That's a lot man for me! You're doing great man!It did go up to 100 today to be fair.
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Free registration at the forum removes this block.That's a lot man for me! You're doing great man!It did go up to 100 today to be fair.
It's like what @BizyDad said, it's a new chapter in life where you got firsthand experience. Learnt a lot and improved a lot. I wish you all the best man!The End of a Journey
It may have been a few days so I'll post one more update here to show what I am up to.
The window cleaning hustle was a great one but honestly I cant see myself building a home services/window cleaning company for the next bunch of years. It is a rather easy to start opportunity with a moderate to low need in my market here. Yes I know there are ways to make this better and to stop being a comodity and whatnot but lets be real here: I started to make some money and to collect experiences. I did archive both these objectives (though the money one less than the experience haha). If I go into this space then purly to make money and if thats the goals I would much rather be in a good market with people that love to spend money, while not being confined to my location here.
Moreover I really dislike this business since each sale causes pain to me and because even just scaling to 10k a month runs into opperational complexity for my situation, since I want to finish school and cant work that much.
The results
I made 1027€ in total value created.
I took home 143€ in profit...
Lets break down why I made so little money. I was running about 20% margins between taking workers with me and the cost of advertising (when factoring in my own time at 15€ per hour).There were two other big factors that cut down the rest of my profit (and all the money I payed myself as a working in theory): 1. Fixed overhead expenses. Since I went out of my way to operate this hustle legally compliant I had to pay a bunch of fees in the range of 50€ to 150€. This wouldnt be significant if I was making more money but since I did not make more money it ate lots of my income. 2. A failed advertising project with the local newspaper. I had them hand out flyers with their newspaper and I got nothing from 3k flyers. Boom 237€ down the drain.
The other thing I gained were some valuable experiences that one only gets when engaging a market.
1. The formular to making the first money is the following: Make an offer and give as many people as possible a chance to pay you. The reason most wantrepreneurs never make their first € is because they never actually get their offer in front of people who can pay for it or better yet, never actually make a concrete offer.
2. Service with a smile makes a huge difference. I suck at cleaning windows and always did a poor Job, yet noone got mad at me or even told me they were not satisfied since I was always kind and did everything the customer asked me to.
3. TIME is important. Its not just so you can be lazy on the bahamans but also so you can actually deliver to customers throughout the day(and night). Since I go to school I could only work on weekends, which created problems and limited the ammount of people I could work for.
4. Website and ads stuff. Its all great and good to read about these things but actually doing them with a purpose is huge and easily teaches 10x more effectivly. I learned how to take calls, I learned how google ads work and how you actually make money with them, I learned how to run facebook ads, I learned how to build and host a website using templates, vs-code and google web servers.
Lastly, I learned that I need to get into something with the plan of solving a problem, not to make money. Despite what @MJ DeMarco told me, I consider this venture somewhat money chasing. While I did work with a market need I never gave thought to what problem I am solving. If I were to start again I would think which problem I am solving first. If that was dirty windows, I can think of better ways to solve that problem than to just clean them for people.
The lesson here is to not focus on what you want to do but instead of what problem you are solving. This goes for everything. No, dont start a marketing agency because you want to do it. Think of the problem (spa owners want to get more customers) first and then work out a solution. Now you can be much more creative and not just limited to one way to solve that problem. (You can do ads for them, license them a great working business model, build them affiliate programms, develope a robot that goes door to door for them...)
Overall I would rate my experience here 6/10.
For now I am focusing on expanding my Skills. I dont want to become a freelancer but I do want to have Skills that allow me to build solutions to problems. Currently I am taking a great course on Web-Development on udemy. Its not the end in itself to be a webdev but its a means to an end. The money invested into this course and the few weeks it takes me to get through it (~70h video material and probably 100 hours in coding exercises if they keep getting more difficult) will give me a Skill that will, for one, make sure that I will always be able to work somewhere in a nice office or from home for more than minimum wage when I need to work. It will also save me thousands for every business venture I get into, since I can build a website with advanced funcitonality myself.
I already have a thing I am working on, as I am learning how Webdevelopment works. Its going to be a while untill I start a progress thread again so I want to thank all the people who gave super valuable advice in here.
Thanks @BizyDad for kicking my a$$ to actually do shit and for helping me get my first real customer.
Thanks @savefox for all your tips and actionable advice.
