Yer party yer gamble
Not something I’d do, very high percentage of them fail. Especially you get into divorces, no thanks
Honestly I'm so glad to not be a big ass operation right now... businesses here with big overhead are getting wiped out left and right.
We just keep chugging along racking fat a$$ tickets with no stress and almost no overhead.
I love the simplicity of this business it's super lucrative but I would never want to have all my eggs in one big carpet Cleaning basket running all kinds of ads and dealing with techs etc.
It can be great but it's a stressful lifestyle, anyone who tells you different is full of shit.
Yup.
If you follow the news....Northern California , particularly exactly where I am has been devastated by wildfires in the last couple years.
I started my business in Northern Santa Rosa.
Many of my clients were in both Coffey Park and Fountain Grove.
Both areas completely wiped out by fire.
My business of course took a hit cuz there were simply far less homes to clean cuz they were burnt to the ground.
Still don't get work there cuz they havnt even finished building all of them.
That fire wiped plenty of service businesses out including bigger carpet cleaners.
Last fall....a bigger, longer lasting fire came into our area and just by a few lucky turns, it stayed away from town until just about every fire resource was allocated to the area.
Firefighters held it from taking our town but it came close enough that every home here got smoked out.
After the first fire, I worked hard at building my local clientele so when the recent fires came here , my phone rang off the hook for smoke inspections.
Last quarter we did over 100K
I'd probably never want to go through that again even if the money was great cuz it was super stressful...
Anyways,.....once this pandemic and ensuing lockdown hit.....I couldn't care less cuz it was nice to be a little slower.
Bottom line....being light of foot helped me a lot and I got really lucky how things turned out....but my luck was definitely improved by my aggressive tactics after the fires.
I've made a ton on window cleaning the last year.
Not my favorite work but it's good money.
All the smoke jobs I was able to farm that part out from a local guy but I do them personally as well.
I don't do enough to get a pole system yet but I want one.
The service I hire uses one.
Paul Brown schooled me in on a couple great onsite drapery methods.
Very effective with little risk
I do pressure washing and soft washing but some of those jobs can bog you down.
Definitely a mixed bag but you gotta do pressure washing for smoke
I might try that, my old school method works well. You hold your upholstery tool up to your shirt and open up your waste gate valve until it sucks your shirt up to the tool without wrinkling. OMS works but back in the day we used Perc or 111 trichlorethane. Those are far too hazardous to use in a home, but we didn't know any better back then.I do a dry solvent vac with MF rag over upholstery tool. No water.
It's been great
@Scroty-sack It's obvious you don't like it when someone is more successful than you. I guarantee if you were on Rob's level success wise you would be boasting it from the mountaintops about how smart and good at business you are. Instead you dismiss it - because you can't compete on that level.
You aren't hard to figure out.
Looks like you have a man crush on mike and at the same time holding onto Rob as a security blanket now that’s amusing
Sounds like your well diversified.Trad or wfp? We kill it with wfp. Have a place on base we pressure wash entire 4 story building, all exterior windows, all drapes and rooms there’s like 104 rooms total. Came from a window cleaning referral. We do windows twice a year and building and carpets once a year
Sounds like your well diversified.
We started exterior services about 3 years ago.
Windows, roof, gutters, siding, power washing walkways, driveways etc. I had an employee full time doing it but now just sub it out, all I do is sell the jobs which is easy when your already in the cleaning industry.
The full house packages are good money and realtors love it. Carpets, tile, roof, siding, windows, walkways and driveway.
I've seen my window guys on pressure washing jobs.
They use way too much pressure and I'd never hire them to do it attached to my name.
Put a helper on some soft washing and had a few problems.
Haven't had enough soft wash jobs to confidently train someone yet
I'll never dip into construction. I just want my demo license to advertise WDR
That's awesome.
Yer story impresses me.
Fer me.....one of my focuses is to be able to nose ride before I'm dead.
Shouldn't have waited till 50 to start surfing