Starting and Scaling an Exterior Cleaning Business at 21

[EthanH]

Lots has happened this past week...

It's been pretty crazy this past week. I'm now at 2.2K likes, all from within my local community.
I'm top out of 13,000 people in my town's Facebook group. I've received lots of interesting messages from people: asking me to speak at meetings, join networking events, speak on local radio, I had the local Santa ask me if I want to help out cleaning the sleigh in time for Christmas, I've had a racing company ask if I want a passenger ride in their new demo race car and one of the most exciting things has happened just now as I was writing this, someone from the BBC has called me and interviewed me for a potential story about the work I've been doing. This would be absolutely huge for me and the business.

I've only advertised once this week and it was to a really small group and I've had about 12 enquiries for the week which is great compared to the usual 2 and I haven't even started advertising to the main groups. I also started a GoFundMe and received £235 in under 24 hours which is pretty cool. I also have one of my first commercial jobs which is a full gutter clean of an NHS health centre, so this may be the start of something cool too.

I went to a networking event and made about 5 connections with one really exciting one being with a guy who owns a property management company that manages £15M+ of property in my area. He's called me since, and is interested in getting me started on a maintenance contract of sorts, starting off with a few of his properties with a view to move to all properties. This would include all of my services, so monthly window cleans, gutter / fascia cleans twice a year and pressure washing once a year. So from this one connection there could potentially £10K-£20K annually.

I'm making a conscious effort to respond to every comment with a unique and genuine response too which has been a great way of keeping up the engagement and I've has a couple of customers come from people commenting on my posts already.

I was super overwhelmed with the reaction at first as I am usually pretty introverted but now I'm adjusting to it. The other thing that I'm fighting with in my head a bit is I feel like every time I post about myself doing this work, that it's ingenuine as I'm partly doing this for the business, not just because I want to do it for the community. Also, it feels like there's a huge amount of eyes on me and pressure for me to make this work, which is great to have but also daunting too.

I'll attach a few images of what's been going on below:

As always, I'd be really interested to hear what everyone's thoughts are and if there's any recommendations / suggestions for where to go with this.

 

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[EthanH]

Hi everyone!

My name is Ethan, I'm 21 years old from the UK and I have spent the last 2 of years working in office jobs, possessing all the traits of a typical Wantrepreneur, always wanting to change but never actually taking any action. Whilst I was told by many how lucky I was to be presented with such a great opportunity at such a young age, I knew working for someone else would never be for me.

I was inspired by MJs books and have read both the Millionaire Fastlane and Unscripted at least 3 times each and have found threads by Johnny Boy / Piano / Subsonic especially useful. I decided to leave my safe and stable office job to commit full time to creating and growing my Exterior Cleaning Business. The main services I offer are pressure washing (patios / driveways), house washing, roof cleaning and gutter / fascia cleaning. This business does not fulfil CENTS however I needed to take action or see myself waste away behind a desk.

My short term goal is to generate £3k profit in my first month. Aiming for £5k/month after 6 months, and £10k/ month after 12.

I will keep this thread updated to track my progress / mistakes as I know I have found other threads similar to this extremely valuable. I would really appreciate any advice / feedback from you all as I get started in my journey. Thankyou for reading!

Note: This is my first post so let me know if I'm doing it right.

 

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[EthanH]

I decided to work for free and have reached thousands with my content...

After spending the last few weeks continuing at the same pace with the business I decided to try something new.

I spent a few hours driving around my local area cleaning up road signs that had been covered in algae / dirt to make them visible again.

I decided to take a couple of videos and before / after pictures as I went around.

I then posted about what I've been doing in my local community Facebook group.

Long story short, the engagement has been huge. From 1 post in my local community Facebook group I have received 532 likes and over 100 comments! I understand these numbers are not significant in the era of videos getting millions of likes / views but this means that 500 potential customers in my target area like and support what I've been doing. If I've received 500+ likes I can only imagine that the post has been seen by thousands.

The population of my town is about 25K people so if we assume that for 500 people to like it then at least 2500 people will have seen it. This means that 10% of my local community have seen me in action which is huge. It's been a goal of mine to get my face known in the local community so this is a great leap forward.

This group only allows promotional posts on one day of the week (Wednesday) so my post was from my personal account and I didn't even mention my company. But this has been amazing publicity for people clicking on my profile and seeing my company in my bio.

I have so far received free pizza, gift cards, people offering to pay me and over a hundred comments thanking me. I've spoken to quite a few people who are eager for me to set up crowdfunding too, which would allow me to take donations to continue doing this work in my spare time and get paid for it.

I plan on spending a few hours each week continuing to do this work to grow my public image.

The plan for now is to post a couple of times a week with the work I have been doing in the community in order to keep up the engagement. Then once a week (on the business promotion days) I will promote my business to the same people who have been supporting me.

This was only in 1 area with a group size of 12K members. There are 2 / 3 more groups of similar sizes within a few miles of me that I could post in too. In total I estimate that there are another 40K members in these groups that I could target my posts to.

I'm considering partnering with another local service business such as a gardener. This would mean I could clean the signs and they could trim the hedges covering the signs. It'd be a great way to build connections with other local business owners too. Whilst gaining publicity for them too.

The biggest question I have now is how to successfully monetise this. I don't want to completely sell out to the people who've supported me, but at the same time, I think this is a massive opportunity to accelerate my business growth. I just need to find the right way to go about this.

