I've seen cleaners come and go and come and go why???

In this business yes the money can come in fast but it also can go out fast.

Most people jump in with both feet and blind folded.

first they run out and buy a brand new ninja, and about 500 bucks worth of chemical.

they clean a few places... they get a few referrals because they are cheap, they throw up a few flyers around town...

they come to the conclusin portable is too slow...here comes brand new truckmount! 60 grand! a few thousand in chemicals...

payments of 1800 a month....

oppss not enough business

oppss truck needs repairs

oppss didn't follow all the service instructions

oppss no warranty

opppss parts coming from the states...going to be down for a week or two

gas chemical repair and advertising get too much to handle

opps out of business...

seen it a million times

then we have people around here that think it's not a good idea to get cost effective ideas...

dont buy used....dont look for cost effective chemicals... buy gas when high...don't try and do any of your own repairs...

chemical is only 3% of total cost??? where the hell do you get that number???? then you want to talk about wits. You have to stock what you use and that means an out lay of cash weather or not you use the damn stuff.

bahahahaha

so in other words to succeed you must use a ninja and clean with Tide??

chems really aren't very expensive sorry,$100 gets me 5 gallons of prespray and that usually keeps me going for 3-4 weeks.

a five gallon pale of powdered emulsifier keeps me cleaning even longer and it's about $150

that brings in anywhere from 5-10 grand in that one month so yeah,,the percentage is low on chem costs

I know you're like me and don't use a huge assortment of spotters so why would you need to cut corners??

You just don't buy soap to start....

If the sales person is doing their job...

you buy a case of soap... a good POG...Coffee Tea remover...Brown Out... Haitian Cotton...A case of Deodorizer....maybe some rinse....maybe some gum remover....pads... blocks....scotchgard...one for carpet one for furniture...a good sanitizer..

easy 600 bucks..... thats just chemical....

now you need a hand tool... a stair tool....a bag to hold the hoses... a bucket... or maybe you add on a pump out???

I don't know about you Steamin... but I stock alot of chemical...

for 2005 I had over $1000 in Just chemical sitting on the ground...

and it wasnt very much stuff... 4 cases of gard... 4 cases of Deo...2 bottles of Brown out... case of POG.... case of Coffee stain remover... case of pads

5 boxes of blocks.....

when I got my first portable I spent around 600 dollars in chemicals

yeah but how much did you bring in with that $1000 bucks worth of chem??

I usually just buy a case or 5gal pale of each chem

it's still a VERY low percentage of costs

Steamer say's { It's still a VERY low percentage of costs.}

Than he jumps all over me when I said chemical costs should be 3% of gross sales, which is a lot different than 3% of total costs.

Make up your mind, 3% of gross sales is the average amount spent by carpet cleaners in North America. 

cleanex

you have steamer and steamin mixed up

cleanex wrote: Steamer say's { It's still a VERY low percentage of costs.} Than he jumps all over me when I said chemical costs should be 3% of gross sales, which is a lot different than 3% of total costs. Make up your mind, 3% of gross sales is the average amount spent by carpet cleaners in North America.

look

cleanex's post

Chemical costs represent about 3% of gross sales in the average carpet cleaning companies. That is one of the smallest costs in our business, don't know about Steamer's costs, if I was going to waste my time on anything it would looking for ways to reduce labour, taxes, gasoline, heat & hydro costs long before trying to save pennies on some SOAP mixture, that may or may not save so little my bottom line would not change.

To each his own, maybe a one man operation could get away with using laundry soap

end post

doug wrote: Lately Steamer has been Steamin? If he didn't waste all his money on garbage to try and upsell it to unsespecting customers he wouldn't have so much inventory?

I try to buy stuff on sale or at a good price and stock pile it... actually right now,  what I have is nothing.

JoeNoob cleaner runs out and buys one jug of gard for $60, and then he mixes it to strong, which makes the carpet stiff, so he has to go back to re-clean and re-apply the gard(to make the customer happy), but it goes stiff again.. the customer calls him back to fix it again...and then they never call him ever.

his portable ends up at teds and his out of money and out of business

I've seen this too

[/QUOTE] That's what you learn... upsell upsell..... when you work for a high volume cleaning company you have to have alot of stock... 

