What is your business...really.

I've been in this game off / on for about 12 years now and I am always reading about how carpet cleaning is just a marketing business and not really about the cleaning.  The big boys on the block have all their marketing bases covered and have grown large businesses with 4+ trucks running all the time.  They all scoff at my little enterprise and keep telling me that I need to be on facebook and the other medias if I want to succeed.  They tell me that I need to stop paying my helpers so much and just find some highschool kids looking for summer cash.  They tell me that I need to stop using presprays and just crank up the heat and use an extraction agent to save money.  They tell me to charge for "everything" beyond just dragging a wand across the floor.  They tell me to attack the competitors in  my area in print and radio ads and always enforce the "no guarantee" policy on all jobs.  They tell me to charge for any call-backs and to target my past customers to squeeze out more money and they tell me that you should never work nights or weekends without a premium fee.

They tell me all of these things, and then they tell me how they were much happier when they started out with just one truck as an Owner/Operator.

So, I ask you, what kind of business are you?

Owner Operator and Proud of it! I treat everyone like I would like to be treated myself and clean every place like it was my own. I'll never be the richest at this biz but my satisfaction will be second to none.

I am a O/O trying to break into owning a self supporting business. I work for someone else full time(not cleaning), while I try to get my business rolling.

I believe in customer service, doing the best I possibly can, and trying my best to make people come back to me again.
I am NO marketer, so THAT hurts my efforts of building my business. I have limited free time, another negative to my business growth.
I will NOT build business by saying bad things about others. I will NOT shortcut or do things a certain way to save a buck, shortchanging the customer.

This summer, I advertised in the local paper. ZERO calls. None. I live in an area of under 13K homes. Small town.
I now have a FB page and multiple websites. ZERO calls so far.

There is no magic bullet, IMO. Well, other than FACE TO FACE marketing.

I know what you friend. I'm tying to build my business from the ground up also. How to get work it doesn't just come to you it takes work knocking on doors building a customer client list then you start getting referrals you do what others don't or won't do. I just drove 2 hr one way to get 1 PC of equip to repair trying to get work in a new area. So good and word of mouth works best with a fair price.

as a 0/0 over the years I would never treat my customers like that ever!
I would say 90% of my customers are not even home when I do the work.

Some I am at their house twice a year and I have only seen them once or twice in ten years. LOL

it's easy to run a business like a pirate if you live in a large market. most of these marketing systems work quite well in those large pop markets.

Whole different story if your in a small market like mine 250K total pop.
word gets out pretty quick.

Good to know there are other white hats out there. I too still hold down a f/t non-cleaning job and it gets tough to juggle at times with almost 60 hour weeks the norm...not counting the cleaning side. It just takes time for the word to grow that you are out there, even Bigfoot has lots of supporters and he has only been seen by a few.

Freemind, in a small town, the best move that I made was to clean an area church at cost as part of a "getting to know the neighborhood" program. Churchs are easy to clean and you will meet a ton of new prospective clients very quickly. It got me a good start when I moved into this new area, which is about 45k people between 2 cities 12 miles apart.

Good idea.

We have a few small churches in my area, and a few LARGE churches. I will try to give them a go with encap.

I am a multi truck operation. It's is had at times finding the production. I am active everyday in our business. I run one van and the other tech runs the other. On off days we work together. I'll say this, you can never really concern yourself with the competition in your area. Know what they do yes, but remain focused on your work. Also there are different markets to service, low end, blue collar, and high end. These all vary in quantity of work load. Each have an increase in value added service as well. You MUST find your spot amd work on that ONLY. It does t happen over night, in a week, or month. It take periods of time. Yvonne last thing you will never know what works of you don't track the production.

We use quickbooks. I love it!

This is a very good post!

l have bee cleaning carpets for about 17 years now in Australia. Started off as a subie for one the biggest carpet cleaning companies at the time. It was all about selling to the customer - hated selling! After 2 years left them and did contract work for 2.5 years while l steadily built my own business. It got to the point where l had more work than they had. So l left and did my own thing.

I have been an O/O now for about 12 years and the one thing l have learned in all this time is to treat your customers they you would like to be treated. Do a good job at a good price. Don't rip them off and don't rip yourself off - charge accordingly. I know you Americans are much more religious than us Aussies so doing your local church's to get know people would be a good start.

l have found that Yellow pages no longer works, the local paper is for the cheap and crap carpet cleaners and people who want cheap prices. Flyers are hit and miss but l did pick up regular customers in the early days with flyers. l now get a lot of recommendations from my local Real Estate agents and regular customers. The big growth area for me in advertising has been on Facebook and Google+.
You need to get your regular customers to leave feedback and comments on both. If you get good reviews on Google+ it bumps you up the cue. l also have few die hard customers that always recommend me on Facebook.  

So what l am getting at here is to try and be the best O/O in your area. Don't rip people off and you will build your business. It does take time but you can get there. Your decision is do you remain an owner operator or employ people. My experience in doing both is to remain and O/O charge more and do a great job.

Pro Touch wrote:Owner Operator and Proud of it! I treat everyone like I would like to be treated myself and clean every place like it was my own. I'll never be the richest at this biz but my satisfaction will be second to none.