This has been my way of implementing @Andy Black 's mantra of "Help people. Get paid. Help more people".

Now its time to figure out the "Get paid" part...


I'm excited to hear what your thoughts are and if you guys have any advice / ideas.

I apologise for the ramble this post has been but the amount of engagement and opportunities this could potentially mean is quite overwhelming.

I'll attach a screen recording of the post below so you can see it too.

Thanks guys!

View attachment Sign-cleaning Facebook Post.mov

 

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[EthanH]

I've had one of the most fulfilling days I've had in a long time today. I had two gutter cleaning jobs, one I found on Bark and the other one was my first ever customer from Google ads, they were much closer to my home too. (20 minutes away vs the usual 40) One job was £65 and one was £50, but it was the customers that made it so enjoyable. I spoke to a couple of people passing who stopped to chat when I was working and I felt much more confident talking to them about what I do (I've been extremely shy my entire life). I felt extremely happy with the amount of value I provided and I was able to get two really great 5 star reviews.

One customer, after seeing my other reviews has contacted me back about getting their entire driveway / patio pressure washed. This lead only cost me £10 to get and now in total is worth £230 to me in revenue. I have £290 of extra work already booked in for later this week and it's only Monday. It feels so much better knowing I have work coming up vs trying to desperately get jobs for the day.

I've had a few days a couple of weeks ago where I was completely lost and feeling defeated but days like this make it all worth it. Just bringing value to people fills me with so much joy. I'm eating / sleeping / working out a lot better than I was and I can feel the effects already. I just need to keep working hard at it and not letting it get to my head.

As always I have a million miles to go with this but I thought I'd share this as it has been one of my happiest days of the year so far (shows how boring my life used to be)

Thanks to everyone who engages with these posts, it really helps me out

 

[EthanH]

Welcome Ethan! What's going to be the first steps you take to get your first customer?

Thankyou! As of last Friday I've done about £700 worth of work for customers I have found using an app called "Bark" It essentially allows me to purchase leads for about £7 per lead and so far I've purchased 8 leads costing approx. £60 in total and have made £510 so far with another £350 job lined up for Friday.

So overall I'm really happy with the ROI of this. Each £1 spent is making me over £14 in work. I'm aiming to hit £1000 revenue in my first week and this is only using one form of marketing / lead gen.

I want to start trying other marketing approaches such as Facebook and Google Ads but don't know where to start with this if you have any advice?

I think within a few weeks if I up my marketing I could average £2500 a week revenue.

 

[EthanH]

Hard day today. I had a house washing job and to be honest I felt like I was out of my depth. I was upfront with the customer and told them that the results were not going to be as good as they could've been. I offered to discount my services but they insisted on paying the full amount. Total revenue was £360 with a profit of £330. Almost an entire weeks wage at my office job earnt in under 6 hours. If I'm able to increase the quality of my work, up my prices and get more leads via ads I think a 10K month isn't too far away. Just need to stay consistent.

 

[EthanH]

Week 2

Last week's goals:

• Deposit all cash (I'm often paid in cash and it doesn't always make it to the business account(I know I'm a moron))
• Create new Flyers with up to date pricing
• Complete all outstanding quotes
• Clean 5 signs
• Post about sign cleaning
• Create FB post to catch all visitors from my sign cleaning posts
• Start new gym membership
• Cancel all unused subscriptions

This past week has been good, I've spoken to a company that will handle inbound calls on my behalf and I'm getting them to start at the start of next week, I thought it'd be hundreds but its only £60/month for the basic package (I'm currently missing 1-2 calls a week due to being on jobs / busy so this is costing me about £600 a month)

I've also invested quite a lot of money into getting the equipment for roof cleaning, it seems for about 1 in 10 gutter cleaning jobs I'll have the customer ask me for a quote to clean their roof (without me really mentioning it to them (It's a pretty easy upsell)). It's a much bigger job and involves scraping all the moss from the roof and then applying a chemical to stop regrowth. My minimum price for a roof clean is £550 which ends up being about £370 after costs so it's pretty lucrative. Once I gain more confidence in the service then I could be doing roof cleans for thousands in the future (I know many companies that do this already)

I've purchased a new phone to use 100% for business use so I can finally split my personal and business life up a bit better, this also makes the call answering service much more effective as I'd imagine it'd be quite awkward to have my Dad calling me and it going through to my "Customer Service Department". This will allow me to focus much better on business tasks throughout the day without the distraction of my personal phone.

The final bit of equipment I've invested in is an inspection camera (basically a go pro at the end of a 30ft pole) which allows me to eliminate the use of ladders on 99% of jobs as I'll be able to see what I am doing from the safety of the ground. This could also be a potential selling point as in the future, when I am quoting jobs, I'll be able to record footage of the roof / guttering for the customer to show them up close the problems they are having. I can also use the camera to film myself working to use in promotional material in the future for social media / my website. This also allows me to reach up to 3 stories whereas I can only see what I'm doing up to 2 stories by use of my ladder.

Goals for next week

• Create new Flyers with up to date pricing
• Start new gym membership
• Cancel all unused subscriptions
• Create new Flyers with up to date pricing
• Set up call answering service
• Book in roof cleaning jobs
• Find a place in my community to clean for social media
• Implement inspection cam into day to day jobs
• Change phone number on website / social media
• Order new batch of uniform

Thanks to you all for reading this, it really helps me hold myself accountable.

