Growing Pains in your business - Wash Rite NZ

As the owner of a house wash and pressure wash business based in Hamilton New Zealand we have had amazing growth in our first full year in business. We went from 1 trailer rig till now we have 2 trailer rigs, 1 van set up and 2 flatbed set up all set up for house wash and pressure washing, The van and 2 flat beds both have pressure wash and soft wash set ups and the trailers are set up for pressure wash.

We have reached a point where we are feeling the growing pains, We find it hard to get decent staff and when i talk to friends whom own other business not in the house wash industry they are finding it hard as well to get decent staff.

Now we have built up a company that can meet all its cost's purely on the cash flow it makes we are now going to try and concentrate on the higher end jobs that have a min costing of around $500 and above. This will mean we will have less reliance on a large staff number to reach the large turnover and profit margins we want out of our house wash company.

The next issue which is a small one and does not bother us is the next faze of investing in equipment, We have purchased all our vehicles second hand and with cash, Its now time to go and buy a couple new trucks and get them kitted out and put them to work, 2 trucks kitted out will cost us around $100000 which is no problem as we would have them paid off within 12 months, This will allow us to have 2 back up trucks in case one is off the road and also allow for easy expansion which we expect we will need.

This year we have invested heavily in advertising, marketing and promotional events. We will be at the Waikato home and garden expo and we believe this will be a great place to get leads and pick up extra high value work. Plus 2 of our biggest competition are there and i will spend what ever amount is needed to even take one job of the,.

The other growing pain we feel at the moment is all the professional and business contacts we have are all compounding at the moment and we are getting 3 to 5 referrals a day from these people which is great but we are starting to run out of time in the day to get out and quote there house wash jobs or roof cleaning jobs. This on top of our website http://washrite.co.nz/services/house-wash/ is bring in all the leads we need at the moment.

So all in all these are our growing pains at the moment, Great problems to have and i hope they continue to happen to us as it means our house wash business is growing which is what we want.

Feel free to check out our website at www.washrite.co.nz or give us a call on 0800101216

Winter is almost over - Time to ramp up the house washing

Down here in New Zealand winter is almost to an end and spring is a few short weeks away and in turn the house washing part of the business is getting ready to explode. Now the sun is out a little longer but there is still moisture around this means the moss and mould on people's house's is set to grow super fast and make there house look really bad. This is where we at Wash Rite come in, We will come and wash your house, clean your gutters out, wash your roof and spray a long lasting moss and mould treatment on your roof to stop the return of the moss and mould. This will get your house looking great again and get it ready for all those summer BBQ and party's you will be having in your clean home.

Now if you have black algi or moss on your driveway, path, and or patios than we can help there too. We can come and pressure wash them clean and spray a treatment on these hard surfaces to stop the return of the moss and mould.

Wash Rite is by far Hamilton's fastest growing and one of the best know house washing and commercial building washing company's around and we have become this due to hard work and excellent results. If you have a free moment have a look at our website and you will find the full list of all our services we can offer from house washing to gutter cleaning and everything in between.http://washrite.co.nz/services/house-wash/

To give you a quick run down on the services we offer.

Main one is house washing,
We use a low pressure house wash system that will removal all moss, mould and dirt and leaving your house looking great, This will also protect and prolong the life of your house.

Roof Cleaning

Wash Rite is the only company in New Zealand that has a genuine softwash systems setup and we use this to softwash your roof and get it looking as good as a new roof.http://washrite.co.nz/services/roof-wash/

Roof Treatment.

Wash Rite is also able to offer a roof treatment service, this is where we spray your roof with a long acting chemical treatment that will kill all moss, mould and lichen and as it dies it will break down and wash away with the rain, The chemical we use is commercial grade and many many many times stronger than the retail wet and forget products.http://washrite.co.nz/services/roof-wash/

Gutter Cleaning

Wash Rite offers a full gutter cleaning service where we removal all material  from the gutters and flush out the down pipes to prevent and backup of the gutter.

