Partnerships

Does anyone have experience with a partnership that does not want to hire employees? Is it possible for two people to make a decent living by themselves? I worked in the shipyards in my younger days and was amazed at how much work is done by two man teams. In fact, given enough time: I think two men could build a ship. Will this transfer to window cleaning with several add-on services?

Comes to mind when I hear partnerships is @Anolog139 and @leavingnc but I know analog has employees and I think leavingnc does come to think of…Lol I guess that didn’t help much, I guess outside of the husband and wife’s teams here on the forum there’s not to many partnerships without employees.

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Hello Samuel and welcome to the forum!

Partnerships usually work better when there are written operating agreements specifying compensation for labor and purchase limits that require two signatures.

Yes, I’m sure that a two person partnership can make a decent living without employees. If you have a two person team that is synchronized they can be very efficient. Check out these two forumites: Reanna & Luke Cleaning Windows - YouTube

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Thank you for your responses. I think most WCR ers can relate that we are both independent minded and bonded by a significant age difference (30 years). I am scared to death of the responsibility of hiring a a bonafide, fully covered employee in our new but licensed and insured business. We really want to do things right.

Many years ago when I was a young man a retired business man told me that partnerships almost never work out in the long run. He adviced me not to do it and I did it anyway. Lesson learned.

He did ask me if the person was my brother. Apparently people will put up with more when it’s their brother.

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Dave Ramsey counsels a lot of businesses and always says"the only ship that won’t sail is a partnership"

The one of you that is business minded should be the owner. The one who is more technically minded should be the employee. Go ahead and and split it 50/50 after expenses, but have a clear chain of command.

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Where are you located that requires you to be licensed

Partnerships are very beneficial in any industry,they also have their downsides.

Good money can be made with window cleaning expecially when you have two driven people, the problem with Partnerships is overtime the amount of work being produced is not as equal as it was in the beginning. One always works less and tries to still take the same.

It’s like any other relationship always takes work to keep it together.

Depends what " good money " is to you. I think two guys can do 100-120k on their own. Then take out expenses and taxes. Maybe you clear 40k each? If that’s the case just work by yourself. I got a partner because I wanted to build something big. This year we will have 11 employees. I’m 100% confident I couldn’t have done that this fast without a partner.

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had a partnership for 5 years. We complimented each other well but we made some mistakes. No one had decisive decision making authority when disagreed, and one wanted to grow the other wanted to remain just the 2 of us.

We made decent money. Lower overhead, tools maintained well and not lost. Both were were equally vested and worked well on jobs together.

Very few partnerships work out. I can think of a few on here/or use to be here that are doing really well.

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For some reason a brother will over look this.

I’m In Missouri. I don’t know if it is a requirement, but the fee is small and looks good on a business card.

Thank you. Your experience and attitude are what I hope for us. He will probably be much better with potential employees than I would be. I’ve worked for gas money before and was very grateful for the job, but I don’t want to exploit anyone. Is there a way to fully cover employees the first year?

What type of license are you referring too?

the reason I ask where you’re located that offers/requires license for the window cleaning industry is because I’ve never heard of this in the states it’s not even offered to be licensed as a window cleaner that I have ever found.

Plumbers and other special trades it’s very common to be licensed that’s why I was interested.

A friend of mine and I started cleaning windows on the weekends. I decided to quit my job and go full time and my partner backed off, not knowing if he wanted to do the same. I work for the first 1.25 years alone. His life circumstances changed and he decided to join me, so he worked a few days a month march-may of 16, that grew to 3 days a week june and july and he came on full time in August. We also bought another local window cleaners business in july which provided all the work we needed for him to join me.

in 2016 we made $106,000 with me working full time and him working full time for half the year.

I’m faster than him and i do more things outside of the actual window cleaning such as scheduling, marketing, accounting etc… so we split all the work we do together 45-55 and anything we do by ourselves we keep 100%.

i think with the fact that he has sped up a bit, that we’re both working all year, and that we’ll be doing more repeat customers (which are quicker) we could do $140,000-160,000 this year. we’ll see

disadvantages to a partnership:
you make a little less per person than you could alone. i.e. a 15 minute drive time to a job is 30 man minutes wasted, we tend to spend some time chatting and joking around. etc…

no one has the final say, though this does help us work on communication, compromise, consideration for others and other valuable social/moral skills.

Advantages:
i don’t have to do everything, everyday we ask each other something like “i don’t want to do that garden window, will you do it?” or “hey, i’ll do the nasty garage window if you go get started on screens” we will sometimes roe sham bo for who has to do the worst part of a job (like that one window you have to crawl through the bushes to get too)

we play to each others strengths, for example, my partner doesn’t like heights so i do the 2nd story windows and he does the 1st floor, but he’s also 100 lbs lighter than me so if we need to go on a tile roof he’s the one to do it. we always have someone to foot a ladder.

we really enjoy each others company and so it makes the day a lot more enjoyable, and we have two heads to examine each idea we have.

i could go on, sufficed to say, if you have the right person as a partner and you’re willing to sacrifice a little to get the benefits of a partner, then i recommend it.

oh, and we don’t have any employees, but we do have two friends that will take care of our storefront work during the busy season so we can focus on residential.

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my dad got so mad when i had a friend help me mow a lawn with a friend, so NO!

Was that 'cause he had to bail two people out of jail?

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Sorry, couldn’t resist. I know it’s lame :smirk:

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I’d hate to have a partner (I think), but like the idea of finding a fellow WC professional that I could partner with if I ever get the kind of job that would be too much for me to do alone.

I’m 63 with custodial experience cleaning windows (spray bottle and rag/wore out,dried up squeegees). He’s mid thirties and a hard working, honest man. I’ve got some college and can still do light physical labor. He doesn’t have untreated ADHD like a partner years ago-lesson learned. I’m truly excited about this new adventure, and I really enjoy finally working for myself.

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