How did you start your window cleaning business?

The Office Business
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Questions for all of you out there…

  1. Why did you get into the window cleaning business?
  2. What were some of the 1st things you did to get your name out there?
  3. What continues to work for you with marketing & expanding your business?

I have gotten into this business because of a book I read called ‘48 Days to the Work You Love’. The author, Dan Miller, has a booklet that shows 48 Business Ideas & window washer is in it! I’ve always enjoyed pressure washing & this became a natural fit for me after doing my own windows at the house! I am now launching it with my 20 year old son and heading into it full steam! Just curious about your own experiences to the above questions…
All the best & thanks!
Tim

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Just starting out in the window cleaning business… It will be an add on to my other services

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Cuz I was broke and needed money.

I distinctly remember one of my first jobs… It was a $500 house (just went back for the 4th annual visit last week) and it was in one of those gated communities that charges a $10 daily gate pass fee. I literally counted out my last dollar bills - 4 of them - and then scrounged change out of my house and truck for the other 6 bucks.

I got to the gate, held a cup of change out the window to the guard (who still works there) and said “there’s ten bucks in here.”

It was literally every dime I had.

And she said “I don’t have time to fool with all of that. Here, just take this pass and have a good day.”

I drove into the community with tears in my eyes, because I had enough money to buy myself lunch that day.

The $500 job took me 8 hours, and I went home with a check.

Last week it took my full-time guy and a helper 3.5 hours.

We now do the windows for two houses on each side, along with another 80 customers in this ultra private community of 240 homes (each valued over 3mil), AND the Golf House, River Clubhouse, and Sports Complex for the community.

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Great story of coming back from the brink of helplessness! Awesome encouragement!!
Thanks for sharing this.

Tim

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I was tired of slaving for a huge corp that really didn’t care about their employee’s. I also wanted to spend more time with more important things, especially my wife and ministry work.

I tried many things to get started, this forum was not around so I spoke to two friends one in CO and one in a nearby city who both still have very successful window cleaning companies and they gave me some advice. They helped me with tools to order and with bidding, one of which sat with me for an hour on the phone and through a wc catalog together.

Then I cold called and left cards at businesses, one larger job I got that first year we still do today as a yearly int/ext corp office and now monthly maintenance on a few of their other buildings. I do not do cold calling today because word of mouth and maintaining phone book adds help enough right now.

I tried door hangers at first, didn’t work for me. But these days you can get them made a lot nicer for a cheaper cost. I would try that again though with whats available today.

Right now I am looking for more help and thinking of adding a scratch removal system to expand.

Here are some things I found that may be a little helpful:

#1 Do not advertise in every marketing campaign you get a call from (literally just had call from another “High school” calendar ad offered a few sec. ago!) The majority are really just burning $, yes you want your name out there but are YOUR target audience looking at these cheesy things?! Focus on what WILL work not what might.

#2 Do not ever low ball bids to get work, you and the customer will not be happy with the result in the end.

#3 Soak up everything with a grain of salt you can from here on the forum and don’t be afraid to try something new, whether it be a technique or new squeegee. Especially after you have been in window cleaning for years.

#4 Professionalism is what I wanted to set myself apart from the competition 10 years ago at 25, I still try and do that today.

#5 Enjoy the chance to work in well kept yards and homes we probably will not be able to afford in our life time with out the upkeep! :slight_smile:

#6 Get a WFP as soon as you possibly can! Will save you in more ways than I can count…

#7 Treat people well and they will treat you well

#8 Do not expect to get every bid

#9 Do not lower a bid when getting it together because YOU think it may be to big, (“No ones going to pay that much…”) you will be happily surprised.

#10 Like I told a buddy of mine yesterday, window cleaning is like a snow ball, you have to start at the beginning not the middle to get it going. But once you do, look out!

I know I am probably saying things that you already know, but once I stated typing I couldn’t stop… it’s a rain day for me :slight_smile:

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Just wait until you see what (your upcoming) marriage and children do to your bank account!

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All good stuff! I come from a place of “not knowing anything”!! :slight_smile: I’m like a sponge…here to soak it ALL up!
Thanks for your feedback.

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Lol. More reason to go to the East Coast Squeegeenomics!

