Scaling a window cleaning company

[Subsonic]

It's been a while since I posted so I'll start this project here to provide value and mayhaps even some entertainment to the people here.

Currently I have a big periode of action faking (or rather action avoiding) behind me, which was preceded by a failure. This failure can be observed in an earlier thread where I got myself entangled in a wild goose chase, tryingto build a highly complex protein soda that nobody wanted and that tasted... let's call it unpalatable.

Now I have decided to refocus on learning and doing, rather than building a perfect cents business.

This came with me remembering a quote/snippet of advice for starting "Find a way to make 10€ and then keep doing that untill there is something better to do".
As seen in that (now dead) thread I accomplished this by doing a small window cleaning operation.
While the theoretical barrier to entry is low, the work is a pain to fulfill so there is really no "competition" for me in my area. "Competition" solely refers to Entrepreneurs and hustlers trying to make a quick buck.
There are obviously actual companies from professional window cleaners (yes that's a bachelor level thing in Germany with 3 years of training).
However they all have horrible pages and no real funnels for their customers.

This lead me to the conclusion that a window cleaning business is my top option for now.


This is especially true for learning to:
-hire low level workers
-build a brand image
-create repeat customers
-aquire customers
-manage orders
-registrate a official company
-pay taxes
-do the hard work, especially when I don't feel like it
-solve a million other problems that translate to other business ventures

My next update will be my first "marketing campaign" using the 1k Flyers I ordered online(30€).
The step after this is to build out the online presence, especially the landing page.

The big goal is to archive predictable profitability by the end of this year. While I don't think this will be my final business, it could be. The top window cleaning business in Germany is at 500 million a year after all.



P.s. If you read this far, thanks a lot.
Should you want to help me out just write down what comes to your mind.

 

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[Subsonic]

It seems the sales and negotiation books payed off...

10.3.2023

Big win today. I went to the car dealership with the expectation the make around 50€ to start out.
NOPE.
I used the tip from here and asked what the guy before me charged and he got 180. I then proposed 140€ and the owner was happy with that offer. They also need someone to wipe the floor once a month and I offered them 80€ a month for the job and they agreed.

In total I closed a deal for 220€ that I'll get over this month.
Tomorrow I'll do their windows and then a bit later the floor.

Now I have so much to burn on ads haha.

 

[Subsonic]

Oh F*ck this went from 0 to 100 really quick.

6.3.

Today, while in biology class, I got a call from a prospect. I thought it would be a sweet grandma with a big home or something similar but nope.
It's my towns car dealership. They need someone to pretty up their storefront and tidy up inside one or two times a month.
So now I have 3 days to get a legal corperation registered and find out how to do formal invoices.
This deal could involve several hundred bucks!


I am really overwhelmed right now.
I'd love some advice on how to deal with this.

 

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[Subsonic]

To copy @piano

I MADE 500 € TODAY !

I sent out 2 articles for my writing job, 150 each and then also booked in 2 jobs for 100 each.

The 1k month is getting closer. Getting cut off from students/children healthcare insurance is also getting closer haha.
The writing is somewhat tedious but with the help of chatgpt its pretty doable (no I cant just tell it to write for me). For the actual business, I am almost done with the website (just need to wait for the photographer to respond and then do the photos) and I am talking to the big city gym tomorrow if I can hang flyers on their black board. Since lots of rich people go there, I assume I will be able to get a few customers from there.

I took the time and went through most of andys stuff on google ads and specifically ads for local businesses.


Moreover I also found a new motivation to work harder: The dodge viper and nitro boosts. It will take a while untill I can afford a Viper (its gonna be my treat for hitting 500k profit) but a nitro Kit could be fun in a few months. Nothing better than a god damm vw caddy going 0 to 100 in 5 seconds haha.

 

[Subsonic]

You should be running LSA as well. It takes like 20 minutes to set up and you only pay for calls. You can get insurance for like $30 a month and you'll need it anyway at some point.

Got it for 6 a month.
Insurance is cheap af in Germany.

