[chopsie]

i sold every tool,every single spanner and had a giant bonfire one night to get rid of all the rest. i set it on fire at night to hide the huge plumes of black smoke !
 

Must of been some bonfire to burn tools 

[bobby p]

i sold every tool,every single spanner and had a giant bonfire one night to get rid of all the rest. i set it on fire at night to hide the huge plumes of black smoke !
 

Must of been some bonfire to burn tools 

it really was big, lots of car tyres too. the core of the fire melted down into the ground,almost nuclear !. but it felt very good,to get rid and no chance of going back

[G Griffin]

Yeah, we got a call to that in the middle of Tales Of The Unexpected and  a chicken jalfrezi. Ya firebug!

[ant french]

my story has just began, but being a single dad with no car licence for 5 years and living on income support and being sick of my life i decided to get a budgeting loan off the benefit ppl for a new fridge etc and spent the money on learning to drive, passed my test in october this yr and now slowly getting my own window cleaning round going. i get about 3 new customers a week but thats better than nowt. no one would give me a job between 9 and 3 so i decided i love being on my own ( loaner ) now i have a car, not many ppl at the time of thinking about being a WC so took the plung, told job centre i wanna be a WC they said good business choice and i arranged a meeting with a business consultant at the job centre and hes helping me with all the stuff i dont understand, i cant wait, i know its going to be cold in winter but PFFFFFT i riden motorbikes in winter with wind chill of -20c so i should be ok.

[mark mann]

I did nearly 2 years working at Toyota at Burnaston Ian, That was like being a robot, Had to press a bell to go for a sh?t !!
Did not know if it was day,night,sunny or raining as there were no windows....bloody Japs 

i know burnaston - i visited factory and took a test drive on the race track up the road with 50 other people all in the auris hybrid - know what you mean about the factory - kaizen millitary effeciency only stocked 4 hours of components before next delivery. you had the rope to pull to stop the line in case of emergency. impressive site but know where your coming from there. bet your happier now as a wcer!!

[ian1965]

After 28 years in engineering thinking the company was making a profit only to see the recievers walking in with there big long over coats on-sorry lads your all out of work-manager creaming money of left right and centre. I was b~##ered if i was going to work for some some again. Invested some money in water fed stuff and away i went. 7 months on 92 customers later am i happy yes target was to get 100 by xmas. There you have it!

[ant french]

ian how did u get them custys then, i got a targer to get 100, i would be happy with just 100 by summer

[chopsie]

I did nearly 2 years working at Toyota at Burnaston Ian, That was like being a robot, Had to press a bell to go for a sh?t !!
Did not know if it was day,night,sunny or raining as there were no windows....bloody Japs 

i know burnaston - i visited factory and took a test drive on the race track up the road with 50 other people all in the auris hybrid - know what you mean about the factory - kaizen millitary effeciency only stocked 4 hours of components before next delivery. you had the rope to pull to stop the line in case of emergency. impressive site but know where your coming from there. bet your happier now as a wcer!!

Been quite a few years since I worked there, 7 to be exact, I left just before my daughter was born. God didnt realise it had been that long    I was happier when I went back to construction (I had done this before Toyota). I am happy as long as I am outdoors, I hated being stuck in a factory. Kaizen.....not heard that for a very long time

[Paul Coleman]

I suffered three redundancies in two years during the last recession (early 90s).  I had always assumed that being self-employed was less secure than working for someone else.  How wrong I was.
There wasn't a sniff of a job so I borrowed a ladder from an out of trade plumber, stuck a roof rack on my old Datsun Cherry, bought a few hand tools from a local janitorial shop, and away I went knocking on doors.  Didn't have a clue.  Just wanted to earn some money so I could come off the dole.  I claimed dole perfectly legally for a couple of months till I was earning enough that I could no longer claim it.  Along the way I did a few days driving here and there for agencies.  Then I picked up a self employed number driving away for a week each month.  I built my window cleaning around that.  When all the driving went kaputt I found I had half a (low paid) window cleaning round and still not the sniff of a job.  So I just carried on.  Still at it nearly 20 years later.  Still not the sniff of a job but I haven't wanted one for 19.5 years so that's OK 

[dave0123]

did you have to pay for the news paper article?

