[paul alan]

Yes I'm being serious. Why not

`




Absolutely, is Friday ok? Its a bit of a drive but would love to meet you and see what I saw on the video for real!

Yeah Friday is fine. where you coming from?

Abergele! north wales

Just realised its a 12 hour round trip!


My wife has just reminded me that Friday is my 40th birthday. I'm still up for it though.

[Slacky]

Leave at 3 in the morning.

[Slacky]

It’ll be 4 hours then. Roads will be quiet.

[Lee Pryor]

Jesus! lol

Well its up to you. Keep me posted

[paul alan]

Leave at 3 in the morning.

Thats what I plan to do

[paul alan]

Jesus! lol

Well its up to you. Keep me posted

I'll be there, it'll be a nice drive. I'll take the wife's car.


Is 9am ish ok?

[Lee Pryor]

Well I wont lie to you, I never get to the office before 11am but Im sure I can manage an early start if your making that sort of effort haha.

[paul alan]

Well I wont lie to you, I never get to the office before 11am but Im sure I can manage an early start if your making that sort of effort haha.

Thanks , see you then!

[Dry Clean]

Dry clean - too many assumptions regards to wages etc.... but really what lee makes or not is not for the his thread and irrelevant to the forum try to view things with a more open mind

Paul - have you thought of talking to a business mentor to help develop your brand and biz ?

Darran

Personally I think he's mad to do it but Lee volunteers his personal info on here and that's why I used him as an example, the biggest mistake most make when it comes to starting a business/employing is underestimating the potential costs and overestimating the potential profit so why you think its irrelevant to discuss them on a business plan thread is beyond me.

[p1w1]

Hi Paul.
I keep very quiet on here nowadays. Please feel free to call me next week if you fancy a chat.
I have  10+ vans (all franchised)  all cleaning domestic customers and all built up with no savings or investment from anywhere.
Its VERY hard work, but with the right attitude and plan you can get there.
I could stop now and enjoy the benefits. (it has certainly been worth the stress and strain) I could stop its growth now and sit back and enjoy the income, but, I am continuing to build my business at the moment, planning to double its size in the next 5 years. This is now easier as investment money is generated via the business.
If you want that chat I'm easy to find.
David Kent
KentKleen

Thats pretty impressive, what was the 1 thing that you found the hardest? Without seeing like i'm prying into your financial details how much work money wise do you offer the franchisee as a starting point and what do they generally end up with to where they are satisfied (just trying to get a general idea of how many customers are roughly needed for 1 franchisee). Also how long did it take you to get up to 5 franchisee's.

I want to go down the franchisee route rather then employ.

Paul

[David Kent @ KentKleen]

This is a very basic overview of how I did it in the early days.
1. Cleaned all my customers as if they where my only customer. I mean totally over the top in levels of service.
2. Got so busy I was running 3 weeks late, even with my father helping me out most days.
3. Started first franchisee with around £2k of regular work.
4. I then Worked like mad again till I was full to the brim, started the second.
5. Repeated for first 5 over a 3 year period.

Now we start from scratch but pull in 40+ new customers a week so a new franchisee can be full within 2 months (then his work is refined/compacted by us over the next few months)  whilst we are building his round up, he gains experience with loads of first cleans and helps out on fsg jobs etc etc.

We will fill a franchisee up with as much or as little as they want.
All our franchisees operate within 10 miles of our base. Most within our relatively small town. No areas, no borders, no arguments.

Hardest part of it is getting through all the first cleans.

 

[p1w1]

This is a very basic overview of how I did it in the early days.
1. Cleaned all my customers as if they where my only customer. I mean totally over the top in levels of service.
2. Got so busy I was running 3 weeks late, even with my father helping me out most days.
3. Started first franchisee with around £2k of regular work.
4. I then Worked like mad again till I was full to the brim, started the second.
5. Repeated for first 5 over a 3 year period.

