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Expert Answers to Biz Questions
Listen in! Pick up some expert advice to a reader's question that we selected from CyberSchmooz.
How to Start Your Own Pool Cleaning Business
If you’re a budding entrepreneur looking for your next business venture, don’t overlook pool cleaning. While there are plenty of fancy online business opportunities that promise million-dollar returns, the reality is that safe, stable businesses, like pool cleaning, often offer the fastest path to success and wealth.
5 Tips for a Successful Pool Cleaning Business
The pool cleaning industry is a booming one. And despite there being several very large pool cleaning and maintenance companies in most established markets, the reality is that most homeowners entrust their pools to local companies. There’s always room for one more. Here are some tips:
- Gather Experience
The first step is to begin gathering experience. If you’ve never worked for a pool cleaning company, it would be smart to spend time working for one. At the very least, you can find a pool cleaning company outside of your market – meaning in another state or region – and see if they’ll let you shadow them for a few weeks. This will give you a good feel for what it’s like to run a pool cleaning service on a daily basis.
Once you have some basic level of experience, it’s time to start building your own experience independently. Take things slow in the early days. Don’t overextend yourself by taking on more clients than you can reasonably handle. You may want to take on just four or five clients at first – one for each morning of the week – and then continue to work your full-time 9-to-5 job.
Then, as you gather experience from these clients, you can gradually start to add new ones into the mix and eventually quit your other job. This sort of gradual approach allows you to gain experience and confidence without unnecessarily putting your own career or financial situation at risk.
- Collect Reviews and Testimonials
In the early days of running your pool cleaning business, there’s nothing that can propel your business faster or higher than positive feedback from your clients. Everything you do in the early days should be focused on making customers happy and getting them to quantify their satisfaction in the form of a review or testimonial.
Reviews and testimonials act as social proof. When you’re able to go to one of your client’s neighbors and tell them that their friend down the street uses you to clean their pool and is really happy with the service, it changes the entire sales pitch.
You automatically have some level of trust and credibility from the start. Now multiply this across different streets, neighborhoods, and communities and your business has the potential to really take off.
- Build Your Brand
Notice that we didn’t start by saying you need to build a brand. This is the mistake that most business owners make when launching a pool cleaning company (or any business for that matter). But if you study successful entrepreneurs, you’ll find that they work in the opposite direction. They follow this formula:
Launch >> Delight customers >> Gather social proof >> Proof of concept >> Branding
In other words, the most successful entrepreneurs aren’t focused on things like logo design, slogans, and setting up a custom website. Instead, they emphasize acquiring customers and exceeding their expectations. Then they turn around and use that social proof to establish a brand that has credibility from the start.
- Use the Right Suppliers
You can’t do this business alone. If you want to grow, you need the right partners. For example, you need a supplier for things like chemicals, parts, and cleaning supplies. There’s nothing wrong with having a nearby store that you can pop into when you need something quickly, but we also recommend having an online supplier like Great Plains Supply and Pool & Spa Products, which offers everything you could need with quality merchandise, fast shipping, and good prices.
- Focus on Customer Satisfaction
Everything you do, especially in the early days, should be focused on customer satisfaction. While you might eventually want to get each pool cleaning stop on your route down to 20 minutes or less, don’t get super focused on efficiency when starting out. If it takes 30 minutes to do the job right, spend 30 minutes. Satisfaction is far more important than efficiency when you’re in growth mode.
Adding it All Up
Building a successful business takes time. Whether you’re selling software or pool cleaning services, patience is of the utmost importance. If you move too quickly, you’ll miss key steps and could end up building your company on a faulty foundation.
Be proactive in your pursuit of growth, but take your time and make sure you get the details right.
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