The first week of 2017. Who's busy and who's slow? How and why on both?

[Lee Stockwell]

I get it that equipment/vehicles need maintenance. But I feel sorry for you guys who are using truck mounts. $30K - $60K for a truck mount....+ all of the maintenance....not to mention repairs. Sheesh.

My most expensive piece of equipment for spot dyeing is a $30 Shop Vac. (but in all honesty....I go through at least 2 of them per year)

Not knocking truck mounts. I completely agree that they do a much better job of cleaning carpets than a porty. But how many carpets do you have to clean to pay for the costs of a truck mount???

It's like a barbershop. How many friggin' haircuts do you have to do (at $11 per cut) just to pay your monthly lease payment?? In Maryland it's about $2,800.00 per month to lease space in a decent strip mall.

My beef with the carpet cleaning industry is that it's SATURATED. Do this: How many carpet cleaning companies are there within your service area? (all zip codes that you service).

If you define saturation as an excess of providers relative to the number of clients willing to support them, I think you are more so than I am.

 

[Cleanworks]

It would be far better for you to speak with people that I've trained rather than asking me for my feedback.

Steve Sparling earned over half $1 million in his first year of doing color repair after taking my training. I will include a photo of his FB profile if you'd like to contact him.

David Mavilio and his brother Peter in Boston earned the entire cost of their training back with their very first job. Their first job was a $10,000 + job at a hotel to repair bleach spots straight out of the training.

Meg & John Burdick (Primadonna) landed a job to repair color loss on a high-end wool carpet for one of their customers straight out of the training. It was their first color repair job. Paid for their training in full.

But it really doesn't matter how many examples I provide here. People will always be skeptical. This is because they are unfamiliar with carpet and rug dyeing. I get that.

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Steve burned over half a million dollars? Not a great recommendation.

 

[Chris Howell]

If you define saturation as an excess of providers relative to the number of clients willing to support them, I think you are more so than I am.

The real question is… Are you competing for business? If not, you're ahead of the game. Kudos to you!

 

[Chris Howell]

Steve burned over half a million dollars? Not a great recommendation.

Huh?? Just say no to crack.

 

[Desk Jockey]

So if I take your KC class (and cancel the protest I had planned outside ) what kind of marketing budget am I going to need to put in my business plan?

How long can I expect before I can color repair full time and sell off all them damn TM'S requiring maintenance.

What is it going to take to make myself known as the color repair professional in my zip codes?

A brown guy in color repair, I'm not so sure if this is the year to start. ??

 

[hogjowl]

Visions of Gary Berg are dancing in my head.

 

[Desk Jockey]

You're lucky. I keeping seeing the boobs on that t-shirt.

 

[Chris Howell]

So if I take your KC class (and cancel the protest I had planned outside ) what kind of marketing budget am I going to need to put in my business plan?

How long can I expect before I can color repair full time and sell off all them damn TM'S requiring maintenance.

What is it going to take to make myself known as the color repair professional in my zip codes?

A brown guy in color repair, I'm not so sure if this is the year to start. ??

Are you expecting that someone else is going to do (and pay) all of your marketing for you??

You'll get out of it what you put into it.

Having said that....we provide marketing advice and support as well as marketing materials for all of our trainees in The Dye Lot.

How quickly you become known as "the expert" in your zip code is up to you. But you will have the BEST support in the industry.

 

[steve_64]

Here's my challenge to you. I've made this challenge to many others as well.

There's just as much color repair (dyeing) work out there as there is cleaning work. Anyone who doubts this. Is likely doing so because they don't advertise the services.

As I've said before, we are typically booked 3–4 months in advance at all timea. Those who have come visited us can attest to this. In all fairness we are only booked out two months right now.

The biggest difference is that color repair is a far more profitable than cleaning work because it's a specialized service that illuminates the need of having to replace carpet. It's not priced as a maintenance service light cleaning.

If cleaning carpets is your thing and you're happy with the profits from doing this, more power to ya. I just don't get why people would want to spend some much money on a machine that's so prone to problems and breakdowns and requires so much maintenance.

But again, if this is what you enjoy and you're earning a good living at it, I'm happy for you

What's the real cost of your class? Hotel rental vehicle a week off work.. The cost of products to get started.

I see some color damage but most of its apartments. Some residential

I see this as an addition to cleaning but I'm sure someone could make a living doing this. As I've said before I'm interested but you seem to be ignoring me.

 

[Chris Howell]

What's the real cost of your class? Hotel rental vehicle a week off work.. The cost of products to get started.

I see some color damage but most of its apartments. Some residential

I see this as an addition to cleaning but I'm sure someone could make a living doing this. As I've said before I'm interested but you seem to be ignoring me.

Sorry, Steve. I've actually made several attempts to get to my computer to respond to you. I know that you are waiting to find out if I received your email. I'm sure I have. I will respond to you tonight. I promise.

Regarding your statement… Color repair is the only service that we offer. We are not a carpet cleaning company and we stay busy full-time. How much work you have is fully dependent on how effective your marketing efforts are.

