Learning from my 2 biggest business FAILURES!

Dumb! Dumb! Dumb!  There is no other way to say it!

It is very tempting to ignore failures you have in life. Whether they are in business or in personal relationships, there is usually a lot of pain associated with them.

But, if we are going to be honest in our dealings with other people, we have to be open about our failures as well as our successes. In this post I'm going to share my two biggest business blunders. I survived both of them, but at great emotional and financial cost.

My first foray into the business world was going in with two buddies and starting a carpet cleaning company. This was no little endeavor; none of this grab a Rug Doctor type carpet cleaning machine and throw it into the trunk of my car. No, this was a big deal: with full size vans and professional truck mounted carpet cleaning equipment; tens of thousands of dollars went into each rig.

Next, we established a 'phone room', with two 13 'man' crews of phone salespeople; operating from 9 AM to 9 PM each day, five days a week. Each truck had a crew of two carpet cleaning technicians, and our trucks were on the road from 8 AM to 8 PM six days a week. We cleaned carpets in over 3600 homes a year, many of them on a 'repeat' basis.

To be honest, there wasn't a lot of profit with all of the start-up costs involved. But we figured the profits would come once the business was established. What came however, was the recession of 1982. During the recession people tightened their belts, quit cleaning their carpets altogether, or rented some cheap ineffective carpet cleaning machine from the local hardware store.

We tried to survive: we let all but one or two of the phone salespeople go (they concentrated on calling our previous customers, trying desperately to drum up some work); and then, one by one, we disposed of each of the truck-mounted rigs.

LESSON ONE: avoid starting a business which requires a great deal of capital investment.

Business number two was a discount grocery store offering slightly dated or about to go out of date grocery items at a 30 to 50% lower cost than retail. While there was some capital investment such as shelving, grocery carts, cash registers, etc., the building was rented. There were two problems with this business:

1. keeping the shelves stocked ( it was hard to find a consistently good supplier),

2. the bigger problem was that this was a passive business. on a day to day basis, we did not know if we would be busy or bored. On a really good days we would make enough money to cover overhead and show a nice profit. Then we might have two or three days with nobody coming in the store.

It is no wonder that most new retail businesses fail. We kept the store 'alive' for three years, mostly to keep our hard-working employees getting a paycheck.

LESSON TWO: never start a business where you wait for your clients to come in the door.

The upshot of all this was that my next business venture was a commercial office cleaning business. With this business I have avoided both the pitfalls:

1. The start-up costs are low,

2. You acquire the clients, and having done so, provide a quality service and they will continue to generate revenue for years.

John Maxwell, in his book Failing Forward, says that failure is a natural thing. We all fail - the question is whether or not we will learn from our failures.

I've leaned a great deal from mine and now enjoy a six figure income. How about you? Are there some failures in your past? What can you learn from them?

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Ready for YOUR Palace?

Can a simple decision to make money by cleaning offices change your life?

A few years ago a biologist and researcher came up with a term he called “the adjacent possible".  It’s a complex theory but here’s a simple way to look at it.  Think of being in a house that magically expands with every door you open.  You walk into a room and see three more doors leading out.  Once you open one of those doors you enter another room with another three doors leading to yet new rooms.  Keep opening doors and eventually you’ll realize you’re in an expanding palace.

When I decided to make money cleaning offices, I had no idea how many doors that would open up for me. Yes, I still have a commercial cleaning business, but over the last several years I have added landscaping, house cleaning, window washing, and at one time had a commercial carpet cleaning firm with over 3600 residential customers.

A palace? Maybe yes, maybe no. But from that simple decision to make money cleaning offices, a whole new world of opportunity and income level possibilities opened up to me.

Ready to do the same?

For more information: http://cleanup4profits.com/

Using your memory at work!

As an active person, you are 'juggling' a multitude of activities in your life. Some of those are personal but many are work related. I want to share with you how I use my memory most effectively in managing my business. 

The answer is simple - I don't even try to use my memory! 

