Don The Window Cleaner

Many of the people who come to this blog and who have watched my YouTube videos are interested in starting a window cleaning business. And their chief interest in in how to find jobs. They are in good company. A lot of people in all kinds of fields are doing exactly the same thing. Politicians are trying to show some leadership in this area by promising programs, ideas, or stimulus money to create jobs. But do we have to wait for them to figure it out? I don’t think so.

I started my business in 1981. Unemployment was at 10.5% and home interest rates were in the teens. I had just moved to a college town, where there are few jobs for people who were not college educated professionals. And the other jobs had brisk competition, with lots of cheap student labor to soak up those. I had a wife and infant son, and one day my wife came home with food stamps. I had been baling hay for $25 per day and giving blood plasma two days per week, and this government handout was very demoralizing. I knew I had to take desperate measures, or we would remain poor for quite a while.

At this time, I recalled meeting a man who came into the shop where I was working in 1979. He offered to clean our outside storefront window for $2 the first Tuesday of every month, and my boss could not open his wallet fast enough to pay him. I think my boss’s excitement and eagerness was in direct proportion to the exasperation he was experiencing just moments before as we had both spent about an hour trying to clean that window with Windex and paper towels, newspapers and vinegar, and lots of elbow grease. At that moment, this man was a godsend. He arrived at the highest point possible for his value proposition. Frankly, I think he could have gotten $10.

This kind of a window cleaning business model is one that offers a solution to a problem at an affordable price. Even though my boss was selling a luxury product (household spas and hot tubs) in a bad economy, he was willing to pay for results instead of using my labor, when I didn’t have much to do anyway. This became the way I did business for the first couple of years I was in it. My aim was to make that simple value proposition to shops with dirty windows as many times as I could. I didn’t even bother soliciting shops with clean windows. When I did, they just told me they had it covered, and I didn’t want to waste my time with them.

Sometimes I found people who just didn’t seem to care. I knew I was an inexpensive service, but they still would rather not get the windows cleaned. They did not see the value in it. It was worth nothing to them. They did not think it impacted their own ability to make money, so they just took a pass. It was hard to figure out in advance who was like this by their type of business. For instance, I did the windows at liquor stores, auto parts stores, dry cleaners, and other places that do not make much use of the display value of their windows. There were also shops that sold dresses and fine furnishings, which extensively use their windows for display, and were content to have inferior looking windows.  So, it remained a simple numbers game for me: offer the value to everyone who needed it.

This was working for me for awhile. I had a lot of loyal customers. I also had a lot of competitors. I had to spread out to shops that were out of my city to stay busy. And in each town I competed with a local service, so I could not recoup my travel with higher prices. But I was beginning to clean the windows for my customers’ homes. These were great jobs because I only traveled once and stayed there for hours, thus making better use of my time.  But I was also charging the same kinds of rates I did for their businesses. They expected certain pricing, and I was giving it to them.

As I gained customers outside of my existing commercial customers, I found that these new people had different expectations.  They thought I was amazingly cheap, and I was. On the upside, they enthusiastically told their friends. This locked me into these low cost expectations for many years. I liked staying busy. The low prices got me lots of phone calls, and soon other cleaning services discovered that there was a window cleaning wholesaler in town! Three cleaning services started retailing my services to their customers.

For a long time, I thought the main value I offered was low price. I know I did good work, and people appreciated it. But I also knew that I was the first window cleaner many of my residential customers ever had. They had previously NOT VALUED WINDOW CLEANING. Now they did. And they kept giving out my name and I kept getting new jobs.

Over the years I have had to reassess the value that I am really offering. Here is the new list:

1. Lower price. Yes, even though I have raised my rates in the past several years, I have not yet caught up with some other professional services.
2. Competence. Cleaning windows in a house is tricky. I see lots of ruined screens from homeowners who could not figure out how to access the window, let alone getting the screen out.
3. Reliability. People like to know that when I come, I will be in and out in a predictable amount of time. Sometimes they have appointments and NEED me to be done within a set time frame.
4. Trust.  It takes a load off their minds to know I am not rifling through their stuff, looking for wallets and purses or small valuables.
5. Friendship. This intangible grows over a long period of time. My customers have known me longer than a lot of people in their lives. They keep up with my family and the interests we share. These are the people who confide in me that I am not charging enough. They don’t send me to people who are potentially bad clients. And I hook them up with other reliable people I know who can fix their plumbing and repaint their houses.  And I don’t abuse their friendship by overcharging them.

In short, you can start offering the first 3 value propositions right away. But the last two take time, and are the most valuable to both you and your customers.

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Having your own small business is a blessing and a curse. It gives you a better income than working at an hourly job, and you have some flexibility.  Sometimes the curse is in the flexibility.

It’s the flexibility that can give you problems in the early stages of getting your business started. You may be struggling with getting enough work, and you start doing some other service to fill the time. If you aren’t careful, you may lose your focus and fail to do any effective marketing in any one area of your business.