 

[Chris Howell]

What's the real cost of your class? Hotel rental vehicle a week off work.. The cost of products to get started.

I see some color damage but most of its apartments. Some residential

I see this as an addition to cleaning but I'm sure someone could make a living doing this. As I've said before I'm interested but you seem to be ignoring me.

Your hotel costs are obviously not covered in the class. Nor is your time off from work.

Am I missing something here??

 

[Desk Jockey]

Are you expecting that someone else is going to do (and pay) all of your marketing for you??

You'll get out of it what you put into it.

Having said that....we provide marketing advice and support as well as marketing materials for all of our trainees in The Dye Lot.

How quickly you become known as "the expert" in your zip code is up to you. But you will have the BEST support in the industry.

No what I am asking is what can the average investor in your system expect in time and money to get it to where you are. Recovering training and equipment costs are great but not my goal.

If I were to invest, my goal would be build a company just like yours. So how much can we expect to spend on marketing to get to where you are now?

 

[steve_64]

Your hotel costs are obviously not covered in the class. Nor is your time off from work.

Am I missing something here??

I was giving you a hard time about start up cost compared to buying a TM.

 

[Chris Howell]

I was giving you a hard time about start up cost compared to buying a TM.

It's all good, bro. Just trying to keep up with everything.

Again, sorry for the delay in responding to you. I'll do my best to get back to you tonight

 

[steve_64]

No problem. I'm not in a hurry. Heading out to work in a bit anyway.

The pic came blacked out not sure why. Must be a filter in the email or printer but I am a veteran.

 

[Chris Howell]

No problem. I'm not in a hurry. Heading out to work in a bit anyway.

The pic came blacked out not sure why. Must be a filter in the email or printer but I am a veteran.

We are happy to provide our training to veterans completely free of charge. Our way of saying thank you for your service to our country.

 

[Beeks]

Normal week for us, last I heard it was 6 booked jobs for the day, pretty much our average. Its 80 degrees out so winters don't really have an effect on us down here. Nov and Dec are our busiest months.

I think we stay relatively busy because people are cleaning up after all the holiday and heavy foot traffic they had over the past few months. We will slow down a little towards middle/end of month, but pick right back up in Feb until late march for spring break weeks.

 

[PrimaDonna]

what kind of marketing budget am I going to need to put in my business plan?
How long can I expect before I can color repair full time

Richard...what kind of budget would you plan for a start up business in your area? Can you market to your existing customer base (is there a need there and you can tap in to existing customers)?

Will you have a dedicated sales and marketing person to get the word out about the service? Do you have many commercial buildings with carpets that can be dyed in your area? The real money will be in the the commercial accounts. Long halls of carpet that they don't want to pay to replace or have the disruption. Costs way more to replace so you can charge more.

You're not going to be booked out 2-3 months with residential jobs. @Chris Howell what is a typical day like for your team? When you say booked out 2-3 months is that 5 days a week, working 8-5? Or do you only book a few jobs a week in the evenings? It's one thing to be booked out 2-3 months running 8-5 everyday or booked 2-3 months but you only work 2-3 days a week for a few hours because that is the schedule you've set for yourself or your team.

Chris has been at this for 20 years. Just because you take the class doesn't mean the work will suddenly appear. YOU have to build the business. I can tell you that Chris often offers work up on the Dye Lot facebook page. He's personally reached out to us to pass on leads in our area or has posted on the page asking for someone who may be in the area or want a job.

 

[Chris Howell]

Richard...what kind of budget would you plan for a start up business in your area? Can you market to your existing customer base (is there a need there and you can tap in to existing customers)?

Will you have a dedicated sales and marketing person to get the word out about the service? Do you have many commercial buildings with carpets that can be dyed in your area? The real money will be in the the commercial accounts. Long halls of carpet that they don't want to pay to replace or have the disruption. Costs way more to replace so you can charge more.

You're not going to be booked out 2-3 months with residential jobs. @Chris Howell what is a typical day like for your team? When you say booked out 2-3 months is that 5 days a week, working 8-5? Or do you only book a few jobs a week in the evenings? It's one thing to be booked out 2-3 months running 8-5 everyday or booked 2-3 months but you only work 2-3 days a week for a few hours because that is the schedule you've set for yourself or your team.

Chris has been at this for 20 years. Just because you take the class doesn't mean the work will suddenly appear. YOU have to build the business. I can tell you that Chris often offers work up on the Dye Lot facebook page. He's personally reached out to us to pass on leads in our area or has posted on the page asking for someone who may be in the area or want a job.

GREAT question, Meg. I haven't defined what a typical day is like in our company. Yes, we are booked out months in advance at all times, but in all fairness, those are rarely 8 hour days. I expect that each van that we have out is going to earn a minimum of $1,000.00 per day. Whether that's doing a full room dye, dyeing long hallways, or fixing bleach spots. Each van is averaging$1,000.00 per day. That number is often much higher than that, but rarely lower.

