To much diversity?

cajun cleanin

cajun cleanin

New member
How diverse can you be and still be good at it all.

I don't want to start a fight here but I see a lot of lawn care guys getting on the boards lately asking questions and getting answers.I always see them around my area advertising lawn care and pressure washing ,window cleaning,fences built, etc, etc.How many things can you do?

If you wash a house every couple of weeks can you do it correctly?Sure they can get the mold off but are they doing damage to the house and our image?

I do trim tree limbs back off of houses and clean windows but everything I do is geared towards the cleaning of the houses exterior.But nothing major

Can you be to spread out?

After asking this I don't think they are taking a lot of work away from me but it seems that this profession is being somehow belittled ( maybe not the right word) by every tom dick and harry saying yeah we can wash a house too.There are carpet cleaners around here that advertize pressure washing.
 
Trying to work with the cities around here to make all pressure washers here have insurance,a place of business, pay the city a permit fee and get a license number from the city so anyone can look on a job and see if the contractor is a business or a Hack......
 
I see the same thing here in the residential market. Everybody offers PW services. It just continues to give homeowners the perception that this is easy to do, you just shoot water and it lowers pricing.

I even had a flyer left on my mailbox last week from an electrical company and under the list of services they offer, you guessed it, power washing.
 
We have the same here in the SC/NC area.
I found that marketing and educating the customer about the difference in service they will get from me. There is always someone out there that does pressure washing at a low price, and just an ad on to 20 other services they provide. It takes some time spent with the customer to explain to them that they will get a professional, quality, and safely executed service. I have found this strategy to be effective against the lower priced guys that just have it as an add on service. I also explain to them about the license, General liability, and workers comp. policies that are WRITTEN UP for the specific services I will perform. This is something many do not think about. If a Lawn Care guy has insurance for his lawn care biz. does not mean the policy will cover damage to a roof, or even worse, a fall from a roof. Just my .02 cents

Chris
 
I have been told that we can’t be good at all the things that we do and all we do is clean stuff!
 
well there is a lawn guy in my area that i happen to know very well and he also does pressure washing with a walmart machine. he isnt lowballing he is charging 350 per house and getting it but it takes him four hours to do it and he doesnt have insurance or anything. every time i turn around i see a lawn trailer with a pressure washer and a plastic homeowners hose reel. :eek:
 
How many of us have used a friend or a backyard mechanic to do simple work on your car? How many have hired a kid to mow the lawn? How about a friend to juice up an ac after hours?

Does that mean there is no place for Dealership Auto Service or no place for Landscapers or HVAC companies? No. It simply means that we weren't willing to spend the amount of money necessary to use those services.

If the kid, backyard mechanic and the HVAC tech weren't available does that mean we would have been pushed to the Dealership, the Landscaper or the HVAC company? No, it probably means we would have gotten on the internet and tried to figure out how to do it ourselves.

There is a threshold over which you lose a substantial portion of the market. It's just like the speed limit. People will drive about 75-80 whether the speed limit is 55 or 100! If you are over that threshold in pricing that market DOES NOT BELONG TO US and we should't be trying to FORCE that market to conform to our pricing.

There is a way to capture that market. That is finding better, faster, more efficient ways to complete a job and price the services closer to that THRESHOLD.

Trying to remove "hacks" will do nothing but remove that ENTIRE market from THEM. It won't do anything whatsoever to help you or me. The only thing it will do for us is cause us to have to spend more money to operate.
 
Bump..:thank_you2:
 
In FL they put a P/W endorsement on your Drivers lic soon as you move down !!
 
Lightning Gene said:
Trying to work with the cities around here to make all pressure washers here have insurance,a place of business, pay the city a permit fee and get a license number from the city so anyone can look on a job and see if the contractor is a business or a Hack......
Click to expand...


A place of business?Gene are you saying having a store front/rental space makes a business more legit?
I like many.many,many others in the industry have a home office.I carry all the appropriate licenses per my city & state.We are insured and pay taxes,but I do not have a place of "business".Matter of fact I couldn't find a property in our home town that I could rent to have a place of business.

IMO,I think that one aspect of your plan to better the industry in your are is flawed.
 
I don't think that having a storefront would be necessary unless you sold things to the contractors but if you sold to the public then you are helping out the hacks.

I can understand the need for a shop to park the vehicles, trailers and large equipment but not a storefront.

I run the business out of my home office and park everything here except the bucket truck.

In time, I see the need for a place to move everything to to make the house back into a home. hahahaha
 
The local carpet cleaner is also pressure washing...He has a 4GPM machine and works out of his minivan. He has a picture of using a pressure washing wand on the roof. His hose length appears to be no more than 50 feet.
 
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