[Dave71]

Home after a long night on nightshift to meet window cleaner doing my windows, took 5 min,charge £5, missing bathroom window, still dirty in corners cob webs like you wouldnt believe and done 6 of these in a row,less an hr, cash in hand, he was sacked there and then new ladders ordered the same day and never looked back

[jsm]

Nice newspaper articles Ian, Did any of these bring you much new business? 

Had 3 commercial enquiries so far from it and a few " I saw you in the paper last week" from me customers ...

Did it mainly to put 2 fingers up to my old colleauges who laughed at me when I told them what I was doing.

Since the articles came out my old dealership has laid 10 staff off and im sure I would have been one of them so looks like I left at right time

must be a car delership thing - i used to do all the Essex Ford's and Toomey motor's Plant when in essex and the car salesmen used to take the p out of me ..... i used to have a chuckle as i earnt double what they did and never worked the weekends  lol
good on you ian .

[dazmond]

found myself on the dole in the early 90 s after being sacked from a landscaping job.my dad had kicked me out and i was living on the couch at a mates crummy little flat.i was skint with no hope (in my eyes then)of ever getting a job again or earning any money!


.......THEN THE WINDOW CLEANER TURNED UP!!!i was desperate for a job and some money and asked him if he had any work.if said yes ill pick you up at 845 tommorrow morning!

i worked with this guy for a year and saved up for a van and he sold me a very small round to start me off!

during that year i could see this guy had a great varied round and he worked very hard(he still does at 64)and i could see he was making a good living!!never looked back.


dazmond

[mark mann]

Out of despair really.....it was just getting harder and harder to make a living after the banks started upgrading their security

lmao - you mean the upgrade of security meant you couldnt walk out with a bag of money every night - lol - sorry couldnt resist. 

[Ian101]

did you have to pay for the news paper article?

no cost nowt ....  just emailed the business desk editor and told him I had a story for them .... met their reporters and gave them a prepared list of facts and info which they love as it saves them messing about.

[Ian101]

ian how did u get them custys then, i got a targer to get 100, i would be happy with just 100 by summer

door knock .... door knock .... door knock ... door knock ... word of mouth ..... door knock ... door knock and then some more door knocking.

also bought some work

this is my opinion ... leaflets too slow .... just door knock however there are lads on here who have build large rounds from just leaflets but too slow for me and my requirements but having said that what Im doing now is when I do a house I do leaflet the other 5 either side of it to get things more compact.

[Paul Coleman]

Out of despair really.....it was just getting harder and harder to make a living after the banks started upgrading their security

I like that post.  Nice to see your humour is back Dan. 

[Steve_c]

After serving 20 years of a life sentence for war crimes, its the only job i could get. I'm half serbian and half croatian, and every morning i wake up and want to kill myself, so killing new window cleaners on my patch would be no problem.

[prestige cleaners]

i was in a call centre (damn) as well as 5 other mail order companys in the same office, had to answer the phone, look after credit card fraud, fix pcs, supervise staff, run reports, clean the kitchen, basically a dogs body.

lasted 6 years before i started to crack under the pressure, boss was really horrible to me.

so i decided to ring my friend to ask if he had a ladder for sale (so i could start trad)

he said hes selling his business and van (wfp) and would i like that instead?

it was a bit of a shock as he wanted £15k for it, so i turned him down, then realised even with a loan i would still be earning treble what i was on then, and would only have to work 2-3 days. so took a huge leap of faith and did it. (scary)

saved me canvassing, and charging £5 a house as i didnt have a clue, his average price was £20 so had nice premium round! been 3 yrs now and even my wife left her legal secretarys job to join me after id been doing it for a year.

[chopsie]

does he regret selling it?