Thanks @piano for being competition
Thanks @jclean for your insightful reply.
And sorry for all the great advice I got and never implemented. In my next progress thread I will actually impement the advice I am getting.
Subsonic out.
Man, this is making me feel odd somehow.The End of a Journey
It may have been a few days so I'll post one more update here to show what I am up to.
The window cleaning hustle was a great one but honestly I cant see myself building a home services/window cleaning company for the next bunch of years. It is a rather easy to start opportunity with a moderate to low need in my market here. Yes I know there are ways to make this better and to stop being a comodity and whatnot but lets be real here: I started to make some money and to collect experiences. I did archive both these objectives (though the money one less than the experience haha). If I go into this space then purly to make money and if thats the goals I would much rather be in a good market with people that love to spend money, while not being confined to my location here.
Moreover I really dislike this business since each sale causes pain to me and because even just scaling to 10k a month runs into opperational complexity for my situation, since I want to finish school and cant work that much.
The results
I made 1027€ in total value created.
I took home 143€ in profit...
Lets break down why I made so little money. I was running about 20% margins between taking workers with me and the cost of advertising (when factoring in my own time at 15€ per hour).There were two other big factors that cut down the rest of my profit (and all the money I payed myself as a working in theory): 1. Fixed overhead expenses. Since I went out of my way to operate this hustle legally compliant I had to pay a bunch of fees in the range of 50€ to 150€. This wouldnt be significant if I was making more money but since I did not make more money it ate lots of my income. 2. A failed advertising project with the local newspaper. I had them hand out flyers with their newspaper and I got nothing from 3k flyers. Boom 237€ down the drain.
The other thing I gained were some valuable experiences that one only gets when engaging a market.
1. The formular to making the first money is the following: Make an offer and give as many people as possible a chance to pay you. The reason most wantrepreneurs never make their first € is because they never actually get their offer in front of people who can pay for it or better yet, never actually make a concrete offer.
2. Service with a smile makes a huge difference. I suck at cleaning windows and always did a poor Job, yet noone got mad at me or even told me they were not satisfied since I was always kind and did everything the customer asked me to.
3. TIME is important. Its not just so you can be lazy on the bahamans but also so you can actually deliver to customers throughout the day(and night). Since I go to school I could only work on weekends, which created problems and limited the ammount of people I could work for.
4. Website and ads stuff. Its all great and good to read about these things but actually doing them with a purpose is huge and easily teaches 10x more effectivly. I learned how to take calls, I learned how google ads work and how you actually make money with them, I learned how to run facebook ads, I learned how to build and host a website using templates, vs-code and google web servers.
Lastly, I learned that I need to get into something with the plan of solving a problem, not to make money. Despite what @MJ DeMarco told me, I consider this venture somewhat money chasing. While I did work with a market need I never gave thought to what problem I am solving. If I were to start again I would think which problem I am solving first. If that was dirty windows, I can think of better ways to solve that problem than to just clean them for people.
The lesson here is to not focus on what you want to do but instead of what problem you are solving. This goes for everything. No, dont start a marketing agency because you want to do it. Think of the problem (spa owners want to get more customers) first and then work out a solution. Now you can be much more creative and not just limited to one way to solve that problem. (You can do ads for them, license them a great working business model, build them affiliate programms, develope a robot that goes door to door for them...)
Overall I would rate my experience here 6/10.
For now I am focusing on expanding my Skills. I dont want to become a freelancer but I do want to have Skills that allow me to build solutions to problems. Currently I am taking a great course on Web-Development on udemy. Its not the end in itself to be a webdev but its a means to an end. The money invested into this course and the few weeks it takes me to get through it (~70h video material and probably 100 hours in coding exercises if they keep getting more difficult) will give me a Skill that will, for one, make sure that I will always be able to work somewhere in a nice office or from home for more than minimum wage when I need to work. It will also save me thousands for every business venture I get into, since I can build a website with advanced funcitonality myself.
I already have a thing I am working on, as I am learning how Webdevelopment works. Its going to be a while untill I start a progress thread again so I want to thank all the people who gave super valuable advice in here.
Thanks @BizyDad for kicking my a$$ to actually do shit and for helping me get my first real customer.
Thanks @savefox for all your tips and actionable advice.
Thanks @piano for being competition
Thanks @jclean for your insightful reply.
