How Long before you were really busy and making serious $?

How long did it take you to be doing 15+ jobs a week?

How much cash did you have when you started?

What was your biggest thing that brought you to the next level of busy? Is it truly just repeat customers? or finally ranking in the top 3 in google w/ some reviews?  

Probably in our 2nd year we reached that 15+ jobs / week, $$ was super tight, first year just a couple thousands dollars profit after a LOT of expenses, 2nd year can breath much better, yes Internet was it, signed up with a SEO company that brought us in the 1st position in the 1st page for a very good price, unfortunately they're getting lazier now and we dropped out of 1st page in Google but our organic listing still in the top 3 positions in the first page.

Ryan, October of 2012¿

Dang dp.. that is inspiring 2nd year mainly SEO.. that's so awesome! I was ranked 2 for a while and still got horrible amounts of calls. The big boys in the area are killing me with a big grin of discretion

Still waiting to make serious money:D I walked door to door to hotels and dental offices, direct mail, and google.  I took out a YP ad and barely broke even.

Cold calls for commercial, and referrals for residential will be your best advertising. I quit paying for advertising when the yellow pages went the way of the dinosaurs. When I started cleaning 22 years ago, I had a guy in carpet cleaning tell me I could make a living doing it, but would never be rich. I was 19 and my wife was pregnant, so it sounded great. I dove in head first, renting a machine from U-HAUL. I make a living, and he was right.

OneBlueSummer wrote:Ryan, October of 2012¿

2010

BTW can you define making it BiG in $$$? I think the way of the dinosaur will vary. I dropped my paper ad to a business card size. We have experienced a massive drop off. There are some variances to that figure for my area. The fur lows and shut down and unknowns with the government guys have major effects on that.

OneBlueSummer wrote:Dang dp..  that is inspiring 2nd year mainly SEO.. that's so awesome! I was ranked 2 for a while and still got horrible amounts of calls. The big boys in the area are killing me with a big grin of discretion

I wasn't detailing it, lol, 1st & 2nd year we did yellow pages as well, they were still ok but fading out, the best ROI was definitely the SEO though, then we started google pay per click sometimes in the 2nd year I think, then 3rd year stopped yellow pages completely and went solely with SEO and google pay per click, they're expensive but they work :-)

Ryan S wrote:BTW can you define making it BiG in $$$?  I think the way of the dinosaur will vary. I dropped my paper ad to a business card size. We have experienced a massive drop off. There are some variances to that figure for my area. The fur lows and shut down and unknowns with the government guys have major effects on that.

I think that's valid for all cleaners, this industry is not for everyone, you have to save and save for rainy days, we're slowing down a lot now for October after a spiked in September, I'm excited to see how November and December goes, November is our second busiest month of the year.
Making it big $$$ = $ 25,000 / month / van ?? :-)
I used to make that much for a company I managed for about 11+ years ago, I'm sure he missed me, lol.

So that translates to 250k annually?

In the mid 90's, I ran a dollar bill size ad for about 6 years. It did very good for us, then it started declining and so did our ad size. There were so many ads in the Yellow Pages back then and placement was everything, especially in a full book. We rarely get calls from our website. But, when we do, we make sure to keep them. This past winter, we got some good paying flood jobs either from our website, Google Search, or our free listing in the YP.

Almost gave me a heart attack there.. 25k! Wowza.. so where was that company located, are u making close to that now?
I guess the $ amount is variable... to a point Imean I remember when I did over 5k last July I was stoaked! Stuffs decently inexpensive here compared to other places but if your making close to 10 or even that crazy 20k over cost of living etc doesn't really matter any more. I guess the real question is over 15 jobs a week not a certain $ amount. But I guess we can include both.
Thanks for all the reply so far!

Before Google's take over all u had to do was
YP and some face to face and that's it. But now most people I meet don't even keep the books. I would rather pay 400$ a month for hanging cards on door knobs and some eddm.

In the mid 90's, I ran a dollar bill size ad for about 6 years. It did very good for us, then it started declining and so did our ad size. There were so many ads in the Yellow Pages back then and placement was everything, especially in a full book. We rarely get calls from our website. But, when we do, we make sure to keep them. This past winter, we got some good paying flood jobs either from our website, Google Search, or our free listing in the YP.

Ryan S wrote:So that translates to 250k annually?  

At that time that was more like 300k annually from the van I was working on with a helper that does most of the work, so may be I should say I was the helper, lol, I remember my 2nd year working for him on November I was $ 200 shy from 30k, and I got a nice chunk of bonus check :-)

OneBlueSummer wrote:Almost gave me a heart attack there.. 25k! Wowza..  so where was that company located, are u making close to that now?
I guess the $ amount is variable... to a point Imean I remember when I did over 5k last July I was stoaked! Stuffs decently inexpensive here compared to other places but if your making close to 10 or even that crazy 20k over cost of living etc doesn't really matter any more. I guess the real question is over 15 jobs a week not a certain $ amount. But I guess we can include both.
Thanks for all the reply so far!