 

[jclean]

I'm not sure what that exact issue was but basically I applied a mixture of Sodium Hypochlorite and other chemicals designed to remove organic growth from render and brushed it in with a water fed pole and I'd leave it to sit for about 30 minutes to activate the chemicals and then rinse it off with water. The issue I was having was that there were some very stubborn marks on the render that wouldn't come off even after multiple applications of the chemical. The customer still ended up leaving me a 5 star review however due to my persistence so she must've been somewhat pleased.

I'd definitely recommend getting into pressure washing but most of my work over the past week has come from gutter / fascia cleaning and I still haven't had a proper pressure washing job yet despite investing over £2500 in equipment. The only problem I'm finding is some customers view it as the same as being a gardener and think anything above £25ph is outrageous but I price per job and sometimes my hourly rate comes to £60+ /hour.

10 years in the same business here is some insight :

Pressure washing has good margins but try to focus on recurring revenue like window cleaning.
This wil keep you busy all year round and not only from march until september.
Window cleaning is also easier to scale with employees.
Pressure washers are very unreliable for that reason we only rent this equipment. Some months 2 weeks. Owning the equipment isn't worth the headache been there done that.

I have seen your picture. You currently like most of us in this business and dont have a brand that stands out and for that reason you will always be depended of marketing and expensive ads.

Try to look different from al your competitors.
You want that people turn there head for your van. And more important remember your brand.
You are just starting now you can change everything very easy and inexpensive.

1)Work with a visual an animal, a mascotte...
2)Choose colors that are not typical in your sector maybe purple and orange instead of blue and white.

Read the e-myth by M. Gerber for some reason this book 'clicks' very well for service business owners.

If there is something i can help you with just shoot i am glad to help.

 

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[EthanH]

First update in what seems like forever:

Hi everyone, I am alive believe it or not.

Over the past 6 weeks or so I've been super inconsistent with my business. I've neglected to update this thread as I believed I couldn't top the progress I had made. Whilst I'm still making progress, the main thing holding me back is the lack of basic discipline and consistency, which is reflected in my posting. I've had my best week of £1700+ but I've also had weeks that have been £0 too. I was on the news with my best friend too which was pretty cool (I'll share this in the future). But overall, over the past 6 weeks, I've let myself get in my own way.

I'd always been pretty shy and introverted so the relatively huge amount of media attention I was getting burnt me out pretty badly so I'm only just pulling myself back together now. I've only just got back out cleaning signs today and am hoping to make the most of this great opportunity I have.

When I'm on jobs I love it. There's nothing more rewarding to me than providing value to my customers and I'm consistently making £70+/hour (When 6 months ago I was making £8/hour). If I was fully booked out every week with my current pricing, I'd be on track to do 6 figures a year at 22. What I really struggle with is when I have to manage my own time and work on the business from home. I get in my own way and soon enough I get overwhelmed with a mountain of small tasks that I've been putting off.

After a call with @Spenny this evening, I've decided to change how I treat this thread. From now on I will be updating weekly, with my goals for the week ahead to hold myself accountable to. I'm tired of being a bitch and want to show you all that I am showing up each and every day to make this work. I don't want this to be a highlight reel of everything going well, because in reality it is often really tough work.

If anyone has any advice then please let me know.

@Andy Black

Week 1

Goals for this week

• Deposit all cash (I'm often paid in cash and it doesn't always make it to the business account(I know I'm a moron))
• Create new Flyers with up to date pricing
• Complete all outstanding quotes
• Clean 5 signs
• Post about sign cleaning
• Create FB post to catch all visitors from my sign cleaning posts
• Start new gym membership
• Cancel all unused subscriptions

 

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[EthanH]

Week 3

Last week’s goals:

• Create new Flyers with up to date pricing
• Start new gym membership
• Cancel all unused subscriptions
• Set up call answering service
• Book in roof cleaning jobs
• Find a place in my community to clean for social media
• Implement inspection cam into day to day jobs
• Change phone number on website / social media
• Order new batch of uniform

This week has been good. I’ve upped my Google ads budget from £10 to £25 / day and have had significantly more leads come through.

My phone answering service is up and running so it’s really cool when I finish a job to come back and check my phone and I’ll have a couple of messages with calls that have been picked up and the customer’s info has all been taken down, then I can call them back and get them booked in.

I’ve now got 3 roof cleans booked in, all for about £550 each so ~£1600 in total which is about 16 gutter cleans so that’s cool. Quoted my first roof clean from a lead that wasn’t a previous customer and got the job for £535 so that was really cool.

I’ve started using my “inspection cam” on some jobs, but mainly I just use it for quoting jobs. It’s much more impressive for the customer when they see me using some high tech looking stuff and seems to get me more jobs so far.

Goals for next week:

• Sort through un-used subscriptions
• Clean more signs
• Update phone number everywhere
• Deposit cash / cheques
• Fix broken van windscreen (pole slipped and smashed my windscreen so that’ll cost me £400)
• Set up new computer

Note: will reformat and add to this when I have my new computer, my laptop has died on me so I’m doing this from my phone.

 

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[EthanH]

Sunday Update:

Spoke to an accountant to get my accounts in order for £85 /month. Seems like a large amount but I know that this is something I need to get on top of.