Also this

These are 20x 250 Flyers. 5000 flyers.
Every 250 flyers bring me one customer on average. This means (even at half of that) this box will bring me 10 customers or more than 1k in profit.
This was my first leap of zeros. I bought this and then made a contract with the local newspaper that they hand out 3k Flyers in their newspapers for me. In total I spent about 300€ on this deal.
While little money for many, this is a pretty big chunk of money for my standards.

 

[Subsonic]

A update towards the end of the month.

I made about 900€. Yeah not quiet the 1k but it's something, right?

NO.
I paid close to 700€ in fees and other bs costs this month. That leaves me with 200€ in profit but that just about pays for my own labour so bottom line, I made no profit.

Next month I am going to make more profit, though the big deal fell through. I really need to get photos for my website so I can have online ads on my side.

I did start this business with the sole intention of learning and I need to remember that. If my goal was to earn money I wouldn't bother with all the legal stuff and just go door to door like @piano who made lots more money than me this month.

Did I learn something at least? Yes.
It's too much to write down but in essence I now understand many things one can only understand after having a business.
It's kinda like playing a song on guitar. You can hear the song and have a theoretical understanding of it. You can play it soloed and slower to practice it.

But once you manage to play it at full speed with the backing track you "feel" it in a different way. I am a entrepreneur now. Not a looser student. Not a aspiring entrepreneur.

That means I will never again struggle to make my first € because that's behind me.

 

[jclean]

Well, different industry in germany.

My experience so far has been that regular house owners frown at the idea of paying more than 80€ for window cleaning. That one car dealership that would take 8 hours for 3 people got a offer for less than 600 by another company.
Yes I can squeeze a bit more money out of window cleaning with a good brand etc. and get up to like 200 for regular houses and I will absolutly do that. My big revenue thing however is going to come from regular cleaning jobs. I can charge about 100 for 2 hours of cleaning for 2 people. Since this kind of job occurs way more often (and is for monthly contracts) it allows me to hire people way quicker and scale more.



Ill sort out google ads today and then get back to facebook this week.
Honestly I didnt know that one can just make new accounts. Thanks for pointing that out.

Hello, i have a window cleaning company in Belgium +- 10 people full time. Started in 2013. This year we will do close to 1M in revenue still a small company but i learned a lot along the way and i am more then happy to help

My thoughts:

(NUMBER 1 today is SPEED)

1) you need to find bigger houses in rich neighborhoods if your customers frown at 80€ ( 80€ for us is a small / normal size home)

2) learn how to sell and be honest ( people can smell it if your just starting your business) always ask them what is important for them.

3) focus on B2B ( or schools or big appartments...) we work a lot for companies that manage big appartmentcomplexes 2k+ jobs

4) require a minimal of 4x per year for homeowners. Our customers are mostly monthly or bi monthly

5) get an automated scheduling / invoicing tool

6) dont fall in the general cleaning trap this soon. You can grow general cleaning much quicker and bigger
But the margins are smaller and the hours are more demanding. (I know owners that do 10M a year in revenue under 10 years in business with general cleaning) but it is very labour intensive.

 

[Subsonic]

"Holy shit Boys, this could be a 1k deal..."

Outline
-Why did I choose to go door to door
-The door to door (or store to store) experience
- hitting 210 on the highway with my moms company car
-Conclusion

Why did I choose to go door to door?
@BizyDad called me out on not doing what I could. I then decided to step outside my comfort zone and actually get out there in person. I always though I was bad at approaching and selling so this could be a great way to make progress. The idea of doing it was still scary but I need MONEY. Also I can't let @piano be stronger than me haha.