I don't use it to try and remember who needs what supplies and when and where.

I don't use it for keeping track of my inspection or training schedules.

I don't use it to remember what training and employee has received or still needs.

I don't use it to remember employee names phone numbers or job start and finish times.

I don't use it to remember job follow-ups on customer or complaints or requests.

By now you're probably getting the picture. Using your memory to assist you with your tasks you need to perform is a wasted use of the mind you have.

All of us have been blessed with a wonderful thing called the mind. The mind uses your brain to function. Many people have compared to the mind to a computer. There is no comparison. Computers are wonderful tools; they can store data and perform incredible calculations, but they can't think.

You, on the other hand, are a creative thinking being with unlimited potential. For you to succeed in business, your mind needs to be free to reason, deduce, use logic, and create opportunities. You will not be successful in business if you clutter your mind with junk, facts, figures, dates, times, etc.

Whether you're using a note pad or a digital device; 

all routine tasks, 

all appointments,

all requests,

all the complaints,

all the suggestions, 

all the inspections, 

all meetings, 

everything should be recorded in a place where you can easily access it. Doing so leaves your mind free of all the clutter so you can reason and think.

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Start your own lawn care business!

I am so excited! I have had a number of subscribers ask me if we had ever provided business services other than office cleaning or residential house cleaning. The good news is that we have developed a number of side businesses: including providing lawn care service to both residential and commercial customers.

Providing lawn care service is a great way to enter the world of self-employment and to provide financial security. I had never intended to get into the lawn care business, but one of our commercial customers requested a quote for the weekly mowing of the lawns in their office park. I was able to jump right into the commercial lawn care business because I already owned a pickup, a 16 foot trailer, a trimmer, and both a riding lawnmower and a push lawnmower.

You don't have to start out on such a grand scale. If you own a push lawnmower and a weed eater, plus a way to haul them around; I can show you how to start your own lawn care business. Start small, purchase additional equipment as you need it, and develop your own part-time or full-time lawn care business.

Why introduce a lawn care business guide now? Yes, it is Fall as I do this, but I'm bringing it up now for two reasons:

1. Lawn Care is more than mowing. Fall and early Winter seasons don't bring a total end in cash flow for lawn care businesses. In fact, Fall and Winter opens the door for soil preparation, leaf and snow clearing, which can bring in lots of extra cash. In snow country, in fact, you can seed a lawn by spreading seed on top of the snow.

2. You need time to develop the business properly. When does your mowing season start? It will vary, depending on where you live and also upon what the customer wants done. Does your customer want Spring lawn cleanup? That's when their mowing season begins. Each customer is different, but if you're going to advertise do so on month or two before the official lawn care season starts.

Here are some of the reasons to consider a lawn care business:

Tax Breaks:

When you work a normal job, your employer pays you your salary on your paycheck. When tax time comes, you may have a few deductions you can make but there is not much leeway. However, when you are self-employed, you can avoid paying many taxes. There are many ‘write-offs’ so you can reduce what you pay in taxes.

Profitable use of time:

When you are self-employed, one of the benefits is that your time spent is your time spent. You don’t have to work 8 hours, you just have to get your tasks done. You get straight to it and don’t mess around. Therefore your time is spent much more efficiently. Also, you can combine your personal errands with your work errands.

Set Your Own Hours:

You don't have to come in at a certain time to start your job or leave at a certain time. You can set your own business hours. If you have a part-time business it is possible to schedule your lawn care business around another job.

Vacation when you want:

You don't have to wait for your boss to approve your vacation, you schedule it as business allows. Plan ahead, pace yourself, and schedule the vacation that you desire.

Be Your Own Boss:

You don't have to answer to anyone but yourself (and your scheduled customers). If a customer is difficult to work with, discontinue your service. You choose who you work for.

You Control of Your Income:

The more effort you put into building your business, the more you'll get out of it. This is the best business growth motivator I know! At a J-O-B, you will most likely get paid your salary or hourly wage regardless of how hard you work. Oh, there may be raises and promotions, but there are limits as to how big these will be. And the reality is you have to wait for someone to offer these to you. When you work for yourself, the opportunities are limitless.