Created "About Us" page on my website, not quite finished.

Completed first draft of community post to be posted tomorrow evening after changes.

Got some cringey photos of me and my van but it'll have to do for now.

 

[jclean]

Right, makes sense. I'm interested in adding window cleaning as a service, even if its not the main source of income it'd be useful to interact with a larger amount of customers and I could build it up over time into a bigger round. Do you have any advice for growing window cleaning in the beginning? Would you gain customers through ads or would you consider door to door whilst getting started? Thanks

View: https://youtu.be/bs1Z5DdlSDs


Here is somebody from the uk that is making a killing.
You are from the uk so if it works for him it will work for you

The most important lessons to be learned from this guy:

He only works with flyers as advertising. 10.000 a time.
( i only do google ads)

He only allows people on a 6 week or 12 week schedule. Easy to make schedules
( we do monthly bi monthly or every 3 months)

He only (mostly) works with residential clients.
( we also have big corporate clients)

He uses the same type of vans / equipment this keeps the business simple and easy to maintain.
( we do the same)

He uses a software gocardless this collects all his earned money automatically.
( something i dream off doing)

He provides +- easy services as window cleaning gutter cleaning and fascia cleaning. (We also do 4 easy services roof cleaning , solar cleaning , window cleaning, gutter cleaning)

This guy turns over more than a million pounds each year.

You dont have to invent every thing on your own. Look and learn from people that already done/doing it.

 

[Andy Black]

I decided to work for free and have reached thousands with my content...

After spending the last few weeks continuing at the same pace with the business I decided to try something new.

I spent a few hours driving around my local area cleaning up road signs that had been covered in algae / dirt to make them visible again.

I decided to take a couple of videos and before / after pictures as I went around.

I then posted about what I've been doing in my local community Facebook group.

Long story short, the engagement has been huge. From 1 post in my local community Facebook group I have received 532 likes and over 100 comments! I understand these numbers are not significant in the era of videos getting millions of likes / views but this means that 500 potential customers in my target area like and support what I've been doing. If I've received 500+ likes I can only imagine that the post has been seen by thousands.

The population of my town is about 25K people so if we assume that for 500 people to like it then at least 2500 people will have seen it. This means that 10% of my local community have seen me in action which is huge. It's been a goal of mine to get my face known in the local community so this is a great leap forward.

This group only allows promotional posts on one day of the week (Wednesday) so my post was from my personal account and I didn't even mention my company. But this has been amazing publicity for people clicking on my profile and seeing my company in my bio.

I have so far received free pizza, gift cards, people offering to pay me and over a hundred comments thanking me. I've spoken to quite a few people who are eager for me to set up crowdfunding too, which would allow me to take donations to continue doing this work in my spare time and get paid for it.

I plan on spending a few hours each week continuing to do this work to grow my public image.

The plan for now is to post a couple of times a week with the work I have been doing in the community in order to keep up the engagement. Then once a week (on the business promotion days) I will promote my business to the same people who have been supporting me.

This was only in 1 area with a group size of 12K members. There are 2 / 3 more groups of similar sizes within a few miles of me that I could post in too. In total I estimate that there are another 40K members in these groups that I could target my posts to.

I'm considering partnering with another local service business such as a gardener. This would mean I could clean the signs and they could trim the hedges covering the signs. It'd be a great way to build connections with other local business owners too. Whilst gaining publicity for them too.

The biggest question I have now is how to successfully monetise this. I don't want to completely sell out to the people who've supported me, but at the same time, I think this is a massive opportunity to accelerate my business growth. I just need to find the right way to go about this.

This has been my way of implementing @Andy Black 's mantra of "Help people. Get paid. Help more people".

Now its time to figure out the "Get paid" part...


I'm excited to hear what your thoughts are and if you guys have any advice / ideas.

I apologise for the ramble this post has been but the amount of engagement and opportunities this could potentially mean is quite overwhelming.

I'll attach a screen recording of the post below so you can see it too.

Thanks guys!

View attachment 51132

Amazing work. I love it!

I presume it takes hardly any time to clean a sign, record it, and post to Facebook. Maybe also post the same video to TikTok, Twitter, Facebook/Instagram Reels (and stories?), and other platforms that do video (even including LinkedIn)?

Get a high-viz jacket or vest with your company name on the back and subtly show it without focusing too much on it?

And/or park your van in front of the sign?

Maybe have a brightly coloured and easily recognised sign? Certainly have it highly visible if you're going to park up at the side of the road. (And please keep safe out there.)


As for monetising ... you're already getting people asking to donate, so there's people watching who are prepared to fork out.

I bet a lot of the people watching are business owners or know business owners too.

Maybe on Wednesday you post a video showing all the signs you've done that week (and maybe a map of the roads done), and say where you're planing to do them next week. Ask if they know any homes or businesses that need work done in that area, and that they they can reach out to you?

Maybe your "thing" is you clean rhe signs in an estate as you do the houses there? I bet that would get passersby talking to you and maybe asking if you could do their house.

Or maybe you ask schools if you can clean their signs for them?

Post videos of you cleaning signs for housing estates, schools, colleges, industrial estates, etc. Maybe ask people if they saw you and your van, or if they know where you were cleaning today?


I just rewatched the video. "Heart" and reply to everyone who commented on your video. Don't just say "Thanks", but do a thoughtful little reply. This increases engagement on the post and could help it's reach. It also brings people back to the post, as well as helping you deepen relationships.