The door to door experience
I knew right away that doing this alone would be annoying and demotivating as shit.
So I called up my buddy Michi and told him to meet me city center. There we met another good friend and offered him to join us on the adventure. After getting lunch we set out on the journey to find jobs. The first store I went into was a small random shit selling store that turned out to be a franchise so they already had a company cleaning for them. Interestingly enough I was not nervous at all and had a great conversation with the people there. Maybe I am just good at this...
For the next hour we probably went into 30 Stores. Michi turned out to not be great at selling and pitching, Jarno (the other guy) turned out to be a born salesman. We started working as a team and going through the stores effectively. It became really fun. Sadly there were no conversions in that hour but we ad a few people ask for business cards to call back later. After that hour we figured we needed to change something. So we hopped into the car and drove over to another town where people speak German. (The city we were in is a big immigrant city so most of the time we couldn't make good sales pitches since the store owners didn't understand german well)
The next city went way better. The people there spoke german and basically every interaction I had was positive and fun. I started responding to the "we already have a company" with " alright then I'll leave you my card anyways in case you want a better service". That was a really good one and I had lots of laughs with store owners and nice ladies at the cashier. Sadly there were still no sales. Then I got a call. It was a big car dealership from a different city. They had seen a flyer and wanted me to come over to give them a quote. Because of their size this could be a 1k job. That is, if I do it right and they paid lots for the last company that did it. Otherwise it's going to be a still massive 500 to 300 job.
After this adventure we went back to the car with still no sales. However I had one last idea: Aproach random people and ask them if they are interested. Did it work? No. But it was again lots of fun challenge each other to approach random people.

(Optional part, just a fun story)
How I hit 210 on the highway with my moms company car
On the drive back home we started playing Mario kart music in the car and just having a blast. I really enjoy this car (Opel zafira with 180hp and turbo). It's a minivan but has quiet some power. My car, a old vw caddy, is massive and cool and all but the performance just isn't there. So after some consideration I decided to go and have some fun on the highway. In Germany there is no speed limit on highways so this is totally legal. The first try I got to 160kmh before needing to slow down for a 100 sign. Since I saw that sign a bit late the brake was funny. The try I got it, one could really feel that the car did not appreciate it. It was at 4.5k rpm and the road was starting to feel really shaky. At 210kmh I was satisfied and gave the car reprise.
The adrenaline was mad and I wont do it again haha. I would also worry about gas but her company covers gas prices. The wonders of being a 100m a year private pharmacy company.


The conclusion for me is to not focus on door to door. Handing out flyers is more effective and perhaps I can couple that with door to door because it's just fun for a adrenaline junky like me.

However I now know that I am in fact not bad at social skills. I used to be a stupid kid so my family keeps telling me I am bad socially. Ha F*ck them. I am better at it then they will ever be. I am somewhat introverted but I never struggle to hold conversations.

If you see this, thanks for taking the time to read this monster of a post.

 

[Subsonic]

They say window cleaning has low entry...

11.3.2023


Today I finished the job for the car dealership.
It took 3.5 hours and payed 140€. That's ~40€ per hour. Thanks to the professional tool I got from my mom (as a startup gift for me) I was able to do this job in a reasonable ammount of time. Otherwise this would have taken maybe 6 hours and a extra ladder.

The owner was satisfied with my work and I'll be doing another job for him this month.


I also really realized that entry can also be replaced with difficulty. Sure, anyone can offer these services but you can't forget that they also have to do it. And trust me, it's HARD work.

This leads to the next objectives:

1. Get online ads going to remove the pain of handing out flyers.

2. Get a guy (one of my bros) hired at 15€ an hour on a minojob basis to help me with the jobs.

3. Secure deals with the other local stores here.


On a side note, I made some really decent money selling old pokemon games. They can go for up to 250€ if you have the original case and 1,6k if it's still sealed.

 

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[BizyDad]

I even considered doing it for free or close to free just to get a testimony and some good photos for the website.

If you need to do free work to build up a portfolio, do it for the grandma.

This is a car dealership. If you offer them something for free, they might think you're not professional enough to be trusted to do the work.

Go there, be dressed professionally, and be prepared to close a deal.

If you do what I said above, then you will have already gotten an agreement from him on how much it will be.

So when it comes time to close the deal, all you have to do is say great, I can come back on Monday at 2:00 to do the work.

If they say yes, take the office managers or general managers business card (so that you have an email address to send the invoice to) and leave.

