Newbie...not the best time to start but lets do this!!

Thought i'd say hello as been reading and following advice on the forum for awhile. My brief story: ive had a very manual job for 19 yrs after various operations over the years i was told to change careers by the surgeon. After thinking about it for a long time, finding out everything about it, talking to a window cleaner friend i decided to hand my notice in, got myself all set up, practiced and practiced with wfp and gutter vac and im good to go. First day doing this will be tomorrow. Bit nerve racking with all this covid stuff happening right at the same time but am going to do everything i can to make this work, no going back. Have asked all friends and family and got a few window and gutter jobs from them then i will be canvassing, canvassing, canvassing. All set up on social media but i know you guys say canvassing is the best way. Will be gloved up when door knocking, keep my personal distance and have a card machine or offering bank transfers if customers prefer to cash. Any advice welcomed ?

Oh jesus.  Good luck dood

Shaun70 said:

Any advice welcomed

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Personally, with the uncertainty, in your situation I'd be looking to get a part time job in a supermarket, unless you have enough money set aside to cover you for 3 months. I wish you the best of luck as your timing has been far from great unfortunately.

Not the greatest timing.. but years ago i had a great colleague called crazy john. This guy was a total nutter.. a harmless nutter.. but a nutter none the less. We got talking one night and he told me how he once ran a rural dry cleaners and became so in demand he was turning over more per year than the local sketchley dry cleaners. He said he started with a small shop and one single dry cleaning machine right in the middle of a recession with three nippers to feed. He said to me the best time to start a business is in a bad time because if you can make it work when times are tough, you'll survive when they're better.

The window cleaning market is saturated in a lot of areas but if you've got the determination.. why not? - you've already got the equipment..

If I was you then I would include grass cutting because of time of year and all you need is a lawnmower & strimmer. When the window cleaning takes off then you can drop the grass cutting.

yes as said before, get a part time job to give you a basic wage  !

Good luck !

After 3 months of "self-isolating" and "home working" I reckon there'll be a load of people thinking 'We need to get these windows cleaned!' If you time it right (ie: once the restrictions start to be lifted & once people begin to 'feel good') I reckon you could get quite a bit of work & it would be a good time for canvassing.

However if you were within the "at risk" group and a stranger came knocking on your door  tomorrow wanting to sell you something, how would you feel? I think you're misjudging the mood of the nation. Now is most definitely not the time to start canvassing IMO.

scottish cleaning service said:

If I was you then I would include grass cutting because of time of year and all you need is a lawnmower & strimmer. When the window cleaning takes off then you can drop the grass cutting.

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Personally I would concentrate on one avenue... starting up offering all sorts of random services will have you coming across like a jack of all trades (unless you keep them completely separate with different company names etc..) and the customer will see that. 
 

With regards to canvassing at the moment I’d give that a miss. Set up a facebook page and get all your friends/family to like and share it, then hit the local community groups with a little advert and build that way.

Thank you for your advice. Going to just get stuck in and just see what happens each day. Crazy times! 

If our gardener doesn't come back then I will be taking up grass cutting for my neighbours as we have a communal area that needs cutting every 2 weeks.

Holy **** really? If your determined then the best of luck to you. Have you considered starting just weekend window cleaning for a few weeks at least?

When the government lock us down us self employed are in real trouble where as people working for companies like yourself will have 80% of there wage paid. 

Honestly if I was you I'd hold out handing in my notice for a few weeks, and start canvassing to work weekends.  Any other time I'd be impressed by your attitude and it is the attitude to success. 

However the next few months will be brutal and I'll bet most of us wish right now we had the guarantees the employed do. Maybe try a day or 2 canvassing before handing your notice in.

Once again if you do jack your job in now I really hope you succeed 

DONT go out canvassing. Apart from putting yourself and others at risk you’ll get a terrible reputation. You’ve only got to follow the FB community pages to see the outrage about people not isolating all it takes is one person in a community to write something about you and all the neighbours will be commenting about you knocking on there’s. 

Maybe concentrate on getting your FB page up & running you can set posts to be automatically posted in the future so have a few of them lined up, get a website ready & learn some SEO it’s not that difficult apparently, research leaflets and design one ready to go out once this has blown over. 

its all doom & gloom on FB at the minute so maybe go out and clean some road signs and post it in the community pages that would really get you noticed. 
 

I wish you the best of luck mate keep us updated 

I got a few good customers in the past few days from Checkatrade. Must be because they are sat at home and looking on net for window cleaners. £80 a month and its slowly beginning to pay off so I can't complain.

Hi @Shaun70,

I'm in the same boat in the same county! Lost my Job in January, started window cleaning early Feb, then our Virus friend has turned up! So canvassing is out of the window (no pun intended). Looking at sitting on what I have and getting recommendations for now. Hope it all goes well for you, but I know that every other company that canvasses has banned the process for now, so as people say, beware of your reputation going out knocking on doors.

I'm new to the game too - I have put a stop to leaflet drops etc.  It's not the right time at all.

Best of luck though.

Hi Guys. 
 

To those of you who have recently started and are finding it difficult under current circumstances... Do you have a website?

Andy

https://preenandclean.com/

I must admit i like the above website, just seems to tick all the right boxes!

I built my own on Wordpress when I first started it’s not that difficult and I’m **** with technology. Websites like Wix etc I’m not sure if they rank as good as a full Wordpress site with SEO I’m sure there’s some experts on here that can clarify that. 

I never got much work through my website it was more for show but I’ve just spent a good chunk of money on having one built with SEO so the phone better start ringing once it’s up & running ??

Wix sites or free sites on services like that never really rank that we'll and often the sites are slow to load.

WordPress is the best way to go, however it's still very easy to miss the simple things for SEO. 

The only way a site will rank is by having good SEO. That said SEO isn't just one thing it's a marketing strategy you constantly work at. It's never a set and forget thing. 

Having a good site that runs well, loads fast and has good foundations is a start. 

@scottish cleaning service agreed nice looking site there. Could be a nice source of inspiration for me at some point.

Gav said:

@scottish cleaning service agreed nice looking site there. Could be a nice source of inspiration for me at some point.

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You will find that a human is a simple being and likes things to be simple. When it looks complicated then they switch off.

I like https://preenandclean.com/ website and would like my website to follow that structure.

My Checkatrade website is what I focus on and it brings me most of my new work.

I have found folk want to know when you can do the work and what the price will be, yes just those two things. The result will come next whether they want you back again or not.

scottish cleaning service said:

You will find that a human is a simple being and likes things to be simple. When it looks complicated then they switch off.

I like https://preenandclean.com/ website and would like my website to follow that structure.

My Checkatrade website is what I focus on and it brings me most of my new work.

I have found folk want to know when you can do the work and what the price will be, yes just those two things. The result will come next whether they want you back again or not.

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Yep it's very true. The first few things a customer is looking to get answers to when searching for a window cleaner for example is what services you provide, what area you provide them in and how much it will cost. 

Once those things are answered they often expand their interest by looking at more detail about your service. Your reviews and so on. 

One thing with websites I always find when creating sites for customers is that they put so much weight on a flashy site with all the bells, whistles and animations on earth. Where in actual fact the searcher isn't often that interested they need to get to their answer quickly and efficiently. 

Of course a site needs to look good but many get lost in the design and flashiness.