In your personal profile give a nod to what you do and how people can message you. Bear in mind Facebook technically doesn't allow people to use personal profiles for business. Maybe just have the banner showing you in your work gear laughing with friends, and in your bio you mention what you do and link to your Facebook page?


Post videos and photos of you in your gear with the businesses that gave you vouchers? Maybe eating the pizza? Give them free publicity and watch more vouchers come in.


Be subtle with the sales. You've built massive good will and people will love it if they don't think it's some sales tactic. Being a proud community member doing your thing while you had a spare hour or two between jobs comes across well.

I personally like Alex H's advice of "Give, Give, Give. Get" rather than Gary V's advice of "Jab, Jab, Jab. Right Hook" (or whatever it was).


You look young if you don't mind me saying. Leverage that as people love helping youngsters get going.

"It's getting a bit unsafe cleaning road signs. Anyone know where I can get a high-viz vest printed?"

"I'm trying to create my Facebook page. Anyone know a graphic designer who could help with the banner?"

"I only just started this cleaning business and trying to create a simple website. My head is wrecked! Anyone know a simple Wordpress theme I can use? Or would Wix or something like that work just as well?"

"I can't decide on a business name. Do you prefer X, Y, or Z? Or do you have any other suggestions?"

"Anyone know a gardening company that might lend me a few tools to cut down some of the foliage?"


Have a look at Facebook Messenger CRM & Productivity : ChatSilo



See if you can get people to Like/Follow your Facebook page too? Maybe post some of the videos to your page and then share them from your personal profile? (Research this as I'm not an expert at Facebook stuff.)

Make your Facebook page a landing page for people who check it out. Make it obvious what you do, where, and how people can message you.




Thread marked GOLD and stickied.


I'm excited for you.

Just don't do videos of you washing traffic cameras. That might not go down as well...

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Upgraded to GOLD (Although I was beaten to it) not necessarily for the "fastlane" potential, but due to the hustle, grit, and marketing ingeniuity. Awesome job and it looks like your community will reward you.

Congrats and keep up the awesome work.

 

[EthanH]

Today I'm going to introduce myself (and the business) to all the local groups I can. Need to get some pictures of me and the van and I want to get my face out there. I've always been a very shy person but I know that if I want to make this work I need to do things I wouldn't usually be comfortable with.

 

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[EthanH]

First post in a while:

After speaking with several people I've decided to start moving away from pressure washing and into window cleaning as my main service. Progress has been slow due to the lack of repeat work, at the moment every day I have to be booking clients to be profitable whereas with window cleaning I will be able to set up customers on a monthly rate.

I met with a window cleaning entrepreneur in another city to buy some equipment and ended up talking to him about the business of window cleaning and learnt a lot. Within 4 years he has gone from 0 to £250K / Year from just cleaning windows and now has 4 vans and 3 full time employees, all payments are taken automatically each month on a recurring date using GoCardless and the amount of money his business generates each month is fixed. I now have this guy as a contact and he's been helping me start the process of carrying out regular window cleaning.

This is the way I want to take the business and the customer base for window cleaning will be easy to upsell onto my other services such as gutter / fascia cleaning, pressure washing and roof cleaning, whilst leaving me with consistent income each month. Also, window cleaning is a lot more trainable for when I am hiring employees in the future in comparison to pressure washing and requires much less equipment.

I've had some really good weeks and also some bad weeks and I've let this effect the regularity of my posting. From now on each week I will post weekly updates with my targets for the following week and my progress from the previous week as inspired by @Spenny

Starting today (Week 1) I will list my goals for the business for the following week, then every Sunday I will post showing how I am getting on and If I hit my goals or not.

Week 1

• Create in depth spreadsheet to track income / expenses
• Go to gym 3 times
• Re-design website for Window Cleaning
• Create letter offering services to neighbours
• Read 1 page before bed
• Cancel FB Ads
• Optimise Google ads

 

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[Johnny boy]

Good, that way you can't hide and can get motivated because you probably don't want to tell us every week that you spent it on the couch.

One of my biggest mistakes I believe was taking breaks.
I kept thinking "Oh I've been doing so much. The rejection has been wearing me out so much" (In your case "Oh I've been doing so much. All the media attention has been wearing me out") but that is just an excuse. In my case it was at least (don't get me wrong, I was legitmately often exhausted, but I could've continued).

@Johnny boy said something interesting once.
"For me, sleep is my only rest and that is enough" or something like that.
Of course you might not be like him exactly. Maybe you need a bit more or less rest but the message is clear.
I think that's also due to the fact that work isn't as bad is it's often made out to be.
Sure, work might be hard, but the feelings of achievement and so on make it a lot less worse.
In hindsight, we often miss these hard times in fact.
I think that's also why Johnny only needs so little rest: He probably finds lot of joy in his work (lol, he might not even consider it "work" at this point anymore if you get what I mean )

Anyways, just my 2 cents.
Good luck Ethan!

Btw, what is it about that Gofundme of yours?

I definitely slack off

But really just go into monk mode for a bit.

Wake up, do what needs to be done, sleep.

Continuing your work with sleep as your only interruption will keep it fresh in your mind and allow you to go deep into ideas and have momentum.

 

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[jclean]

It was my business’s 1st birthday this week, here's a very very overdue update.

