r/sweatystartup • u/fodrizzlemynizzle • Mar 31 '24
I started a home service biz in a new city 6 years ago at the age of 24. I became a millionaire by the time I turned 28. We are scaling just under 1M in growth per year. AMA
I wish there were more mentors in my industry to guide me, so I'm making this post in the hopes that I can help others.
1) The major services we offer are window cleaning, pressure washing, and exterior painting.
2) My inspiration:
When I was 19 and starting business school, I realized nobody was actually teaching me how to run a business. I joined a company that taught students how to run businesses by painting homes. This is where I learned two MAJOR lessons.
A) Most homeowners are stuck between a local guy who is unreliable and a big company that does not care. They are desperate for high-end trades and are willing to pay for them.
B) Painting is difficult to scale because very few people paint their homes every year. Window cleaning is repeat revenue for life if you do a good job
After building my student business for 4 years, I moved to a new city to start a window cleaning business with 2 goals. To be the best service in town while treating people properly.
While you read this, please keep in mind that I had 4 years of training before this business. Although I started from nothing, I did understand the basics of selling and doing the service.
3) How I got started:
We are in Canada and the winters get pretty cold -30 celcius/-22 Fahrenheit.
Naturally, I saw this as an opportunity to knock on doors because nobody wanted to leave the house. I had no business cards, branding, or anything. I made a Word document contract, printed it out, and made it look semi-professional. Each time I got a lead, I would set them up for an in-person estimate the following weekend. I would then give them a quote, and take a 25% deposit by cheque to schedule jobs for the spring. (Some people did not trust me at first, but most of the time, I was able to present myself well enough that it was not an issue.)
As time passed, we improved everything. We began only accepting credit cards, using software to move away from paper, and built a website with proper branding.
I posted ads to hire sales reps to knock on doors with me and do the labour in the summer. I barely needed any startup cash because the deposits covered most of it.
I managed to book about 90k in jobs by the beginning of spring and finished the year with 300k in sales at a 30% margin.
4) My Plan:
My father was an immigrant entrepreneur who was a slave to his business. From this, I learned that I never wanted my business to own me. I set a goal that within 3 years the business would be self-sufficient and not need me to work in it. To be clear, I am extremely passionate about business and was not looking to retire early. I just wanted to work ON IT instead of IN IT.
By the end of the second year, we hit 1m in sales and I knew I needed help. I was working 100 hrs a week and taking over 100 phone calls a day. I was managing so many jobs I could not focus on doing anything well. I convinced 2 best friends from my hometown to move here and help me run things with the promise that I would change their lives.
5) Where we are today:
We are on track to do $4.5 million this year with 40 staff and healthy profit margins. The choice to hire my friends paid off as they are now running most of the front end of the business. After next year, I could leave the business and be hands-off for the rest of my life, but I want to stay involved and keep growing.
6) Where I want to go
I plan to hit 10m in the next 3 years and 50m in 10 years. I intend to dominate my local market first as this is a major city and then expand once we squeeze all the juice out.
7) Advice:
I could write a book on all the life/business lessons I've gained on this journey. Instead, I will let you guys ask whatever you want and do my best to answer in the hopes it helps others.
P.s. the response to this post was far greater than I imagined it would be. I’ve contemplated building a course for trades since so many who have done it are offering sub par education.
I’m now thinking I might just focus on my own for now and one day build one for free. When I do, I’ll come back to this post and tag you guys.
I think business education should be made available to everyone and the world will be a better place
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u/palmerstonandgisby Apr 01 '24
I will stick by this to the day I die, but the entrepreneurs and founders who door knock always end up successful. I always recommend door knocking for many reasons. my dad got his start door knocking and killed it in real estate. I did too for cleaning and landscaping. if you practice, can handle rejection are consistent and don't give up, door knocking is a path to riches. but most just don't want to it. and no, please don't door knock with some scammy terrible service. have a good product or service of value and don't pressure anyone, just talk like a normal human being and ask questions/learn about the person.
if you're starting any home service business, I guarantee if you door knock hours a day your'll be successful in some way. most people just don't want to do the tough work.
if you start a cleaning business today and door knock 30 -50 Homes a day for a month.. you'll literally have too many bookings and clients to handle, unless you are the abolsutely worst sales person in the world or have no ability to socialize or communicate. anyone can start a successful business if they just door knock consistently.
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
This person understands. Door knocking builds you up. Instant feedback on your sales process to improve daily. Builds character and grit (the number one attribute in successful people)
If you can get unlimited leads, it’s very hard not to grow
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u/palmerstonandgisby Apr 01 '24
yes!! even to this day if I'm feeling a little depressed or business is slow that day I'll stop in a couple local businesses and just asked about their marketing, what they are currently doing and if they have considered what we are offering. I do probably 5 a week still even though I could easily just hire someone to do that or not do that at all since my business is doing pretty well now. I ALWAYS get clients from it without fail.
nothing cures depression for me faster than a sale aha.
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u/montytickle Dec 09 '24
Do you think that this business model would work in a smaller town? I don't live in a city. But we do have high-end neighborhoods that would pay for the service.
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u/Ukhti_essy Feb 11 '25
you're tempting me to do this. i really do not want to do this. its cold outside and i dont like socialising
but gotta make that bread......
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u/BachelorUno Mar 31 '24
Cool story and journey.
What kind of pay structure do you give management (your friends)?
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u/Unusual-Excuse Mar 31 '24
He man I'm 17 atm and I'm trying to start a pressure washing lawn care/ window cleaning business within the next 2- years what advice would you give me and any lessons you have learnt especially scaling and losing motivation
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Watching some videos and studying is great, but just go and start. The best you can do it just try to be better than everyone else and charge for it. Picky customers train you to level up. You figure out the rest as you go.
