Business Ideas

Archive for October, 2009

The Five Critical Factors That Can Make Your Commercial Cleaning Business A Resounding Success

The current economic downturn is pushing people all over the world into acting out of their comfort zone. Top economy analysts and well known business men have been seen on TV proclaiming this to be the ‘perfect opportunity’ for brave entrepreneurs to be creative and to take their livelihoods into their own hands.

I happen to agree this is the time to thrive!

Take calculated steps towards building your own future and not having to rely on ‘a boss’ for your next paycheck. Whether you like the corporate rat race the hustleandbustle of the big city or a quite room/office in your own home owning your own business will accommodate your personality quite well.

So if you like the sound of being your own boss keep reading to find out what are the 5 critical factors that will give you a headstart in the right direction and will make the difference between success and failure.

Before I keep going though I want to mention that owning amp; running your own business will not be ‘a walk in the park’. Some people like to make it sound supereasy but the reality is that it’s only easy if you can find a proven system that you can follow and rely on like a personal coach. Only then can you expect great results and financial stability over the long term.

Choosing the right type of business to start however is *the most critical decision you will have to make* before even making the first step. Choose a niche market that also has the earning potential and allows for healthy competition without the need for too much starting capital. The Commercial Office Cleaning market is hailed as one of the most lucrative markets in America today. Add to that the fact that it has a built in continuity and you have yourself a perfect scenario for earning a healthy pay check every month from the same customers.

So here are the top 5 things you’ll need to consider if you are to succeed at starting and owning your own Commercial Cleaning business.

1. Keep your startup capital to the bare essentials. Unlike a retail businesses a Commercial Cleaning Business would not require too much capital to start with. As a start you’ll need the following: cleaning supplies staff of less than three whom you’ll pay at the end of each month a vehicle to get you to your appointments and an internet/telephone connection to allow you to communicate with your clients and staff.

No need to rent an office space as you can work from home at least in the beginning later on you can decide if you prefer to rent an office space separately. No need for a huge marketing budget although a few dollars could come handy. And no need to keep an inventory which usually takes a huge chunk of initial capital.

Keeping your initial outlay to the bare essentials will make sure that you breakeven start making profit in the shortest time possible after that you start earning for yourself and your family.

2. Know and understand your market and your competition. Knowing your competition in the area you’re planning to work in will give you an edge because you will know more about where your business fits in that landscape. It is critical that you position yourself right in the eyes of your potential clients because then it will be obvious to them why they should pick your services as opposed to your competitor.

Sometimes it’s as easy as pointing out the obvious like stating “We only use chemical free cleaning materials that look after your office and your staff’s health. “Knowing that no one else in your city offers this Eco service and stating it upfront will make people flock to you.

Also you should find out how much your competitors charge by asking around. Once you get an overall picture of the price structures of your competitors you can then tailor your rates accordingly. Going lower is not usually the right answer give your market what it wants. Maybe in your city there are a lot of very well off businesses that prefer to pay ‘top dollar’ to make sure they receive quality… You won’t know unless you research your market and your competitive landscape very well.

3. Build up your client base through wordofmouth. Wordofmouth is still the most effective form of advertising. Once you have built a good reputation your clients will pour in. This is the key to your success. To establish a good rapport with your customers give them updates regularly or offer special rates for regular patrons.

Make sure to ask for your referrals happy clients will want to rave on about your good service. So don’t be shy contact them and let them know that if they refer to you another business that ends up becoming a paying client you will give them a month’s free services.

Don’t be put off by the whole month’s free thing think of it like this: if a client stays with you for at least a year but in reality it’s a lot more and you charge 1000 hypothetically per month for you services then you get 12000 per client. So in actual fact you’re paying 1000 a month’s free services to get 12000 back… In business terms this is a heck of a great deal!

4. Make sure you build your business to last. How much you earn depends on how much effort you put into your business and how you setup your payment structure. In the beginning you’ll make sure you have water tight payment terms and an offer that incentivize your clients to sign up for the longterm. You are not interested in a one month contract you want your clients to stay with you for 6 months to a year minimum. That way you ensure that money keeps coming in.

Later on when you’ve perfected the basics clean up your processes and your systems and thing about branching out or offering franchise options to interested entrepreneurs just like yourself.

The earning potential of having your own Commercial Cleaning Business are endless you just need to know how and what to do. But that shouldn’t be a problem if you find a proven method that can guide you stepbystep through the whole process effectively cutting out the possibilities of costly mistakes.

5. Own your business don’t let it own you. One of the biggest most attractive advantages of this business is that it would not take too much of your time once you’re up and running. In the beginning the business will require more of your time but as you get your first few clients and if you follow the system properly you will start to notice that your daily intervention is needed less and less.

Beware however not to get clingy hahaha it may sound funny now but a common pitfall of new business owners is that they get so caught up in being business men and doing everything themselves that they threaten to suffocate that business because they cannot grow without outsourcing and delegating the necessary tasks.

Make sure you start to let go of the micro tasks in your business as you see the opportunity to grow. Hire more people build your systems and processes and learn to manage your team from a distance giving them the opportunity to do their job according to your guidance of course.

At the end of the day owning your own Commercial Cleaning Business will be the best thing you’ve ever done for yourself and your family. When you have a great system 40;road map41; to follow this business will not only give you the control you need over your own financial future but it can be an awesome confidence boost too.

