To answer a couple of the questions:
I started out nearly 9 years ago (Jan 03) after being made redundant as a Factory Manager, starting on carpets with an Extracta Exel and then gradually added on, took on first employee after 6 months. I've always been of the opinion that "I can do that" before I look at offloading it to someone else! The only big cleaning we haven't starting doing yet is oven cleaning. I've got a caustic tank and can clean an oven to a decent standard, but I just think the margins are too low for the effort that's put in to it, it's probably fine for someone self employed, but not employing....at least not in my eyes at the moment.
Yes it can all be a hassle and I sometimes (often!) wish I was self employed again, however there are probably more positives than negatives, like yesterday I spent the day Christmas shopping in Newcastle, had a lovely lunch out with the dearly beloved in the knowledge that the business was still running and making money (not necessarily profit
) Last week we took a day off when all the schools were closed because of the strike and went for a big walk with our daughter up in the hills around Wooler, again lunch out at a little pub! There's a growing theme here
Everyone who works for us knows what to do, I don't have to watch over them or worry that they are taking the p!ss. In some cases I only see some of our commercial office cleaners on a monthly basis and some of the part timers even less than that.
I think I could stop tomorrow and know that the business would carry on without me without too much disruption.
We don't go in cheap, we're actually probably the most expensive in the area, partly because we're VAT registered and have bigger overheads than others, but also because we don't want to work for nothing and be busy fools like some out there.
My real passion however is for the cycle hire business, I've now got around 60+ bikes (20 new ones added in September). I would love it to be in an area where I could spend all my time concentrating on that. The mind set of the people who hire bikes is totally different to our cleaning customers, they are on holiday and looking for a good time and wanting to explore the area, they're not people winging about how a sill had been missed on the last window clean or complaining that we'd put the price up by 50p!!
We've just invested in a new 3200 sq ft workshop and this has made a massive difference to how we operate, home is now home and work is in a totally separate area.
I agree it's not for everyone, but I like to think we've gone the right way.
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