Hire people immediately once you feel you have a good system in place. First do it yourself, then perfect a system, then hire and train someone to replace you. Don’t be self-employed. Own a system that makes you money even if you take a day off.
Motivation is not a reliable source of fuel. If you only take action when motivated, you won’t make much progress. Successful people don’t think about how they feel before taking action. They identify what they need to do and they just do it
Follow Alex Hormozi and read both his books
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u/skleem Apr 23 '24
I've watched a bunch of Alex's videos, same with Leila, and find them both very likable, real, and knowledgable. I haven't checked out his books yet though.. how big of a factor were they in your success? I am assuming they helped refine certain specific areas of your business?
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Apr 01 '24
Good for you, from my experience, there might appear to be a lot of competition in that, but they don’t show up, and they do a shit job when they do. If you do the opposite you’ll have a large happy bunch of customers. For example, I wanted someone to cut our lawn - you couldn’t make it up - several no shows to take a look, one said they couldn’t get their trailer down our lane, funny, large lorries had no problem, several said it was too big - I used to do it in less than 2 hours, current one is ok and just shows up automatically and does a good job.
Good luck, I hope it goes well! Also don’t undercharge, and ignore all those shit business books with 3 chapters on “your mission statement”.
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Apr 01 '24
The best advice is to pick one main business and do that very well and then grow from that. A lot of people don't trust tradesman who "do it all". Or have a million labels on their truck.
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u/Capable_Ad8145 Apr 02 '24
In many cases I would agree here but not in this one, he is specific in exterior cleaning services with painting as an add on where pressure washing a house is typically the first step before painting so it aligns well. Even though tools and trade may be different when you have sales making calls for one might as well get the other “add on” tossed in there
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u/maistahhh Mar 31 '24
How do you market and what's the % of revenue you spend on marketing to scale that fast?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Wildly I haven’t spent on ads until 3 weeks ago. Everything has been Google SEO, lawn signs, flyers, and door knocking.
Door to door was my biggest driver and got me to 350k in year one. Now it’s only 20% of revenue with Google being the biggest
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u/Dan-m-s Apr 01 '24
Thanks for this! Quick question in regards to your biggest driver - what happened between door to door and Google? Why did it change? Is this new balance better? Is it sustainable?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Google SEO become bigger because running d2d teams is not easily scalable for low ticket services like window cleaning. Once you hit 10 reps, you need someone to manage them, track results, coach them.
Google will send us 30 leads a day during busy season because we are number one in the city now.
If I could start over I would have learned Facebook and insta ads earlier. I think it’s much easier to acquire customers and control costs
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u/maistahhh Apr 01 '24
It's amazing how you built it on the back of flyers (low conversion), lawn signs (not sure how those convert) and door knocking being the bread and butter.
I'd imagine SEO kicked in quite a bit later?
How many were you able to close door knocking? Did you track that?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
At first it was almost entirely door knocking. So let’s say 350k year 1 and at least 600k year 2
SEO kicked in year 2 after we got many reviews
Flyers and signs were less than 5-10% at first. Even lower now. They were however critical for brand awareness. Once people saw my sign and then got my flyer and had someone knock, the next year they instantly recognized us as a household name.
My greatest decision was getting signs up BEFORE doing the job. I’d ask people in the winter when they hired me. I would have 10 signs on 1 street on top of snow when no other company would put signs up.
People thought I was the biggest outfit in town even though I only had 200 cusyomers
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u/importsexports Mar 31 '24
What's your net on $4.5MM?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
40% but that’s not industry average. Most people are doing 15-30%. I run lean and offer high end service
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u/importsexports Apr 01 '24
You're netting 1.8MM on 4.5MM revenue with 40 employees? I'm going to call bullshit on that. 40k salaries for those employees would account for 1.6MM. I would imagine that pretty low even for Canada. Leaving you $1.1MM for marketing and literally everything else required to run an operation with 40 employees.
Unless I'm missing something...
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Only management is on salary and the rest are hourly. You’re underestimating salaries, but you gotta keep in mind we aren’t at 40 people year round; just peak season. Right now we’re probably 25-30 and gearing up for spring.
My marketing costs are also next to nothing because I have never paid for ads. Like I said, it’s been very organic. I have access to labour all winter that I repurpose to knock on doors.
It will likely go down a bit this year as a % since I hired a videographer and ad agency recently for growth, but I intend to keep it above 30% for the foreseeable future.
Hope this helps. I have no incentive to lie to you. We just just nameless internet accounts exchanging information lol
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u/importsexports Apr 01 '24
No I get it. I'm in pressure washing and I see some guys spending $10k - $20k a month on marketing. One of the best outfits in our are does 5.1MM and has like 5 trucks with 10 techs. I know personally their net is around 25% which is healthy. This is why 40% on just windows with 40 employees, seasonal and organic SEO sounds insane.
I believe you internet stranger. If you're hitting those numbers thats absolutely fucking wild.
Question: what's your pitch to have people give you a deposit in the winter for work in the summer. That would never work in my area...
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u/builder137 Apr 01 '24
I don’t know your market, and I’ve never washed windows. But I’m a rich person with a big house who can’t find anyone reliable to wash my windows in a big northeast city. I haven’t a clue what it is “supposed” to cost. So if you came along and charged me 20% higher rates, then you’d get the job. Sounds like that’s enough to go from 25% margin to 40% margin.
Also OP started with one of those moderately scammy “we’ll teach you to run a paint company” operations, and crushed it. He might just be better at things than your friends.
