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Growth - How have you all grown your businesses?

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SureShot

Active member
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Location
Cardiff
Hi all

I'm three years into WFP cleaning now.. have around 180 residential customers and a few commercial.  I'm at a point now where I can't physically handle anymore on my own, so have acquired a second van and taken someone on one day a week. This has enabled me to free myself up (in theory) for a day each week to focus on growing the business and pushing on through this next phase.

I'd love to hear your respective stories of what you did if/when you were at my stage to move up a level.. taking into account that you now have an employee to get busy five days a week... and subsequently deal with all the extra responsibilities of admin etc.. what key steps did you guys take to evolve from a one man band into what you are today? What things have you implemented have been the best decisions/investments/stratagies etc. I'm just looking for golden nuggets of advice relating to growing the business I guess.

Cheers

Sean

 
SureShot said:
Good for you. Any advice on business growth or are you still doing all the work yourself?
Click to expand...
I work on my own and have done for just shy of 20 years, I wouldn't have anyone work for me, mine has grown more organically to a point, but have a website, fb page and signed van also fully uniformed so collectively it all helps 

 
windowgleamtrowbridge said:
I'm sat at around 190 now in 2 years. 33k a year. Barely takes up 10 days of work a month. What kind of set-up and demographics do you have?
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90% of the round is still spread out, I have very few areas where there are more than two houses together (I work on leafletting these areas regularly but competition is high).. so a significant amount of time is spent driving to the different streets/areas... hence I'm only doing around 10 houses a day. I have a day each week seeing to businesses in the city centre that keeps me from houses. Plus I also have school runs etc eating into my time. I'm also trying to work smart, I'm not interested in breaking my back now and regretting not starting the ball rolling with employees sooner. I struggle a bit physically as it is, it's the main thing that's pushed me into taking someone on. My aim is to fill up his round asap in order to then take on a second employee, and then rinse and repeat.

Set up - Two vans, a WFP system in each with 350ltr tanks.. plus a pressure washing set up in the bigger van.

Demographics - Quite varied, mostly though it's women (middle aged and up), semi's (not sure what else to say?)

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I thought about taking some one on but don’t think it’s worth the hassle for me. I do roughly 350 houses that are on a 4 week cycle it usually takes me 3 weeks to get them all so that leaves me a week to do some other jobs that’s that my business offers. Hope everything works out with the new team member 

 
Maybe 4 years in. 600 houses and maybe two days commercial. One van windows one van extra jobs. 

From where you are now house wise I guess I spent a lot on advertising to get bigger. Website helped loads and put a lot of those add on money jobs back onto targeting window clients on fb.

Basically build an online brand and a largeish following of near 2k likes on my biz page so far. Not the biggest but decent all the same. 

 
Chris33 said:
Maybe 4 years in. 600 houses and maybe two days commercial. One van windows one van extra jobs. 

From where you are now house wise I guess I spent a lot on advertising to get bigger. Website helped loads and put a lot of those add on money jobs back onto targeting window clients on fb.

Basically build an online brand and a largeish following of near 2k likes on my biz page so far. Not the biggest but decent all the same. 
Click to expand...
Now we're talking

I always get a decent return from FB advertising. Could you tell me a bit about how you go about yours? 

Up until now I've just been putting £50 on at a time to run the ad for a week. I target the ad at women only, 25 to 65 and over.. seems to work better than aimed at men and women. Do you get more specific with your targeting or do it differently to that?

Cheers

 
SureShot said:
Now we're talking

I always get a decent return from FB advertising. Could you tell me a bit about how you go about yours? 

Up until now I've just been putting £50 on at a time to run the ad for a week. I target the ad at women only, 25 to 65 and over.. seems to work better than aimed at men and women. Do you get more specific with your targeting or do it differently to that?

Cheers
Click to expand...
Well competitions are the best bang for buck. In scotland we have a light show once a year in the highlands, called the enchanted forest. Near pitlochry. 

So I waited until all the tickets were sold out on their site last year and then ran my comp. I had obviously bought a ticket way back..

Demand was high and locally relevant. So like my page share this status and tag 3 friends in the comments. Lucky winner chosen by random Google number selector. That comp took off! 

I put a little boost on it targeting similar to your demographic and just let it snowball. Those 3 friend tags are essential cos usually one of the three keeps it going each time, by entering too. 

