Going to try to make long story short. I am looking for resources, advice, mentorship.
I own multiple commercial cleaning franchises doing recurring janitorial services. Unfortunately this industry can’t get past charging clients $20/hour for these services. I have 50 customers cleaned 1-3x weekly and still only make about $6-10k/month This leaves extremely little room for overhead and expenses and barely allows you to pay your employees a legal minimum wage for their time. All that said, I am focusing on carpet cleaning, strip and wax floors (since I have much experience here as well as I own all the equipment that is less than 2 years old) until I get window cleaning going. I am going to start window cleaning as my main long term focus. Been following Luke and Keith Kalfas for about 6 months. I read Keith’s books.
This is what I have:
Window cleaning experience from commercial cleaning businesses
Luke window cleaning kit from WCR as well as previously owned tools
Business name, logo, and mostly built website(WIX), new LLC.
Home Advisor
Housecall Pro
Bank Account
What I am working on:
Ordering print materials. (business cards and [cant decide between door hangers or postcards])
Phone (can’t decide between app like GoDaddy or SmartLine so I can use personal phone or getting a line form MetroPCS)
Gen. Liability (thinking of using Verifly, app for ordering insurance right from your phone on the spot)
Getting a WFP. (I can get a brand new Unger WFP of my choice financed over 12 months no interest, no money down through my commercial cleaning franchise but dont know if I want an Unger System yet. Maybe an Unger system with Xero Carbon pole??)
What I could use advice:
-marketing (Most marketing ideas from Keith Kalfas and Luke)
-advice on best apps for CRM, insurance, invoicing, phone line, etc.
-RESIDENTIAL or COMMERCIAL. This is my biggest decision. I have the equipment to do pole work up to 2 stories for all commercial jobs. I like the consistency and idea of having commercial routes and not having to deal with people as much. This would tie in well with my commercial cleaning franchise, however I can not pursue window cleaning jobs through my franchise clientele in any way without running into conflict of interest. I also like the idea of pursuing very high end residential. I live in San Diego so the average home price here is $590k and the part of San Diego 20 minutes from me has a median home value of $2.59M. There is plenty of high end homes. There are also 40+ listed window cleaning companies in San Diego on Google.
Thank you all for any input and advice.
Sorry for the long post. Just may be a great way to get as much start up info as possible into one thread.
Glad your looking into this and congrats! I would write a long post but I feel that this information is best transmitted via call. Feel free to contact me at 928-446-8983. My name is Gabriel
You can get the Window Cleaning Blueprint from WCR and Chris has some great info in there on marketing.
CRM… depends on what you’re going to do. For storefronts where you’ve got 20+ jobs per week, it’s hard to bet The Customer Factor. If you’re going to focus on large jobs where you’re doing less than 20 jobs per week, then something like Jobber or HouseCallPro might be a good fit.
Large Commercial and Residential can both be very profitable. For average residential you can figure $100/hr for high end stuff… you might be able to go $200/hr. Commercial can easily do $100-250/hr with wfp. I’ve done several 3-5 story buildings and the money is awesome. Hotels are fantastic. Only thing is large commercial like hotels they’ll only do it maybe twice per year. Smaller commercial like offices maybe every 8 weeks or quarterly.
I haven’t heard of The Customer Factor before but have been using Housecall Pro. I like it a lot but it seems not as user friendly for commercial work.
So I gave up my janitorial franchise and no longer have easy access to financing for a WFP system. I may have to wait til I have decent revenue for this purchase.
Ideally, I would like to have large recurring clients and focus on high end residential.
What is the fastest way to grow my billing in the industry? Due to not having a WFP at the moment, I am going to be focusing on pole work for a little. I was thinking 1 and 2 stories commercial work will be my main focus from the start. As long as I can get it done with poles. I know everyone says stay away from plaza, storefront, and strip malls due to ridiculously low pricing. However, I feel like most of these types of clients in this area dont even have a window cleaner but need one and probably would hire one if one walked in the door.
Totally agree with this. HouseCall is a great app but for me it wasn’t convenient because when doing route work and busting out 15+ stores a day it’s too time consuming to open and close the app all the time. But overall I like the app.
I hear Jobber is a great app ( Steve o made a video on it recently ) if anything it depends what work your doing. Like I said with route work in commercial you’ll find your time very pressed and wont have time to be entering all the information as you go. Perhaps with doing residential it could work much smoother. I really like quickbooks for invoices ( emailed ) and for tracking my monthly expenses & profit margins. When it comes to commercial work we simply use carbon copy invoices and keep the yellow side for our records and every day at the end of the day we enter everything into quickbooks and it takes care of everything. You can go many directions with crm apps…
I think I am going to go with The Customer Factor. I tried HousecallPro and like it a lot but I plan on having many commercial clients while pushing into residential. Housecall Pro seemed to favor residential clients more than commercial. I may do the trial of ResponsiBid but I believe that The Customer Factor has many of all of the features that ResponsiBid does. Jobber didn’t seem necessary at all if I use The Customer Factor. And TCF is only $45 a month which is unbelievably low, in my opinion.
Exactly! Hey if you want to go over some info today I am available all day. I know your looking for advice on some other areas so if you want feel free to call me at 928 446 8983.