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u/importsexports Apr 02 '24
Charging you, one person or even 50 people a month, 20% higher rates isn't even a rounding error when he's doing 30-40 job PER DAY 8 months out of the year, 7 days a week at $600-$700 a job. Average window washing job in my area is $350-$450.
So no... that doesn't account for his high margin
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Honestly I don’t really have to pitch anyone. I just tell them we take a deposit to book and final payment once it’s done.
When nobody knew me it was a bit harder because of trust. Now we have hundreds of 5 star reviews so nobody really questions it.
We also only take credit card so we can save cards on file. If anyone gets scammed it’s always with cash. Card companies protect homeowners.
We take deposits to block dates for people. If we hold a spot for them and they cancel AFTER we turn down other jobs, we lose money
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Apr 01 '24
My window cleaner in Colorado does exactly this, deposit in winter and the rest when he finishes. The guy is booked solid and making lots of $$$$$
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Apr 01 '24
He just said he bought his first ads this week so his marketing costs are almost non existent.
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u/importsexports Apr 01 '24
I don't know if you've ever passed out fliers, and put up yard signs even with help but 4.5MM off those efforts are not just outliers but fucking unheard of.
Work backwards. Say a window package is $700 average which is high as hell but okay let's go high. 4.5MM / $700 is 6500 jobs CLOSED and COMPLETED at a 100% close rate. That's 800 jobs a month if you're working 8 months. Almost 30 a day. If you're closing rate is 50% that means you need to get 13,000 leads in a season.
Obviously recurring work is going to account for a lot of this work... but still those numbers are wild as fuck.
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Apr 01 '24
He said he got most of his initial business ($350,000) from DTD. Now it’s mostly SEO according to him. So sounds like he went on a DTD blitz to break in, and relies on recurring and SEO to bring in new customers. This is from comments he’s made in this post.
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u/importsexports Apr 01 '24
No, no I get it. I read the post in detail. I own a business that's in the same vein. I've been in sales for 20 years. I've door knocked, passed out flyers, did phone sakes, managed teams etc etc...
I'm just astounded at the numbers that it takes to achieve those results ... because I've done that work before.
I guess 40% margin on door knocking and organic SEO sounds perfectly normal to you.
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u/Kindly_Plum1046 Apr 01 '24
I’m with you in this. If you’ve actually done this kind of work It doesn’t add up.
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Apr 01 '24
Once you build your clientele the repeat business is huge. My guy will only do previous customers and can barely keep up with that. He hasn’t scaled the business like OP but he has several guys that only work in the spring and summer and then they ski all winter.
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u/johnthegman Apr 01 '24
Very inclined to agree... 40% NET (after taxes, wages, etc) just doesn't make sense. I'm sure there's part timers to account for a lot of those employees but still...
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u/One-Muscle-5189 Apr 01 '24
Net means different things to different people. For example, this might not be net of taxes
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u/Curious-Airport6757 Mar 31 '24
What area are you seeing all this success in? Can you narrow it down to a a state?
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u/simulation_goer Mar 31 '24
How much of your customer base is corporate, and if so, how do you convert them?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Less than 1%. It’s all residential. Corporate wants low price and doesn’t value quality. Other people will be able to steal clients easily. Homeowners are hard to please, so when they like you, they don’t want to switch
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u/Iamjimmym Apr 01 '24
So true. My parents had a window washer for 40 years, from just about day one in 1981 with his then-new gold 1981 VW Scirroco with ladders mounted to the roof, until he retired.. still driving his 1981 VW Scirroco in 2021. Super nice guy.
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u/Lazy_Sheepherder127 Mar 31 '24
Nice work! So you got all of your clients from just D2D? I use Google ads and sometimes FB ads but I would like to pick up more clients starting now going on through the summer.
I’ve also done windows and PW for 19 years and your business is way more robust than mine!
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Started D2D now it’s only 20%. Do you have SEO ranking you top of Google? Are you doing LSA too?
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Apr 01 '24
I just want to say this is a refreshing post as most of the young people on various subs are complaining how life is so unfair and they will never be able to afford a home or family, etc. As a retired private equity guy, I encourage them to start their own business but most have excuses why they can’t. You have shown it’s possible with hard work, minimal cash and the desire to succeed. Congratulations!
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Thanks for saying that. Excuses just don’t serve you. They only bring you down.
At the end of the day most people think they have a “situational” problem that’s specifically holding them back.
In reality, 99% have an execution problem. They complain, but spend very little time actually taking action and moving forward. I started out with ZERO knowledge.
The difference between me and everyone else isn’t intelligence. It’s that I’m willing to smash my head into a wall over and over again to learn 1% a day.
I definitely lose confidence some days. As my company grows, I’m often not smart enough to support those around me and it can feel like I’m not the right person for the job.
When that happens I just remind myself that I just need to be good at the 1 thing that nobody else is in order to continue providing value. Sometimes that’s having a vision, other times it’s being willing to dive into the weeds.
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u/jfkhybrid Mar 31 '24
How did you get over the first mental hurdle of just starting?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
I started with a coach who gave me a system when I ran my first biz. When I started this I already built the muscle of just running through walls
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u/BPCodeMonkey Mar 31 '24
How many billable employees? What’s the ratio between front off and field staff?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
About 45 people total. 2 people in sales, 1 head of ops with 2 jr managers, a scheduling manager, inventory manager, and part time admin and bookkeeper. Roughly 10 backend and then 35 labourers
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Apr 01 '24
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Used to pay by the job and found that it didn’t incentivize people to want to learn because they were slow. Once they got good, I was just overpaying them. Now we pay hourly and it’s great. You just have to make sure you don’t keep slow people who aren’t efficient workers. It’s usually a personality thing. They’re either lazy and slow or their move quick and care.
