looks like commercial cleaning only. by your title
yup as from few weeks back we only take commercial on now and hope to be 100% by end of 2017 will all residential sold off
Hi Ian
I've noticed on a couple of posts that you've mentioned you are going commercial only...
What are your reasons for selling off all domestic work (apart from larger houses) and going commercial only?
Andy
Hi Andy ...... short answer is longevity and money
long answer is im now 47 and by 55 want to be in a position where I can take a few weeks off several times a year and still keep the £££ coming in - in my current set up I cant do that as im the guy doing the graft. So for the last 2 years on and off Ive been looking at different ways I can achieve my long term goal.
FRANCHISING - would only work for me if I had about 6 - 8 franchisees and I think that would take a long time to find these people who are prepared to hand over a lump sump then 15% to 20% of their turnover every month. YES it can be done but not I think / feel in my geographical area plus I would hate to start on this path only to start struggling a good few years into it. Also seems a lot of effort for what is still going to be eventually a limited / capped income level for me.
EMPLOYING - again it can be done 4 or 5 vans ... 8 to 10 staff .. another 3000 customers to keep the vans fully loaded with work but I think it would be soooooooooooooooo stressful every day plugging holes in a leaky d**e with staff problems, customer issues, trying to find customers, holiday cover, enough pure water, premises etc etc etc then the VAT will take a chunk out of the profit margin plus potentially a massive overhead inbalance towards whats coming in .. I foresee a slow and painful process to get where I would want to be at.
So because of the above which yes all of it so far is how I imagine it would turnout but some of it is from knowing a guy who used to run a multi van business and from seeing others problems on here I think my way forward is going to be thru commercial which of course will be a walk in the park with no issues and problems what so ever (joking
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Why commercial - on the right job the £££ per hour are a lot higher and I have a good few of these already as a regular clean, the true big money is on the large one off jobs but not just windows think along lines of cherry pickers, other services inc pressure washing, façade cleaning - purple rhino - jv price etc. once u have done a big job worth for example £3850 and you take out staff costs or in this case subbies invoices (profit would have been higher still with staff) what's left over makes the £11 from Mrs Jones for her bungalow look a little bit of a comedown (btw im not saying im not grateful or its not worthy as Mrs Jones has been paying for my existence since 2010 just its time to start doing better and to stop coasting)
Problems - obvious one is finding the big jobs hence the website question originally which TBH I kinda knew the answer to plus the first 2 replies confirmed it for me, VAT not a problem in fact bigger customers see a VAT registered supplier as more legit
yup strange world innit .. staff and van problems yes potentially still there but less staff needed to do a bigger turnover on commercial v residential ... finding the time to find the big jobs i.e. canvassing / emails / post this will be a struggle at the moment as 100% chokabloc on residential however last week gave away 25 jobs to a newbie that were taking longer to get there than do them this has freed up a day or two at least, starting at 8am instead of 9.30am and working an hour longer (new van with 800 litre tank is a massive help with this) has by the looks on George for May taken another 2 days from the schedule so now got 3 to 4 days free to start getting the big commercial stuff. I tried Becci Swann which didn't go to plan and there is a locked thread of mine from a few weeks back
It will be a gradual transition so 2017 may turn into 2018 and basically will need to sell of the residential to fund the equipment needed ...........Torik machines aint cheap
What's the worse that can happen ? - my plan don't work out so what then ? just keep doing what im doing now so not a problem
For the interest of the forum and cos I like to post long boring dribbly self serving posts I will post updates on my progress with lots of boring photos .. if your all lucky I may get so much abuse and become all upset and toys outta cot like others that have gone before e.g. solar stevey / purple rhino that I strop off and ................... then rejoin weeks later to see what theyre all saying about me
Told you this was the long version