 

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[Subsonic]

Scaling the Business

Covered in this post

• MRR system
• Ads
• Getting workers
  

MRR System

I have a few deals behind me and a few more scheduled. Now its time to level up this business. Inspired by @Johnny boy ill go implement a MRR System to charge/upsell clients to.
This would allow me to drastically increase the profit and revenue of the business and have a compounding effect on new clients. It would also give me consistent jobs, which is going to be essential for hiring workers down the line.


Ads

Since I dont want to carry out 10k flyers I will have to pay some money for ads. The first thing I am going to do is give some of my broke friends 30€ each to carry out the rest of the 1k flyers I have.
Next thing is buying @Andy Black 's course on google ads and learn those while google is procesing my aplication. I suspect that ppc ads will be the most cost effective and time effective way to aquire customers. The necesary landing page is also in the works.
My goal is to keep the cpa below 30€ when starting out. Otherwise its going to suck to fulfill orders for effectivly minimum wage.


Getting Workers

Germany has been a pain in the a$$ for me so far. Yet 2 good things are the small company law and the minijob law: Both are exempt from tax. That means I can scale to about 2k a month without a need for paying taxes (profit btw).
The current prospects I have are 2 pothead looseres and a friend who is not a looser.
However they could potentially be enough to make me 2k a month if the cpa stays low enough and the margins dont get squeezed by paying 15 per hour.


Conclusion

This is going to be the hardest thing I have done so far. My parents really dont want me to turn this essentially mini job into a real business. Well, they dont need to know about that stuff anyways. Its also going to be hard because I need to leave my comfort zone on so many levels.

The question is have now are the following:

1. What can I charge clients 80 to 150 a month for that they would be happy to pay ?
2. How do I manage the invoices ?
   
   
   
   
   
   P.s. I hope you like this new formating. After seeing @Fox post the "I want to B rich" thread I resolved to put more effort into the posts.

 

[BizyDad]

Why did I choose to go door to door?
@BizyDad called me out on not doing what I could.

Who me?

I think I'm getting a little too much credit here. All I did was take a screenshot of your catchphrase. I let you take that however you wanted to take it.

"Holy shit Boys, this could be a 1k deal..."

Outline
-Why did I choose to go door to door
-The door to door (or store to store) experience
- hitting 210 on the highway with my moms company car
-Conclusion

Why did I choose to go door to door?
@BizyDad called me out on not doing what I could. I then decided to step outside my comfort zone and actually get out there in person. I always though I was bad at approaching and selling so this could be a great way to make progress. The idea of doing it was still scary but I need MONEY. Also I can't let @piano be stronger than me haha.

The door to door experience
I knew right away that doing this alone would be annoying and demotivating as shit.
So I called up my buddy Michi and told him to meet me city center. There we met another good friend and offered him to join us on the adventure. After getting lunch we set out on the journey to find jobs. The first store I went into was a small random shit selling store that turned out to be a franchise so they already had a company cleaning for them. Interestingly enough I was not nervous at all and had a great conversation with the people there. Maybe I am just good at this...
For the next hour we probably went into 30 Stores. Michi turned out to not be great at selling and pitching, Jarno (the other guy) turned out to be a born salesman. We started working as a team and going through the stores effectively. It became really fun. Sadly there were no conversions in that hour but we ad a few people ask for business cards to call back later. After that hour we figured we needed to change something. So we hopped into the car and drove over to another town where people speak German. (The city we were in is a big immigrant city so most of the time we couldn't make good sales pitches since the store owners didn't understand german well)
The next city went way better. The people there spoke german and basically every interaction I had was positive and fun. I started responding to the "we already have a company" with " alright then I'll leave you my card anyways in case you want a better service". That was a really good one and I had lots of laughs with store owners and nice ladies at the cashier. Sadly there were still no sales. Then I got a call. It was a big car dealership from a different city. They had seen a flyer and wanted me to come over to give them a quote. Because of their size this could be a 1k job. That is, if I do it right and they paid lots for the last company that did it. Otherwise it's going to be a still massive 500 to 300 job.
After this adventure we went back to the car with still no sales. However I had one last idea: Aproach random people and ask them if they are interested. Did it work? No. But it was again lots of fun challenge each other to approach random people.