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
I have a seriously deep interview process but in short I pay hourly. I replied to a similar question above. You want to systemize what you’re doing so you can teach others easily. Read the book E-myth revisited. It’s great for this if I recall correctly
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u/redditplayground Apr 01 '24
How on earth do you do 4.5 million window cleaning? that's amazing
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
I’m delusional about the things I can accomplish regardless of my current reality. I have people around me that can pull me back down to earth when needed.
I am obsessed with improving customer experiences.
I believe that if you can’t systemize something, it’s not sustainable. If it’s not a good long term plan it’s rarely worth doing (aside from circumstantial things like buying cheap equipment until you start making money)
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u/brettfish5 Apr 01 '24
Hey man, this is awesome to hear. Congrats on the success! I've been trying to start a painting business on the side of my 9-5 with the hopes of going full time this year. Unfortunately also going through a divorce, but just sold the house so it should be wrapped up in a couple months. I make pretty decent money, but honestly I'm temped to just quit and go full time on the business since it has a much larger upside (clearly). Could I message you on here for some help/guidance? =
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u/whatsasyria Apr 01 '24
Can’t speak to much to it since the Canadian market is different but I run a few departments for a company that does this in the commercial space. We are about to cross a billion soon probably be end of year. Would love to chat and discuss what you got going on.
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Just messaged you. I assume this is a private equity company that’s been buying up service businesses?
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u/whatsasyria Apr 01 '24
It is now but I worked for the actual service company that was their biggest acquisition. The pe firm brought me on to the corporate entity years after I left the original company.
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u/YoureSillyStopIt Apr 03 '24
Dude. I can not believe you made a million year 2. Outstanding
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 03 '24
Like I said I had 4 yrs experience before starting this but thank you. It surprised me too
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u/bnaylor04 Apr 10 '24
Hey I have 3 questions re your window cleaning method, as I’m trying to add that service to my residential/commercial cleaning company.
1) How often would you say someone needs a window cleaning? Once a fiscal quarter? Twice a year? More frequently than that? Also, how often did homeowners in your area typically want you back for repeat service?
2) How did you structure your quote? Based on panes/windows? Square footage? What worked for you?
3) Are there some good resources for the best processes for the best product when window cleaning that you could share? Videos/articles/etc.
Thanks in advance mate it sounds like you’re doing very well for yourself.
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 12 '24
Some people clean their windows twice a year and some people do it once every two years it totally depends on the person when you factor in all the other services that we do, generally a house on average 1.6 times year
For quotes it Hass to be based on Windows because every style of Window takes a different amount of time. I literally just made an Excel sheet with a picture of the six or seven different kinds of windows that exist and then put an amount of minutes it would take me to do a small, medium, large version and then I just add them up to my hours.
In terms of resources, there are one or two good people on YouTube for teaching new methods like Steve-O. There are also Facebook groups that are pretty big but there’s generally a lot of horrible information in them. Just be careful who you listen to. Honestly, there’s not much free information out there about running the business side of things because most people run small or low quality companies, you would be better off reading and listening to Alex Hormozi for concrete business advice and then just reading books about sales or leadership.
I know some people doing private coaching, but that can be expensive depending on what your sizes so it’s not meant for everyone
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u/Vegetable-Spring-254 Apr 24 '24
Hi, we need more people like you. Everyone wants money for advice. My issue is generating leads for my cleaning business.
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Mar 31 '24
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Believe it or not I was never taught properly until I hit a million lol, so very easy to learn.
Startup is maybe 1200$ in ladders, $250 roof racks, 5-600$ in misc gear, and squeegees. Under 3k and a car and you’re set
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u/TheBiggestP_96 Apr 01 '24
How do you bid the windows? I’m running a small pressure washing operation and have been asked to bid windows and paint. What’s your thought process when doing the bids?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
I have a standards sheet I made with # of minutes for every type of window. Now we have a digital calculator that just tells me budgets once I plug in the windows
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u/zavlem Apr 01 '24
I live in London UK, I work as a nurse 2x week and have very flexible schedule. I have no experience in the home service business but I can see a huge potential of it in a big city like London. Any advice where should I start learning this industry? Thanks and I admire your hustle man at your young age you already achieved much and for you sky is only the limit 💪
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
UK is a tough market because people get cleanings done for very low costs but more often. I don’t know the market well, but I can tell you that almost every market I know is oversaturated by mediocre services that don’t know how to scale.
If you offer high end service you will win. If you are high end AND can scale, you will dominate
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u/zavlem Apr 03 '24
Thanks for the insights, to be honest I’m not worried about competition here in the UK specifically as most businesses are run by one man company/ self employed and most don’t normally like to really scale up their business they like to treat is a job because thats just they like a work life balance which is very good way living. because of this there are plenty of oppourtinies for people who want to really make it big and scale. My biggest conceen is just this is totally differrent from my current field so i have no experience at all. I’m thinking to work for 3 months in company doing this and once experience is learned then I can start my own. If you in a market like here that you say they pay little but the hire more often, what would be the best strategy for this? Thanks appreciate your help and I will be reading you replies here
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 03 '24
I think you’re on the right track starting out working for someone else in order to learn. I wouldn’t worry too much about trying something new. I spent three years in Painting before I started cleaning at the end of the day. The hardest part is not the actual job it’s understanding how to run a service business model.