If you're interested, I'll be offering this 50 page business guide within the next week or so. 

Find it here as well as many more self-employment ideas.

Earn A Great Part Time Income as you Make Money Cleaning Offices

We all need a few extra dollars to spend now and then, but taking on another job, even if it’s part-time can really cut into your family life. 

If this is your problem then you may want to learn how to make money cleaning offices or other commercial buildings in your spare time. This is a great way to build financial security, pay off debt, pr send the kids to college without student loans.

First: One of the benefits of creating your part-time job and earning the extra income you need. Is that you get to set you own hours!  If you can work on Monday and Tuesday nights and not Wednesday through Friday because you have plans with your family, then you could schedule yourself to only work two nights a week. Locate several small offices that would need your services once a week and still have free time on the nights that you need for your family. By setting up your schedule like this you can generate some office cleaning income and still have some flexibility with your work hours.

Second: You can also plan on how much money you want to make each week, making sure your customers (cleaning accounts) meet those needs. When you decide you need more income you can simply add more customers to your list. Do a good job, build up a reputation and you can easily increase your office cleaning  clients. Growing slowly, maintaining a balance with your new business and other responsibilities is one thing you need to do if you are serious about learning how to make money office cleaning and be a success at it.

Third: You will need to decide what kind of service you will offer such as light commercial office cleaning. Work from a proposal and a check list. You list what you will and will not do, such as not cleaning carpet, or not dusting people’s desk that have important papers on them (but you will dust their desks if they move everything to the center of the desk). Make sure your list to includes only those tasks that you are willing and able to provide. This way everything is clearly explained between you and your clients.

Fourth:  Always keep your word and don't make promises to your clients that you can't keep. If you can't show up for your appointed time be sure and let them know and arrange another time to do the job. Most clients will be okay with this as long as you let them know what happening.

For more info:  http://makemoneycleaningoffices.com

3 Key Steps if You Want to Make Money Cleaning Offices

If you decide to clean offices as a great way to earn a full or part-time income, you need to educate yourself on all the various requirements of the business. Although there are a number of ways to learn how to make money cleaning offices, there are three basic steps.

Step one to becoming a profitable office cleaning company is to build up your client base. There are two different ways you can do this:

One option is to subcontract from an existing cleaning service. This is the easiest option as you will not be looking for clients and come up with a proposal or sales program. You will have this done for you.

The second option will require hard work but will have you ‘building’ your own commercial office cleaning company and putting in the work to get your first few clients. Having your own cleaning business allows you to earn more money and build up an asset you can pass on to your children or sell when you retire.

Step two of how to make money cleaning offices will be determining what individual ‘jobs’ consist of, as well as having the tools on hand to do the job right. You might find this a bit more complicated than expected, but be assured it is very doable. Some clients may prefer you to use their purchased cleaning supplies and products while others will expect you to provide all cleaning supplies. Sometimes the cleaning agents you use will be left to your discretion; other clients will emphasize ‘green cleaning’. Simply accommodate your client’s individual needs and preferences.

The third and most important step is maintaining consistency in all phases of your relationship with the client. This includes: 
showing up on time to complete the work, 
taking on extra tasks if needed 
or putting in some extra time one week when your client has people coming by. 

You want to make sure your client is invoiced properly and on time and that you create a good impression in every area of your relationship. If you decide to go with the cleaning on a full time basis, this easy step will do a world of good in making it possible to increase your office cleaning business volume.

Learn to properly do the work in an effective and professional manner that will keep your clients happy, earning you great references. Build a solid foundation for your work, whether as a second source of income or your main income source.

Need more info? Check out http://makemoneycleaningoffices.com

5 MORE Networking Mistakes

Here are 5 MORE Networking Mistakes to Avoid:

6. Staying focused on your own self-interest. If you make the effort to find out how you can help someone else get what they want, there is a good chance they will reciprocate and give you what you want. Zig Ziglar said it best, “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want”.

