Читать книгу Recession-Proof Income: Cleaning Up in the Commercial Office Cleaning Business - Douglas Smith - Страница 6

Introduction

In the mid-1990s, I was reintroduced to the commercial office cleaning business. I say reintroduced because when I was a teenager, growing up in rural West Virginia, I had a part-time job, cleaning doctor’s offices in the evening, while my best friend had a job cleaning a barbershop. The money wasn’t great, just enough to keep us up to date with the latest records and other teenage junk. Little did I know then, that as I got older and more educated, I would revert back to this teenage occupation as my primary means of earning a good adult living.

While working as a purchasing agent for a major Washington DC building contractor, I met this guy who worked in my building. A quiet and unassuming person, he worked in the mail room for another company within the building. However, every evening, after leaving his day job, he would go and clean a small private school in suburban Virginia. One day, we were standing in front of the building, taking a break and talking. He began to tell me a story about a guy, who during the Great Depression drove a new Cadillac every year, wore expensive suits, and smoked fat cigars.

While others were jumping out of windows, riding the rails, and eating at soup kitchens, this guy was enjoying the good life. How did he do it? What did he know that those suffering did not? They say that most truths are simple. Well, this guy’s truth was no different. He realized that no matter how good or bad the world’s economy was doing, with few exceptions, the people who work all day in an office building or other businesses are not going to stay and clean them at night.

This simple truth remains a fact today, just the same as it did nearly a century ago. No matter the upturns or downturns in the economy, the opportunity to earn a good living by providing this basic but highly necessary service will remain for the foreseeable future.

I listened as this guy spoke, and I took it all in and kept it in the back of my mind. Well, a few years later when I got tired of working for someone else, I began to look around for opportunity. I thought about selling real estate, cars, etc. After a long while, I began to realize that the best thing I had to sell was my labor. The work I was trained to do offered lots of opportunity to earn a living, but it wasn’t recession proof. Any downturn in the construction industry could leave me in a precarious financial situation.

One day while meditating on the problem, I remembered my conversation from years earlier with the guy who worked in my building. As I began to seriously consider the idea of starting my own commercial office cleaning business, I quickly became overwhelmed. Where would I start? How would I start? Would I quit my job? What tools and equipment would I need? Where would I find jobs? How much money did I need to get started? Unfortunately, there were no books available on how to start a commercial office cleaning company.

Drawing upon my education, business experience, and after much trial and error, I was able to start my own company. Soon, I started to pick-up jobs and began to earn a steady income. With repeat customers and a steady flow of new one-time customers, I was soon earning more money than I ever earned working for someone else. After about three years, I was earning in excess of $100,000 a year, and after about seven years, I sold my business for a nice sum of money.

Fortunately, you do not have go through the trial and error that I did in order to start your very own commercial office cleaning business. In this book, I have laid out concrete steps, detailing everything you will need to do to get up and running quickly without a complicated business plan, and more importantly, without breaking the bank.

Filled with suggestions from real-world business experience, this book will show you exactly how to start your business. We will show you how to choose your market, lay the groundwork for a successful business, and most importantly, how to find customers and begin reaping profits. So buckle up, sit back, and enjoy the ride because you are now on your way to cleaning up in the commercial office cleaning business. I wish you every success in your new venture.

Douglas A. Smith