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Free registration at the forum removes this block.This is one of those situations where you have to search deep inside yourself because there's no "one size fits all" answer.Should I wait until next year when I have more repeat customers? Or should I just find someone who can work part time?
Here's a good way to set it up:I'll be hiring a virtual assistant from Philippines for $6 an hour to manage inbound calls, customer service and social media when I start getting more leads,
Nail it for yourself and then scale by doing this, or creating a platform you own that sends leads to partner carpet cleaners?a marketing company for carpet cleaners?
Here's a few things I do for my carpet cleaning clients:Just a quick update. Yes, I'm still doing it, though it's going pretty slow right now, but it should pick up some time around March. It's normal in the home service industry. I'm planning to quit my full-time job when I'm able to do 1 or 2 carpet cleaning jobs per day. I'm doing 2-3 per week right now. The average ticket is around $300.
It is a great business with high margins. You can easily make $400-500 for 2 hours of work while spending about $10 dollars on gas and chemicals. The most difficult part is getting those high-margin jobs, because the competition is fierce.
So the demand is definitely there. I think the problem is that there's not enough value skew. I have a nicely designed website with an online booking system, good customer service, a 100% guarantee on cleaning results, a fast dry time, no bait-and-switch tactics. But there are companies that have all of that too, plus hundreds of reviews. I need to think about how I can differentiate myself from them.
That's a good idea, I just went and bought a pressure washer. I will add pressure washing to my services and if it goes well, I'll probably create a pressure washing and soft washing company, because carpet cleaning and pressure washing sounds kind of weird togetherPressure washing could be another upsell. People that are in let’s get the carpets cleaned mode are probably also open to having a nice clean driveway and paths too.
Idk what it is about our industry, but every time I see someone come out with a carpet cleaning mentoring course they get absolutely destroyed by the community. For some reason carpet cleaners don't like to pay anything above $0 when it comes to coaching/courses. Not saying it can't be done though.Maybe I should offer a course on how to start a carpet cleaning business or some kind of coaching! Or a marketing company for carpet cleaners?
I was a client of Ads Grow Business for a very brief time. They are one of the largest marketing companies for carpet cleaners despite the fact that their leads are either fake or the lowest quality ever. If you can be a detective and find out who their customers are, you can have a very effective rip and replace campaign.I heard a lot of complaints from carpet cleaners that agencies send them fake leads, and complaints from agencies that carpet cleaners can't close the leads that get sent to them, because they don't contact them in time, don't follow up etc and cancel the service eventually.
I heard a lot of complaints from carpet cleaners that agencies send them fake leads, and complaints from agencies that carpet cleaners can't close the leads that get sent to them, because they don't contact them in time, don't follow up etc and cancel the service eventually.Nail it for yourself and then scale by doing this, or creating a platform you own that sends leads to partner carpet cleaners?
Hi! The profit margin is about 65%. Chemicals cost maybe 1-2% of the revenue, and I spent about $1000 on maintenance last year. The biggest cost was marketing, because I didn't have any repeat business and had to buy every customer. Hopefully this year I'll get more repeat customers. I've set up automatic SMS and email reminders and postcards with discounts on other services every 1,3,6, 9 and 12 months.In terms of profit how much would you say you get to take home ? 50%? A little bit more ?
How do you manage your business finances ? How much % are you keeping for chemicals and vans maintenance ?
I've been following your journey on this thread and i can't say anything more than congratulation and to keep the grind !
People prefer to to talk to people rather than deal with an impersonal form-filling process online.I was looking into getting a call answering service. Just need more leads to pay for it. I don't know why they need to call when they can just book online and even get a discount for it.
yeah, I skipped the door knocking part because it's not scalable and I didn't have time for that, and started focusing on internet marketing right away. It took me about 6 months to figure out what to do, and I'm still not there yet. Like @Johnny boy said, you need to be your own lead gen company. You can make 10s of thousands in revenue per month with an optimized GMB, Google Ads of Facebook ads, LSA, referral program for your customers, getting repeat clients etc. Are you doing just window cleaning? Can you buy a pressure washer and add that to your services? Or gutter cleaning? Roof cleaning? Combine them in packages (good, better, best) and upsellHey man, reading this tread has been really motivating.
Your business is basically the same as mine, just a few level higher.
Good luck on your further journey.
Just don't do steep roofs.Yeah I'll do that when I can.
Since I have no clue about websites and online backend, that stuff will take me another week. Also flyers have proven to be alright but it's starting to get expensive now.
The upsell thing is great. I am gonna look for a safe way to work on roofs, since that has a high barrier to entry and I can charge way more money for that.
Pretty sure the guy who cleaned ours didn’t have one, I didn’t pay enough attention. I really don’t think anyone would care or even know what a truck mount is.Made $10k in May and quit my 30k a year job yesterday! Hit a new record of $1300 today from 5 jobs. Should I invest in a truck mount? Would you care what method of cleaning your carpet cleaner used? I'm using a $500 floor buffer and it cleans pretty well as long as the carpet is pretty clean to begin with, just doesn't look professional. Truck mounts are around $10-20k
Thank you for replying! Yes, I want to deal with real business problems like hiring and firing and organizing all the processes so the business can run without me working full time in it. When I hired my VA, it felt really good. It really motivated me to work harder because now I have a person who entirely depends on me to feed their kids and pay rent! Having more employees will motivate me even more.This is one of those situations where you have to search deep inside yourself because there's no "one size fits all" answer.
Do you want to deal with managing, hiring, firing, quality control, tough conversations, etc? This is an industry where things can get ugly if you make the wrong hire. One of my employees robbed a customer and I ended up getting sued for it. Not fun, but it's part of the game when you have a biz that requires employees to enter a client's home.
When I needed part time employees I found that the best ones were retired airline suitcase workers. They're reliable, work very hard(transporting suitcases all day is exhausting), and don't want a full-time income because they already have their pension. They just want some extra pocket money.
If you want to go the solo route but make more money, another option is to aggressively raise your prices. You have clients who are loyal to you regardless of price simply because you've earned their trust when entering their home.
Those 2 are great, also The Clean Up is a great carpet cleaning group still small enough that there's zero negativity but big enough that there's some great content.Join some FB groups.
Truckmount Forums
Cleaners Connect
Yes, and provided you are consistently making good profits you could even consider franchising your business. Service businesses are very often franchised. The franchises amount to buying a job, but there are plenty of service franchise networks that have grown to be huge businesses.But once you are in a business for some time you will figure out how to scale, hiring more staff or providing higher margin service for instance.
yes, I've read it like 5 times actually. That's what inspired me to start a service business@savefox read this thread: GOLD! - HOT! - Starting (and Fastlaning) a lawn care service business
he runs a different business, but your business should have a lot of the same fundamentals
he was also 21 when he started his
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