[Doctor Carpet (Ret'd)]

Hi Martin

As Simon said do make sure you work out your break-even figure. Without that you may think you are doing alright when in fact you may be losing money hand over fist. But I guess you had already thought of that-hence the question about business plans.

The whole point of a business plan is to try and be accurate to it but of course these will always be an element of guesswork. However, business plans are valuable because it gives you an objective yardstick to measure your actual performance against and it doesn't really matter if you are ahead or behind the curve. What it does give you is early warnings of whether you are doing better or worse than you thought.

A scenario: you think your t/o figure per week will be £x, when in fact you find that after 5 weeks you are in fact only achieving £x-£50 on average per week. If you had not bothered to measure this then you would have a nasty surprise at the end of the year, but by identifying early on this short fall you can either take steps to remedy it by finding extra work, or there may have been a simple reason why you were not able to achieve £x (eg you had a weekly hospital appointment which took most of the day for say 6 weeks). Plainly once the appointments have finished you'll have more time in the week to achieve target and therefore this is simply a one-off.

Another way would be that you realise that you could increase your prices and so achieve your targeted t/o without losing business.

I could go on but I guess you get the picture.

Finally you mention going out with other cleaners. I see you are in Wales. That's a big place and you will almost certainly find you will have to travel out of your area but other cc's possibly won't offer unless they know if you are North or South Wales.

Rog

[V_Purcell]

500 jobs a week...you'd need more than 10 vans to service that lot.
More like 20.

15 carpet cleaners to do those jobs, used so much chemicals that I was able to become a distributor of one of the most, respectable companys in the UK and probable the most respected in the USA.

[JandS]

33 jobs a week each.
5 jobs a day and that's working on a 7 day week.
You'd need an army just to answer the calls and sort the bookings out.

[Ian Gourlay]

Vince

You must have had a very compelling Leaflet. I do realise you were fishing in a big pond

Please do not think I am having a pop as I have always been awe at what you achieved.

[V_Purcell]

We had 4 girls all family members taking the calls, 3 AB Dick printing the machine, we printed our own leaflet and some other customers leaflet, these presses didn't stop, then we had 3 mini buses with 8 people delivering leaflets, we rented machines to our cleaners and also sold them cleaning chemicals, it was a great way to maxamize profit. We never paid for our printing or for our distribution. Rental from machines brought in £780 a week.
A plan for this was never written, it just evolved. I remember buying Formula 90 that came in cardboard boxes.

[V_Purcell]

Vince

You must have had a very compelling Leaflet. I do realise you were fishing in a big pond

Please do not think I am having a pop as I have always been awe at what you achieved.

My leaflet has never changed, it original design, it has only had services added to it, it is often copied, but they never last, the hardest part of the business is to get them delivered, which is the hardest part.

[V_Purcell]

Vince is probably correct but being Fired Up is easy when it all goes right and everything falls into place but sometimes life is not simple and things do not work

The Secret is to keep trying

On the other hand I would think carefully before giving up a well paid job for Carpet Cleaning especially if you have a Mortgage, Family and Children

On the other hand if you are Fired Up you will not listen to me You will just be out there making it work using POT




quote]
Ian, I take it your beer glass is half empty.
You may wish to buy the book or I can loan you a copy given to me by the author and owner of Subways sandwich chain.

Vince
Been out of action for two years  seriously ill so i am at pick yourself up dust yourself down and start all over again 

Vince been out of action two years seriously ill so I am at pick yourself up dust yourself down and start all over again stage   read POT when I was a young Manager at 21
Ordered Mr Subways book this Afternoon used to like them when I was in Canada but think they are rubbish in UK

So yeah to be honest my glass is quarter full

My first Sub was in Minnesota, love them, even had my own franchise.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Start-Small-Finish-Big-Fifteen-Key-Lessons-to-Start-DeLuca-Fred-NEW-Paper-/300896846778?pt=Non_Fiction&hash=item460ed983ba