So...competitions well thought out with a good prize work. Go hard though ie night away for two and meal and link a small vid of the venue if possible, info on it, images...instigate this before the comp itself even

By mentioning the comp in 1 post, info on it and for everyone to keep watching for the comp coming up on your page soon ??

Otherwise I sometimes do random little chat videos and post them. Educational if you like. Maybe on gocardless for example. These also get a good reach

I done one 2 years ago,how to clean your interior windows. Posted it the week before xmas and it went down great...cos A unique and B relevant 

 
Chris33 said:
Well competitions are the best bang for buck. In scotland we have a light show once a year in the highlands, called the enchanted forest. Near pitlochry. 

So I waited until all the tickets were sold out on their site last year and then ran my comp. I had obviously bought a ticket way back..

Demand was high and locally relevant. So like my page share this status and tag 3 friends in the comments. Lucky winner chosen by random Google number selector. That comp took off! 

I put a little boost on it targeting similar to your demographic and just let it snowball. Those 3 friend tags are essential cos usually one of the three keeps it going each time, by entering too. 

So...competitions well thought out with a good prize work. Go hard though ie night away for two and meal and link a small vid of the venue if possible, info on it, images...instigate this before the comp itself even

By mentioning the comp in 1 post, info on it and for everyone to keep watching for the comp coming up on your page soon ??

Otherwise I sometimes do random little chat videos and post them. Educational if you like. Maybe on gocardless for example. These also get a good reach

I done one 2 years ago,how to clean your interior windows. Posted it the week before xmas and it went down great...cos A unique and B relevant 
Click to expand...
That's quality, I've never considered running an actual competition with a big prize to gain notoriety. I've boosted posts before which simply offered discounts, but I guess there's no real motivation for folk, nothing like a pair of tickets anyway.

Good to know, I'll definitely be giving that a go.

 
SureShot said:
That's quality, I've never considered running an actual competition with a big prize to gain notoriety. I've boosted posts before which simply offered discounts, but I guess there's no real motivation for folk, nothing like a pair of tickets anyway.

Good to know, I'll definitely be giving that a go.
Click to expand...
Walk through vids

Educational vids

Comps

Free council sign cleaning (just started that and local fb news page done an article on us) 

Think outside the norm. Good luck. 

 
One guy I know parked his van on a main road for a week to see how many new customers he would get. He got one new customer out of it. I think the internet is the way forward. I have had great success when I enter an area and their windy has chucked it, especially on a Saturday morning. I don't even need to put cards through their doors. That scenario just comes down to luck or paying for advertising on the net. Yell, FB, Checkatrade, Trustatrader are all worth a punt in March to September.

 
scottish cleaning service said:
One guy I know parked his van on a main road for a week to see how many new customers he would get. He got one new customer out of it. I think the internet is the way forward. I have had great success when I enter an area and their windy has chucked it, especially on a Saturday morning. I don't even need to put cards through their doors. That scenario just comes down to luck or paying for advertising on the net. Yell, FB, Checkatrade, Trustatrader are all worth a punt in March to September.
Click to expand...
Yell is pointless until you pay. The reason for this is that they hold us to random for top 3 listings per area and service.

Google business pages on the other hand are free and far superior today. Because they show above all natural web listings. 

SureShot said:
Thanks Chris, I've taken all that on board. Great to hear what works for people.
Click to expand...
Your welcome. Drop me a pm anytime. 

 
Chris33 said:
Yell is pointless until you pay. The reason for this is that they hold us to random for top 3 listings per area and service.

Google business pages on the other hand are free and far superior today. Because they show above all natural web listings. 

Your welcome. Drop me a pm anytime. 
Click to expand...
What's a Google business page I'm with Yell?

 
Poles Apart said:
What's a Google business page I'm with Yell?
Click to expand...
These mate. When you search for almost any local trade or service you'll see this type of thing. The top three you see are the three pack..called so because that's where all the biz goes.

So there are many more listings under that but the three pack is clearly where all the calls go so with reviews images links to the actual google page (newish form of backlinking) and so on..we can dominate the three pack.

Then you'll get lots of calls and emails basically. 

Screenshot_20200218-162412_Google.jpg

 
scottish cleaning service said:
One guy I know parked his van on a main road for a week to see how many new customers he would get.
Click to expand...
Not surprised, people will have most likely thought he had no work on or had broke down and abandoned his van, a street I clean in has a window cleaner who lives in the street his van hardly ever moves and no one in his street has their windows cleaned by him

 

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