7. Inability to articulate how you can help others. You need to distill what your company brings to the table in easy to understand language (make it easy for others to grasp what you are all about). How exactly would you do this?

Basically this means telling people that you operate a cleaning company that knows how to get things done right the first time, you won’t make excuses if there’s a slip-up, you are fanatical about quality control and you will solve their cleaning woes if given the chance.

If you can leave them convinced you are that person, you are going to be one busy owner of a highly successful cleaning company. Oh and by the way, you will probably become quite wealthy in the process.

8. Not establishing any connections. To network effectively you need to connect with people. Though you will not connect with everyone you meet, you can improve your results by making use of a simple approach that is guaranteed to work wonders for you. I call this the “A, B, C Technique”. If you master this method you will be ahead of the competition.

A. Make eye contact

B. Smile

C. Ask questions

Three easy steps: It all starts with great eye contact, followed by a smile, then finish by just asking questions and showing interest in the other person. You will instantly be among the best networkers by using the A, B, C technique.

9. Performing the “meet, greet and leave” strategy. Virtually every networking event has at least one person running around like a jack rabbit saying “hi, here’s my card, nice to meet you”. Then they run off to the next person in their path.

This type of technique may let you give your card out to a lot of folks, but you will never build a relationship with anyone that way. You will get much better results by creating relationships instead of performing the meet, greet and leave.

10. Not following-up afterwards. What you do after the networking event is just as critical as what you did during the event. You need to follow-up with whoever you just met (this is part of the relationship building concept). Keep in mind that following up does not mean touching base three months later to see what’s going on.

Instead, you need get in touch while everything is still fresh. Here are two follow-up strategies to consider:

# 1 – When you meet a prospect, make plans to get in touch with them shortly after the networking event took place. Contacting them within 2-5 days would be optimal. Arrange a meeting at a time that suits your prospect’s schedule. 

# 2 – When you meet someone at a networking event that is not a prospect, look for any opportunities to send some business their way. If you have someone that may need the services of the person you just met, either refer them ‘ASAP’ to that person, or give the contact info to the person you just met. Being a “giver” is a sure fire way to not only make friend, but to get some referrals coming your way when they reciprocate the favor.

Networking can have a huge impact on your sales providing you take the time to do it correctly. Avoiding these ten networking mistakes will make your efforts much more fun and profitable.

Check out our FREE Newsletter filled with great small business ideas here.

5 Networking Mistakes to Avoid

One of the fastest ways to drum up business for your cleaning business is through networking. Networking gets you in front of more people who either need your service or know someone who does. In other words it creates sales opportunities.

However many people make a number of mistakes during the networking process that keeps them from getting the most out of their efforts. I’ve made a lot of them! Here are 10 of the biggest mistakes people make when networking.

Ten Networking Mistakes You Should Avoid  - (Part 1)

1. Going to all the wrong networking events. When I first started my cleaning business I attended as many local networking events as I could fit into my busy schedule. However I quickly realized that I ran into the same group of “regulars” at some of these events, and very few of them interacted with the type of decision-maker I needed to know (they had no clue who hired the cleaning service at their company).

Before long I realized that I was going to some of the wrong events. For me the solution to this problem was to focus on the smaller networking groups around town. By-the-way, my wife does really well in business women’s groups – ‘administrative assistants’  are often the real decision makers when it comes to selecting a cleaning company.

2. Waiting for other people to introduce themselves to you. A sizable percentage of the population is hesitant to go up to a total stranger and strike up a conversation. That’s human nature at work, but to have success at the networking game you need to find a way to overcome that fear (just bite the bullet, and take the initiative to introduce yourself).

Another quirk of human nature is that if you break the ice first, you will be perceived as a person of authority and power (all it takes is a little confidence in yourself).

3. Talking too much. This is a common mistake I see all the time. You do not want to dominate the conversation (it’s not about you as much as it’s about them). If you want to make good impressions with others there is only one way to do so, listen much more than you speak.