I agree!

I'm in the making people happy while making as much money for doing so as I can biz.

I'm not the cheapest, just the best.


-Dave

You should be telling the public that you used skilled trained,experienced tech's. You properly pre-treat the carpets and do extra dry passes to get more moisture out. That you won't nickel and dime them for every step or extras you do. That you have respect for your competitors who are honest/fair. And you won't criticize the comp. Tell them about your guarantee! Tell them what you will do that the other CC won't.

-I remember a saying from years ago; 'find out what everyone else is doing and do the opposite'. Makes you stand out in the crowd.

I am in the business of being a provider. First and foremost providing my family with all of the essentials and hopefully a little more. Second, providing opportunity and a good working environment for my employees so they can provide for their family's. Third, providing the highest quality work at a reasonable price to all of my customers so they can afford to maintain a clean and healthy home. I currently run 4 vans (mine included). Being in the business of providing, I have found that carpet, upholstery, air duct, and floor cleaning allows me to be the best possible provider I can be. In order to maximize my providing ability I have found that being a Marketer/Salesman is essential to keep my providing vehicle in motion. Just as essential, is being an excellent cleaner, an empathetic listener, ethical business person, and good neighbor to my competitors. The number of vehicles I/you (anyone) operate is irrelevant. All customer bases are finite (regardless of industry), without employing these essentials my/your ability to be a good long term provider would be severely hindered, limited, and unsustainable.

I am in the business of being a provider. First and foremost providing my family with all of the essentials and hopefully a little more. Second, providing opportunity and a good working environment for my employees so they can provide for their family's. Third, providing the highest quality work at a reasonable price to all of my customers so they can afford to maintain a clean and healthy home. I currently run 4 vans (mine included). Being in the business of providing, I have found that carpet, upholstery, air duct, and floor cleaning allows me to be the best possible provider I can be. In order to maximize my providing ability I have found that being a Marketer/Salesman is essential to keep my providing vehicle in motion. Just as essential, is being an excellent cleaner, an empathetic listener, ethical business person, and good neighbor to my competitors. The number of vehicles I/you (anyone) operate is irrelevant. All customer bases are finite (regardless of industry), without employing these essentials my/your ability to be a good long term provider would be severely hindered, limited, and unsustainable.
Amen friend some companies don't understand that. Not even Washington

ACE Services wrote:
Amen friend some companies don't understand that. Not even Washington

Hey Eddie did your quote button not work?

Sorry I'm on my phone and I'm new with copy paste quote thanks for the help

Owner operator, started with that clear vision and I will stay that way. You can be successful large or small, as long as you have a clear vision of what you want to be and how to get there.

Just a bump on this topic. 

Small business fail due to lack of information collecting. Marketing is not the answer. Tracking beneficial marketing systems IS. 

The Big Boys are extremely different than where is as O/O start. Where we are similar is a successful O/O and Big Boy company have Systems in place that add value of a turn key business. 

You HAVE to know WHY you started your business. It's not to make money either, although that's great. I started mine because I wanted a place that treated Employees for what and who they are and what they can potentially bring to our service. I personally knew how I didn't want to be treated and clients to be treated. So I build my business around that. That's how I approach it. 
 Check out my Vision Statement. 

"Neighbors Serving Neighbors". 

Think about it. What really makes you excited about the nuts and bolts of your business. I would bet it comes down to what YOU hold as a personal value. 

Good thread Rob. Similar to Joe Bristors' o/o vs big boy thread.  

I love these threads.

customer retention is the most important in this business, you cant "pay" for every customer with a coupon ad, its not sustainable.

tracking what marketing works and what doesnt is big also, while keeping overhead reasonably low.

for every good carpet cleaner there is probably 10 crappy ones.

the biggest companies consider it a success to retain 30% of their customers, so the other 70% end up somewhere.


being o/o is not a bad gig compared to many many jobs out there but you will need to put down the wand someday and it would be nice to have something to pass along or physically be able to keep running.


I think with the value of the dollar today its pretty important to get the average invoice over 200.00, without pressure sales but just doing the best job.

Also in my mind very important to do more than just carpet cleaning, I like specialty cleaning

so if you are asked about woodfloors, or tile, etc they dont think your just a carpet cleaner that will also give that a shot but rather a full service company that has nice equipment to do many jobs.

"I'll never be the richest at this biz"

I beg to differ, you have to look at stanley steemer, service master, coit, servpro, etc, I believe you can do anything if you set your mind, work hard and have faith in God and yourself.
If you think you'll never reach the mountain top, you won't reach it, but if you try you'll reach it eventually.
Bill gates, walt disney and a couple other billionaires wasn't succesful in getting the loan they needed at first few tries but they kept trying and they made it, google their stories if you don't believe me :-)

In one word, the reason I started this business is Freedom. The freedom to work as much as I want to, The freedom to work for who ever I want to work for and lastly the freedom to make as much money as I want to.

Mo wrote:In one word, the reason I started this business is Freedom. The freedom to work as much as I want to, The freedom to work for who ever I want to work for and lastly the freedom to make as much money as I want to.

I think you have the right attitude....exit the rat race.