I’m just curious if there was a turning point where you found that you no longer had to go out looking for work, but rather just sat back and just answered the calls. I stay pretty busy for the most part, usually a few weeks scheduled out but I definitely have to keep up with my client list and keep the ball Rolling. I’ve noticed this month is extra busy, I’m scheduled till after the first week of June and I feel real good about it. This is the busiest I’ve been so far and it had me curious what you guys have experienced.
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That is a great question. I never gave that any thought. If I had to guess, probably around 2011 was the last time I looked for work. I never stop networking though. You just never know if you might lose 10 clients in a 2 -3 month span because of people relocating, job layoffs, etc. I always want to make sure I can replace clients really quick if needed.
I know there are plenty of window cleaners that never look for work. Word of mouth has been very good to them!
To answer your question… 8 years. I had to work really hard to get where I am today. It was through trial and error. I learned a lot over that time. It was worth it though.
A fellow window cleaner here in my city got there in just a couple of years I think mainly because he was at the top of Google though he did mail out a postcard to previous customers once a year. Then I came along and now we wrestle for the top and we kind of split the new business that comes from there but that’s okay we’re friends and we’re actually buying his business when he moves soon.
I don’t think you’ll ever get to the point where you can literally do nothing, but I hope to get to the point where I don’t have to pay anything to get new customers I just got told customers to call
this the 1st year where i dont go out of my way to find work.im at year 8. im properly snowed under ,its a great feeling !
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Year one, about 6 months in.
Roughly 3 months after I learned to harness the power of the internet.
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we are in year 6 and first year that I have not spent a cent yet for advertising and we are absolute slammed so I will say 5 years of great reputation is paying now
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Year 7… We dialed back on advertising to working on managing growth and focused on building bigger cash reserve… Cut advertising back a ton… We still grew 30% percent and had to hire on an extra full time employee that year.
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depends totally on what you mean by “business”.
for instance, if you want to keep growing, it’s likely you will never reach that point.
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That’s awesome! I hope it keeps up for you. Thanks for the feedback
Wow those are good results. That’s really good, I’d like to know how you did that. Are you paying to get your results or is it just through the natural searches?
So from what I’ve seen so far from everyone it seems the average is about 6 years. That’s actually not too bad. What I’m shooting for is to not have to pay for advertising or anything and just keep up basic networking and answer the calls when they come in. With the basic fees to keeper up a website as needed. This is not factoring in growth of employees and things like that though. I guess this is going off if you are at the size of business you already want to be. I would think if you are always trying to grow this might not be possible. @Window_Spas @c_wininger @Kyle
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So my father in-law has been in business here for 30 years. For years he has just answered the phone and been as busy as he wants to be. Now he literally does about as little as could and stays busy. He has calls all the time and no website or anything. Just a newspaper ad I think is all. But I think that is to be expected when you do business for 30 years in a town. I’m shooting to take as little time as I can to reach the same results. However I plan on growing to a decent size business.
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Year 3 for us?
For the last couple of years, we haven’t advertised. We have been meaning to, but just haven’t needed to. And we’ve been growing about 20% per year.
Last year my wife basically completely stepped away from the business and helped me transition to handling it 100%.
This year we are working on bringing in more help. Originally, our goal was to be just me and her with no helpers, but we’ve been slowly changing that.
This fall we are truly hoping to advertise to beef up in our primary geographic service area, and next year we are hoping to fairly dramatically narrow that service area. We will be advertising more to accomplish that.
Basically, once we got to the point where the business was coming in on auto pilot, we stopped advertising., and we could continue that way with double digit growth every year, I believe. However, we want to better choose the part of our city we work in, which will require us to be more proactive.
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Has anyone given home adviser a try?
There’s about a hundred threads on home advisor minimum check out the search button.
This topic has nothing to with H.A.
Just want this thread to stay on track it is a great topic to discuss.
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I think I would have to agree as well now that I think about this topic more. I plan to expand as the demand keeps coming in. I’m always doing something to network and grow no matter where I am in my business. I ask pretty much most stores or restaurants if I’m shopping or eating and see a dirty window still. I suppose unless you are truly content with the size of business you have or don’t plan on adding to the workforce you will probably never reach a time when you just do nothing. As a single operator or maybe a 2 man business I think this is very possible, but eventually you will have to start turning down all the excess work and just let the calls come in. My goal is to have a couple crews of 2-3 guys going. So as business grows to where I can’t keep up then I’ll add another crew member to make it manageable again. So I gues the process would start over again to support the new worker. I guess it really boils down to what your business goals are then.
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6 month, the power of Internet is crazy. I was able to be in the top 3 of Google. This year we expended and have a new car for our crew of 2 and now I don’t do any advertising, and I’m filled booked a month ahead of time.
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Do you pay a service to get to the 3rd spot of Google?
