Life strategies for the Career (solo) Window Cleaner

[Garry]

I give the homeowner a choice of 2-3 available days for them to choose from. I am also booked up about 1 1/2 to 2 weeks out so they can choose any day that works for them on those open weeks. Everybody has a life and schedules to meet, it is all about matching them.

[windowsrx]

I always suggest a day that is open on my schedule. Sometimes they will ask for a specific day. As long as the day is open it doesn’t matter to me what day I clean their windows. Everyone is pretty easy to schedule.

[Majestic66]

Anyone ask for April 7th 2021 yet
I’m coming to Louisiana that day don’t book it.

[Peachy]

Done more of what at 20 though?

[whatapane]

Great question.

Having to do it all over again, after having the level of responsibility I have now and knowing how hard it is and having to rise to the challenge, and knowing that I am capable of way more than what I thought I was, I would have pushed myself harder in preparation for what was ahead.

In specific I would have been more diligent to grow my business to the level where I am working on my business instead of in it. This allows, not only for greater income to take on a family and a mortgage, but it also allows for a more flexible schedule to also re-invest your money into other ventures.

Also I would have been more diligent to be frugal with my spending in order to maximize my financial growth.

Last I would have included some bigger adventures of in my life before marriage. Once you get married and start having kids you are much more tied down and it cost way more to go on any trips.

Last I would have saved as much money as possible in preparation for having a family. With a wife, kids and a mortgage there are always unexpected expenses that come up and they are often in the thousands of dollars and those that are in the hundreds quickely add up to thousands.

[Peachy]

Thanks pane. Right now I am in my early 20’s. Single, no wife, no kids. Don’t plan on having any.

What you said especially about the bigger life adventures is a little worrisome. I haven’t had any myself yet. Kind of sucks because even with my current FT job I kind of think the same thing… wish I would’ve done more before I got this job because right now it’s hard to imagine me finding anything better.

I’d like to grow my business to the point where I could go FT. Besides working on the literal how to clean windows part I’m focusing on other aspects-legal, advertising, customer service.

Sometimes I think I’m not capable of growing my business to the level of making actual livable wage off of it but I’m going to keep on keeping on. It’s a little scary.

Thanks for the reply. Have a good day.

[whatapane]

Peachy, your in a great place we the a lot of pontential. Your in your early 20’s and you have a lot of time. Now that said that time will go by way quicker than you think so the key is not to let it go to waste and work as hard as you can while you still have your strength and before you start to take on any major expenses in your life.

The biggest key to start with is to be as frugal as possible. You can’t sail a ship with holes in it. Well you can but your will spend your time and energy bailing water out and you won’t get far. Look at your expenses and cut cost anywhere you can food, rent, cell phone etc. Now is the time to do it when you uave no one else depending in you for support. Cutting your expenses like a crazy man will give you wiggle room with your money so you can invest it to nto your business without the risk of not being able to pay the bills and you can grow alot quicker. You can make decisions with your business without being as concerned with wether or not you will have a roof over your head tomorrow or not. That can be a huge advantage and help you to be competitive.

Once you have cut your expenses to a bare minimum and you are running lean your next focus is take make as much as possible. Work your ass off. Some people try to say work smarter not harder. I say work smarter and harder and you will kick butt!

You might not see yourself being able to grow a sustainable business that can support you but that’s an easy fix. Let’s take care of that right now. Its like doing the windows on a 10,000 sqaure foot house by yourself. When you look at the whole job it looks impossible and you don’t even know where to start and you don’t see how you could ever tackle it. The key is to break it up in to smaller sized portions that you CAN see how to accomplish and then doing the whole job is just a matter of completing all those smaller areas of the house. Easy peasy!

So with a business you need to try to Invision what you want it to look like to be able to quit your job and be supported full-time by your business. So you need to think about how much money you need to take home after taxes in order to not just say your bills but also have extra to keep your moving forward.

Next you need to figure how much you think you will need coming in every month or year to not only operate your business but to have money to reinvest and keep it moving forward and growing.

Then you add those that figures together and dint forget to figure how much you will need to cover your income tax. That’s your initial ling term goal. You want to grow your business to where it’s doing that much in revenue every month, quarter, and year. Don’t forget to project and plan for all three, monthly, quarterly and yearly as it can be seasonal depending on where you live and it can fluctuate with busy times and slow times and it will be crucial to plan for both busy and lean times.

Now that you have your new goal nailed down it’s just a matter of working back from there. Now you just out together a plan of how to get there. Remember your key to doing this is to break it up into smaller goals that seem attainable and that you can vissualize.

So let’s say your goal is $100,00.00 a year to quit your current job. It’s ok if your goal is not exact, meaning that you may find as you get closer to that goal that it is too big or too small. That’s ok as you very well might adjust your plan as you go as the more your work towards your goal the more you will learn and the better idea you will have as to how to reach that goal. Will that in mind you might set a goal of $100,000.00 a year and find that as you get closer to your goal you realize that as soon as you jump in full time you could actually do so before you reach your goal as going full time you might gain wuico traction that will propel you to your goal because you dive in full-time and out all your time and energy behind reaching that goal. So keep that in mind.

