[Daniel Bradford]

Hi All,

So I used to window clean years back for someone and always wanted to run my own round but I got into a career and did well for myself. Unfortunately I have recently been made redundant and am deciding on my next move.

I really want to get back to window cleaning and start my own round. I have bills mortgage ect. to pay and want your advise as to how long it will take to build up a worth while round capable of bringing in 2-3k per month initially. (What I need to make it worth while at home) I need to make the decision sooner rather then later as savings to pay the bills are limited and I don't really want to go back to the work I was doing.

I used to clean traditional and wfp. I haven't got the capital to buy a load of work or start off with wfp unfortunately. The plan is to build up and make the switch from traditional to wfp at some stage soon. I am planning on hitting the sales hard with a combination of leaflet drops, targeted canvasing and FB adverts.

Thoughts and advise greatly appreciated

[Smudger]

WOW!

that, in all honesty is a tall order - I started out 10 years ago - I had enough redundancy to last 3 months - I canvassed like mad every day - only got essential equipment and by month 3 just about had what I needed ( £1500 p/month ) I pushed on from there.

you need to look at the following:

How long you can last on your savings
How affluent is your area, can you get decent prices ( take a day and door knock for research )
what spend do you have for equipment
Could you get away with trad to start
You need to be out everyday canvassing - as the saying goes - winter is coming!

Darran

[jk999]

Good look

[Richard iSparkle]

i can't offer any more advice than Smudger there.

other than I would question whether you really do need to bring in 2-3 000 or if you could go back to basics with your spending whilst you build a business.

also, im not sure if you need to have 2-3000 a month to cover your domestic expenses, which would mean you would need to turn over more than that considering business expenses and of course the dreaded tax...

[zesty]

Daniel in this day and age it won’t be easy to build 2-3k if work in 3 months.

Perhaps you can, but being realistic is the key, perhaps 1500 worth of work, but the good news is within a year you’ll have £3k a month with some hours canvassing each day!

[AuRavelling79]

If you are determined to make this work and you have little capital to spare I would suggest the following.

Get a part time grunt job on three days a week. Spend the other two (or three) days canvassing and building your round. Start with barrels and backpack out of your car and build up. When you are filling two days a week then even with a backpack and the crappy work you'll do when you start off you should be able to build up to up to £150 a day with it.

This will put you on 8 days x £150 = £1200 per month. If you work Saturdays then more.

How long will this take? Depends how  much time you put in. Six months? A year?

At some point drop the PT job or cut it back to 2 days and get a van with a tank. Your days can then be built up to £200 plus quite readily.

Good luck.


 

[TomCrowther]

Hi Daniel
Some good advice above. I think it depends how hungry you are for it. Forget facebook and other forms of online marketing.
Go door knocking every day from 16:00 until 19:00 and leaflet outside of those hours. Speak to other window cleaners in your area and see if they know of anyone who either has too much work or is about to retire etc.
If you do the above, you are practically guaranteed to have new work every day. Set yourself a target of so many leaflets per day and so many first cleans/customers a day. Take on the one off jobs that nobody else wants, speak to the shop owners, property management companies etc. I personally would avoid estate agents due to bad experiences almost every time.
If you do three hours knocking every day you will get absolutely minimum, four new customers a night. Clean them the next day and repeat.

[nathankaye]

In a nut shell, its gonna be a tonne load of hard work to achieve what your after and within a short time frame.  Near on impossible, Regardless of what experience you may or may not have.

[Crystal-clear]

Sound Advice above. I will just emphasise taking the medium figure gross at £2500 per month to be certain you're going to to take home that much it would be safe to say 40k in the year turn over...
that sort of turnover you will need the water fed pole (sustaining that on Ladders will be hard).
So you're going to incur loads of start-up expenses taking home £2500 profit a month in your first year as mentioned is certainly a tall order..

But nothing's is impossible I suppose you would need to be a workaholic to make that profit in year one with little to no money behind you.
Do you see yourself leafleting and canvassing for about 50 hours a week? Do you see yourself cleaning windows on weekends as well as through the week can you put up with being unpaid sometimes and messed around
if the answer is yes to all
Then I would say you would be ok..however I suppose it would be hard for you not to ignore the salary you were on before and how many hours you were putting in to achieve that.

You say you have a mortgage to pay and bills to pay perhaps it would be sensible to to look for another full time job and on the weekends build up your self-employed window cleaning income and see how you get on from there to be on the safe side. It will give you an idea what it's like in reality when you're working for yourself because when you were working for the previous person you were not responsible for any financial responsibilities or any other stuff involved with window cleaning ie cancellations messers you will still get paid a day rate regardless it's very different doing it for yourself and the reward is there in the longer term.