And sorry for all the great advice I got and never implemented. In my next progress thread I will actually impement the advice I am getting.
Subsonic out.
While writing, I read this ^ by BizyDad.This is what the entrepreneurs hero's journey looks like...
You started.
You overcame obstacles.
You learned.
You grew.
You gained confidence.
Ultimately you made the empowered decision to change the direction of your life, twice. First by starting this business, then by ending it. You're closing one chapter of your life, and starting another.
Good for you Subsonic. You are on your way and I look forward to hearing about your next adventure.
The End of a Journey
It may have been a few days so I'll post one more update here to show what I am up to.
The window cleaning hustle was a great one but honestly I cant see myself building a home services/window cleaning company for the next bunch of years. It is a rather easy to start opportunity with a moderate to low need in my market here. Yes I know there are ways to make this better and to stop being a comodity and whatnot but lets be real here: I started to make some money and to collect experiences. I did archive both these objectives (though the money one less than the experience haha). If I go into this space then purly to make money and if thats the goals I would much rather be in a good market with people that love to spend money, while not being confined to my location here.
Moreover I really dislike this business since each sale causes pain to me and because even just scaling to 10k a month runs into opperational complexity for my situation, since I want to finish school and cant work that much.
The results
I made 1027€ in total value created.
I took home 143€ in profit...
Lets break down why I made so little money. I was running about 20% margins between taking workers with me and the cost of advertising (when factoring in my own time at 15€ per hour).There were two other big factors that cut down the rest of my profit (and all the money I payed myself as a working in theory): 1. Fixed overhead expenses. Since I went out of my way to operate this hustle legally compliant I had to pay a bunch of fees in the range of 50€ to 150€. This wouldnt be significant if I was making more money but since I did not make more money it ate lots of my income. 2. A failed advertising project with the local newspaper. I had them hand out flyers with their newspaper and I got nothing from 3k flyers. Boom 237€ down the drain.
The other thing I gained were some valuable experiences that one only gets when engaging a market.
1. The formular to making the first money is the following: Make an offer and give as many people as possible a chance to pay you. The reason most wantrepreneurs never make their first € is because they never actually get their offer in front of people who can pay for it or better yet, never actually make a concrete offer.
2. Service with a smile makes a huge difference. I suck at cleaning windows and always did a poor Job, yet noone got mad at me or even told me they were not satisfied since I was always kind and did everything the customer asked me to.
3. TIME is important. Its not just so you can be lazy on the bahamans but also so you can actually deliver to customers throughout the day(and night). Since I go to school I could only work on weekends, which created problems and limited the ammount of people I could work for.
4. Website and ads stuff. Its all great and good to read about these things but actually doing them with a purpose is huge and easily teaches 10x more effectivly. I learned how to take calls, I learned how google ads work and how you actually make money with them, I learned how to run facebook ads, I learned how to build and host a website using templates, vs-code and google web servers.
Lastly, I learned that I need to get into something with the plan of solving a problem, not to make money. Despite what @MJ DeMarco told me, I consider this venture somewhat money chasing. While I did work with a market need I never gave thought to what problem I am solving. If I were to start again I would think which problem I am solving first. If that was dirty windows, I can think of better ways to solve that problem than to just clean them for people.
The lesson here is to not focus on what you want to do but instead of what problem you are solving. This goes for everything. No, dont start a marketing agency because you want to do it. Think of the problem (spa owners want to get more customers) first and then work out a solution. Now you can be much more creative and not just limited to one way to solve that problem. (You can do ads for them, license them a great working business model, build them affiliate programms, develope a robot that goes door to door for them...)
Overall I would rate my experience here 6/10.
For now I am focusing on expanding my Skills. I dont want to become a freelancer but I do want to have Skills that allow me to build solutions to problems. Currently I am taking a great course on Web-Development on udemy. Its not the end in itself to be a webdev but its a means to an end. The money invested into this course and the few weeks it takes me to get through it (~70h video material and probably 100 hours in coding exercises if they keep getting more difficult) will give me a Skill that will, for one, make sure that I will always be able to work somewhere in a nice office or from home for more than minimum wage when I need to work. It will also save me thousands for every business venture I get into, since I can build a website with advanced funcitonality myself.
I already have a thing I am working on, as I am learning how Webdevelopment works. Its going to be a while untill I start a progress thread again so I want to thank all the people who gave super valuable advice in here.