Most successful businesses are not so as a result of a ‘stroke of luck’. With the list above you can make sure that things are not left to chance and that the success of your own Commercial cleaning Business is solidly in your own hands. Find a proven system do your research thoroughly follow the system and expect to reap the results of your hard work. Remember longevity in any type of business requires perseverance determination and flexibility.

About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;Next Step: Read also how Clean Up The Profits by Sam Rodman earned Jeremy Gray 12992.96 in his first 3 months of starting a commercial cleaning business.

Head over to http://cleaningbusinesssecrets.com/ now and judge for yourself.

The Birth And Death Of A Clever New Invention

I received a telephone call one daysome years ago when tractor feed paper was the norm for computers from a gentleman who we shall call “Mr. Andrews”. A friend of his had given him my name telling him I would give him advice about what to do with his invention.

Mr. Andrews had invented a way of separating the perforated edges of tractor feed printer paper. We met and he demonstrated his prototype to me. He showed me the results of his patent search and some letters from apparently interested parties in Japan. His trimmer idea was quite simple. He mounted a razor blade in the tractors of the tractor feed mechanism of an Epson printer.It appeared to work well.

I was impressed with his demonstration and offered to manufacture and market his margin trimmer for him. Mr. Andrews agreed to my. After signing the papers I took possession of his prototype instituted my own patent search and contacted several printer companies about the idea of a margin trimmer built into the tractor units.

The first piece of bad news came when I began experimenting with Mr. Andrews printer with the built in margin trimmer. After a relatively short period of time I discovered that the prototype had a couple of problems. After a few hundred pages had been trimmed a significant amount of paper dust began to build up in the tractor. The paper dust began getting into the works of the printer and gumming things up.

The second piece of less than welcome news was from the printer manufactures who said they might be interested as long as there were no sharp blades involved that could injure someone. My brother cut his thumb badly enough to need 4 stitches while using it.

The third piece of bad news came from my patent attorney. An identical device had been patented in Austria in the 1950′s. It wasn’t patentable! Apparently the patent search Mr. Andrews had obtained was through an inventors club at a big discount. The patent search was only performed on U.S. patents and did not search foreign patents.

I began to experiment with tractors from some old printers I had laying around and after a few days I had a tractor unit that worked quite well left no paper dust had no sharp blades that could cause injuries and was patentable.

While experimenting with the tractor units I found that I could use one of the tractors as a handheld manual type of trimmer. Depending upon the weight of the paper and the style of perforations I could trim the margin of a stack of up to about 20 sheets at a time.

So now I had two potential products a hand held trimmer and a trimmer built into printers. There was no question in my mind that the devices were patentable and marketable.

I enlisted the help of my brother setting up a limited partnership to fund the project and we raised about 75000 from about 30 small investors we rounded up from among our friends. One of our investors owned and operated a plastic injection molding company.

We applied for a patent and I designed a hand held margin trimmer that was attractive easy to use and entirely injection moldable.

I also designed a stand alone automatic margin trimmer that automatically trimmed the margins off of the paper as it fed out from the printer or in batches. The prototype automatic margin trimmer had a paper tension sensor so it could track the output of the printer trimming at the same rate as the printer printed. It also could trim just the left margin just the right margin or both.

The tool and die makers at the injection molders built the prototypes of the hand held and automatic margin trimmers.

Our injection molder built the tooling we needed for the hand held device amortizing the tooling over a large number of units. We were to pay an additional dollar per piece until the tooling was paid for. I’m having a hard time remembering the details but I think it was costing us about a buck and a half 1.75 per trimmer to injection mold the plastic parts assemble the trimmers and package them in blister cards.

I think we had a suggested retail price of 7.95 although I am not sure. My brother and I were trying to market it ourselves but we weren’t really salesmen and weren’t making much progress.

One of our investors was my marketing guy for another product. He took the prototypes of the trimmers to a computer products trade show. He was able to demonstrate our new products to the president of Curtis manufacturing. Curtis was in the business of manufacturing and marketing computer accessories such as surge protectors diskette holders mouse pads etc.

The president of Curtis loved the automatic margin trimmer. He agreed to market and distribute the handheld version. The president of Curtis hired a product development company in Palo Alto CA. to refine my automatic trimmer. After several months the new product development company had a working prototype to show us and it was slick. I believe it was going to cost about 50 to produce and was to be marketed for a couple of hundred. We would get 5 of the gross sales wholesale.

Curtis was selling hand held margin trimmers color coordinated to match Curtis’s color scheme for 9.95 I think and they were beginning to sell. Life was good.

Thats when outoftheblue the parent company of Curtis a gold mining company I believe declared bankruptcy. I’m not clear on the details but somehow the bankruptcy caused the president of Curtis to resign.

The new president of Curtis without explanation canceled the burster/trimmer project and the hand held trimmer as well. They had sold 27000 of the hand held trimmers.

We obtained the prototype trimmer/burster from Product Genesis and tried to market it ourselves. We were unable to interest any manufactures in our device. Probably because it was so inexpensive to build that the profit margin would have been much smaller.

We had no money to manufacture the product ourselves so the whole thing died.To this day you can still buy one of those big heavy expensive bursters if you need to separate continuous forms in batches for several thousand dollars.

About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;For more information about inventions patents prototyping marketing and new product development please visit: Inventons and Inventors All kinds of useful information for and about inventors.

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