 50 jobs that month that he had first done the year before.

How did he win a $70,000 multi-unit contract?

Through relationships, not ads. After a year and a half of residential work, Daniel joined a local BNI group. Handymen and plumbers introduced him to property managers, and that networking led to the largest multi-unit contract in his area: 564 units, worth $70,000 in total.

Commercial work runs differently. Associations usually want the vents cleaned from the exterior with compressed air, quickly, and they pay net 30. One compressed air system handles about 70 units, and he said his team can finish a 200-unit association in three days. Single-truck competitors cannot wait a month to be paid or carry the insurance. Daniel can, because residential jobs pay the day they are done.

His goals for 2026 were four to six contracts of that size, 800 units on the multi-unit side, and a third truck.

What would he tell another owner?

“Start small, think big.” Do not buy the fanciest truck and equipment on day one. Keep overhead low, use the advantages of being small (lower prices, faster response), and stick it out.

He credits reviews for much of the rest: more than 200 Google reviews in about 15 months, which he says helped put the company first in its area on Google Maps.