I live in a town of about 10,000. It is a small town and a lot of the people know eachother. There are towns of similar size that are kind of close to me (within an hour). Anyone build a nice business in a town this size? Any recommendations or advice?
I see alot of people on here from big cities (New Jersey). I would think it would be a little bit easier to market to millions of people.
Settle on ramen noodles or move closer to a metro area.
Clearchoice -
If you are in a very small town that probably means that there aren’t a lot of windows cleaners there. I would estimate that there are about 2,500 homes in your town.
I suggest you make yourself a name in town as being the best, most reliable, friendliest window cleaner in your town. If like you said, everybody in town knows each other, then word will travel fast.
If only 25% of the people in town used your services and you average $185 per house, that would result in $115,625 annually. Not a bad living.
+1
You have a golden opertunity. Heck Sam Walton started in a small town. Like Bailey said “being the best, most reliable, friendliest window cleaner in your town” these things alone will get you business. Word of mouth will be your best marketing. Marketing in Jersey is not easy. It’s not easy anyplace you go. In Jersey marketing cost a lot of money cause you have a lot of people to try and market to. I dont flood areas like Chris does, but if you took a guy like him with his advertising budget. He would be hitting every house in town with a mailer all the time. He has to send out more in Jersey to get more back. In a small town, once he got the client he would only need to work on keeping them as a client. It cost more money to get a new client then it does to retain one.
Small markets are much easier to stand out in. Just got to make sure you don’t disappoint a customer, it’s pretty tough to regain a damaged reputation in a small market.
You can get noticed fast if you do something noteworthy in the town. Offer to clean the old age home for free, or the school or library. It won’t cost you anything but your own time, there’s a good chance you could get a community newspaper to pick up on it, and you’ll instantly have the golden boy reputation for a long time to come.
I think you might have to do several services, windows, lawns, lawn spraying, spring and fall clean ups, aeration, gutters, snow clearing. I think it would be hard to stay busy with only 10k people in the town. Unless it’s some kind of rich suburb but if it has a normal demographic of rich, middle class, and poor you might find it tough to pay the rent unless you live in your truck. And there has got to be other window cleaners there, even retired guys that don’t have to charge full price and younger bums doing store fronts for $10. Home services might be a way to go, the best customers are ones that will give you money every month of the year. You only need 20-30 of them for a nice base.
I’m centered in a town of about 5,000. I will say that within the borough and a couple miles radius I get probably less than 10% of my income. There are pockets of upscale communities and a tourist area a bit further out, so I’m willing to go 20-40 miles for good money.If you work at getting additional services as Mike said such as gutter cleaning, office cleaning you can do pretty well. I’ve kept at it for 24 years and make a good living.
My situation was much like yours. For about 8 years I lived in Sonora, California and ran a window and gutter cleaning business. Sonora has a population of 5,000. There are about 5 or 6 other smaller towns within 45 minutes. I also drove an hour and 15 minutes to Modesto to build up my business. Anyways, my business was great! For 3 years (before the recession hit) it grossed over $160K, with just me and one other guy. We built a business that was about 25% Gutter Cleaning and 75% window cleaning. Our window cleaning was about 50% commercial and 50% residential.
I think the key for me was to deliver on the goods when I went out to do a job. We really tried to do the job as if it were our own home, and were not happy until our customer was happy. Also, willingness to go the extra mile to solve and problems or complaints helps a ton.
I say, you might have a wonderful opportunity right where you are. You may have to drive a bit, but the benefits of building your own business far outweigh the negatives.
I live in a small town and live fairly close to some larger cities (30 miles) I prefer the small town. Like some of the guys said get known as the friendly local window cleaner. resi customers tend to be more loyal than commercial accts. offering more services too gives them the one stop shopping advantage too, especially once they like and trust you. My hubby is a contractor and picks up lot of work from my clients and the other way around too.
I agree with the consensus, definitely possible.
Just my 2 cents, but if you’re willing to change up your marketing, go more old school with newspapers, word of mouth and hit EDDM heavy, it’s a private customer pool!
