Commercial work is worthless, seen so many big guys fall cos of ruthless under cutting and rubbish cleaning. Domestic work is worth ten times as much imho .
Agreed, we do so much commercial around london direct and via subcontracting, i also resub loads out too, its all about the undercut, so much work gets lost to being undercut but can win lots of work by undercutting the competition yourself! Can still get a top day rate, some weeks we hit more doing office and blocks than doing a full month of domestic and believe me my domestic work is perfectly priced but you can always get burnt and are never appretiated at all as they are always looking for the next guy to save them 5-10 percent.
I too am slowly at the mo building a massive domestic business up, lucky no need for big TV advertising or leaflet drops as im out canvassing as a team leader with 3 others doing 4-5 eves a week 5.30-7.30 building up something totally different that coins it in as much as windows but also doubling it up gaining domestic customers too when im local which i see as a lovely little perk of the job :-) The canvassing im doing requires us to bingo card everything so everyone gets hit and my god its bringing in some close decent work.
Very soon ill be subbing everything Commercial without chasing or taking on anymore and give another go at employing on domestic with everything direct debit/go cardless which i think is the BIG game changer that will make it work without the need to be chasing debts all the time feeling down and low finding wages and all other costs before any profit with that feeling always in my head of "ill be better off as a 1 man business with next to no overheads or stress".
I think Lee has nailed it, with everyone on standing order/go cardless all he needs to do is manage the leaflet/canvassing and all the other customer generating ways he has, and the business simply builds itself! All new vans and equipment so no real worry of anything going wrong and losing profit, all he needs is good reliable staff which you get by showing respect and not taking the p which a decent day/hourly rate with a shinny new van that can be used for average personal use helps big time, all he needs to do is watch his money come in and make sure his guys are all working as they should via tracker. I find it hard to convince existing customers to go cardless sadly but I'm finding all new ones if told at the start after the first clean are pretty easy.
So far on paper it looks pretty easy to smash it up on the domestic side and do well out of it! I did it before and did ok apart from always having to chase debt day after day which got me so stressed out that i decided to sell and go commercial and retail which has been good but im ready to go again, without the headaches of chasing debt so much its a big game changer that i believe will work much better this time.
Im going to hit London by storm...Watch this space
