How to read a revenue figure in a boring business story

Every owner in this database comes with a number, and the numbers are not the same kind of thing. Some are a year of company revenue. Some are one good month multiplied by nothing in particular. Three belong to franchise systems rather than to anyone's business. One is "total income" from a profile, one is backed by documents a reporter reviewed, and one was removed because it came from an AI summary of a podcast. This piece goes through the shapes a revenue figure takes in the 33 entries, using the owners' own pages, so the next headline you read can be sorted before it is believed.

A system is not a company

Scoop Soldiers reported about $1.25 million a month by 2023. That is systemwide revenue across 96 franchised territories in 16 states, and the brand's materials count $79 million in lifetime revenue. Divide roughly $15 million a year by 96 territories and the average is about $156,000 per territory, our arithmetic, mixing new territories with mature ones. The franchisee the coverage features, Ryan McCoy, passed $900,000 within a year in Dallas, but he had managed that market as a corporate employee for two years before he bought it.

The same applies to Augusta Lawn Care, at $50 million-plus systemwide across 200-plus locations, and to 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, at about $600 million systemwide. Those figures describe what every franchisee together bills customers. The franchisor keeps a share of it, and a franchisee keeps what is left after the fees. Our piece on what a franchise buys and costs goes through those deductions. When this site adds up the revenue of every owner in the database, it leaves these three out for that reason.

A month is not a year

A lot of the figures are monthly. Cristobal and Sandra Mondragon report $120,000 to $140,000 months. Adam Hill grosses over $58,000 a month from vending. Anna-Marie Ortiz was at about $10,000 a month fifteen months in. Multiplying by twelve is reasonable when the work is steady, and this site does it, labeled as our arithmetic, on pages like the buyers ranking.

It stops being reasonable when the business swings. Kim Hatch reports up to $200,000 in a peak month of septic pumping and about $30,000 in a slow winter one. Twelve peak months would be $2.4 million and twelve winter months $360,000, both our arithmetic, and neither is the year. The word "up to" in a monthly figure is a sign that someone picked the best one. Steve Hunsaker has the opposite problem: his $800,000-plus comes from about eight weeks of holiday lighting, so the season figure is the annual figure, and dividing it by twelve would make the business look smaller and calmer than it is.

A peak is not an average

Johnny Robinson and Sergio Silesky were running $65,000 to $70,000 a month when they sold Orange Window Cleaning, about four and a half years after starting. Annualized, that peak is roughly $780,000 to $840,000. Their cumulative sales over the whole run were more than $1.3 million, which works out to under $300,000 a year on average, again our division. Both numbers are true. The peak tells you what the company was doing at sale; the cumulative figure tells you what the years before it looked like.

Cumulative figures cut the other way too. The Mondragons' more than $5 million is a decade of revenue since 2015, not a year. Kyle Landwehr's company says it passed $1 million in sales across its first two years, and an earlier version of his entry turned that into "millionaire status at 22," which the sources do not support. That correction is on the corrections page.

Revenue is not income

Daniel Tom's Bay Area Sanitation reported $4.3 million in total income for 2025, per CNBC Make It. On the same page Tom puts labor at about 30 percent of revenue and his own salary at roughly $120,000, with the rest reinvested in toilets and trucks. A $4.3 million headline and a $120,000 salary describe the same company in the same year.

Joel and Hunter Davis's $851,000 is revenue from a pool franchise, and their entry says plainly that it is not owner income. Hill's entry makes the same point about his vending gross: product, labor and fuel come out of it. The margin ledger shows what each trade keeps, and the owners' own figures range from the 20 to 25 percent Tom reports in portable toilets to about 60 percent in Alan Tursunbaev's mobile detailing. Even the margins need reading. Tursunbaev's 60 percent is gross. Landwehr's 50 percent in year one was gross too, and fell to about 20 percent once an operations manager ran the company.

Told is not checked

Almost every figure here is what an owner said in an interview or on a podcast. That is the honest basis of the database, and it is stated on every entry. A few go further. Michael Haskell's $135,000 of 2025 revenue, split $97,434 through eBay and $37,500 through an auction house, with about $82,000 of operating earnings, comes from documents CNBC Make It reviewed. When a figure arrives with that kind of split, it has usually been looked at.

At the other end, two signals deserve caution. One is a seller of education: Landwehr teaches junk removal through a course, and his entry notes that the coverage does not say whether the $2.5 million figure is revenue or take-home. The other is a figure with no traceable speaker. Ian Hecht's entry once carried a year-two profit of about $280,000. It traced only to an AI-generated summary of the podcast episode, so it was removed. His $2.1 million of revenue on about $26,000 of advertising stays, because he said it himself.

Five questions before you believe one

Whose revenue is it: one company, or a system of franchisees? What period does it cover: a month, a season, a year, or a decade? Is it a typical stretch or the best one? Is it revenue, gross profit, or what the owner takes home? And who said it, with what to sell? The revenue ranking applies those labels to every owner, and our new ranking of revenue per dollar of starting capital shows how much the answer moves when the denominator changes. This site is one of SideRoad's weekly builds, and the figures on it get corrected in public when they turn out to be wrong.

Common questions

What does systemwide revenue mean for a franchise?

It is what all of a brand's franchisees bill customers combined. Scoop Soldiers' roughly $1.25 million a month in 2023 was spread across 96 territories, about $156,000 a year per territory on average by our arithmetic. The franchisor keeps a share and each franchisee keeps what is left after fees, so a systemwide figure says little about any one owner's business.

Is a business's revenue what the owner makes?

No. Daniel Tom's portable toilet company reported $4.3 million in total income for 2025, while Tom pays himself about $120,000 and reinvests the rest. Labor alone is about 30 percent of his revenue. Joel and Hunter Davis's $851,000 pool franchise figure is also revenue, not owner income, as their entry states. The margin ledger covers what each trade keeps.

Can you multiply a monthly revenue figure by twelve?

Only when the work is steady through the year. Kim Hatch reports up to $200,000 in a peak septic month and about $30,000 in winter, so twelve times either number misstates the year. Steve Hunsaker earns his $800,000-plus in roughly eight weeks, so his season figure already is the year.