Carpet Cleaning Business Startup
On today’s episode Mike coaches Joe Caruso of Ready Fresh Carpet Cleaning www.readyfreshcarpet.com on how to start up a carpet cleaning business with little to no startup money.

Currently Joe is trying to transition from a fulltime job to owning and running his own carpet cleaning business startup.

Mike starts off with a little suggestion that carpet cleaning always works as an addition to janitorial services.

BONUS TIP: The one thing Mike likes about janitorial is ongoing revenue. You know exactly how much you have coming in every month.

With carpet cleaning, you can and should get repeat and referral business but it’s not that solid. But it can and has been done successfully so Mike dives in!

The first thing Mike asks Joe is how much time and How much money do you have?…

Joe has late afternoon to evening and weekends for time and $100/mo to devote to the business.

BONUS TIP: If you have no time and no money don’t start a business.

Mike then goes into simple business acceleration strategy. One of the benefits to having a fulltime job while you transition is the ability to spend the first 3-6 months reinvesting all of your profits to building your business.

If you don’t do that you will always be making small income. But if you are looking to transition out of your current full time job into your own business, invest 50-100% of your profits to accelerate that growth to make that transition faster.

Otherwise you are going to be constantly be riding the line between employee and business owner.

Because every dollar counts you have to be very careful with how you spend that money.

Now Mike get’s into the tactical –

First and foremost pick a niche.

There’s a difference between chasing and taking. Mike would recommend , if you want residential, go after bigger houses, but servicing whoever reaches out and asks for service.

Listen to the show to hear what niche Mike recommends to Joe.

The way to get that work is to 1) Offer free work. One of the way to do that in the carpet industry is do a room for free or offer that is hard for people to turn down. When you start getting your first couple of jobs in the neighborhoods you want to target, then you go for the neighbors.

Offer a discount for people who recommend you to the neighbor.

Try to upsell for the other rooms. You should be able to upsell at least 50% of those customers.

2) Set out to create joint ventures with other vendors of your favorite customers. Listen in to hear how to get that ball rolling.

BONUS TIP: Like clients tend to hang out together and try to find people who do similar things than you.

Building JV and strategic alliances is a great way to build your list and doesn’t cost you anything.

Joe gives back in the Lightning Round
You’re either building your own dreams of helping someone else build theirs
Procrastination is the #1 mistake and doing a job accepting the bid over the phone, doing the work and never getting paid
Don’t let your past determine your future or let someone’s perspective of you influence who you are