But because of our hourly rate ($375.00 per hour for residential and $900.00 per hour for commercial) we don't have to put in an 8 hour day to reach our goal (minimum) of $1,000.00 for the day. And I certainly don't cap it at $1,000. If my techs knock out a commercial job in a couple of hours and have brought in $2,000.00 then we will certainly give them an additional job(s) to be completed that day. But because we are about 75% commercial it can be challenging to get them in to do multiple commercial jobs in a single day as much of the work has to be done during the evening hours so as to not disrupt their working environment. We also do a lot with the public schools in Maryland, so that has to be done on weekends and during holiday breaks.

So to answer your question, we usually work about 3 - 4 hours per day this time of year. But that's all that we need to do because we are reaching our sales goals. During the warmer months our technicians are pretty much always putting in 8 - 10 hour days.

This time of year we also stay extremely busy with our color restoration projects on Persian Rugs. Jeff and I were out in the shop last night dyeing the round felt rug that I shared in The Dye Lot the other day. I'm actually trying to get out of the rug work by referring more and more of our customers to other people I've trained who have the airbrush. I've also been having Sturdy come down and do rugs for me as I really don't have the time to do them right now.

 

[PrimaDonna]

@Chris Howell ....You know I knew all that...but I thought everyone else should know what your schedule is like and why it's 2-3 months out.

Are your guys working 3-4 hours 7 days a week, 5 days a week, less days per week?

You expect that 'each van' you have out will earn $1k per day. How many vans are you running? How many days a week are they out?

Certainly the logistics of some of the buildings limit when you have access so to say you are booked out in Feb. for a school job when they are closed for Presidents Day makes sense. I also know that when you did the Peace center, it was over several nights because there was really only about a 3-4 hour window you could be in that building working. So it took several nights to complete. Also a reason you are booked out so far when you only have small windows in the government buildings to complete the work and it has to be spread out.

Thanks for the info, Chris.

 

[Chris Howell]

@Chris Howell ....You know I knew all that...but I thought everyone else should know what your schedule is like and why it's 2-3 months out.

Are your guys working 3-4 hours 7 days a week, 5 days a week, less days per week?

You expect that 'each van' you have out will earn $1k per day. How many vans are you running? How many days a week are they out?

Certainly the logistics of some of the buildings limit when you have access so to say you are booked out in Feb. for a school job when they are closed for Presidents Day makes sense. I also know that when you did the Peace center, it was over several nights because there was really only about a 3-4 hour window you could be in that building working. So it took several nights to complete. Also a reason you are booked out so far when you only have small windows in the government buildings to complete the work and it has to be spread out.

Thanks for the info, Chris.

Meg, we are currently running 4 vehicles. They each run five days per week. Each vehicle/operator has a sales quota of $1,000 per day. The amount of time that they require to achieve their quota depends on the type of job they are doing. Most of our jobs are completed within 4 hours. We are very selective about which types of jobs we take on.

Are you and/or John planning to come join us on the big condominium job that we are doing next week?

 

[Desk Jockey]

I will never understand why you wouldn't just add more crews and get a reasonable backlog of a week or two.
Especially as you being a trainer, you don't even have the huge training costs involved. At 1k a day per crew I'd add technicians and vehicles and crush it.

 

[Chris Howell]

I will never understand why you wouldn't just add more crews and get a reasonable backlog of a week or two.
Especially as you being a trainer, you don't even have the huge training costs involved. At 1k a day per crew I'd add technicians and vehicles and crush it.

As I've said before, we used to be bigger. We used to have a lot more vans on the road. We are far more profitable now with fewer headaches. My guys have work every day. I'm just happy where we're at, Desk.

 

[Desk Jockey]

Just a difference in people I suppose.

I'm still trying to build a Hagopian or DA Burns dynasty.

 

[Chris Howell]

Just a difference in people I suppose.

I'm still trying to build a Hagopian or DA Burns dynasty.

Hagopian has a GREAT operation! I did a training there this past September. I trained 3 of their lead techs as well as a tech from Robert Mann's facility in Denver and Dr. Khosrow Sobhe's son.

 

[Desk Jockey]

Yeah I think they use the Transit Connects for color repair. They still haven't sold off the TM's yet though.

 

[WillS]

One thing that does keep us busy during the first 2 weeks of January is vacation rental homes. We have been cleaning for a Vacation Rental company for about 4 years now. All of their homes check out first week and we get called. These houses are mostly area rugs and rooms with carpet. The rental company doesn't care the cost to clean, because they don't pay for it. It is submitted to insurance and off it goes. It is one of the BEST commercial customers we have. They found us from one of their housekeepers driving by our truck one day on the road and writing down our number.

 

[A.J.]

1 week and I've already made 3 times what I did all of last Jan and Feb lol.

Then again I was new and ranking last online last year.

 

[Lee Stockwell]

It's easy to triple your volume, if you start low enough.

 

[SamIam]

I put out 400 cards to repeats last week. And spending $50 a week on Facebook.

Had a busy week.