That company was located in Northern California, and no I'm not making that much now, reason why I take life a WHOLE lot slower now, at that time I was around 25 years old, was VERY ambitious, knocking down 8 - 9 jobs a day, hussling in and out, selling anything can be sold, pet treatments, odor treatments, scotchgard, etc, so that figures comes with LOTS of sweats and wear and tear on my body, working long hours, won't do that again, not for any price :-)

my first full year in business we grossed 83K with our expenses at 35K.  I thinks that a decent start for a one man operation.  Like dp say there was a lot of sweat and tears to achieve that mark. Let me qualify that with the Tax return for the year as well. Take another 12k from the bottom line and Uncle Sam has his gracious portion. It's important to remember your responsibilities of tax payments.

Ryan S wrote:my first full year in business we grossed 83K with our expenses at 35K.  I thinks that a decent start for a one man operation.  Like dp say there was a lot of sweet and tears to achieve that mark.

That's very impressive number Ryan, we restarted in LA at the worst year of 2008, economy was so bad that we were grateful that we made a couple of thousand dollars profit the whole year, lol. Thank God for some savings, that's why we always try to save during summer months and the holiday season.

It takes a few years until you create followers that continue to use you and refer you to others. Id say 3-5 years until you see a good amount of calls on a weekly basis. I aint easy just plain hard work followed by treating each customer with the highest respect.

Raffy nailed. You see a little repeat on second year, but more sustaining number after that

[quote="OneBlueSummer"]How long did it take you to be doing 15+ jobs a week?
Four months.

How much cash did you have when you started?

I will talk about my current business (not my first one which I unfortunately was a franchisee... I would never suggest that route to anyone - especially when there are so many people out there willing to share & help you learn and prosper)  . Six years ago I purchased a two year old van no money down payments just under $350/mo. Took a home equity loan to consolidate debt and used approx. $10k for supplies, equipment, and initial advertising. Kept about $5k set aside in the bank to cover short falls for the first couple of months

What was your biggest thing that brought you to the next level of busy? Is it truly just repeat customers? or finally ranking in the top 3 in google w/ some reviews?  

A friend referred a very good reliable employee to me who was in need of a job due to a business closing. So, I purchased a used van for about $2k on ebay, and purchased another RX and portable with a credit card and doubled my advertising. I did that several more times over the next year, but only had to increase the advertising about 50%. With all that said, I was still very poor and would say I was barely scraping by.

Here's the thing - it's easy to buy business, and buy things [equipment] on credit - but if you spend to much to buy it [on advertising] and have a high debt service it's very difficult to become successful. You just have to keep working harder to pay the bills. Now six years in to this business, I am spending 25% less on advertising than I did in my second year (about half of what I spent in the third year), revenue is 50% hire then our third year, we average 50 jobs (slow weeks) to 80 jobs (busy weeks) per week, we are debt free, plus most weeks I can spend a day or two and most weekends off the van. Had I never hired anyone or at least waited until I could have paid cash for everything and not had to increase advertising expense to support new employees, I am confident that I could have reached this point at least two years ago and maybe even three.

The moral of the story: Unless you have a lot of money behind you (I don't know anyone in this business that does), you will probably achieve great success faster and easier if you take the longer seemingly slower route.  

By the way: definitely not wealthy, but at least there is a little money left over after paying the bills. And, much easier to sleep at night.

Joe I really enjoy reading your posts. Starting up a business on credit is always frowned upon buy you proved that it can be done that way.

Allied just joined the forum and I bet this thread would be vey interesting reading for him a lot of others guys that are thinking about starting up. Thanks for starting this thread Charlie.

When I started out 5 years ago, I cashed in nearly the whole savings account (around 18k), bought the best equipment that I could and tried to get a commercial anchor account right off the bat. By having that anchor, I knew that I could cover my insurance and van payments so I could then focus on earning a paycheck.

Things were slow that first year and then I ran into a serious health issue that sent me back to a day job to earn a living until I could recover. Admittedly, I still hold that day job out of some lingering fear, but I still work the business 4 days per week and saw a big upturn in years 3 and 4 when I became more well known in the area. Still not making big money in year 5, but it looks like I should hit 48k this year as a side business.

I think that your business will never really take off until you beat your overhead. My initial expenses were high due to equipment costs, but once they were paid off, I started making some really good money and still had some of the best equipment at my disposal to work with going forward. Considering that my day job is averaging 58 hours per week over the last year, I feel pretty good about the results of this year.