Thanks @BizyDad for kicking my a$$ to actually do shit and for helping me get my first real customer.
Thanks @savefox for all your tips and actionable advice.
Thanks @piano for being competition
Thanks @jclean for your insightful reply.
And sorry for all the great advice I got and never implemented. In my next progress thread I will actually impement the advice I am getting.
Subsonic out.
I'm glad you learned a few things, my instinct says you might be quitting a little too soon...The End of a Journey
It may have been a few days so I'll post one more update here to show what I am up to.
The window cleaning hustle was a great one but honestly I cant see myself building a home services/window cleaning company for the next bunch of years. It is a rather easy to start opportunity with a moderate to low need in my market here. Yes I know there are ways to make this better and to stop being a comodity and whatnot but lets be real here: I started to make some money and to collect experiences. I did archive both these objectives (though the money one less than the experience haha). If I go into this space then purly to make money and if thats the goals I would much rather be in a good market with people that love to spend money, while not being confined to my location here.
Moreover I really dislike this business since each sale causes pain to me and because even just scaling to 10k a month runs into opperational complexity for my situation, since I want to finish school and cant work that much.
The results
I made 1027€ in total value created.
I took home 143€ in profit...
Lets break down why I made so little money. I was running about 20% margins between taking workers with me and the cost of advertising (when factoring in my own time at 15€ per hour).There were two other big factors that cut down the rest of my profit (and all the money I payed myself as a working in theory): 1. Fixed overhead expenses. Since I went out of my way to operate this hustle legally compliant I had to pay a bunch of fees in the range of 50€ to 150€. This wouldnt be significant if I was making more money but since I did not make more money it ate lots of my income. 2. A failed advertising project with the local newspaper. I had them hand out flyers with their newspaper and I got nothing from 3k flyers. Boom 237€ down the drain.
The other thing I gained were some valuable experiences that one only gets when engaging a market.
1. The formular to making the first money is the following: Make an offer and give as many people as possible a chance to pay you. The reason most wantrepreneurs never make their first € is because they never actually get their offer in front of people who can pay for it or better yet, never actually make a concrete offer.
2. Service with a smile makes a huge difference. I suck at cleaning windows and always did a poor Job, yet noone got mad at me or even told me they were not satisfied since I was always kind and did everything the customer asked me to.
3. TIME is important. Its not just so you can be lazy on the bahamans but also so you can actually deliver to customers throughout the day(and night). Since I go to school I could only work on weekends, which created problems and limited the ammount of people I could work for.
4. Website and ads stuff. Its all great and good to read about these things but actually doing them with a purpose is huge and easily teaches 10x more effectivly. I learned how to take calls, I learned how google ads work and how you actually make money with them, I learned how to run facebook ads, I learned how to build and host a website using templates, vs-code and google web servers.
Lastly, I learned that I need to get into something with the plan of solving a problem, not to make money. Despite what @MJ DeMarco told me, I consider this venture somewhat money chasing. While I did work with a market need I never gave thought to what problem I am solving. If I were to start again I would think which problem I am solving first. If that was dirty windows, I can think of better ways to solve that problem than to just clean them for people.
The lesson here is to not focus on what you want to do but instead of what problem you are solving. This goes for everything. No, dont start a marketing agency because you want to do it. Think of the problem (spa owners want to get more customers) first and then work out a solution. Now you can be much more creative and not just limited to one way to solve that problem. (You can do ads for them, license them a great working business model, build them affiliate programms, develope a robot that goes door to door for them...)
Overall I would rate my experience here 6/10.
For now I am focusing on expanding my Skills. I dont want to become a freelancer but I do want to have Skills that allow me to build solutions to problems. Currently I am taking a great course on Web-Development on udemy. Its not the end in itself to be a webdev but its a means to an end. The money invested into this course and the few weeks it takes me to get through it (~70h video material and probably 100 hours in coding exercises if they keep getting more difficult) will give me a Skill that will, for one, make sure that I will always be able to work somewhere in a nice office or from home for more than minimum wage when I need to work. It will also save me thousands for every business venture I get into, since I can build a website with advanced funcitonality myself.
I already have a thing I am working on, as I am learning how Webdevelopment works. Its going to be a while untill I start a progress thread again so I want to thank all the people who gave super valuable advice in here.