Are you still on your own or back subbing?  Or are old habits hard to break?

Most cleaners never bother to learn about the machines they buy...

the service man makes all the profit. 

there are so many things you need to know and learn...before you just jump into this business

don't buy a machine if you can't do most the service yourself.

I hear ya Mr.Steamer.,, and agree,,

Auto mechanic experience sure is a plus...

Have car problems you can't figure out and if your like me never take your ride to the repair shop here is a good forum that i visit once in a while....

http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/index.php - http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/index.php

The people I see fail is because they borrow the money to buy the equipment starting out day-one in debt. They have no money left for promotion and advertising and do not have the ability to go out and sell or telemarket in any way, shape, or form.

They send out 20,000 flyers and have an answering machine on their phone. The first round of flyers generally never work, I buy their equipment back and the cycle starts all over again.

But yes some do make it and do well and that does my heart good to think I was part of it all happening. Money is not everything in life. You need satisfaction.

It's not surprising though that a greater rate of success comes to our new Canadians who came to this country from more difficult backgrounds. They hang in longer and are very persistent and even have much less going for themselves but persistence can bring prosperity.

Taking advantage of the Canadian Immigration laws and kindness doen't hurt either.

Taking advantage of the Canadian Welfare system for newly arrived immigrants are a great cash advance not offered to all those Real Canadian Born Citizens that do fail because of not having the same safety net.

Taking advantage of their own closed knit society of immigrants that arrived before them also helps.

I suppose if we natural born Canadians want to succeed in any type of business be it carpet cleaning or any others we must first go on Welfare, buy our clothes at the local church basements, apply for food baskets, and horde our earned cash money we didn't pay tax on, then when we have enough of Canadian hospitality...........move to the states

                              Nightrider

Ted, you said it.... Lack of experience.... you all get ill when anyone mentions sub-contracting...

I haven't heard one of you say anything good about subbing...

Let me tell you it gives you good experience, if your not willing to work for someone or learn from someone you stand no chance.

Many of you buy equipment and its beneath you to work for anyone else, you rather bring the stuff back to Ted or let the bank take it, or sell it cheap just to get out.

Experience is the key to any business, the do's and dont's you have to know... learn while getting paid to do it.

I've subbed for a long time... this year was my first year running my trucks under my own flag.

but it was the years of experience from subbing that gave me the know how to run my own operation.

Without that experience I would surely fail... like so many weekend warriors or part timers I see just jump in blind

it's tough for me to imagine doing what I do without having done it for a while first

make sense?

Concur with steam and doug....

I worked for Holiday cc'ing...

then Universal,,, then Preferred,,, then Stanley Steamer for a total of about 3yrs before i went on my own....

Great discussion, I was a Union Electrician, making $33. hr. for 6 months a year, I would go to work with a friend cc when layed off, we had a great time and I learned the biz, my friend got killed in a car accident and I purchased the business from the estate, turned it from a good business into a great business, we would buy our chems in 45 gal drums. Had many tm`s and lots of good gov. contracts. Would have made my friend proud.

Retired>could`nt stay away>, back in..

Cleaning carpets is 45% of the business, You HAVE to know about business..      "The E-Myth" by Micheal Gerber

They never had this forum 20 yrs. ago! Great advantage

Ok we passes all the good stuff... the next on my list is customer service....

I'm sorry but a lot of carpet cleaners are really just cleaners.... they lack personality and customer service.

I love calling the local guys to hear how the answer the phone... they never use company name...a good morning... or even Hello.  Most times you get "YEP" in your ear... If I'm a customer I just hang up.

Or while in the house you have no corner protectors drop cloths or clean rags to help protect the customers prize possesion...

you don't smile or make idle chit chat... you look angry, the customer is afraid to approach you.

a smile goes a long way