I have a question for those who have successfully expanded their business into one or two crews. In your opinion how much do you need to be making per month in order to do this right? i ask because although i love cleaning windows I dont want to do it the rest of my life. My goal is to work from a home office booking the jobs, making the sales, and overlooking my business.
Right now, in my fourth year of business, im pulling in about 12-16K CAD a month, APR-NOV. This is basically with no selling. I have a healthy client base and some online advertising. Ive had a few helpers along the way in the past ($20/hour under the table) but ideally id like to have one or two vans of one or two people each crew. Anyone have any advice on how to make the transition? Ill answer any questions you guys have. Thank you.
the quickest - is to look at your avg job ticket, the larger the better, meaning thousands or tens of thousands, set up your marketing for that and pull in those jobs or single contacts who have multiples of those jobs. can lead to lots of challenges as develop office side behind all the work, systems, finance and human resource needs
smoothest - if the office and marketing is more developed than the field, once you go legit with employees admin, human resource stuff, finance paperwork all go way up in time needed, but unless your wife is full time without salary it will draw on your finances until field production catches up with number of employees and vans. in other words everything is set up and operating first: office, admin, marketing, finance, with that framework and infrastructure set up, hiring and running crews is way simpler. unfortunately this is the most costly way to do without lots of free family expertise and staff
typical - trying to develop everything at the same time for a multiemployee business. feels like plugging water holes with not enough fingers to plug them. Human resource stuff gets unwieldy, Osha, payroll, admin, calls, scheduling, marketing, taxes, hiring.
at least youâve already started and have some awareness - 2 employees to 4 is a big change and 4 to 6 is a big change
the more the employees you want (even if under 10) the key will be larger job sizes - this cuts down on almost every potential trouble point
Thatâs our goal as well. Personally if I were making in the 10k-12k a month range then the only thing that would determine how soon I can retire is if I can find the right employee to not mess up my company.
Great question. Residential: we run 6 to 7 two-man crews with revenues of $20,000 +/- per month per two man crew. I started with one residential tech and built from there. The key is understanding revenue trigger points for when to hire who - including technicians, admins in the office, to a supervisor in the field. All can be done very systematically if you understand the balance of revenue, including what I call hiring dials, marketing dials, and conversion dials. All of this is assuming you want a Stage 4 Auto-Pilot Operation which I believe you do. Ultimately, provided this is your vision, is to build a company where you do nothing except guide the âshipâ. You have people doing EVERYTHING for you! Absolutely possible. I have 40 that make up my commercial and residential divisions. All I do is look at reports, tweak my systems, come up with new ideas, and focus on market domination and LEAD - the fun stuff x to learn more of how this comes to light. And feel free to give me a call and I can get a little deeper on how I put my company together starting exactly where you are right now. My number is in there. Good luck!
First and foremost, make the change from âunder the tableâ to legit. You need peace of mind before you can send more people out and raise your chances of something happening.
which will require the marketing to produce clientele who will pay the pricing that makes the wheels go round
best advice for those ready to go forward is know what you are all about, where your âpower bandâ is to have that marketing system in place to reach the desired client that will pay the rates that sustain and allow a legit business to not only survive but thrive
if I were you I would be long retired.