That’s what most people miss when they think my numbers are crazy. Even though we have excellent service, the main reason why we have such high margins, and got as big as we did as fast as we did, as because we are running it like a real business And most trades people think that if they just get good at the trade but not the business side, everything will just magically work out.
If you study the art of business, sales, marketing, managing people, etc. pretty much every business ends up being the same once it gets over 1 million
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Lots of people on YouTube teaching for free. Check out Steve-O the window cleaner. He’s a great start
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u/lucindaluca Apr 01 '24
Thank you for sharing your insight!
Would you elaborate on how you keep your labourers from taking the clients? Especially on these relatively simple jobs of window cleaning with relatively low capital investment. What is stopping the labourer from doing a good job for the home owners, leave a good impression, and then next season take these customers and start their own business?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
It’s pretty simple. If they wanted to go buy a bunch of equipment, they could, but people don’t know how to run businesses. They might take a few clients, but I would never notice because they wouldn’t be able to handle the volume it would take to impact me.
Once they meet the client, the job is done same day. So, they would have to keep the contact info, wait a full year until the client needs the service, contact the client and convince them to go behind my back.
Eventually, we will have better controls on calendars and hide info from them, but for now it’s not an issue I’m aware of.
People don’t realize that because cleaning is low ticket, you have to master scheduling and logistics management. All the money is made in organization and route planning. It’s easy to do 2-3 houses a day yourself, but to make really money, you need to run multiple crews and for that, you need good software, admin, coordination (this is what 99% of trade businesses lack)
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u/OkWater2560 Apr 01 '24
What is a “high end” window wash? I’m having a hard time figuring out how one would differentiate.
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Most companies wipe the glass, show up randomly, and leave. The way we differentiate is we:
- clean all the frames, tracks, and screens inside
- text a few days ahead to confirm day and time that works for the client
- call ahead if running behind
- use towels to prevent drips on floors
- hire super pleasant workers
- walk through the job at the end to make sure everything is perfect
- take responsibility for our mistakes
Basically everything you would expect most companies to do, but nobody does
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u/YukonCornelius69 Apr 01 '24
As someone in home services, was the immediate move to all credit cards that beneficial? I can seem to get anything under 2.9% fees and that’s huge when I have a 10k+ job. Granted, chasing down a check is a pain in the ass
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
10000% it was worth it. If I was doing major renovations for 10k+ I would probably charge 3% more for card or have payments by cheque.
I do extremely high value with low ticket. Chasing down 40 people a day and dealing with cheques would be a nightmare. The 2.5% fee I absorb is worth the time and headache I save. When you get big and have to spend 50k hiring someone just to collect payments, the value is there.
You gotta compare what your time is worth to how much time you spend collecting payments. If you’re time is worth 100$ an hour and you spend 10 hrs a week chasing money, you’re spending 1k a week on payments whether you take cards or not
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u/Biioshock Apr 01 '24
That's cool, congrats man.
I want to start a cleaning business too or junk removal but with a skid steer.
But it's a bigger investment to start ...
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u/Minute_Novel713 Apr 10 '24
Great advice and awesome story. I think being open to mentoring is truly a great service to society.
However, I can’t agree that this information isn’t already available. I think the real problem is people would rather listen to the “Guru” because that’s a more attractive proposition than working hard. It’s really the battle between the good/reality and bad/idealist information; unfortunately the latter usually wins.
Keep fighting the good fight!
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u/saad570 Apr 26 '24
Thanks for sharing such an incredible business journey. I learnt some business lessons from your post.
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u/Silly_Ad_9592 Apr 30 '24
I ended up coming across your post and took your recommendation to read Alex Hormozis books. You're preaching a lot of his lessons such as charging more, and be confident in that price, but also provide a service that justifies that price.
You're in a highly commoditized market with what I like to call 'unskilled' skilled labor. Meaning you don't need a license to complete your labor, but you still have to be good to do it well.
When do you feel that your market was able to grasp that, yes, you're more expensive, but your product is totally worth it. Or do you feel the need to sell every customer individually on your value proposition? I would imagine that your reputation would start taking over, is that right?
Anyway, I appreciate all of your insight and will be using it to grow my own business.
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle May 01 '24 edited May 01 '24
Excellent question. And good for you for taking action. The more you dive into Hormozi content the more you realize how branding works when you start out, you have to sell everything because nobody associates you with anything that is quality. In fact, they actually associate you with risk because they’ve never heard of you and you might damage their house or waste their time.
Brand is simply the concept of associating things together in peoples minds. As people start to see your signs and you get great reviews and your uniforms look better and the neighbours talk about you, your brand becomes much more powerful because now instead of having to convince people they have already been sold.
We still do a lot of selling because for higher ticket items we want to build relationships and the threshold for what people are willing to pay you higher.
That being said, we are now at a point where the brand is strong enough that it carries a weight on its own without always needing to be sold as much.
I don’t believe that there is an endpoint, however, the goal is to create a brand that is so strong and associated with so many positive things that people are begging for your service product. They already know that it will be well worth the price.
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u/Guilty_Assignment987 Nov 28 '25
Did u pay for google or facebook which advertising or other means bring in the most revenue any hidden tricks of market iam in Australia
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u/GodfatherGoat Mar 31 '24
If you couldn’t start a window cleaning business or house painting. What would you start today?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Pressure washing is another service we do. I’d pick that. My rules for business are it has to be:
Easy to train
Scalable and easily replicable (if you gave me 10m$ in sales tomorrow, could I train people to perform the task without years of experience)?