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[QUOTE=grimebuster;131199]Questions for all of you out there…

  1. Why did you get into the window cleaning business?

12 years ago I started working for a friend of mine who owned a general cleaning company. We did everything , night time janitorial,
construction cleanup, pressure washing, maid service, window cleaning, carpet cleaning, tile and grout, anything cleanable, we cleaned it, commercial and residential. I started in the office doing mailings and such and soon moved into being field supervisor, overseeing all the day and night work (can you spell burn-out? ). I became a supervisor not knowing anything about cleaning and learned from the folks I was supervising. After a few years I switched over to just daytime supervision, mostly windows, residential carpets, pw and new construction clean up.
As we grew those aspects of the biz I spent most of time in the field working with and training employees. Over time I realized that cleaning windows (just cleaning, not supervising) was something I really liked to do. I actually enjoy the work. Since I was the one who did all the bids I also realized there was good money in it. I was committed though to not going into competition with my friend and our arrangement actually worked well for me in that I could take off six weeks in the summers to tour with my band. There were some other benefits as well. Coupled with that was my total insecurity about being a business owner. So I stayed with him. A year ago he sold the business and in October of 2010 I was fired by the new owner. “You don’t fit in with the new direction I want to go”. The next day I started Just Windows.

  1. What were some of the 1st things you did to get your name out there?

First thing I did was contact people I had been cleaning windows for already, people who always asked for me to be on the job when I was with the other company, with a letter to let them know I had started my own business. Then I did a saturation mailing of 2500 to select areas. My wife also gave me names of people to call from her place of work, a few jobs there. I bought a truck and had it lettered with logo and all. I was fairly busy till the new year. Then when things slowed I started doing door-to-door fliers with a decent response. Better than the mailing. Jan/Feb was sloooow but not dead. I got my Yellow Pages ad in the book and that has gotten me half a dozen jobs. My best response yet has been from a mailing to top producing Realtors giving them $50 off gift cards that they can pass on to their clients as a gift from them.

  1. What continues to work for you with marketing & expanding your business?

So far everything I have done has worked, some better than others but all forms of
marketing are working. My biz is pretty new so I can’t really say yet what it
is that continues to work. One thing that didn’t work was my working with
a marketing consultant/coach ( not Kevin :slight_smile: ) because there were certain
ideas he had that I couldn’t agree with and he couldn’t let me disagree.

Matthew

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I was looking for a new business venture after the economy hit my furniture business pretty hard. I retired from law enforcement after 25 years and was too old to chase bad guys but too young to sit on the front porch. I began looking at service businesses that would not be affected by the economy as much. Doing google searches and checking into all kinds of service businesses and window cleaning just kept popping up. What attracted me was the low initial investment. After losing money in the furniture business, my wife was more supportive of the low risk. I found a actually enjoyed the work and the money is very good.

I mainly pass out fliers in the neighborhoods that I want to work in. I am having very good success with fliers and door hangers. Now referrals are coming in. I still hand out fliers and get referrals and watch my business grow. I plan to start doing some direct mail soon and would like to hire at least a part time helper. My goal is to grow my business to the point that I don’t have to climb the ladder anymore. I want a crew or 2 and to be free to do estimates, sales etc.

Good luck with your business. WCR is a great place to start. If I had not found WCR, I’m not sure I would have taken the plunge. I’m sure glad I did.

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Here’s how I grew super fast in that private gated community my first year:

Whitepages.com. I entered the name of my customer and the city, and searched them. Once they showed up, I clicked “Neighbors” and went down the list calling each neighbor.

“Hi, I’m Michael with Mole Window Cleaning. We just finished doing window cleaning for Mrs. Jones, your neighbor. I’m going to be in the area tomorrow, would you mind if I dropped by and gave you a free estimate for window cleaning?”

Most people said they would take an estimate. After that, my charm took over. Snowball starting rolling, word of mouth started working wonders, and I grew quite a bit. Got a job delivering pizza at night to help pay the bills. Just went fulltime with windows Jan 2010. The Domino’s days…they sucked. That, and remembering the feeling of having no money and rent due, keeps me hustling to this day.

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Love the story man!

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Thanks Mark!

Good perspective to have through our struggles: this will make for a good story on some Internet forum someday, if I live to tell about it.

:slight_smile:

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  1. My Mom had a house cleaning business when I was a kid and she did not want to clean the windows. Soo to keep me out of trouble in the summers I would go to work w/ her and while she cleaned the homes, I cleaned the windows(this began when I was 9).

  2. As I was in my middle teens and started taking this more seriously, my Mom told all her clients and they told people they knew.

  3. Being a 1 man operation I don’t advertise(if you saw my truck you would disagree). Based on the quality of my work, the level of trust I have earned w/ my clients, and the amount of referrals(2 dozen already this year) I receive every year, my clients are who stimulates my growth. I honestly just love waking up every day and going to work.

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You skipped the part where you got the current purple hair.

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Could have really used your last $10 to help with that, made it blue to match my truck. But seriously Mike, Thanks for sharing your story with us all and damn glad to know great things came to a good guy.
Take care of yourself,

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cashed out my 401k and listened to a lot of these guys advice…ask these guys and myself anything, and you’ll get the end of the rainbow advice from at least one of us.

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Damn Larry. You are a prophet. Married and a kid now…and geez do a wife and kid cost some $$$.

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Amen to that!

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Imagine four of them…