(Optional part, just a fun story)
How I hit 210 on the highway with my moms company car
On the drive back home we started playing Mario kart music in the car and just having a blast. I really enjoy this car (Opel zafira with 180hp and turbo). It's a minivan but has quiet some power. My car, a old vw caddy, is massive and cool and all but the performance just isn't there. So after some consideration I decided to go and have some fun on the highway. In Germany there is no speed limit on highways so this is totally legal. The first try I got to 160kmh before needing to slow down for a 100 sign. Since I saw that sign a bit late the brake was funny. The try I got it, one could really feel that the car did not appreciate it. It was at 4.5k rpm and the road was starting to feel really shaky. At 210kmh I was satisfied and gave the car reprise.
The adrenaline was mad and I wont do it again haha. I would also worry about gas but her company covers gas prices. The wonders of being a 100m a year private pharmacy company.


The conclusion for me is to not focus on door to door. Handing out flyers is more effective and perhaps I can couple that with door to door because it's just fun for a adrenaline junky like me.

However I now know that I am in fact not bad at social skills. I used to be a stupid kid so my family keeps telling me I am bad socially. Ha F*ck them. I am better at it then they will ever be. I am somewhat introverted but I never struggle to hold conversations.

If you see this, thanks for taking the time to read this monster of a post.

That said, I'm glad this was such a positive experience for you overall.

The conclusion for me is to not focus on door to door.

But you didn't really do it. And almost nobody gets results their first time out. So how is this the conclusion?

Last I checked, @piano doesn't need moral support to go out and close business door to door.

You're the one that said you're leaving thousands on the table by not doing door to door.

So you went out once with two buddies, had some laughs, and now you think it's not the right thing for you?

That doesn't add up.

(Psst... Now this is me calling you out. )

It's your business bro. If you're happy leaving thousands on the table while other people go door to door, I'll shut up.

You know, just a thought here. But maybe, you get that one buddy of yours to go door to door for you. Sounds like he's a natural...

Offer to pay him a commission off of every client he brings in and every job you do for that client for a year...

 

[Primeperiwinkle]

Wait. Wait.

PLOT TWIST!! The only two window cleaning people on the forum live in the same city?!?!? Ohmygosh!!!!

This is the window washing drama we’ve all been waiting for!

ETA: just realized there’s another one of you guys! Love it!

 

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[Subsonic]

@savefox I implemented your tips and also incorperated some of andys google ads stuff and now its actually working. Traffic is kinda low (11 impressions a day) but I got a lead and probably customer the just today when the campain started running.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Oh F*ck this went from 0 to 100 really quick.

6.3.

Today, while in biology class, I got a call from a prospect. I thought it would be a sweet grandma with a big home or something similar but nope.
It's my towns car dealership. They need someone to pretty up their storefront and tidy up inside one or two times a month.
So now I have 3 days to get a legal corperation registered and find out how to do formal invoices.
This deal could involve several hundred bucks!


I am really overwhelmed right now.
I'd love some advice on how to deal with this.

Invoices are simple. Just look up examples online and do one up in Google Docs. Google Docs probably has templates for this.

I can't advise about the corporation part if you're in Germany. Don't know anything about their legal business processes.

If you were in the United States, I'd say just get started even if the entity isn't formed yet. You would automatically operate as a sole proprietor anyway until you filed as an LLC or other business entity through the Secretary of State's website.

If a legal entity is absolutely necessary over there, then you might consider outsourcing the work to another contractor until you're set up legally.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Invoices are simple. Just look up examples online and do one up in Google Docs. Google Docs probably has templates for this.

I can't advise about the corporation part if you're in Germany. Don't know anything about their legal business processes.

If you were in the United States, I'd say just get started even if the entity isn't formed yet. You would automatically operate as a sole proprietor anyway until you filed as an LLC or other business entity through the Secretary of State's website.

