I will post them here and in the greenhorn room as well.
Hot seat notes
1. I don’t pretend to know everything…this is just how I am doing some things that are working really well for me.
2. Been cleaning carpets pretty much my whole life with some down time a year here and a year there. Owned some Chem-Dry’s …worked for some Chem-Drys and started steam cleaning around 8 years ago in this area. I own my business now.
3. My business structure is really based on people helping people. There are two different carpet cleaners …in my opinion….There is the Craftsman and the Business man…now you can be really good or really bad in either dept but this is what I think the difference is.
4. The Craftsman is really into the cleaning aspects of the industry…really likes the equipment and process’ used…all the chems used and always looking for something better.
5. The Businessman is the guy who loves the marketing, speaking with customers…or clients, doing office work or has people to do the office work if it is too much.
6. I am the business man…I’m not a great business man…but at businessman nonetheless.
7. I think by me hooking up with some craftsman that do great work…IE o/os things tend to work out well.
8. Why not find that carpet cleaner businessman to find you the work, deal with phones and work that side of it and you do the craftsman part and split the income?...Or vise versa
9. Which one are you? Either way I think it is a win win.
10. Doing the carpet cleaning and the office will work fine if you don’t want to grow your business…but if you do then you have to have other people on your team.
Now here’s the money part
1. I split just about every job down the middle. The guys that work for me pretty much full time I split 50/50. Some of my lower end jobs …or out of the area I will go 60/40 because those are fewer and not worth a lot of money and my “Face” is not really on the job.
2. Every job that I get costs me money to get…even repeat customers have their cost. The guy cleaning doesn’t have to pay for the job, he just answers the phone and there it is, no mailing, no ads…whatever. But he does have the expense of doing the job and maintaining the equipment etc. So I believe that each have their equal expenses…at the end of the day anyway.
3. When I first started this, I had to cut my overhead way down by selling the van and all the equipment and of course that cuts out gas and chemical usage…repairs… you name it
4. I was losing what I figured to be about $2000.00 every month by jumping off the truck.
5. The thing is, I had time to work on getting more jobs to make up for that loss…for every extra $200.00 job that came in…I made an extra $100.00…And that’s what I did.
6. The best part is I can now work on my company to get more work…I can send these jobs to Cleaning Techs who may not have a lot of work …that they didn’t directly have to pay for those customers.
7. I do like to think that I have slightly higher end work…but definitely not always.
8. There have been some guys on the board who have gotten some crappy jobs from me but you have to take the bad with the good…as do I. whattyagonnado.
9. This is better for me than having employees because of the costs and liabilities involved…workman’s comp, payroll, taxes etc.
10. I pay the guys who work for me just like I would and accountant or a mechanic…they are vendors.
11. I have to 1099 anyone who makes over $600.00 from me and they have to have their own equipment and insurance.
12. And California subcontractor law states in part “they must do the job their own way and on their own time”. Which means I really can’t even have them do a job at a scheduled time…it just works out that it is the time the customer wants it….if you understand.
13. This is a reason why cable companies give you an 8 hour window sometimes.
14. The Cleaning Tech has no “loyalty” to me. If they want to keep a customer base and follow up with a customer…or “Steal” the customer after the initial job then they have the right to do that…I can’t stop them.
15. BUT, I keep the customer on file, follow up, remind and basically keep in contact myself…and that Craftsman carpet cleaner probably doesn’t care too much about keeping the records anyway or they wouldn’t be doing the work for me to begin with.
16. It just works out.
