Small houses

Should I shoot for starting off with single story homes and minimize ladder work on residential jobs? There is an abundance of smaller single story middle class homes that I was curious of trying to obtain business from. Is this a good idea?

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If you become unwilling to do anything over 1 story, you will not likely be very successful.

It’s fine to flyer those 1 story homes, but there is more money in two story homes. Learning to do pole work can lesson the amount of times you need to use a ladder. If you are scared of ladders, this may not be the industry for you. Sometimes, you will have no other choice then to ladder up.

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I have no problem with ladder work. I was just curious if there was very much money in doing smaller houses since there happens to be alot of them around here

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If you got a ton of them, sure, why not.

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I wanna charge a reasonable rate considering no one around here or anywhere else for that matter is making a ton of cash. What would be a decent rate to charge for a 1,500 to 2,000 sq ft home? I’d like to sell them on a monthly or bi monthly plan

What do you consider a ton of cash?

There isn’t really any great paying jobs around here so if your making $40k a year then your doing pretty good.

It is a good strategy.

Bear in mind what takes the longest in resi - screens, storms, insides. Dont underestimate those things, be sure to charge minimums in addition to unit price. So if it is $10 per storm unit and they only have 3, charge your minimum which would be higher

I like your maintenance concept. Exteriors only. That’s also a sustainable practice. Again, calculate a minimum. So if your minimum is $100 and they only have 5 windows, its $100.

You’ll have to figure out pricing for yourself. None of us know your numbers.

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I was thinking around $80-$100 would be a fair price.

Where are you located?

Southern WV

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Keep in mind it may end up costing you 15-20 to do 45 in the outset.

Learning the cost of operation should be high on your priority list.

Believe it or not it will cost you money to do each job…

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I guess my thought process was if i could sell them on window cleaning then maybe I could sell them on pressure washing, gutter cleaning and maybe snow removal.

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Hmm, just thinking, if you do all that, why not sell the pressure washing first and then windows as an upsell? WV pw is popular enough and pays better? Maybe not, too many $99 wash guys?

Lower cost of living there too.

Everyone and their brother is either doing landscaping,trimming trees,pressure washing etc. I was trying to find something for supplemental income while separating my self from the flock a little bit.

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Bingo

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Ok, just so you know, if you hope to live at a 40k standard of living, you’ll need to gross 60k-70k in the business.

And I don’t know too many people who are willing to put in the work and stress of owning a business/self employment, and are happy with only 40k in their pockets. There are some, but most of them are working part time, and doing something more important full time.

As to your initial question: the smaller the jobs are, the more volume you’ll need. Simple mathematics. Some guys have a very comfortable living doing strictly $15-$50 storefronts all year. But they have a TON of them. And they’ve figured out how to reduce all of the “parasitic losses” between jobs: time spent behind the wheel, invoicing, chasing payments, giving quotes, etc.

Monthly or bi-monthly service may be a tough sell here in the States (I wouldn’t say impossible, though). Most people want their windows done once or twice a year. It’s a much easier sell over in the UK, where houses are smaller with fewer windows, and people are conditioned to treat cleaning their windows like mowing their lawn. Either they do it themselves regularly, or they hire the local guy for a few quid to take care of it like clockwork.

You can make money with pretty much any size job. You just need to pick something to focus on that you’ll enjoy, and work the numbers out in your favor.

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It’s a paradigm shift of consciousness. Lol

When i started i did so many small cookie cutter houses. What worked really well for me was hitting a 4-5 block radius with “today and tomorrow only” cleaning prices. All my flyers said was "we’re on your block today, if you join your neighbors today or tomorrow only, the ext price is 65$. Normal rates are $99.
It was very common for me to get 5 houses per city block. Ext only took 20-30 min. And sometimes i wouldnt even load the truck, just walk my gear across the street.
This strategy works great on townhouses and condos too.

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