[zoe humble]

afternoon folks. I'll try not to repeat a question already asked...

My question is about approach.  So I'm shiny new person in business trying to go it alone.  I think I am good at cleaning and organising stuff.  I've done some market research probably not enough. I have knocked together my website and doing some flyers about to knock on doors to try and get work as a domestic  / general household chores etc.

So my question at the moment it is just me.  In the future I might need to or wish to expand and take on staff.  Do I price accordingly for the future or go steady and price per hour for my over heads.  I am also trying to weigh up price per hour v all in fee. 

I have a gut feeling that I should try and keep it simple and worry about the future when / if it comes.  So is this approach reasonable or am I going to set up problems in the future.  My concern is that If I set out my pricing at say £10 ph (approx) for general household cleaning and in the future I need to up it to cover staff costs it will be difficult to move any exisitng customers to the new pricing. 

I am planning to use my own equipment / crb / insured etc etc.   I know I need to do more work here but thought I'd canvass what your experience is.   

thank you Zoe

[Adam P]

price now the same as you would for the future when you have staff. you'll have problems as you have alreayd recognised with customers when you have to up your price to one that'll work for your business. if you customers don't want to pay a reasonable amount now then why do you want them?

i chose to go in cheap so i can at least have some cash coming in which helped but i have found it a pain to get rid of those first customers. i felt almost guilty to say i'll be increasing my prices/stop cleaning for them as they'd become friends even though they didn't really pay too well. i think it was a mistake as i should have just stuck to a price that was realistic to run a business and then earn more for when i did work, and then i would have had no problem when i had to get staff to do it.

also charging less now then you would charge in future when you have staff is silly as you're the boss so should be earning more not less if you have to do the cleaning as well!

sorry if this post makes no sense, it's late i'm tired and can't be bothered to rewrite it

[zoe humble]

no that makes more sense.  One thought though I see profressional teams working in teams and the pricing is by job. So to start with it will just be me (most of the time) probably a tad slow.... so it would be a good incentive to quicken the pace up a bit and get some staff on board to help. I have a feeling that price per job is the way to go and understand that i'll probably get through less to begin with.