Recession proof WC business

Commercial Real estate is a good asset to have . What’s the going rate for a commercial property going for in your area ?

its all over the place… leasing is $9 sq ft for something decent. Everything I have looked at is cheap but needs a lot of work, or too expensive to buy. We are taking our time.

This👆! I used to be in the recreational vehicle industry. Elkhart county, Indiana was known as RV capital of the world. We had less than 4% unemployment rate prior to the recession. It went to 20% real fast. I was unemployed for over a year. During that time, Obama came into town talked about the need of diversifying. Many companies came in to bring different types of manufacturing(mostly failed electric car companies). They were either poorly ran or lack of community support.
In 2010, myself along with many others were back to work. In short time the RV industry was back in full swing. We saved up for a couple of years and moved out west to here in Denver. Which is a pretty diversified city.
Meanwhile, back in Elkhart everyone is riding the lone industry until the next downturn!

We can learn a lot from our customers

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What are you crazy skipper, your listening to advice form an 80+ your old guy about investment in your own business, while your cleaning “his” windows! :slight_smile:

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$9 a SqFt is cheap. $17 sqft minimum in my area for something… kinda decent.

“The Richest Man in Babylon” by George S. Clason

First thought in my head when reading this.

EVERY single person I know that has read and applied the principles in that book are all “financially secure for life” you could say.

One guy was fresh out of prison with a 3rd grade education. He now owns a used medical equipment brokerage located in Edmond, OK. He does millions per year. Direct result of good mentorship and that one little fast read. That book is totally worth reading. I guarantee it.

I have never been really, broke broke after reading that book.

Just saying

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@Anolog139 we need to chat bud.

I can see we think alike.

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Not true and I proved it not true. I had been in the Window cleaning business for thirteen years in West michigan but got out and opened Pawn shops. When the recession hit I had so many people coming into my shops who formally would never have needed to sell or get a loan. I would hear their stories, mostly building sub contractors etc. A few bankers. One yong man was losing everything , selling me everything he owned over time, So I told him about window cleaning, how I had gotten my start. He said

“yeah but you could never do that today in the present economy”.

So after that I began to wonder, if he might be right and I might be wrong. A few other things were going at home and I really needed a break from the pawnshops, so I decided to take trip out west and see if I could still get window cleaning contracts (this was late 2009- till early 2010) .

I choose las Vegas, and Vegas was hit harder than most cities by the recession. Think about it. There is no industry to speak of in Vegas but tourism. When the entire country is in an economic downturn, people skip vactioning. Consequently, The casinos were laying people off, lots of people were out starting up service companies of their own. And the existing well-entrenched companies were having some contractions too. Unemloyment was 16%. And here I come strolling into town an outsider with five grand to spend on a new business (And to live on- I had more but I set out to prove something to myself) . I slept n my camper truck and bathed at a 24 hour Fitness club.

I made a pack not to spend on myelf for anything but what I could earn. that meant if I couldn’t find windows to clean I wouldn;t eat. (That actually happened only once, because I had a few meetings and didn’t get out to canvass until late in the day i was sleeping n North Vegas but the meeting was in Henderson south of Vegas proper, traffic was gridlock that morning so I didn;t make it to the thriteen dollar per plate breakfast business meeting in time to eat. everyone had stopped eating by the time I arrived late and the meeting was already underway, so I didn;t eat, but paid the fee anyway to be there and network).

The bottom line is after about ninety days I was averaging a thousand per week. I had spent the five grand I brought on the licenses, insurances, business cards, mailings, a BNI membership, a uniform to wear. and ladders, I already owned my tool belt. This is how Happy Window Cleaning was born.

Now in fairness, I had years of experience to draw upon at the time. but most likely so do you. You would have to go out and hussle, work very hard, but you can and most likely would survive even in the bad times. There are always lots of people who have tons of money in this country and they don’t want to do the work themselves. Many are afraid to climb the ladders. More window cleaners just means that more people get their windows cleaned.

If you only made that negative statement to discourage newbies, shame on you, there is plenty for eveyone in this industry. but if you believed what you said my sotry proves that with the right attitude and knowledge anyone can make it in this business.

Lol no I didn’t post that to scare away newbies… I post videos on YouTube all the time giving advice to newbies. Clearly you don’t know me. If my window cleaning business was making $1,000 a week I’d be panicking. Now I agree, to a guy living out of a van that can be ok money. But to the person running a business with overhead, employees, a mortgage, and all the other bills that come with life, $1k a week won’t cut it. Especially after you take out taxes. What I’m saying is the big companies will dominate during the recession because they have a large percentage of the market wrapped up. I’m talking about companies thriving, not just surviving. But I think it’s awesome you sacrificed what you did to create what you created. Very few people are willing to do that.

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Silver, in 2010 I owned two pawn shops in Michigan while I
concurrently started the window operation. For a start up and ninety days
in, doing only windows I thought is was a promising start. But you are of
course correct that a grand a week is not all that much money. I now do not
own the pawn shops, sold those. Prot City Trade is now called Anytime
Trade. Real Estate guy bought them.

I have about six hundred client’s and am growing in the Grand Rapids
metropolitan area of about one million people. The size of the number isn’t
what is important, to some guy starting out a thousand dollars a week with
just a few hundred on overhead will sound pretty good. To Kirk Haggerty the
one who owns the first legal Marijuana dispensary in Spokane Washington
called Green Leaf, my lousy fifty grand a month take home at the pawn shops
isn’t enough for his lifestyle and expenses. I worked for Kirk once upon a
time and remain in contact with him. But I am not interested in that
business nor the pawnshop anymore. In Virgina and Maryland there are guys
selling aircraft carriers and fighter jets at a billion dollars a pop,
Kirks business is going to seem rinky dink to those guys. Point is there is
always somebody bigger all the way up to the RothChilds. I guess the buck
stops finally at God, lol. He’s got the whole world in His hands.

Glad to hear you help newbies I certainly didn’t mean to come across as
offensive. I don’t know you. I can be a bull in the China store or
whatever that saying is.I just believe in our free enterprise system. If
Rich Devos and Jay Van Andal of Amway can turn a multi-level
vitamin business into a Global empire with ten billion plus annual
revenues, there must be no upper limit to what someone can do with a
Window Cleaning Company or most any company for that matter. Customer
service, integrity, understanding finance, sustainable growth rate, and
dealing with staffing issues successfully are the major hurdles to scale
this business.

The reality is that unless one acquires an established business or spends a
whole lot on consistent and large volume advertising (with the right call
to action and a good risk aversion device), it is going to take a while to
grow significantly. Customer acquisition rate is a fixed variable given a
sound marketing strategy and effective operations. Like many of us who’ve
been around, I have done it all. Advertising-wise, guerrilla marketing,
every kind of mailing, banner advertising, most every kind of promotion.
Of course, one’s growth depends mostly on how we treat the customers we do
get and whether we ask for referrals or otherwise incentivize.

I developed my own marketing program based on tried and true numbers from
past campaigns. This is my fourteenth year in the cleaning business, but
twenty something in business. 8.5 years as a pawnbroker, lucrative and
sleazy.Even though I like to think that we were a light on the hill. I
still learn things every day. I am blunt and will challenge what I read if
I don;t agree. But I also recognize that writing does not capture our full
intentions as well as we might like. With me, I always want to be
helpful. I think it just is silly to allow myself to become prideful and
arrogant. It is kinda why I choose such a humble occupation as window
cleaning, to begin with.

Have a prosperous year!

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Recession proof? I would be happy with winter proof.

Sorry for the irrelevant post

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You do snow removal too, huh?

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