(Note: This post is a mess but I just need to post)

Being completely transparent at the end of last year I had a pretty messy break up which left me miserable for a good while and I lost all motivation for the business. I essentially just sat in my room feeling sorry for myself, watching my bank account slowly drain to 0 with my business expenses coming out.

6 Months on, whilst I feel much better within myself, I’ve made very little progress. Many of the goals of my last post still haven't been done. I’ve since had my best week and day to date so I was very happy with that, however it didn’t last. I’ll go from having a good couple of weeks to not working at all out of pure laziness. The truth is I genuinely love my work, I will often do jobs for free for people because I get so bored sitting at home and love seeing the happiness I can bring people.

The main problem that I face is that I have no consistency whatsoever. Last year I made it on national television with my sign cleaning work which was a huge achievement. However, instead of doubling down on what was working, I got overwhelmed by it all and stopped. Most of my weeks are spent just waiting for people to contact me (I also suck at getting back to people too) and completing 1 or 2 jobs per week to cover my expenses, then I’ll sit around all day on my phone or playing golf or stupid stuff.

I have virtually no systems in place so I’m essentially trying to run a business with the mindset of a lazy employee. I feel my best when I’m working, making money and making progress, yet I sit around all day feeling bad about myself until I get a call or message about a job. It's pathetic… I feel a constant lack of fulfillment as I waste my life away doing the bare minimum to get by.

I’m only writing all this stuff down because it's best to just be completely transparent, I SUCK AT THIS. (that's the part i need to own up to and work on)

Whilst I can say that I’m progressing, it’s at a snail's pace, I have a friend with a similar business and he has £15K+ of work booked in for the next couple of months yet I have about £1,200 and the thing is he started his business after I did and I told him what to do, bit the difference is that he actually did the work consistently while I didn’t.

I’m making the transition into focusing on roof cleaning which is where I wanted to get to ever since I started the business so I am happy with that. I’ve done a course on it, bought all the equipment and, since reaching out on a national roof cleaning forum, I’m going to spend 2 days next week with a company that has been doing it for the last 3 years so that I can learn the ropes. I’ve also recently bought a drone which is amazing, my before and after pictures now are super high quality compared to before.

I’m aware this has been more of a structure-less rant than a concise forum update but I needed to start somewhere. MJ’s books changed my life and this forum was absolutely crucial in supporting me through the ups and downs of the last year but I’ve neglected all I’ve learnt from both.

I want to say thankyou to @Spenny for planting the seed of getting back onto the forum and for the support he’s given me over the last year.

I’ve spent far too long aimlessly drifting and It’s time to make the change from being event focused to process focused.

I’d love to hear what you think.

Put everything you earn into marketing,
force yourself to work every day.

If there is no work, your work is gaining customers.

At this stage you dont need to focus on systems.

Just focus on marketing / sales
(gaining clients) !
It took me 10 years and I think another 5 years to really get to the level I want.
( building a multi million business is possible)

The first years of a business are the hardest because you still have to learn everything.

This is the time of year when you are most likely to gain new clients. This determines the rest of the year... do not waste this period.

 

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[EthanH]

Weekly Update:

Not a massively busy week jobs-wise.

Have about 3 jobs lined up within the next month worth only about £250.

Started my first Google ads campaign yesterday. Still yet to have my first click so I've got to look into that but at least its up and running.

Created a Next door business account to start posting and engaging more with the local community.

I've started receiving a couple of natural enquires a week of customers messaging me and asking for quotes. It's hard to tell where these are coming from, could be from about 5 different sources but I can always ask the customer.

After watching some of Andy Black's content on helping people I've decided that once a month I want to offer free pressure washing / gutter cleaning to those who need it. I'll put a post out on Facebook / Next-door about it and see if there's any interest. I have all the equipment the only thing it would cost me is my time but I think there's lot to be gained, not just in terms of business, by putting a bit more positive energy in the world instead of just waiting for stuff to happen. Also It'll give me a chance to film my work and get really good content for my website / ads whilst costing me a couple of hours of my time and a tiny amount in fuel.

I hired a Facebook agency to help me get set up and profitable with ads. They guarantee me at least 30 leads / month straight to my phone. They've done some previous work for Exterior cleaning companies like me and seem to be getting leads for about £10 on average, so if I convert one in 2 leads to a sale thats £20 / customer and I'd say at the moment the average profit for a pressure washing job would be about £150 so there's still £130 to be made, or I could factor it into my pricing and increase it that way.

My goal for the next couple of months is to build consistent revenue, week by week.

Over the next 6 months my goal is to offer Roof cleaning which would cost about £1000 to get all the equipment but the minimum charge of most companies is about £500 for a roof which would take about a day. A few of those jobs and I'd have paid back the cost of equipment. I'd rather complete a few high profit jobs each week than lots of small £50 jobs.

I'm not where I want to be and still have a mountain of things to work on but I'm proud to say that each day I'm moving closer towards my goals.

 

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[EthanH]

I've had £260 of work stolen from me...

