Erm,

Advertise in local shops…. Explore the possibility of buying an existing ’round’ of houses. Get yourself listed on google (they have a free business listing) and other internet directories. You could join a church and then get work from them. You could try speaking to local pubs and seeing if you can get their daily cleaning duties. many things…

I want to run a business….. but i dont want to clean…..

Oh yea…. and business cards in pubs is always a good one….

And you can get free business cards from here http://www.VistaPrint.co.uk 250 of em for nuffin!

yea totally… in fact… i have yet to meet a person whome is particularly thrilled by the prospect of cleaning. Car valeting is also a good one… i know a few guys who make a killing…. they go to peoples offices (like get booked to go) and clean the peoples car in their work car park… aparantly for like a whole hog wax n clean inside and out you can charge a bomb.

expect to put ALOT of work into it with not much gain to start off with …. all the best businesses start off small and work there way up .. earning experiance as a valubal lesson on the way … expect to make mistakes when you first start off and make sure you use them mistakes as a learning curve and go from there … 😉

A guy from my class at school started window cleaning after he was made redundant …. He had a bucket and a ladder and needed some money. Now he employs 3 blokes and I guess does quite well out of it.
Try for a start being polite to people whether they want the work done or not, turn up when you say you will, not 2 hours late, people have to go out, so if youre late its a pain and they wont have you back. Its all down to service, do a good job and people will tell their friends especially if they are proud of the job youve done. Dont do it on the cheap, people will expect that if its cheap it will be a bad job, theres enough cowboys about. So work out a fair but reasonable price for the job. Dont swear while talking at a customers house, if they do first then maybe its OK, people have different values( remember polite). Remember that theres never just the right amount of work, its either too busy or too quiet, never just right. You will have great days when you come home with a ton in your pocket and other days when it is SHIT and you want to pack it in. Make sure you get paid, some people will string you along for several weeks before telling you they are broke and cant pay. And so on and so on. Oh and I know its boring, but keep some records for the Tax man and keep all your bills for expenses petrol, work clothes etc etc. I’ve been self employed for 28 years now and the fucking dole can fuck right off I am my own boss now and I always will be.

it is one of those things like office supplies which is fucking ruthless as every office needs it so there is loads of competition, so no one in the trade is going to help you if you play nice..

You need to go “undercover” (or get someone to do it (preferably a girl with a sexy sounding voice) to ring up saying she has just set up a new business and is looking for cleaners – use a “disposable” phone number (not the one for your planned business sales line!)

you can also request quotes using on line places but the sales bods will often phone you back so you need a consistent story -give them the address/region of a to-let unit in some place like Colchester, Braintree or Chelmsford of the same size as whatever size you would be prepared to clean (if they get suspicious tell them you are waiting to sign rental agreements and just keep saying “how much to clean a 100sq ft office)

you can put the phone on speakerphone (beware of background noise) and use one of them audio recording machines or your computer to keep a track of the conversation – do this on about 5 or 6 of your potential competitors, then you have a nice file of their prices (so you know where to price your offerings) also google anything they give away about their businesses ; locations, contact methods, types of vehicles used.

add this to your “market intelligence” info – it all helps 😉

You can do anything short of actually stalking human beings as thats illegal but otherwise all’s fair in business, if you become succesful your competitors will try the same on you.

its still going to be hard as you and any staff you plan to employ will be competing with low paid foreigners on minimum wage or less. Its up to you whether you are prepared to dob rival companies in to Borders and Immigration if you should find they are blatantly doing illegal stuff (if you are prepared to play by the rules then I don’t see anything wrong…)

“Ethics” in business is often just the county you happen to currently be in :laugh_at:

Been self employed all my working life – best piece of advice I can think of for getting clients etc is that the personal touch always works best. In your case that means doing some legwork, and knocking on peoples doors – even if you’re only handing them a flyer with the info on it you’re more likely to get their business if they’ve met you face to face.

And if you’re self employed, get yourself a good accountant or learn to do it properly yourself – you can put all sorts of things through your company books that you don’t expect (some friends who are bookdealers get their catfood and vet bills put through the company books – they are considered “rodent control staff” :weee:)… If your books show a profit in the first year, your accountant probably isn’t doing his job properly..

Good luck raaaraaaraaa