So let’s say it’s $100,000.00 a year for the sake of understanding how to develop your plan. Now let’s break that up into smaller more vissible goals that are easier to see how to accomplish them and will those smaller goals they will help you to see how your ling term goal is attainable.

This can be done any number ways so you can okay around with how to structure the smaller goals and break up your goal of 100k a year in a way that suits you and how you want to go about it. So let’s break it up into 3 types of jobs, point of sale business (route work), non point of sale commercial jobs, and residential.

Let’s say you decide to start my that route work and building a small route to give you an initial regular steady money coming in to help feed your business and break into the it her two types of jobs. Since you have a job right now let’s start with a conservative figure that you can do outside of your current job and it only takes a couple hours each day and some Time on Saturday to complete. Remember you will need time to manage things and sell and plan etc. So let’s say 2 hours a day and 4 hours on Saturday. That’s 14 hours a week. Let’s set a goal of $50.00 and hour for gross revenue. That’s $700.00 a week gross revenue and $35,000 a year if we take 2 weeks off a year. So now working only part time on your business if you reach your first goal you would already have achieved about a third of your long term goal!

Now let’s take that 35k and break it down. Let’s say you average $20.00 a job for route work and they go once a week to keep the math easy. So each route customer will bring in a little over $1000.00 a year in revenue so let’s just say and even grand. That means to make 35k a year in revenue off of route work you have to have 35 customers that go once a week. So to build that up in a year you would have to sell about 3 jobs a month. That’s pretty conservative but your working part time so we will go with it. So your first year goal is to go out and add 3 route jobs a month that bring in $20.00 a week, or mix and match different size jobs with different frequencies that total that amount. Now you have your first year goal and monthly sales quota.

This leaves $65,000 left to achieve. Now let’s say our goal is to keep your route work to 30% of your gross revenue or under $35k a year. So this will give you money to invest in equipment needed to break into residential and commercial and it will give you some money to spend in marketing as well. So let say you you split the remaining 65k into 35k worth of residential and 30k in commercial work.

Let’s take the residential as one of our smaller goals. Let’s say the average house has 30 windows and you charge $10.00 per window for easy math. That’s $300.00 for the average job. Now let’s say your customers are going to do a ther house an average of 1.5 times a year (some twice and some once year etc.). That means each customer you add to your business will bring in and average of $450.00 a year. So to reach your smaller goals of 35k a year in residential you have to add 77.77 residential customers to your business. Let’s round it up to 78. Now let’s divide that by 12 months in a year. That’s 6.5 customers a month or about 1.5 customers a week. Do you think you could go out and see 1 or two jobs a week? So now you have a sales target for resdidentail where you know if you reach your sails quota you will reach your smaller goal of 35k for residential and it will contribute to you reaching your long term goal of 100k a year. So your second year goal is established and your new monthly sales quota.

Then that leaves the commercial. Let’s say we go after smaller commercial building that stand alone and shoot for jobs of about $400.00 that go quarterly. That’s $1600.00 of yearly revenue for each commercial customer. That means we need 19 commercial customers to reach your goal. That means once you start to focus on commercial you need to sell 1-2 Jobs a month to reach your goal in a year. That’s your third year goal and sales quota.

So if you complete your monthly sales quotas you will reach your goals for the year and in 3 years you will have a business that can support you and you can quit your job!

Now of course it will not go exactly as planned and it can go either way. It may go quicker or slower. You just go very your numbers every quarter and readjust your goals and business plan. You may see different avenues to oersue to reach your goals etc. Now w you just try some different sales strategies and be creative and go for it. Make a different plan that suits you but this is just an example of how to break it down and simplify it to make it easy to see how it can be accomplished. Break it up into smaller more manageable good that together reach your ling term goals.

I hope that helps!

[theallsmith]

Yea I live in Colorado and it seems like that may be happening sooner than later. With all the houses being built im getting on that wagon and making some money from it while it lasts. I wont be doing windows forever though this is just a start for me to get into blacksmithing and locksmithing etc. hence the name The All Smith. But ive made more money doing this than ive made at any other job. even if i have slow times i know its going to be more than worth it for me to run this. Now working 60-70 hours a week is not for me. Its hard for me to work for someone else 40 hours a week at $15 an hour. Maybe because im a millennial but its pretty ridiculous when i have all the work myself and im in dangerous situations and my boss still screams at me for taking 4 hours to do a house. I completely understand why younger people dont have a drive to work anymore. Do any “jobs” really provide a purpose anymore or are all the jobs being automated and all the crappy jobs are left for the people that really dont care about what they do? Weird world right now.

I love working for myself and its been the best thing ive ever started. I may need to get a PT job in the winter but it wont last for longer than the season. Ill be right back at it in the spring. And im actually planning to keep work in the winter and just push through a learning curve. Ive always been the person to take initiative but im also the person everyone looks down on for some reason because im so straight forward and point out the obvious and people dont tend to like that these days.