Thanks @BizyDad for kicking my a$$ to actually do shit and for helping me get my first real customer.
Thanks @savefox for all your tips and actionable advice.
Thanks @piano for being competition
Thanks @jclean for your insightful reply.
And sorry for all the great advice I got and never implemented. In my next progress thread I will actually impement the advice I am getting.
Subsonic out.
if labor in germany is so cheap then i better moveLet's say you pay them 15 bucks/hour. Add another 5 bucks for their dumb insurances and whatnot and you pay each one 20€/hour.
Now let's say you have 4 150€ jobs for them each day.
I thought that if you quit, I'd feel relieved (since less competition) however I don't feel that way. I can't put it into words quite honestly.
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.
Oh, no I am not throwing this away haha.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.
They are SCREAMING at you to help them! Shout at the market & sometimes it echoes back!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.
1. Just make sure the people really deliver the flyers...1. Reduce Google ads and start paying people to hand out flyers for me
2. Increase customer ltv
3. Do the Jobs myself so the cost to fulfill is reduced to like 15€ in gas and equipment.
What do you want to know ?Some go back to their abusive ex. While I've never had a real girlfriend (outside a goofy 6th grade 2 month thing) I may very well be someone who falls victim to that.
Why?
Because I'm back to this horrible/amazing business, yeeeeeeeee haw.
After failing at cookies miserably and still having some customers, I decided to go back to cleaning windows and now with general cleaning added on top.
Last month was a great experience with @MaximOntheRoad helping me with ppc ads and @Cojo with site optimization.
I made about 1k in revenue but sadly lost around 200€ at the end of the month.
This is due to my cpa being way too high compared to my profit per customer:
CPA 80€
Price to fulfill a job ~ 70€
Average Customer LTV ~130€
Yeah so the math sucks right now and there are some things I can do to change this.
1. Reduce Google ads and start paying people to hand out flyers for me
2. Increase customer ltv
3. Do the Jobs myself so the cost to fulfill is reduced to like 15€ in gas and equipment.
I am also studying for my finals right now, which are 3 massive 4 hour exams taking place in around 4 weeks.
Others would see an excuse, but I see an opportunity to learn.
What am I doing now? All of those things. In 4 months, I plan on flying to Thailand for 3 months with a friend and I want to save up around 3k till then so I don't have to ravage all my savings.
If anyone reading has some more suggestions to improve the math of the business or something else, I'd love to hear from ya.
Congratulations man.What do you want to know ?
This month i finally did over 100k in revenue. Mostly from cleaning windows.
Most important.
1) Recurring revenue.
2) route density
3) good branding
4) find reliable co-workers
5) good crm / planning software
Always try to aim for a minimum of 4 services per year.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.
Yep, this is what I'll look into.Have you tried Facebook ads?
They’re generally much cheaper than flyers since you don’t have to pay for handing them out. I pay $15 to show my ad to 1000 targeted prospects.
I have a friend who literally just put up a digital flyer ad and got leads for $7 each with a 1/3 booking rate.
Once you find an ad that has a good ROI you can simply just turn up your adspend and scale it to doing as many jobs per day as you want
@Subsonic if you want I can help you with ads on fb. We have already written about this in relation to your old business, my offer is still available. I am developing my full business now, but I will be able to find some time for you.Yep, this is what I'll look into.
Can you help me?@Subsonic if you want I can help you with ads on fb. We have already written about this in relation to your old business, my offer is still available. I am developing my full business now, but I will be able to find some time for you.
The last time I ran adverts in a similar target group, I paid €2.1 per view by 1,000 people. In your country it will be a little more expensive, but I do not know exactly how much
What’s your ROI on flyers looking like? I might give it a try again myself.Yep, this is what I'll look into.
Flyers have had a great ROI thus far and I want to test them on a larger scale once before going with something new.
Last time I did it, it was massive because I handed them out myself.Can you help me?
What’s your ROI on flyers looking like? I might give it a try again myself.
I'd be interested, sure.@Subsonic if you want I can help you with ads on fb. We have already written about this in relation to your old business, my offer is still available. I am developing my full business now, but I will be able to find some time for you.
The last time I ran adverts in a similar target group, I paid €2.1 per view by 1,000 people. In your country it will be a little more expensive, but I do not know exactly how much
I've wrtien on pv you if you want to, where you can write more detailed information about what you need help withCan you help me?
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