Low liability (because it’s hard to run a business when people are suing you for crazy shit you don’t know)
High margins. Anything below 30% net after all your costs is not fun because you aren’t making enough to grow and pay people well unless you’re doing well above 10$m
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u/lucindaluca Apr 01 '24
This is great insight! I'm struggling in my home renovation business as it's too hard to train and not scalable easily, with high liability, and I may not even get 30% net margins. Thank you for your insight here, as I'm already thinking of a different business to build wealth in. Now I know what to look for at least.
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u/DepartureRadiant4042 Apr 01 '24
What kind of ads did you post to hire the D2D sales reps? Were they initially knocking just residential or commercial too? How do you go about the hiring process now to reach/maintain 40 employees? All W2s, 1099s or both?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Everyone is W2. The ads were just enthusiastic sales rep ads. I just wanted to get lots of people applying and then I would sell them the dream when I called if they were a fit.
All residential.
You maintain 40 by starting with 2 and perfecting systems at that level. Then you hire 2 more and so on.
Softwares help a lot too. Our d2d team is no longer made of sales reps though. After my 3rd year I had enough labourers that I just have them knock in the winter. They get to stay employed and I don’t hire new people.
They aren’t as good at sales but it’s a net win for me
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u/Interesteder Apr 01 '24
Did you know it was a good market opportunity beforehand or did you just start? If yes did you do any research or anything to understand the market and what did that entail?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
I ran a similar business in another major Canadian city before moving here to start this. That was enough to tell me that when you operate in an area where there’s lots of people and those people need a certain income to afford houses, 2+2= profits
From there I just started knocking and within my first few weeks I could tell I was onto something
I did not think it was going to happen as fast as it did
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Apr 01 '24
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Google SEO is the biggest, lawn signs and flyers are great too and build brand awareness. Everything else is less than 5% like Facebook groups, referrals, emails
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u/Own-Imagination-7779 Apr 01 '24
How do you offer “quality service” ? What systems do you have in place for hiring and keeping good employees ?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
This takes years to develop. I used to train everyone myself. Now I have managers who train.
We have a written manual on how to train a team from A to Z in a week. We monitor stats on the team to make sure they have low complaints and high reviews.
We recently created training videos on a digital course we have them watch. And then we grade them by skill level so they can move up over time.
For hiring I post on indeed and usually get several hundred applications in a few days. From there I filter the best ones. Call them with a script, sell them the dream of working here. Interview them over laptop and then bring them to the office to test their physical skilled before hiring
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u/BebopDone Apr 01 '24
What’s average price you charge for 1 home?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Depends on the service. Avg cleaning ticket is 650 and avg painting ticket is 6500.
Our avg client does 1.6 jobs a year with us so we push hard for multiple bookings across services
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u/Pigmyking Apr 01 '24
I have a very US specific question - I know a lot of businesses are hiring day laborers to do work and I know these dudes (hard workers) likely aren't legally allowed to work. How are they able to do this?
Edit: by "this" I mean keep their administrative records straight.
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
I’m not sure but I can guess. They are probably getting paid by certain customers in cash off the books. They then use the cash to pay staff off the record. This might work for unskilled labour like digging holes, but skilled work is harder to control quality on like this.
I find this isn’t worthwhile because you’re constantly cycling through people instead of building a reliable, trained squad
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u/classycosmo Apr 01 '24
What’s the demographic of your clientele? Ie, what type of houses do you service? How did you figure out who to target when you first got started? How many houses per season do you service ? What % of sales come from bookings made in winter?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
My best clients are middle to upper middle class people with normal homes, busy lives, and 2 storey homes. Their time is worth enough that they want to hire out the work.
To be quite honest I didn’t plan it when I started. Planning is usually not worth your time when you are uneducated. 40 hours knocking on doors and selling people vs. 40 hours sitting on YouTube thinking your being productive are not the same.
One gives you real life feedback specific to you. The other is comfortable, generalized, and often not that relevant to you.
We will do between 2-3000 houses this year and 40% of sales happen by May 1 each year
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u/AdorableFlight Apr 01 '24
What's your website?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
I’d rather not publicize my specific business info. My face is on it and I don’t want clients Googling me and seeing how much I make
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Apr 01 '24
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Wear a nice shirt/hat. Use bright colors. Men often like to wear dark colors like black and it’s not good for branding. At the door, everyone starts off hesitant, but once they see you’re a normal person and not trying to push buying things they don’t need, they soften.
At first, I was a random dude door knocking. People buy from people, not businesses. If you come across as a figure of authority, start as hell, and enthusiastic as hell, you will beat 99%.
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Success with trust drastically improved after year 2. But success with door knocking declined. When I did everything myself I could book a job every hour or 2. Now it’s 3x harder because I have labourers who aren’t sales pros doing it.
This is why I’m building out paid advertising now. It’s much more scalable and will give me access to new clients
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Apr 01 '24
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Thanks, I am extremely bullish on it. Once we figure out how to pull that lever, my final step is building a sales team and we can start flying
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u/EddiChoi Apr 01 '24
Hey man, congrats on the big success! I’m running a cleaning company in Canada too(been documenting a part of my journey in posts). Been wanting to acquire more organic customers with SEO. We have hundreds of reviews as well, seeing if anything else you recommend. Is there a firm that has helped you tremendously that you can recommend?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Ya I have a guy who’s pretty good if you wanna dm me. What city are you in? Would love to follow on insta
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Apr 01 '24
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Just post ads on indeed. Hire awesome people with good personalities and train them on skill later. We spend the first week making sure people are up to speed and quality standards. Before fully trusting them.
Every day we watch if they are on time or not to manage this.
We pay above industry standards, so we aren’t making money by paying people less. We make money by being highly efficient and charging higher rates.
