I started my own company June 4th of 2018. The company I had previously worked for was filing bankruptcy and I was getting laid off. There were a few things that I had to my advantage fortunately. My house had nearly $100K in equity and I knew I was going to be able to get a lot of the equipment from the bankruptcy trustee liquidating assets. Also, I had collected every one of the clients’ contact information in my personal phone since we were required to do all of our own booking and client communications (at the time it was only for identification purposes only so I knew which client was either calling or emailing me). When the company folded, I sent out an email to everyone in my contact list saying that I was going out on my own and if they were not able to get on the schedule with the previous company to give me a call. There was a client base around 750 and the owner told me he was only going to handle about 125 on his own, so there were a lot of people that were going to need service and would be looking. I did make it clear that I was not stealing anyone from the original company, and no one had any service contracts, nor did I have any non-compete clause. Out of the 750ish clients I only had contact info for 300 or so and sent them a blast email, but only about 10 clients ever contacted me from the email blast. However, these 10 clients did go on to their neighborhood facebook pages and an app called Nextdoor and wrote high praise reviews for my new company. This led to multiple new clients that were calling me without me ever spending any marketing time or money. To this day, 14 months after starting my company, I have only spent $30 on marketing for a facebook promotion for my company’s FB page, and only at my wife’s request, and it did not result in a single new client lead. I spent $75 on 1,000 business cards and just handed a few to each client as I completed their job and asked for them to had them to neighbors if they were happy with the work I had done.
I invested $60K into my business right off the bat. I had a custom trailer built and put a down-payment on a used diesel truck to tow it. I bought some new tools from WCR and paid all of my State Licensing and insurance fees. (I pay $50/mo for a $2 million policy since I do commercial work on car dealerships and 3 client’s houses that are $1.5 million+. $1 million is a good place to start for windows only services.)
One thing I did though, and I don’t know if you can do this in Colorado, was I registered the company as an LLC where I am the sole member. This provides me with the legal separation of my personal finances and my business. So if someone were to file a lawsuit, they can not go after my personal assets like my house. I think that if you are a sole proprietorship, you do not have that same protection.
I think the one strength that has kept me in business is being diversified in the skills I offer. I do commercial and residential windows along with pressure washing of both. I also do screen repair, minor irrigation repair, paver and concrete sealing/restoration, and screen enclosure re-screening. Basically everything evolved from keeping windows clean. For example, the window is getting sprayed by a sprinkler and it is causing hard water calcium build up, so I adjust/move/replace the sprinkler head or install drip irrigation to stop the cause of the problem before I fix the hard water stains. Windows with heavy mildew and mold on the glass or frames led to pressure washing the whole house before I do the windows (which doubles my income from a single client/visit). Well since I pressure wash houses, clients wanted me to pressure wash their screen patio enclosures which often led to old brittle screens tearing out and needing to be replaced, so I added that. Then I was asked to pressure wash paver driveways, the jointing sand often gets blown out so it needs to be replaced and a sealer is applied to prevent future mildew growth. All of these required minor equipment and supply investments, but those expenditures were easily recovered within the first job while also maintaining a profit margin.
By being diversified last year I grossed around $50K in 7 months. This year I have grossed over $80K in 7 months and already have $30K worth of work scheduled over the next 3 months. Here in Florida, we do have the benefit of being able to work year round and the fall is our busiest season with snowbirds coming down from northern states and wanting their houses cleaned once they get here, or everyone wants their houses and windows cleaned before decorating for the holidays.
Since you have a winter drop off, what if you were able to look into making a minor equipment investment into air duct and chimney flue cleaning? This way you can predominantly work indoors doing that in the winter months and then in the warmer temps, offer window cleanings for the same clients.
I work for myself and probably will never hire an employee until my daughter is old enough to work. (She has Autism and is very detail oriented when it comes to assigned tasks. I hope that she and I can work together and I would know she would do an excellent job.) When I worked for the previous company 17 other employees came and went in 3.5 years. Mind you there were only two work vehicles on the road for the company and one of them was mine. Most guys were fired in less than 90 days, one was less than one full shift. The biggest issue was employees not maintaining standards and causing client satisfaction to drop significantly, thereby ruining the reputation the owner had spent 10+ years establishing.
Pay for a VOIP business number rather than a landline. I use GoDaddy’s where I get a local phone number for my business, but it rings directly to my cell phone and I can call back from the business phone number from my cell phone so my clients never get my personal phone number. I also get transcripted voicemails emailed to my business account. It’s like $12/mo. It also allows me to set business hours so when the business is “closed”, it will not ring on my phone and will automatically send the call to voicemail and email me a transcript of the message. There is a similar app called Grasshopper.
I tend to write really long posts and have mental diarrhea. Hopefully some of it is useful to you.