Terrible week.
Barely done anything.
Can't face the job. Just sick of it.
The business is growing which is what I want but I'm not at the point of employing so all these new jobs are piling up. First cleans taking ages. Id be happy if I was off the tools but a long way to go.
Any advice?
You have to decide what you want and why you are doing it, im exactly the same i work myself to death and feel stressed, knackered and fed up a lot. I cant be arsed most days. Oddly for me this is going to be a record week, a mixture of having just put prices up and being so far behind ive just smashed it this week....But ive not enjoyed it, its been a hard slog, im aching all over and had enough.
The thing is you say you want to be off the tools and employ.
If you truly want to do that and expand then you might as well set someone on now, if you are the point of had enough just do it now. Sooner you do that the sooner you can concentrate on growing the round and looking to employ the next one. You cant grow the business whilst killing yourself on the glass, you just wont have the energy after a hard day.
But you actually need to question if you truly want to employ , now i know when you dont like cleaning windows its easy to imagine having someone else out there doing the work, but that can actually be more stressfull. You will have to train them, deal with complaints and equipment damage. You need to pay them regardless of weather and your van being off the road. You have to put up with them turning up at your house everyday to work blurring the lines between business and home life. You have to sort their pension and sick pay cope with them not turning up when you book work in. You will spend time and money building the round for them to leave a few months down the line dropping you in the poo. The extra work to organise things on an evening...the list goes on.
In your head you imagine a couple of guys going out doing the work whilst you switch off and go play golf...except you cant switch off, they ring up... cant find this house, vans broken down, equipment failure, someone texting you saying a window has been missed. They become like a parasitic leech sucking and draining the life out of you. Its like having a child or a dog, you are responsible for everythimg and taking care of them. You cant get a break from them apart from when they are on holiday.
So think carefully what you actually want, rather than just growing for the sake of growing, do you want more money or more free time ?
If its the latter, perhaps put your prices up and reduce your days down to 3 a week. If its money you chase then you will never be satisfied anyway.
For me personally im getting fed up of the window cleaning business, its very boring and tiring working 5 days on your own and employing is just as bad... when you crunch the numbers it just doesnt scale very well at all, most service businesses dont. Im seriously thinking about selling work off and going down to 3 days a week to free up some time to look at other business opportunitys and take bit of a break from it, im sick of thinking about cleaning windows it takes over your life.... i think we work so hard and get blinkered into thinking because we want to grow a business it has to be window cleaning as thats all we know, but theres a big world out there with lots of opportunitys to explore so maybe think outside the box.
It doesnt help ive not had a week off, a holiday or a break for a year now apart from christmas its just relentless.