Many years ago I branched out into full janitorial work, and hated every minute of it. I hope I never strip and wax another tile floor again. Fortunately, this was a brief detour, and I only wasted about a year struggling with this.

Today, I am at a point where I have a very well established business. In the next few years I will be forming some kind of exit strategy. I was thinking about setting a target of working about 20 hours a week in the future. I don’t really ever want to retire. But I would like to be taking it a bit easier.

But this past year I did something unexpected and ran for Mayor. I have been politically active for the past 10 years, and I never thought I could get elected in this college town, but the recent showing that I gave has changed my mind. I lost by 42 votes, scared the Hell out of the local power structure, and I now find myself gaining support for a future run at a city commission seat. This changes things.

I will be running next March and I expect to win it. It will be hard to do, but I believe the timing is right. It means I will be changing some things. A city commission seat is a part time position, and it doesn’t pay well, so I will  keep my business a few days per week after I am sworn in, in the event that I do win. Up until then I will  be very busy, and I have to figure out what else I will be doing with my other interests.

Another thing that has changed is that the number of people who call me and email me for advice on their window cleaning business prospects has increased. As it goes right now, I don’t have time for that. But, I would like to make time for it if it could be done profitably. So far, it’s just been a good deed. I don’t make enough money off products and advertising for it to be worthwhile. And as long as it’s just the occasional person who wants help, that is no big deal. But the volume of calls has forced me to think about going back to a paid service, at the very least to thin the herd. Otherwise, I cannot afford to talk to everyone who wants what amounts to be the same information over and over again.

So, in the near future I will be creating an email new letter. It will be an annual subscription. When questions are asked, all subscribers will get the answers. Any videos I make will be for subscribers only. I will leave up the old videos on YouTube, although I may clear out all the ones with Squeegeesbymail.com ads because I no longer own that site and I no longer sell equipment. That was not worth it even a little bit.

When I figure out a price point for the newsletter, I will announce that here.

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I am finally finished with my run for Mayor of Gainesville. I came in second out of five candidates on March 16th and that put me in a runoff with the top vote getter. On April 13th, he scraped by with 6,110 votes to my 6,068 for a 42 vote victory. It was a real heart-breaker because the voter turnout was so low: 16.75%. It was also a hard loss to take because it was such a nasty campaign. I guess that is the reason why so few people want to run for office. But I believe it is important for good people to keep trying. When we bail out of the process, we leave it to the biggest scoundrels to run our cities. And 83% of the registered voters in my city bailed out of the process altogether.

In order to stay involved, I will be putting more time into future campaigns and with helping other good people run. And that means I will not be doing as much window cleaning mentoring in the future. Yes, I will do some, but my city is a higher priority. So, I will likely do more re-blogging of interesting articles and videos. I will make relatively few of my own on this subject. But I will be around.

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone! I’m really busy right now, and I haven’t had to discount my prices at all, in spite of continuing bad economic news…

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I don’t know how much of the news you are watching, but our country is in deep trouble financially. Combine the largest US deficits of all time with our reliance on foreign trade and investment, and you get a dollar that buys less and less goods from other countries. And since our squeegee blades are made in China, and our other hardware comes from around the world, you can bet on those prices going higher and higher. I buy my squeegee rubber in 36″ lengths to save money, and they are about $4.17 each. They are made from rubber that is grown in Southeast Asia. We owe those people a buttload of money. Are we gonna get those blades for $4.17 next time? I don’t think so. Anyway, business is real good right now, so I should probably get a years worth (at least) before January.

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What have you put into your business? I know that when you feel desperate and don’t know what to do to get your business off the ground, all you can think of is what you can get OUT of it. But starting a small business is not a free ride. It’s like riding a bicycle: You start riding up hill, not going very fast, working very hard, and it takes a while until you can coast!

I am not alone in believing that giving can lead to receiving. Listen to this economist talk about what his research has revealed!

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I can hardly believe it’s been about three weeks since my last post. I’ve been busy at work and at home, and away from home. We’ve been renting out the downstairs at my house, and tenants have been coming and going. Things have had to be cleaned and maintained and repaired and it’s an all around headache. This covers almost our entire house payment, so it helps us as we work on getting rid of all our debt.

Cindi and I went to EPCOT in Orlando last weekend. We took three days, so I was off Monday. It was Cindi’s birthday, and we had a great time. She was even drafted by some street performers to play a role in their skit. They got more than they bargained for because she is such a ham.

But, you all want to know how business is in this terrible recession. I gotta tell you, it is really bad for a lot of folks here in Florida. We have one of the higher unemployment rates in the nation, and there are so many for sale and for rent signs every where we look. More seem to be added to their number every week. It’s one of the reasons I am so happy we have full occupancy. The competition for renters is fierce.