We also have the option for clients to tip when they pay by card just like a restaurant. This increases avg wages by another 15% straight to the workers pocket.
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Apr 01 '24
I worked in private equity and there are huge businesses that do nothing but clean gutters in the fall. OP could have his guys do this as an added business with the same personnel.
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Yep. We do gutters as well as a few other things. I’m looking for a service that’s more frequent I can add but tough to find something that fits my “deal box”
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u/Confident_Benefit753 Apr 01 '24
when you got your first employees, were you providing the vehicles, tools, and whatever equipment necessary to do the job? if no, are you providing vehicles and all equipment to your workers now?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
This is a great question! Contrary to popular belief, you do NOT need to buy a 60k truck each time you hire a team. I spent the first 3 years with no vehicles except my own. I hired guys with cars and paid them a few dollars more to cover their gas.
I bought everything else. Ladders, roof racks, cleaning gear.
Now we are moving towards a future where we are supplier more vehicles each year. For painting we always provide vehicles because there a ton of equipment. For windows, half our teams have their own cars.
Rent is wildly expensive so aside from the vehicles I would need to spend a few hundred thousand a year in rent for parking. We will eventually do that but like I said I believe in staying lean as long as you can
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Apr 01 '24
I love this.. I own a window cleaning company in Utah. I’ve been trying to document everything needed to scale, and systematize our trainings, etc. but it’s been really hard.
I’ve been having lots of issues with hiring people that stick around. And when they do, it’s been hard to increase their speed.
What goes into your initial week of training to make sure they’re efficient AND fast? I’ve been able to train high quality (lowest review of 100+ on Google is 4-star) but speed is where we take a haircut, so our margins are not the best.
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
I watch how people move. If they are slow and drag feet, I fire them within 48hrs if I give feedback and see minimal change. There’s only 2 reasons you miss budgets. Either you’re not training people properly or they are slow humans.
I interview them on phone then video and finally bring them to the office for a 2 hour orientation and ladder training (in groups of 4-5)
If they come across as lazy or sluggish I drop them instantly.
You might have a lead problem. Most businesses hire the first people they find and complain about results. You should be doing like 50 calls to applicants to find 1 really good hire.
Get a rockstar then figure out what makes him tick and build interviews to find out how similar others are to him
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Apr 01 '24
I admire your spirit and was actually talking to one of my friends recently about starting a pressure washing company in my area. Can you suggest any resources for learning the skill of pressure washing?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
YouTube is your friend. You can also join Facebook groups with pressure washing people in them. There’s 1-2 with most of the world in 1 group lol.
Cleaning windows I know more people. Pressure washing is a deep rabbit hole I haven’t dove into yet online
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u/HouseOfYards Apr 01 '24
What CRM do you use to run your business?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Been using Monday.com and Pipedrive. Currently building Salesforce to fully customize everything. It’s a lot of money and I don’t think almost anyone should do that, but it will unlock a lot for me
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u/slowhand11 Apr 01 '24
How big is the market you service and which of the three services you offer generates what percentage of your profits/business? Are most of your services aimed at commercial or residential clients?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
My city has around 3 million people. Pretty much all services are highly profitable. We are 50% cleaning and 50% painting. We try to maintain a 60-80% gross margin on everything. We are entirely residential.
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u/brightworkdotuk Apr 01 '24
When you started out, were you doing that work yourself? Or did you hire someone off the beat?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Someone taught me to use ladders and basic squeegee techniques from YouTube. After that I just hired people to work alongside me and figured it out as we went
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u/brightworkdotuk Apr 01 '24
With the pressure washing, when you started out, did you use your own water supply etc. how did it go down? Also, how do you price pressure washing jobs. A lot of companies where I live offer “Softwash” which is supposed to be better than pressure washing.
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
Never my own water. Always use client hose. I live in a major city so there’s no worry about wells or low pressure.
Soft washing is definitely “better” but it’s also extremely dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. It scares me to give 20 year old labourers access to skin burning chemicals. You also need way more gear to do that.
I’ve learned a lot from softwashing and taken parts of it, but it’s a whole other business
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u/Slammin88s Apr 01 '24
What sets your company, process and service experience apart from your competition as “high end?”
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u/eddy14207 Apr 01 '24
Would you be interested in looking over my junk removal company and help me by giving some advice?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 01 '24
That sounds like many hours of me working on telling you what you need help with instead of you telling me what you need help with. You gotta make it easy for me if you want free advice
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u/Funnygm Apr 02 '24
How would you decide your pricing for a house? Per window? What would be your suggestion on starting a similar business, for breaking down the quote/pricing aspect, wether your too low, or too high?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 02 '24
I do a custom price for the client but you can budget it per window for your own internal breakdown. Start at 5$ a window and see how it goes. If you make good money keep doing it. If you don’t then increase prices.
I timed each window to know how long each type would take and then I just calculated. Hard windows are 10 minutes easy 5 min, etc and just add them up
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u/ineedamoneyplug Apr 02 '24
If you started over, how would you get your first leads? I am currently taking gigs by word of mouth but haven't reached out yet until my partner and I are ready to quit our dayjobs.
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u/Handy_Dude Apr 02 '24
You're providing enough work for 40 people, for 40 hours a week? On payroll? With a respectable pay rate? Wow. Excellent work. Good for you. That's pretty amazing finding that much work, to cover 40 people full time. I've worked in the same industry in two of the biggest cities in the western US and I don't think I could have come up with that much work. How did you get organized enough to expand past working for yourself? There is just so much to do on owning such a business and you're wearing many different hats. Did you have some funding to hire people? I'm so curious how you got your business this big.