Keep in mind networking is not really the time for hard selling (don’t go trying to get someone to sign up for your cleaning service on the spot). You are here to make connections that you can follow up on later.

4. Not engaging others (not asking questions). The fastest and most effective way to create a connection with others is to ask them questions. Inquire about their business and what they do. Ask them about any special challenges they face in their field. Ask them what they enjoy most about their work.

These types of questions encourage people to share information with you and help position yourself as someone who cares (and as someone they may be able to do business with later on).

5. Getting distracted by others. Ever had a conversation with someone who constantly watched what was going on in the room instead of paying attention to what you were saying? Didn’t that leave you feeling somewhat ignored and unimportant (I know it gives me that feeling).

People who do that make a bad impression (maybe bad enough to not get a referral). Don’t make the same mistake. Give absolute attention to every person you meet and try to learn how you might be able to help them.

Tomorrow - 5 More

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Some Financial Security Advice in today's faltering economy.

There are many people today that are unhappy with life. Many would like to leave the the insecurity and the boredom of the jobs they have. Even those individuals who have relatively secure jobs often find they are unhappy with the work they are doing. Unfortunately, many of them feel trapped, locked into the routine of the 8-5, day after day.

Their greatest fear is that they will run out of money; be unable to put the kids through college, be unable to retire in comfort.  They read magazines, investment guides, etc.; looking for the best investments, hoping the 'market' will be UP when they need to sell.

There are many people who would prefer instead to choose their own path, enjoy the rewards of their own effort, building a business for themselves instead of developing someone else’s.

 There are many reasons for choosing self-employment: 

1. Some people have the goal of increasing their earnings;

2. Others desire to have more time with their families,

3. Some want time for their other interests in life.

These goals are achievable to anyone who is willing to invest time and effort in a commercial cleaning business to make money by cleaning office buildings and other facilities. The start up costs can be low - just a few hundred dollars, and the potential is unlimited.

That is Financial Security Advice that works.

Retire without worry? Can DO!

To be honest I never really thought that someday I would be talking about retirement, let alone be retired. I remember being 20, standing in front of the mirror in a college dorm, and wondering what I would look like at age 40. At age 40, I never stopped to wonder what I would look like 60 or 65; I was too busy. Just the day-to-day struggles of making a living and paying the bills; it never dawned on me that there would be a day when I either would not, or could not,  put in a 40 hour work week.

Retirement? That was too far down the road. And now suddenly retirement age is here. Unlike my father, who retired and expected to live no more more than a decade or two, experts now tell us that we need to plan for retirement could last 30 to 40 years! It is said that many boomers who retire in their late 50s or early 60s can expect to live far longer than any previous generation. In fact many will spend more years in retirement than they were in the workforce, according to “10 Ways Baby Boomers Will Reinvent Retirement,” by Emily Brandon, in a January 2010 article on usnews.com.

Maybe you're retired. But the retirement income, the Social Security, the pension plan you counted on is not enough. As a rule of thumb, studies suggest that most retirees need about 78%-94% of their pre-retirement income, adjusted for inflation, to maintain their same standard of living in retirement.

 Many Boomers have felt the shattering effects of having two economic bubbles burst on them within a 10- year period, in many cases decimating the accounts they anticipated using for retirement. “The Great Recession clearly hit Baby Boomers at a vulnerable time, when they were close to retirement or at least should have been preparing for it, noted Rick Newman, in a Dec 10,2010 article, ”Why Baby Boomers Are Bummed Out,” on usnews.com.

Maybe just a few hundred dollars a week; or maybe a couple thousand dollars a month would change your life? I have good news for you. I found an income source that allowed me to pay my bills, support my family, and live a lifestyle that I could never have dreamed of just a few years ago.

Not a franchise; an office cleaning business that anyone can start with only a few dollars and build it into the part-time or full-time business you desire. I’ve written a book, sharing my experience, on how you can make good money with your own office cleaning business.

Find out more here, and start building your own successful office cleaning business.