Our business is on  the upswing. It’s really good right now, but this is the busy season for us. It’s started a little earlier than usual, and we had a pretty good summer. So I am fairly optimistic. My customers who have put us off for awhile are getting done. This is the phenomenon called “pent-up demand”. People who were used to getting a certain service are now going without it, and they feel deprived. So, we are now on their list.

We are also continuing to pick up new clients. Most of this is just word of mouth momentum. I have passed out few fliers lately, but people are still giving my name out. And power washing is a good advertising medium: it’s noisy! People hear the machine and want to see who their neighbor has hired. Then they ask for a quote and then a date.

What is the prognosis for the future? This is hard to say because our economy is in such bad shape and, in my opinion, the current administration seems to want to increase the level of fiscal malpractice from the last administration. Our best hope for most Americans is that in 2010 the Obama White House will be neutered by a massive replacement of the present Congress. For me, I will just keep trying to reduce my obligations to a level that can be sustained in an even worse economic situation.

I also want to forecast that there will be a lot more people like us selling our services to those who can afford them. A couple of young guys sold my wife some car detailing yesterday. They were canvassing our neighborhood and caught her at a point of pent-up demand and made a sale. I was surprised, since we are so miserly lately, but it just goes to prove that there are sales than can be made in many markets.

Speaking of my neighborhood, while I was walking my dog I came upon a yard sale at my neighbor’s house. She told me she has been unemployed for awhile because teaching jobs are hard to come by. She asked how my business was. When I told her it was great, she and her two customers stopped to ask why that was. Now they all want to get into the window cleaning business. This is just what I need.

I also get a lot of calls from people around the country who leave messages asking for a quick consultation on the phone. Some even ask if they can come and clean for me for a day or so for free, so they can learn the business. I am so busy I cannot begin to even return these calls, so please stop! One of the reasons I put all this free info on the web was to stop the calls. It seems to have backfired. And my customers would not appreciate a steady stream of out-of-town “apprentices” in their homes; not to mention that training people is work. And it’s work I will not engage in for people who are leaving.

I have more “pent-up information” to share, so I will post again soon!

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This video is a brief description of the “pipeline” Don is thinking of when he says he is still waiting for those customers who are in it. It takes several calls and emails to get people to get off the dime and get that work done!

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I didn’t realize it for a long time, but a very high percentage of my customers are Jewish. This is just a guess because I do not actually keep data like that, but when you see enough Mezzuzahs on doorposts, you begin to detect a pattern. This becomes especially obvious in the Spring, when people are preparing for Passover. Observant Jews intensify the house cleaning before this and a few other holidays. Therefore, it might be a good idea to drop off some cards at the local synagogue. I have never done this, but the local congregations have helped spread my name around without having to do that.

I also want to add here that there is something else I have noticed about my Jewish customers. In general, they are my best customers. They get done more often, are nicer to me, and are more generous. This is not to say that there are not obsessively clean, kind and generous people among other demographic groups. I work for Catholics, Presbyterians, Wiccans, Pagans, atheists, and plain vanilla heathens who are kind, reasonable people who are also not cheap skates. It’s just that the concentration of Jews in my customer files is hard to ignore. And that means it would be foolish to ignore them.

I just got an email from a customer who let me know she needs done before Rosh Hashanah, and that is two weeks away. For your perusal, here is a calendar of Jewish holidays for the year.

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A few days ago we were out with friends for a birthday outing and I saw a bead store. That’s right: beads. It was in a shopping center that is made to look like a park, and the anchor store there is a women’s fitness center. There are a lot of female-oriented retailers there (jewelers, hair stylists, tanning center, boutiques of various descriptions) as well as a dentist and a few eateries. It’s the perfect place for a craft supply business. There is lots of traffic, and it’s the kind of people who buy beads.

I marveled at this sight, because I know that it is not cheap to have a store in this center. And the utilities in this town are an absolute punishment. They had to sell a LOT of beads to pay for the rent and electricity, let alone pull a paycheck or two out of it. Then I forgot about it, until the next day, when I saw ANOTHER BEAD STORE at the shopping center just across the street! I thought that this was just crazy! How can two bead stores, located in the same part of town, survive? I thought about it, and realized that the markup on beads had to be enormous. This got me thinking about the window cleaning business. There is a very low cost of entry, and the profits are quite high. You don’t need a store or utilities. There is just your  own cost of living, and a fairly small investment in equipment.

There are only two dedicated bead stores in this town, Bead All About It and Gifts of Avalon. There are also some craft stores like Michaels, and there are the craft departments of stores like Wal-Mart and Target and others. Yet, in spite of the big stores with their cheap beads, two entrepreneurs dared to open these stores and depend on their bead sales to stay alive. I have to admire that.

In our business, we compete with full service cleaning services, do-it-yourselfers, and a high tolerance for dirt. We just need to find a couple of jobs every day to survive, but these bead stores probably have to have dozens of customers every day just to keep the doors open. How do they do it? By making beads special. Go to their web sites and read the descriptions. We can learn something from them.

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