Leigh Farrell
Contributor
Hi fastlaners,
It's been a while, so here's an update on what you've missed some i left.
The road so far.
Start:
Started a home and office cleaning business in a country town in south Australia. Knew nobody locally as I'd just moved here.
Using a $5 per day Google ads campaign, an online lead Gen company, and door knocking i built the biz to $2k per week ($100k/year) in my first 100 days of business. Hazzar! It's also worth noting we're a premium service that charges the highest rates in our area.
Next i hired an employee. I let a local job agency recommend someone who came with a large government subsidy and hired her after 2 interviews.
I trained her for 2 weeks and then left her to it while i handled new clients and continued growing the business.
Soon after, she became really unreliable and was losing customers, FAST! After 3 months she decided that she was too stressed and asked for a month off. I fired her.
By this time, the turnover had dropped by 50% despite making another $1500 per week in sales.
This, combined with my partners slow lane bs complaining crushed my drive. I started looking for other options and decided to become a financial planner. Started studying and am still studying and working my business (more of a job than a business) at the same time. My plan was to finish study, get a job (ewww) as a financial planner for 3 years (minimum requirement to start your own firm), and then start my own firm.
Last weekend my biggest client sat me down for a talk.
Her: We've had cleaners all our lives (they're in their 70s and he used to be the federal treasurer) and we've never had anyone who can clean as good as you can. If you can teach people to be even half as good as you are, you will make a lot of money. You're wasting your life with this financial planning nonsense.
This has got me thinking. Why don't i continue to build the business until I'm ready to start my own financial planning firm, and then sell it.
I think what i need to help keep me on track, is an accountability partner. Someone i talk to weekly about what I've done for the past week, and what I'm doing in the following week. Then talk about what they've done and what they're going to do. The idea is to help each other stay on track and ride out the bumps, and block out the noise.
Anyone interest in doing something like that?
It's been a while, so here's an update on what you've missed some i left.
The road so far.
Start:
Started a home and office cleaning business in a country town in south Australia. Knew nobody locally as I'd just moved here.
Using a $5 per day Google ads campaign, an online lead Gen company, and door knocking i built the biz to $2k per week ($100k/year) in my first 100 days of business. Hazzar! It's also worth noting we're a premium service that charges the highest rates in our area.
Next i hired an employee. I let a local job agency recommend someone who came with a large government subsidy and hired her after 2 interviews.
I trained her for 2 weeks and then left her to it while i handled new clients and continued growing the business.
Soon after, she became really unreliable and was losing customers, FAST! After 3 months she decided that she was too stressed and asked for a month off. I fired her.
By this time, the turnover had dropped by 50% despite making another $1500 per week in sales.
This, combined with my partners slow lane bs complaining crushed my drive. I started looking for other options and decided to become a financial planner. Started studying and am still studying and working my business (more of a job than a business) at the same time. My plan was to finish study, get a job (ewww) as a financial planner for 3 years (minimum requirement to start your own firm), and then start my own firm.
Last weekend my biggest client sat me down for a talk.
Her: We've had cleaners all our lives (they're in their 70s and he used to be the federal treasurer) and we've never had anyone who can clean as good as you can. If you can teach people to be even half as good as you are, you will make a lot of money. You're wasting your life with this financial planning nonsense.
This has got me thinking. Why don't i continue to build the business until I'm ready to start my own financial planning firm, and then sell it.
I think what i need to help keep me on track, is an accountability partner. Someone i talk to weekly about what I've done for the past week, and what I'm doing in the following week. Then talk about what they've done and what they're going to do. The idea is to help each other stay on track and ride out the bumps, and block out the noise.
Anyone interest in doing something like that?
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