Now we start from scratch but pull in 40+ new customers a week so a new franchisee can be full within 2 months (then his work is refined/compacted by us over the next few months)  whilst we are building his round up, he gains experience with loads of first cleans and helps out on fsg jobs etc etc.

We will fill a franchisee up with as much or as little as they want.
All our franchisees operate within 10 miles of our base. Most within our relatively small town. No areas, no borders, no arguments.

Hardest part of it is getting through all the first cleans.

Thanks

[John Mart]

This is a very basic overview of how I did it in the early days.
1. Cleaned all my customers as if they where my only customer. I mean totally over the top in levels of service.
2. Got so busy I was running 3 weeks late, even with my father helping me out most days.
3. Started first franchisee with around £2k of regular work.
4. I then Worked like mad again till I was full to the brim, started the second.
5. Repeated for first 5 over a 3 year period.

Now we start from scratch but pull in 40+ new customers a week so a new franchisee can be full within 2 months (then his work is refined/compacted by us over the next few months)  whilst we are building his round up, he gains experience with loads of first cleans and helps out on fsg jobs etc etc.

We will fill a franchisee up with as much or as little as they want.
All our franchisees operate within 10 miles of our base. Most within our relatively small town. No areas, no borders, no arguments.

Hardest part of it is getting through all the first cleans.

How do you generate your customers David?

[paul alan]

This is a very basic overview of how I did it in the early days.
1. Cleaned all my customers as if they where my only customer. I mean totally over the top in levels of service.
2. Got so busy I was running 3 weeks late, even with my father helping me out most days.
3. Started first franchisee with around £2k of regular work.
4. I then Worked like mad again till I was full to the brim, started the second.
5. Repeated for first 5 over a 3 year period.

Now we start from scratch but pull in 40+ new customers a week so a new franchisee can be full within 2 months (then his work is refined/compacted by us over the next few months)  whilst we are building his round up, he gains experience with loads of first cleans and helps out on fsg jobs etc etc.

We will fill a franchisee up with as much or as little as they want.
All our franchisees operate within 10 miles of our base. Most within our relatively small town. No areas, no borders, no arguments.

Hardest part of it is getting through all the first cleans.

First cleans for me are hard, I did two today that took an hour each. They're only 10-15 min jobs.


I often wander if there is an easier way to do them but I have come to the conclusion that there just isn't. If you skimp on a first clean then you wont be able to do a regular maintenance clean on your next visit.


I found that by wiping the top frames with a cloth that it speeds things up considerably, but the next clean I wont have much confidence just giving them a quick clean.


Any pointers?

[Shrek]

I don’t think there is a way to speed 1st cleans up , apart from using a 14 inch brush and water on high flow. My first cleans take upto 40 mins or so , I actually enjoy 1st cleans as they feel like a challenge 

[paul alan]

I don’t think there is a way to speed 1st cleans up , apart from using a 14 inch brush and water on high flow. My first cleans take upto 40 mins or so , I actually enjoy 1st cleans as they feel like a challenge 
[/quot

Best bits the look on the customers face when your done.

[David Kent @ KentKleen]

Good morning 8 weekly.
Having the amount of vans we now have, referrals alone bring in around 20 a week. We have a local office close to the town centre, so again walk ins are very common.
Leafleting areas repeatedly works very well for us, along with ‘we clean your neighbor’ notes.
An already ‘full’ van/franchisee will hand less compact Work back to the office as and when they get neighbours added to there round in areas they work, this helps new franchisees as they are getting a maintenance job straight away rather than a first clean.
When we need too, we use our Facebook page. We haven’t really done much with it all summer as the Work has flooded in.
Finally, we try to provide a top class, value for money service,  we aim to do more than is expected for our customers, this alone can bring you as many new customers as you want, very quickly, but, is the hardest part of all.