I had a pressure washing job lined up for tomorrow worth £260 and I was pretty excited about it and had bought the materials from in etc, I sent the customer a reminder text saying "I will be there at 10am tomorrow, might need to come back another day for the re-sanding if it rains..." and then he send me a message back saying "Ethan, I was told by your partner on the phone that you could not do the job tomorrow or anytime soon so I've had it done already by another company, he referred to you by name but unfortunately I didn't catch his name"

Just got off the phone with the customer and turns out that the customer was talking with this other company that did the work before I called him, the customer decided to go with me and we agreed a date and time. He then called the other company back to cancel the work. What we think has happened is the other company has got someone else to call the customer, pretending to be me, and cancel the work. Therefore he went with the original company to carry out the job. I'm now out money on materials and have lost essentially a third of my weekly income. The guy that did the job in the end was apparently quite pushy and assertive but otherwise did the job fine, the only other bit is he didn't have a business bank account and took payment by bank transfer to his personal account. There's not really anything anyone can do but It hurts me and leaves the customer upset with being lied to. The customer insists he will call me when he needs it doing again but I now have 2 days with no jobs and I've been defrauded out of £260. To be honest I didn't think that there were people like this in this business, maybe I was naïve but its a shame. Just need to get my head down and let this push me to work harder.

 

[jclean]

Food for thought:

I have a promotion currently running in a written advertising magazine ( a written article).

Free window washing inside and outside max 20 windows.

Now a week into it 150 responses.
Leads who filled out the contact form on our website.
Where we ask them everything :
frequency, outside or inside , some pictures.

If they do not fill in everything, we send them a template email with the questions they did not fill in.
This has 2 advantages

1) People really consider having their windows PERIODICALLY cleaned.
If they are satisfied then everything is already in place to continue working. If they don't want this they have to send us an email to cancel.

2) people who are only out for the free wash have to 'make an effort' to get it.
Most of them dont respond to the questions.

So the questions serve to qualify the leads.

In your case if you sometimes do nothing for a week then I would still do these and try to build a relationship with these customers.

If you are just starting try to spread your work over all the weekdays this forces you to get outside and work.
Action always beats inaction !

 

[EthanH]

Week 6

Last week’s goals:

• Update phone number on website
• Get quotes for fixing van windscreen / brake pads
• Create PDF document for roof cleaning (to explain the process to customers)
• Add roof cleaning section to website
• Create spreadsheet tracking revenue / customers for the past few weeks.
• Deposit cash

It's been a tough week so far, I've had to re-schedule 3 jobs due to all the gutters being frozen and the jobs I have been able to do have taken more than twice as long as usual. I was de-motivated for a couple of days but I've pulled myself back together, the goal for now is to minimise my costs for the winter and just focus on surviving through to spring.

I created a spreadsheet covering the last 12 weeks tracking my revenue and costs etc and it has been super interesting, I now know that my costs each week are ~£400 so my weekly goals are much clearer. The only thing I'm super anxious about at the moment is that I need new tyres, brakes and a new windscreen which all together is about £700 I don't really have at the moment. It's all a learning experience, and I'll know how to prepare for winter much better next year.

I've started my first roof clean too which was challenging and took a lot longer than expected, the weather isn't helping much as it needs to be above 5 degrees Celsius for me to apply the chemical treatment to the roof, and it needs to be dry, so at the moment the chances of finding a day that fits this criteria is pretty impossible.

Goals for next week:

• Update phone number on website
• Get quotes for fixing van windscreen / brake pads
• Add roof cleaning section to website
• Pick up Hi-vis uniform
• Quote all outstanding jobs
• Start sign cleaning Tik-Tok

 

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[EthanH]

It was my business’s 1st birthday this week, here's a very very overdue update.

(Note: This post is a mess but I just need to post)

Being completely transparent at the end of last year I had a pretty messy break up which left me miserable for a good while and I lost all motivation for the business. I essentially just sat in my room feeling sorry for myself, watching my bank account slowly drain to 0 with my business expenses coming out.

6 Months on, whilst I feel much better within myself, I’ve made very little progress. Many of the goals of my last post still haven't been done. I’ve since had my best week and day to date so I was very happy with that, however it didn’t last. I’ll go from having a good couple of weeks to not working at all out of pure laziness. The truth is I genuinely love my work, I will often do jobs for free for people because I get so bored sitting at home and love seeing the happiness I can bring people.

The main problem that I face is that I have no consistency whatsoever. Last year I made it on national television with my sign cleaning work which was a huge achievement. However, instead of doubling down on what was working, I got overwhelmed by it all and stopped. Most of my weeks are spent just waiting for people to contact me (I also suck at getting back to people too) and completing 1 or 2 jobs per week to cover my expenses, then I’ll sit around all day on my phone or playing golf or stupid stuff.

I have virtually no systems in place so I’m essentially trying to run a business with the mindset of a lazy employee. I feel my best when I’m working, making money and making progress, yet I sit around all day feeling bad about myself until I get a call or message about a job. It's pathetic… I feel a constant lack of fulfillment as I waste my life away doing the bare minimum to get by.

I’m only writing all this stuff down because it's best to just be completely transparent, I SUCK AT THIS. (that's the part i need to own up to and work on)

Whilst I can say that I’m progressing, it’s at a snail's pace, I have a friend with a similar business and he has £15K+ of work booked in for the next couple of months yet I have about £1,200 and the thing is he started his business after I did and I told him what to do, bit the difference is that he actually did the work consistently while I didn’t.

