So right now I’m working 4 days a week as an HVAC technician and I’m working towards starting my window cleaning business. I’m trying to figure out how to transition.
Is 1 day a week going to be good for me to finish out 2022?
What happens if I get a decent amount of work but don’t have the schedule to fit it all?
Is it even possible to jump all in?
I just need some general advice on this or what you guys would do. I’m the only one who works in my family of 3 so I need the money to stay flowing in since we live more paycheck to paycheck.
My advice would be try to fill that 1 day a week with route work. You could make $500-$600 a day starting out in route but it will take time to build. Use that to get out of living paycheck to paycheck, this limits your options in life. Once you have a bit of a nest egg, put your business on Google my business and ask your current route customers for a review. Your phone will start to ring in April, May, June, Sept, Oct in my experience (only second year). Book those jobs on Saturday and Sunday and build more of a nest egg. Eventually quit and go full time.
My first year semi-full time I net about $10k. I did not spend a dime on marketing thought, I used doorhangers, and got on google. Most of my business came from pounding the payment and referrals or repeat from that. After getting some google reviews, I get calls from google searches now but you need that credibility. I will probably triple what I did last year, again semi part time. I say that because I have 3 young kids I want to be around and not work all the time, its also seasonal so July, August, November are slower and December, Jan, Feb, March are route only.
Getting/having the credibility is no big deal for me. I’ve got (7) 5 star reviews on google already from doing friends windows in exchange for google reviews.
I do get what you mean from the storefront but from my experience storefront takes a decent amount of time to build up, which I’m okay with taking the time, but in my market the residential side is much better.
So if for example, I dedicate my only day off to only storefront, and I score a few residential customers then I’ll have no room to put them in. And this is part of the struggle I’m thinking about.
To me it’s a numbers game… if I put out 100 door hangers out, I should expect to get 1 call from that. And this is a low estimate example. So if I’m doing that and the numbers do truly add up, how busy can I actually expect to get? Because I do plan on spending money on marketing and I do plan on putting myself out there as much as I can even though it’s only one day off.
Keep your job for now , work on your day off . Save a little bit of money , keep your life simple. When your job is getting in the way of your business then you know it’s time to quit. Also remember window cleaning is seasonal , so don’t quit after the busy season . Quit before it gets busy , have a target date of spring 2023
Sure, 1 day a week is fine. If you start to get busy with windows just tell them you’re booked until …whenever your next window day is. They don’t need to know your not full time at it. Then maybe you start adding an occaisional Saturday. It is possible to jump all in. I did that, and my wife was working too. So we got by.
One day a week is solid to get started. You’re in a similar boat to me (full time job + family + business). Wanted to say thanks for creating this thread as it’s an encouragement to know someone else is on the same path.
If I had to do all 27 years over again, I probably would still have learned window cleaning buttaken up pressure washing a lot sooner. It pays three times more per man hour for me.