If a legal entity is absolutely necessary over there, then you might consider outsourcing the work to another contractor until you're set up legally.

Lex, getting divorced made you more handsome, I swear

(and I know, random, but here's the first time I saw your new pp lol)

 

[BizyDad]

Oh F*ck this went from 0 to 100 really quick.

6.3.

Today, while in biology class, I got a call from a prospect. I thought it would be a sweet grandma with a big home or something similar but nope.
It's my towns car dealership. They need someone to pretty up their storefront and tidy up inside one or two times a month.
So now I have 3 days to get a legal corperation registered and find out how to do formal invoices.
This deal could involve several hundred bucks!


I am really overwhelmed right now.
I'd love some advice on how to deal with this.

Wunderbar. (I just started learning German) Congratulations. That's proof that your idea is working.

Take a deep breath. Envision yourself going there. Make a list of questions you want to ask. That way when you go there, you know how to get them talking, and you'll come off as more professional.

Ask them what happened to their old guy who did this work. Ask how much they used to pay.

Whatever they say, tell him you'll be able to match that price. (Unless you think you can't for some reason). Once you get good at this, you'll be able to ask for more and justify it. But right now just worry about closing this deal and getting your first client under your belt.

If you have any other questions, post them and we can help out.

 

[Subsonic]

Just say no to Wix.

Friends don't let friends use Wix.

He's competition...

 

[Subsonic]

Employees are the Best Thing Ever!

Contens

1. Short Update
2. Why the Title
3. What this means for the future

Short update
I had a great week with 2 Jobs on satureday, totalling 160€. Well it would have but the heavens had different plans. That caused the second Job to fall flat in a furious thunderstorm. The first one was a floor Job but took way longer than expected. In the future I will price that in and take more for floors.

Why the Title ?
Since the 2 Jobs had rather little Buffer in between each other I got scared that I would be too slow by myself. So I called up my buddy Michail and offered him to work for me for 25€ per Job. He accepted and got up at 5am on a Saturday to be in my Village on time. Unsuprisingly the doubled manpower cut the time for the Job in half. Since this "half" turned out to be 3 hours I was really F*cking glad to not be there alone.

What this means for the future
I will go and file a minijob thing for my buddies. This comes just right since I am starting to do more advertising. A ad in the local newspaper costs 230€ for about 50k impressions as they claim. I am going to take a tenth of that and say 5k impressions is the real number. Still, at a 0.1 conversion I would double my money. If my math is off and I get way more than that I really need some employees if I dont want to make the customers wait 3 weeks or more for service.

 

[Subsonic]

So I have 2 potential employees right now.
I also got a job as a copywriter for a friend of my dad. He runs a online company and needs someone to write bolg articles that are seo optimized. I get 3ct per word and it's a great thing to do while there is nothing else to do.

I am going to pay some more money this month for ads.
The local newspapers are a great channel to reach my ideal customers. It's also pretty cheap to get a ad there.

The goal is to make 1k this month.
Last month it was 300 and I made ~700.

 

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[Subsonic]

Wait, so did you pay the 1k now or later, or won't at all? I don't really understand.

It's only 130 I have to pay.
The 1k is only if I was a bigger company.

 

[savefox]

Small update

I managed to fix google ads but my worst fear came true:

People went to the website.

The website has the problem that its a "to check the box" website (its terrible) and I thought people would just call me. Sadly not so I am pausing the ads untill I have the good website up. However the ctr seems to be decent (180 impressions, 16 clicks).

I am also going to change the campaign from smart campaign to a real one since I saw andy saying that smart campaigns cant be trusted.

Don't spend any more money on google ads. Buy @Andy Black course first. All those people that clicked weren't even looking for window cleaning most likely

 

[BizyDad]

Never thought I would post here again but I got like way too many calls to not mention it.

2x 130 from a landlord with two medium houses

1x ~350 from a grandma with a mansion I can't clean.

1x 100 from the monthly job at a car dealership (-60 making a friend do it for me)

1x 120 from another homeowner.