I’m making the transition into focusing on roof cleaning which is where I wanted to get to ever since I started the business so I am happy with that. I’ve done a course on it, bought all the equipment and, since reaching out on a national roof cleaning forum, I’m going to spend 2 days next week with a company that has been doing it for the last 3 years so that I can learn the ropes. I’ve also recently bought a drone which is amazing, my before and after pictures now are super high quality compared to before.

I’m aware this has been more of a structure-less rant than a concise forum update but I needed to start somewhere. MJ’s books changed my life and this forum was absolutely crucial in supporting me through the ups and downs of the last year but I’ve neglected all I’ve learnt from both.

I want to say thankyou to @Spenny for planting the seed of getting back onto the forum and for the support he’s given me over the last year.

I’ve spent far too long aimlessly drifting and It’s time to make the change from being event focused to process focused.

I’d love to hear what you think.

 

[EthanH]

Week 7

Last week’s goals:

• Update phone number on website
• Get quotes for fixing van windscreen / brake pads
• Add roof cleaning section to website
• Pick up Hi-vis uniform
• Quote all outstanding jobs
• Start sign cleaning Tik-Tok

Being 100% honest, I've had a terrible week. Lots of stuff going on in my personal life has meant I've had to take a step back to sort myself out. Desperately need to pull myself together. At the end of the day, shit happens, I just need to get back up and running asap. The success of the business is a direct reflection of myself so I need to work on separating the two more effectively.

One up-side this week was that I've been donated a high vis uniform to help with my signs cleaning work, I've also been given some gardening equipment to help me clear around the signs too as so many are obscured by bushes / trees etc. Nice to that people want to help me out.

Not the most interesting read but I'd rather be transparent with how everything goes.

Goals for next week:

• Update phone number on website
• Get quotes for fixing van windscreen / brake pads
• Add roof cleaning section to website
• Quote all outstanding jobs
• Start sign cleaning Tik-Tok

 

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[jclean]

Best of luck ! There will always be a need for this kind of businesses. Each day (spring) we receive emails from 4/5 potential leads. With an ad spend of 750 euro each month. 14% ctr. Google ads is Definitely something you need to consider.

 

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[EthanH]

@Andy Black has a course on this

Thanks, just bought it. I'll get through it over this week.

 

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[EthanH]

Yep, count me in too.

Well thanks guys. Here's the link https://g.page/r/Cat3vwZsmFsyEAI/review
Funny thing is out of the two reviews I had google seems to have removed the real one and kept the fake one but oh well.

 

[jclean]

How's it easier to scale? Can't you just tell the employee to follow an operating procedure to clean a roof?


How come? Please elaborate.

Window cleaning is easier to scale because:

The work itself is easier, safer to perform.
You get recurring revenue preferably
monthly or bi- monthly ...
After a while you know how much time a job is going to take.
So you can make a good profitable schedule.
Window cleaning is in europe for the most part all year round. In 2022 we only had one day off due to weather.

With pressure washing each job is different. Sometimes you need a boom lift, sometimes you need a ladder, there are a lot of surfaces each with there own specific cleaning methods. If you dont know what you are doing it is dangerous, and you can do a lot of damage.

If there is to much wind,rain, cold you cant perform the work due to safety reasons.
You can guess how much time its going to take but you never are really sure.

(last week we had a job that we thought was going to take 7 hours. it has become 14 working hours)

 

[EthanH]

Update so far:

I had a really good first week but the past 10 days or so haven't been great. I had a couple of bad days with getting no response from my leads off of Bark and I let that effect me and get to my head and haven't contacted anyone since. I need to stop letting my feelings effect how i run the business.

I've gone down to the foundations of my habits and am building better sleeping / eating habits so that I can work more effectively on the business. I've seen so many threads get started by inspired new entrepreneurs, only to go silent after a week or two and I'm determined to make sure that's not what happens here.

Over the last couple of days I have started distributing flyers (250 out so far) and I'll see if there's any response over the next week.

I have updated the website, ( if anyone has any suggestions on how it looks please let me know: Impact Exterior Cleaning | Expert Exterior Cleaning Services ) to get it ready for google ads.

I've finished Andy's course and now just need to start my own campaign which I will do over the next 2 days.

Thanks to those of you that've left reviews on my Google Business Profile, it really helps and now I have 5 5 star reviews.

Thanks for everyone's feedback / support so far. I've got a long way to go.

 

[Stargazer]

That may be underhand move but you could have lost the job anyway.

Pretty much any large company you deal with has a cancellations department that are really a sales department. You will need to do the same if you want to grow. Most cancellations will be on price, ie they have found soomeone cheaper after contacting you. Many people are not just contacting one contractor after decades of Yellow Pages telling people to call three.

So you neeed to have a little script in your head to deal with this if and when it crops up. If you get larger it will crop up.

eg Ask the reason for cancellation (if it's lower price get that price), then something like ok well on Wed I have 3 others in your area now so if I could reschedule to that date I would not have the travel costs as already there and would you be ok with £matching or slightly higher price?

Also, when someone agrees to work with you, take an initial deposit if not the entire amount, and have a series of what happens next texts/emails with a number to call if they need to reschedule for any reason. Like your dentist will do.

So these two things will reduce your cancellations. Upfront deposit/ what happens next? and a cancellation process.

Right now you are getting the odd job here and there and each one therefore matters to you personally. When you have 50 calls a week coming in like clockwork over time you would just accept you have honed things that 50 calls turns into 30 orders of £xyz for example.

Dan