gideonfisk
New member
Day 1
Day 2
Day three is all about creating your professional business image. Your goal is to make your business seem much more established than it really is. If you do it right, your customers might be asking to get in touch with your “accounting department” to handle payments. Sure Karen, I’ll get in touch with them.
Hopefully you wake up this morning with a logo that you are happy with, because we are about to use it on a few things. If you are going to look professional, you need business cards and apparel with your logo on it. These might take a while to receive, so order them as soon as you are happy with your logo!
I’d recommend getting at MINIMUM two polos and two hats. That way, you can work two days in a row without having to do laundry. Trust me – you’re going to stink after every job. Re-wearing clothes is not something you’ll be doing. Plus, with two pairs of things, you have a good chance of your buddy wearing your logo’d clothes on the first time you need extra help on a job.
If you have some extra money and live in a colder climate, consider getting a water-proof jacket with your logo as well. My girlfriend gave me my logo’d jacket from Queensboro for my birthday, so maybe consider waiting for a holiday and asking for it as a gift. Not necessary, but I love mine when it gets a little chilly.
Note: It may take a long time for your items to arrive. In the meantime, consider just buying plain polos (I like blue) to wear for your first few jobs. I paired this with some khaki shorts/pants and a plain hat while I waited for my clothes to arrive. I had these clothes already, so hopefully you can find something to put together and look presentable in the meantime.
If you want your business cards faster, you might want to go with a local company, so that shipping won’t slow you down. Local is typically a little more expensive, though.
I’d choose anywhere from 100-500 business cards, depending on how many you expect to give out and how long you think your business cards will suffice for your business. Personally, I outgrew my “window cleaning” specific business cards when I decided to add multiple other services.
Make sure you put your window cleaning business logo, your business phone number and your name & title (I use “Owner”) on your business cards.
Check out some example business cards from Moo.com on the original post here.
Short story time: I was working a job a few weeks ago at a customer’s house. All of the sudden, I saw the NICEST, fully wrapped window cleaning truck that I’ve seen in real life. They were handing out flyers in the neighborhood I was working in. The best hose reels, the cleanest setup, and the most professional wrap I’ve seen, especially in my small town.
Anyway, I was seriously a tad bit worried that they would take a good bit of my potential business. I’d never heard of them and assumed they were new in town and ready to get after it. I looked them up online and couldn’t find a single thing.
A few days later, I was working at my day job (accounting), when I see their truck pull up to our firm. Shit. Even my employer hired these guys over me, ha!
Nope… turns out they were meeting with one of the partners, venting that they were hardly getting enough business in the past couple years to afford the accounting fees. I can’t help but think their business wouldn’t be struggling if they had at least SOME SORT of online presence to give customers some trust in the business.
Well, that was a long story. Hope you enjoyed it. Moral of the story: don’t be like them. Go ahead and setup your business profiles now. Google My Business and facebook are by far the most important. These will help you start your window cleaning business with better odds of succeeding while you are still growing.
Personally, I wouldn’t worry about Yelp, HomeAdvisor, Angie’s List, etc. By the way, screw Yelp, but that’s a different story. Just do a couple of minutes of research on how bad yelp really is so that you know for the future.
It’s time to create business profiles on the following platforms:
a) Google My Business: The Most Important One
c) Instagram
Hootsuite is a HUGE timesaver, and it’s free! It allows you put all of your social media work in upfront, and then it will publish your social media posts when you schedule them to be posted!
For example, you can can take an hour out of your day. You go in and design 15 social media posts of you cleaning windows, with one being published each day on Facebook and Instagram. You determine the scheduling! Then, you are set on social media posts for over two weeks!
The free version allows only one user and 3 platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and another of your choice). Facebook and Instagram is all I worry about, but I’d chose either Twitter or LinkedIn as a third.
Using the free version, you can have up to 30 scheduled posts at one time. That would be 10 posts on 3 platforms or 15 posts on 2 platforms. That’s plenty!
Download Hootsuite for Free:
Even if you get just 1% better (which is nothing) ever single day, you’ll be blown away by what you can accomplish. Keep at it, and we’ll see you tomorrow!
--
Interested in this type of business? Come check out r/ExteriorCleaning!
Day 2
Day three is all about creating your professional business image. Your goal is to make your business seem much more established than it really is. If you do it right, your customers might be asking to get in touch with your “accounting department” to handle payments. Sure Karen, I’ll get in touch with them.
Hopefully you wake up this morning with a logo that you are happy with, because we are about to use it on a few things. If you are going to look professional, you need business cards and apparel with your logo on it. These might take a while to receive, so order them as soon as you are happy with your logo!
Part 1: Buying Polo Shirts & Hats From Queensboro.com
- Estimated Time: 1 Hour
- Estimated Cost: $42 for 2 polo shirts + 2 hats
I’d recommend getting at MINIMUM two polos and two hats. That way, you can work two days in a row without having to do laundry. Trust me – you’re going to stink after every job. Re-wearing clothes is not something you’ll be doing. Plus, with two pairs of things, you have a good chance of your buddy wearing your logo’d clothes on the first time you need extra help on a job.
If you have some extra money and live in a colder climate, consider getting a water-proof jacket with your logo as well. My girlfriend gave me my logo’d jacket from Queensboro for my birthday, so maybe consider waiting for a holiday and asking for it as a gift. Not necessary, but I love mine when it gets a little chilly.