With no ad spent. That means if all those (that I can do) go through I am taking home close to 500€ this month, not counting in my actual venture lol.

Btw I will not get back into this biz. It's horrible, I don't have the means to scale it and I don't want to spend the next ten years of my life cleaning windows or managing people who clean windows.

What are you doing with your time that is so valuable that you can afford to throw away free money like this?

Dude, if nothing else, find someone to buy your website.

 

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[jclean]

Congratulations man.

Since I am at around 0 to 4 Jobs per week right now, my focus is on getting more recurring revenue and a cheaper cpa perhaps.

The path I see towards that is improving the service quality and maybe implementing a standardized recurring plan for customers ?

The crm part is something I'll look into once I get about 1 job a day.

Thanks for the pointers.

Always try to aim for a minimum of 4 services per year.

Hard to judge if your cpa is worth the money yes or no.

A bad cpa can end up costing you a lot more.

What seems like a lot of money now is relative in a few years.

 

[Subsonic]

Just a question, did you create a Gewerbe (=company)? And also, do you already have a website or is it still in planning?

Website is in the works right now. It's gonna be a landing page together with the about us and other basic things for now.

I don't not have a gewerbe yet because I only had nice grandmas as clients so far. I will get it over with as soon as I can to be able to do all the legal company things.

 

[Subsonic]

I was thinking about your problem with not having a legal entity. Can you not just delay invoicing until you are registered?

So it means that you will be working without getting paid initially, but once you are registered you just deliver the invoices for all work completed so far.

It's not uncommon in the UK for tradesmen to invoice months after they have completed the work.

I know that it sucks from a cashflow perspective, but it might be a way of buying you some time.

No problem I already got the legal entity.

I had no idea about anything legal but I decided to just act.

I walked into the local government representatives office and said "Hey I want to register a company".

15 minutes and 36€ later and now I am a ceo.

I'll get my tax number in a few weeks so in the mean time I can't send invoices over 250€. No issue tho as I am not doing enterprise deals just yet haha.

 

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[Subsonic]

Just got another client at 80€ next weekend. If I do her home and the mopping job I'll be at 160.
Granted, her house is a 3 story building so I'll be doing some ladder acrobatics haha.

 

[Subsonic]

Hey young man, do you really want to do this for 50€...

15.3.

Two big lessons for today. The first one is that I need to be more confident in charging more money. This grandma that called today has a huge mansion or something and I was gonna do it for 50€. That would have been so bad that even she didn't want to take the deal and insisted I take more. So we settled on 80€. Imagine getting roasted by a client for charging too little money.

The other one is that my "50% off for new customers" on my flyers is pointless because nobody wants the discount or even mentions it. Also because doing it for 50% less would be stupid for obvious reasons.

In therms of finances, between pokemon games on eBay, crypto and business I'll probably be making over 700€ this month and ~ 600€ profit.

That's more than a quarter of my one year goal of earning 2k this year.


As a bonus lesson, I really understand "pay yourself first" now. The reason I can make 50€ per hour with no qualifications is that I get paid first, not last.
The guy I'll hire next month (if things work out well enough) will be paid 15 per hour.
Still I don't have to pay taxes yet.

 

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[Subsonic]

Alright tomorrow I got a meeting with the advertising guy from a decently sized newspaper.
Prices start at 100 a month and contracts are typically 6 months to a year.
The guy has been doing newspaper ads for 30 years now and claims that many companies that started small could scale massively thanks to the ads on there. Safe to say they know how to advertise for smaller local companies.

Thanks to the copywriting job I can easily afford 100 to 200 a month in ads without cutting into my savings.
Also I really just want to have some more jobs to do and money coming in.
@piano is getting close to making more money than me.


As a side note, I know that newspaper is a dying medium and only read by old people. But guess who my best customers are? Old people.
The ad will also hopefully give me some more credibility with the local stores so I can contract them for regular cleaning jobs.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

@Subsonic - check out my experience in hiring window cleaners, and why my wife hired them. It's in the Random Thread. Might be some takeaways there for ya.

 

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