Carpet Cleaning business income
The quickest way to earning $100, 000 per year from your business is as an efficient owner/operator.
The beauty of a carpet cleaning business is that you can make a lot of money without having to build a complicated infrastructure.
Prematurely building a large infrastructure will slow you down and possibly threaten your success.
The need for speed
It’s a race against time.
People starting a cleaning business typically have limited money.
Time is critical for most because they are draining their cash and credit reserves to pay business and personal bills while building the business.
The clock is ticking until you can produce enough to pay those bills. If you run out of cash and credit before you hit that point, it’s over.
Anything that needlessly adds to the complexity or expense of running the business makes reaching the goal that much harder.
Your advantage is the simplicity of the business structure that requires minimal sales revenue to reach the goal.
A common mistake is to prematurely expand business costs. Many operators add nonessentials such as additional cleaning technicians, office help, overly expensive equipment or ineffective advertising.
Poor choices can add tens of thousands of unproductive dollars to the annual expenses.
Minimize your need for new customers
The most challenging and expensive part of building a business is getting new customers.
Minimizing the need for new customers increases your chances of success.
The fewer customers needed to pay your business expenses plus your $100, 000 income, the easier life will be. Nonessential expenses require more customers and make success more difficult.
You need a plan to build a streamlined owner/operator business.
A good plan focuses on spending wisely and attracting profitable customers. Without a plan, it’s easy to make choices that slow down your progress.
Most of the business advice in our industry is from people who have succeeded with large and complex operations that require huge sales revenue to maintain.
Most of that information is helpful to companies that are already earning $100, 000 and are striving for higher goals.
Evaluate the advice you hear as to whether it is appropriate for your business. A small business is on a different path. Good ideas for a large business could be costly for you.
You must get it done
The quickest way to $100, 000 requires you to perform almost all the cleaning and business activities.
Your success demands that you do things you may not be comfortable with or enjoy doing. Once you reach your goal, you can choose to do things differently.
Giving in to the temptation to avoid some unpleasant tasks makes it harder to reach your goal.
Your challenge up to this point is a lack of profitable customers, not a lack of time.
Failing to perform important tasks, or paying someone to do things you can easily do, is a mistake.
There is nothing complicated that prevents you from reaching the $100, 000 goal.
A lot of little things must get done and you’re the one to do them. Answering and returning telephone calls, data entry, paying bills and printing, folding and sending out follow-up and marketing materials are all part of the job.
Until you have more work than you can handle, you must remember that every dollar you needlessly spend is an additional dollar you must earn.
Owner/Operator advantage
You hold the advantage when competing for jobs and gaining new customers.
The skill, care, knowledge and expertise you provide are perceived to be greater than those of an employee-technician of a large company.
If the customer is given the choice between having the owner or his best employee doing the job, the customer will choose the owner.
Appearing more skilled and professional increases your value to the customers, enabling you to win a larger percentage of jobs.
You also have the advantage when competing for high-profit consumers. Again, your superior skills and professionalism make it easier for you to win the more profitable consumers who are willing to pay extra for quality.
These consumers tend to become loyal, long-term customers who repeat annually, thereby reducing the number of new customers you need.
These consumers also tend to refer you to others more frequently, accelerating your growth.
Winning high-profit consumers enables you to greatly reduce the cost of your advertising expense.
Achieving the goal
Once you reach the $100, 000 goal, you are in a position of strength and financial security to decide where you want to take your business.
You have succeeded. You won the race against time. The door to great opportunity in this industry is now wide open.
Now, you can choose and decide to continue the freedom and flexibility of running a single truck business and build it to higher levels of profit, or expand your business to become a multi-truck company.
Building your business as an owner/ operator is the quickest way to reach the goal of earning $100, 000.
There are other ways, but considering the greater investment and risk, keeping it simple and fast increases your chances of success.
Steve Marsh is the creator of the Be Competition Free Marketing Program. He is a 30-year veteran of the carpet cleaning industry, an IICRC-approved instructor and a Senior Carpet Inspector. Marsh is a marketing and business consultant who provides a turn-key program for attracting better customers. For more information, log on to www.BeCompetitionFree.com.
