Okay, it's been a little while. I didn't post an update after June probably because it was a TERRIBLE month (more on that later). For those that dont know... back in Feb I found out that my position with my company was going away and literally started a window cleaning company overnight (see links to original posts and my youtube diary below if you want to follow the journey)...bla bla bla, I have had many successes and failures and have learned quite a bit so far.
After coming off of another almost $10,000 revenue month (didnt even get close to my $15,000 goal) in May I followed it up with a $3,000 month in June. That was a very discouraging period. On top of it all my landlord informed me that we had to move by July 1st adding a lot of additional expense and stress. Lets just say that June sucked and leave it at that. The biggest reason that my revenue dropped in June is because I sort of 'lost my way'. We are also in the slower season compared to the spring time but the big issue was my effort and focus. I started getting distracted too much with the whole 'work on your business instead of in it' thing. To be clear, I 100% understand and subscribe to that philosophy but when you are new there are really two important things: 1. make sales 2. complete jobs so that you can collect money. I was focusing on the next step so much that I stopped doing what had given my my early success which was TONS of effort in prospecting. The rough June slapped me in the face and helped me get back on track.
I mentioned that I bought a pressure washing trailer (very cheap on craigslist!) and had just begun to add those services to my business. Since I have started promoting pressure washing (simply by adding it to my flyers) roughly 80% of our business has been pressure washing. I'm interested to see where this goes as I am not going to force it either way. Our company identity has become the 'exterior cleaning' company (we also do interior window cleaning). We now offer cleaning from the roof of your house, to the siding, to the sidewalk and driveways. The reason for the addition of pressure washing was because a large percentage of my customers were asking us if we did it and I had been giving the work to another company and watching them make the money.
I have been very undisciplined on my bookkeeping so I cannot give exact numbers on my net vs gross at this time (I know....i'm in the process of fixing this). On any given job my labor expense is around 30% and my supplies range anywhere from 1% - 8% (low on window cleaning and higher on pressure washing). Liability insurance costs $1300/year.
When I first started all of my energy was going after commercial work with the exception of a lead generation site that I used for residential. At this time we have 100% stopped pursuing commercial and are solely going after residential. I do see value in large commercial work and will likely pursue it once I get the residential side of the business streamlined.
My current marketing strategy is flyers, flyers and more flyers. I have had limited success with them and then I did a complete redesign on the flyer style and have had a MUCH better response rate. I am finally getting things started online but I am not there yet.
I finished July with just over $9,000 in revenue. As hard as I am working I dont know if August will be much better simply because of the time of the year. I am planning on and expecting my revenue to significantly increase around October due to all of the snow birds coming back to Florida and getting their homes spruced up again.
I'm sure that there are other things that Im could mention but it's late. Hit me up with any questions and I'll do my best to answer.
Big thanks to this community for the moral support. It's been awesome having a lot of strangers pull for you.
You can see my video diary here. Feel free to follow along: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTS3WLs0t2stlWFaqTzP2mQ
You can see my previous updates here:
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