Note: It may take a long time for your items to arrive. In the meantime, consider just buying plain polos (I like blue) to wear for your first few jobs. I paired this with some khaki shorts/pants and a plain hat while I waited for my clothes to arrive. I had these clothes already, so hopefully you can find something to put together and look presentable in the meantime.
Part 2: Window Cleaning Business Cards from Moo.com
- Estimated Time: 1 Hour
- Estimated Cost: $22 for 500 business cards
If you want your business cards faster, you might want to go with a local company, so that shipping won’t slow you down. Local is typically a little more expensive, though.
I’d choose anywhere from 100-500 business cards, depending on how many you expect to give out and how long you think your business cards will suffice for your business. Personally, I outgrew my “window cleaning” specific business cards when I decided to add multiple other services.
Make sure you put your window cleaning business logo, your business phone number and your name & title (I use “Owner”) on your business cards.
Check out some example business cards from Moo.com on the original post here.
Part 3: Creating Online Business Profiles for Window Cleaning Companies
Short story time: I was working a job a few weeks ago at a customer’s house. All of the sudden, I saw the NICEST, fully wrapped window cleaning truck that I’ve seen in real life. They were handing out flyers in the neighborhood I was working in. The best hose reels, the cleanest setup, and the most professional wrap I’ve seen, especially in my small town.
Anyway, I was seriously a tad bit worried that they would take a good bit of my potential business. I’d never heard of them and assumed they were new in town and ready to get after it. I looked them up online and couldn’t find a single thing.
A few days later, I was working at my day job (accounting), when I see their truck pull up to our firm. Shit. Even my employer hired these guys over me, ha!
Nope… turns out they were meeting with one of the partners, venting that they were hardly getting enough business in the past couple years to afford the accounting fees. I can’t help but think their business wouldn’t be struggling if they had at least SOME SORT of online presence to give customers some trust in the business.
Well, that was a long story. Hope you enjoyed it. Moral of the story: don’t be like them. Go ahead and setup your business profiles now. Google My Business and facebook are by far the most important. These will help you start your window cleaning business with better odds of succeeding while you are still growing.
Personally, I wouldn’t worry about Yelp, HomeAdvisor, Angie’s List, etc. By the way, screw Yelp, but that’s a different story. Just do a couple of minutes of research on how bad yelp really is so that you know for the future.
It’s time to create business profiles on the following platforms:
a) Google My Business: The Most Important One
- Go to Google My Business https://business.google.com/create
- Login to your gmail account (If you don’t have one, click “Use Another Account” And then “Create account”)
- Click “Add your business to Google”
- Type in your business name
- Fill out all of the information, including the city where you are based out of and your domain name.
- Chose to have the verification postcard sent to your personal address. It should take about 5 days.
- Within a month, I had the second most reviews on google of any other window cleaning company in my city. You can do the same, if not even better.
- Why? This is where many customers make their decision on who to hire. Who has the most reviews and the highest rating? Google is the best legitimacy builder.
- Login to your personal Facebook page
- Click “Pages” on the left side of the screen
- Click “Create Page” in the top right corner
- Click “Business or Brand”
- Type in your business name. The category will be “Local Service”
- Add your logo from Fiverr and a cover photo if you have one. I used Canva (super amazing, free picture editor) to create my cover photo that I posted below. They have templates that are the perfect size (820 x 312 pixels) for the cover photo.
- Fill everything out in your profile if you’d like. Or, you can do it later.
- Why? Many of your customers will leave Facebook reviews instead of Google. This is also where many customers make their decision on who to hire. How many people recommend your business? Your facebook business page builds legitimacy.
c) Instagram
- Go to your Instagram app on your phone (if you don’t have one already, go ahead and join).
- Go to your profile (bottom right corner)
- Click your name at the top. Click “Add Account” and “Create Account”
- Fill out all of the information, and add some high quality pictures if you already have some of you cleaning windows (if not, we’ll be taking some in a couple of days).
- Here is a list of hashtags that I use for just about every post to grow my following (couldn’t hurt!): #windowwashing #windowcleaning #wcr #wcrlife #windowcleaninglife #windowcleaner #windowcleaningresource #auburnalabama #opelikaalabama #auburnopelika #auburnopelikahomes
- Notice I have some local hashtags in there. Find some that are in your area!
- Why? This will build your overall social media profile. It will also encourage you to take good pictures, which you can use on a variety of platforms as free marketing.
Hootsuite is a HUGE timesaver, and it’s free! It allows you put all of your social media work in upfront, and then it will publish your social media posts when you schedule them to be posted!
For example, you can can take an hour out of your day. You go in and design 15 social media posts of you cleaning windows, with one being published each day on Facebook and Instagram. You determine the scheduling! Then, you are set on social media posts for over two weeks!
The free version allows only one user and 3 platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and another of your choice). Facebook and Instagram is all I worry about, but I’d chose either Twitter or LinkedIn as a third.
Using the free version, you can have up to 30 scheduled posts at one time. That would be 10 posts on 3 platforms or 15 posts on 2 platforms. That’s plenty!
Download Hootsuite for Free:
- Sync your facebook page and instagram page you just made.
- Go ahead and create your first scheduled posts now if you have good pictures!
- Tip: Don’t put hashtags in your posts, as they will go to all sites (including facebook, which doesn’t use hashtags. It looks weird). After you make posts, go back into Instagram at some point and create a comment containing all of your hashtags for your posts. Works the same!
Even if you get just 1% better (which is nothing) ever single day, you’ll be blown away by what you can accomplish. Keep at it, and we’ll see you tomorrow!
--
Interested in this type of business? Come check out r/ExteriorCleaning!