[Stoots]

Not much ambition then - perhaps he’ll be happy just pottering around cleaning 4 or 5 houses a day 🤔

Hard graft come with the job - wfp is no where near as bad as the trad days - everyone has there own perceptions and ways of working none of them are wrong if it suits you

2 man work is an art to get the best efficiency- it takes a really good co ordinated team to make it worth while

Darran

How many jobs is 1 employee getting through to do £250 a day solo ?

Im going to give it a go with my new guy who is starting next week as doing the figures thats what he really needs to be doing once ive factored in his wages, pension, N.I and van running costs etc.

If i cant get him doing 250 a day i fear it may not be worth it to go any further with this employing lark...

what kind of profit margin should i be aiming for per man is 50% profit good after ALL additional costs of employing them ?

I cant work out whether its really worth it or not, its all a lot of hassle and extra costs and im not sure there is enough gain, but i will give it another try and see if i can make it work.

I feel like im peeing in the wind though, ive spent all year so far trying to employ with various success and ultimately its not worked out, ive had a great employee who left then a few other messers and. I feel like i may have found a good one this time but who is to know,  i dont like the thought of quitting but at some point i feel i may just be happier not bothering and keep my sanity and maybe look into doing other things.

For such a simple business window cleaning is so frustrating!

[dazmond]

Not much ambition then - perhaps he’ll be happy just pottering around cleaning 4 or 5 houses a day 🤔

Hard graft come with the job - wfp is no where near as bad as the trad days - everyone has there own perceptions and ways of working none of them are wrong if it suits you

2 man work is an art to get the best efficiency- it takes a really good co ordinated team to make it worth while

Darran

How many jobs is 1 employee getting through to do £250 a day solo ?

Im going to give it a go with my new guy who is starting next week as doing the figures thats what he really needs to be doing once ive factored in his wages, pension, N.I and van running costs etc.

If i cant get him doing 250 a day i fear it may not be worth it to go any further with this employing lark...

what kind of profit margin should i be aiming for per man is 50% profit good after ALL additional costs of employing them ?

I cant work out whether its really worth it or not, its all a lot of hassle and extra costs and im not sure there is enough gain, but i will give it another try and see if i can make it work.

I feel like im peeing in the wind though, ive spent all year so far trying to employ with various success and ultimately its not worked out, ive had a great employee who left then a few other messers and. I feel like i may have found a good one this time but who is to know,  i dont like the thought of quitting but at some point i feel i may just be happier not bothering and keep my sanity and maybe look into doing other things.

For such a simple business window cleaning is so frustrating!

theres no way your new guy will be doing £250 a day from the off......more like £100 on his first day....every job will be like a first clean if he s not used to window cleaning.....itll take him a few weeks at least to get up to speed.....

[Smudger]

Oh dazmond, please! So the first free days it’s slow, they have to learn you know but it’s only window cleaning not rocket science after 2 weeks they can easily be up to speed on the glass but the real challenge is learning the rounds that takes 3 to 4 months where they remember all the little tricks to park etc...

All I will say on employing is it’s a great safety net over a single operator and if you want to you can earn nicely out of it, like any biz, it may not be there from day one - my days are spent doing quotes and few bits here and there and lots of family time ( the equivalent would be 7 solid hours on the glass + paperwork and quotes etc... )

Would you say owning amazon would be worth the hassle ?


I read recently there profit per item is something like 1% but with the volume it’s probably the best biz in the world and that’s the point one man operator makes 60% profit a cleaning company with employee may only make 40% profit per man ( that’s 2 to start with is more than on your own ) now in the case of lee times that by 10

£250 a day ( that’s a slowish day ) we have so many  different cleans it varies from an estate of small semi’s where they hit 30 cleans in a day to manor houses where they clean as little as 3 properties

Add ons are key for us with sfg cleans starting at £70 for a small front and back semi - these are done in about an hour same for Conny roof cleans .


Best money for us is now pressure washing - roof cleaning - brick cleaning etc... four figures for 8 hours
Drives, patio’s bring in double p/h than window cleaning

Darran