So what are you guys doing for the winter?

Residential
61

chris, do you guys cut your employees hours back or only higher temporary help up till winter?

62

We keep our commercial guys on full time, a few more than needed actually and a few residential guys. Basically everyone else collects, but is on call… If a big job comes in, they need to come in. But really Im happy to have everyone take the winter off and rest up for the spring…

63

So after reading this thread started thinking and thought maybe looking into snow removal. Residential, nothing crazy but try and get some accounts to keep the cash flow going. Talked to a landscape buddy of mine who does snow removal and got a few ideas and pointers. Our entire neighborhood is hooked up via google groups email. No soliciting or advertising, just a way to share happenings in the neighborhood. Someone posted up looking for snow removal. Didn’t quite have my ducks in a row yet so sat back and watched as I got my things together. So someone posted her son did commercial and he might consider it if there were enough people in the neighborhood. Someone else posted her guy did good work, cost her $30 per time. A few more chimned in, then it got crazy. Next one was $20 no matter how much snow as long as there were 10 people in the neighborhood. Then the emails turned to some sump pump issues and a guy posted he was an out of work plumber and offered his services for $30/hour to fix anybody’s sump pump problems. This morning the same guy posted this…

“Call Me,
I will Clear your driveway,sidewalk and porch for $12.50. Let them beat that! Thats less than $1.00@min.”

Obviously desperate for some cash, can’t imagine he’s insured. Not even sure what he means by the $1 minute statement.

So my new plan for this winter is to stay warm, redo the website, bury my nose in some marketing books, read every page of Kevin’s site which I joined last month, put my spring mailers together and get ready to have a huge 2011.

64

A whole lot of gutter cleaning. We had a wicked thunder storm today. A reminder for NW home owners to get their gutter cleaned out!

Cheers!