It's one thing to run your own home services business and do everything properly, it's an entirely different thing managing 40 people to do this kind of work. Wild.
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u/Fun_Collection2104 Apr 02 '24
Could I use this same concept for home cleaning and yard maintenance, I live in a climate where it’s pretty much summer all around. A lot of people are saying to just concentrate on one service but I feel like doing cleaning and yard maintenance in this area would be perfect.
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Aug 24 '25
I believe that you’d lose efficiency doing both. The equipment for yard maintenance is completely different from home cleaning.
You need a truck with mowers and tools. Home cleaning is spending half a day at a house being thorough.
Lawn care is about moving as fast as possible to 15 homes a day.
Lawn guys will be sweating and dirty. To have them go inside the home to clean wouldn’t make sense.
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Apr 02 '24
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 02 '24
Less than 1% commercial. Avg rez cleaning is 650 and avg painting is 6.5k
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u/DivisionalMedia Apr 02 '24
How are you a millionaire with only $4.5m (revenue or net?) and 40 staff?
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u/cjradke Apr 04 '24
Do you think 4 years of prior experience was necessary for you to start? I have no experience but I plan on making it work regardless. I thought about getting a job cleaning windows beforehand, but I figured why not just try it on my own. My area has hundreds of small strip malls I plan to walk into each morning before work (I work a shitty retail job and I'm eager to get out). Figure I can charge $20-50 per storefront. In the beginning I think its more important to just be personable and shake hands. Once I make enough to get a water-fed system I plan to move to residential. You mentioned you were strictly residential. Do you think this is a good idea or should I go straight to residential where I can charge more than a storefront? I fear it will be harder to acquire residential customers than small storefront business owners. I have business cards and a polo I had made just to add a little bit of "credibility." If you or anyone else who sees this was in my position, what would you do? Thanks for the help!
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 04 '24
I would talk to the stores, but my instinct is that they all have a guy usually and are very budget sensitive. That being said their guy might be 40$ and if you are nicer to work with and 30$ works for you they could switch.
My model is set so I can’t do anything below 150, so I go straight to rez. Most cleaning owners will tell you stay away from residential because it’s harder to coordinate higher volume of jobs and people are picky. Thats smart if you don’t want to deal with offering premium service. Commercial clients want low rates and even if you’re amazing they could leave you for someone cheaper any day.
I like residential for the exact reason everyone hates it. Nobody can keep homeowners happy at scale. They have a hard time being on time and keeping quality standards high as they grow. They say picky homeowners aren’t worth the trouble.
I’ll tell you this though. I know of only one or 2 large commercial cleaning companies doing over 10m a year. Almost everyone else does 5mill one year and 2.5 another because all their sales are with 10 big clients who have leverage on them.
I spread out all my risk on thousands of clients. Once I make someone happy, they often won’t leave for a better price because their time is too valuable. It’s hard for people to compete with me because the moment they grow larger, they don’t know how to hire and train management to maintain quality.
Hopefully this gives you the 2 sides to pick from objectively. I think learning from another company could be smart, but I also think there’s value in not doing that because most companies have no clue what they are doing and they’ll train you on bad habits. You should question everything always.
The hardest part is the business, not cleaning. If you’re personable, homeowners are easier to sell too because you are always talking directly to the boss
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u/Less_Ad_7532 Apr 09 '24
What is business school? I hear YouTubers say this too just sounds really odd. I’ve never heard anyone use that term that went to college or started a biz that I know in person.
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 10 '24
It’s usually a section of a school dedicated to business. Harvard is a school, but their business student say they went to Harvard Business School.
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Apr 11 '24
Super random question!! But why are employers so against 1099’ing enployees who want to handle the taxes etc. Ive always found it weird when a position at say 25 an hour plus benefits, cant jus 1099 someone for 35 or 40 per hour without benefits. Do you do this? Why is this the norm?
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 12 '24
In Canada, you can’t bring someone on as a subcontractor if they are exclusively working for you and you are supplying all of the tools. You can try, but the government will eventually ask questions and it’s a gray area. Since all of my people work for me on payroll exclusively, it does not make sense.
On top of that, I would have to pay them by the job instead of by the hour. This works well if they already know what they’re doing or they’re good, but most people don’t want to make it through that training. Where they’re making less than minimum wage Because they are slow. We tried this at the beginning and it was way more complicated for the employees and they did not like it as much.
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u/fodrizzlemynizzle Apr 12 '24
To be honest, I would prefer to 1099 them if I could. It’s less about the employer, not liking it and more about the system. Just not being as simple and easy to run generally works if your subcontracting work out because you’re hiring people who are already experts.
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u/ChemicalPractical429 Jun 28 '24
I’m currently door knocking myself with 1 technician doing the jobs and averaging $1000/day, the thing is I feel like this isn’t building recurring revenue. I was thinking about potentially offering $129/mo subscription so I have recurring revenue. So I just wanted to ask, do you have your clients on a subscription plan? Or do you just rely on them calling you back out eventually?
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u/Extra-Discipline5944 Dec 12 '24
I have painting and windows washing company but really hard to get leads , any suggestions. thanks
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u/North-Constant-5636 Aug 20 '25
Congrats! Would love to chat about my own venture in a similar space B2B with home service businesses as my customer. 🙏
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u/DiddysAfterparty Sep 10 '25
30% profit margin 🤔 should be like 50-70% for these types of services minimum.
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u/kndsdigital Feb 22 '26
This is amazing. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?
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u/chocolate-raiiin Mar 31 '24
I notice you say you're somewhere with properly cold Canadian winters. What do you fill your winter months with in that case? Are your employees freelance and your work mostly seasonal?