Commercial building washing

Wash Rite is by far the best placed company in the Waikato to wash your commercial building as we have current contracts to clean Westfield Chartwell, Breamer Hospital, Waikato hospital and many many more large building, We are fully kitted out to wash the large building and do not need to contract any of it out to outside company's. http://washrite.co.nz/services/commercial-buildings/

Farms and Dairy Shed

Wash Rite has a massive amount of experience in cleaning dairy sheds and other farm shed, We have built a strong reputation in the rural industry for superior work and great value to the farming business.http://washrite.co.nz/services/133-2/

Pest and Spider Spraying

Wash Rite has fully licensed and qualified pest control specialist on the team and are able to spray your home and or business to remove any pest, We always recommend spraying for spiders after a house wash as the spiders can and will return and spin a new web on your clean house.

So if you think Wash Rite could help keep your home tidy than give us a call on 0800101216 or visit us at www.washrite.co.nz

Wash Rite will be at the Waikato Home and Garden Show 2016

Wash Rite will be having a stand at the Waikato home and garden show this year held at claudlands event center from October 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th so come and see us as we will be having giveaways at our stand and come register your interest for a free quote to get your house looking its best. As there are no better company out there to wash your house, clean your roof, clean out your gutters and get your house looking a million dollars.

Hope to see you guys and girls there.

Wash Rite - House Washing
www.washrite.co.nz
0800101216

Wash Rite will be at the Waikato Home and Garden Show 2016

Wash Rite will be having a stand at the Waikato home and garden show this year held at claudlands event center from October 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th so come and see us as we will be having giveaways at our stand and come register your interest for a free quote to get your house looking its best. As there are no better company out there to wash your house, clean your roof, clean out your gutters and get your house looking a million dollars.

Hope to see you guys and girls there.

Wash Rite - House Washing
www.washrite.co.nz
0800101216

Internet presence for your house washing business - www.washrite.co.nz

The question i get asked all the time is how important is it to have a web presence for your business??

Well the simple answer is its very important, The first and major step you need to do is get a website built and get it up on google asap and than put some time and effort and money to optimize it to get the best results.

As you will see from my website www.washrite.co.nz its basic but it tells you we are a house wash, softwash, pressure wash and roof wash company and where we operate and that's Hamilton New Zealand. All the basic's. Now you have to get that website out there and best way to do that is to get anyone else you know that has a website link your site to there's and list your site on every business directory you can find.

I also highly recommend getting a Facebook page up and going, You can link your website to your page and this will help google pick up your site, With your Facebook page you need to have as much house wash based content on there that you can. This will help drive google to your content rich website. Check out my Facebook page for idea's www.facebook.com/washritenz

These are the first two steps on building a web presence to help grow your house wash business. 

Hope this helps the new guy in the house wash or pressure wash business.

Thanks

Troy Hillard

Wash Rite 

www.washrite.co.nz

How to deal with a customer complaint !!

Its not very often that we at Wash Rite gets any sort of complaint but we have gotten 2 in the past month so i thought i would go through the two complaints and run through how we handled it and what we done about the two complaints.

The first one come through our website www.washrite.co.nz and was about how one of our service's vehicles left a tyre mark on the clients grass. 

When we received the complaint the first thing we did was call the client and tell them we will be out there straight away which they seemed happy to hear. On the way to the clients address i went via my house and grabbed a bad of grass seed i had in my garage and went to see the client.

Upon arriving i could see what the client was talking about. It seems the service vehicle went of the end of the driveway and the tyre made a mark due to the ground been wet due to a large amount of recent rain. I grabbed the bag of grass seed out of my truck re seeded it and the client was happy. Problem solved.

The second complaint come via phone and from the time i picked up the phone call a lady started to scream, swear and hell at me, After a minute or two i gathered what her complaint was about. It seemed that we did a roof clean on the house next door to her house, These two houses are joined and share a common wall, The job was done about 1 year ago or so. We went back 3 months after the job and took a picture and you could tell a massive difference between her roof been uncleaned and our clients roof now clean. Our out sourced social media company uploaded the picture to our Facebook account and the lady who's roof was not cleaned was very very unhappy that the picture made her house look bad. She was also unhappy about the comment the social media company put with the picture, " One roof cleaned the other owner did not want there's cleaned" or something very close to that. Needless she was unhappy and she wanted any reference to her taken down , 

What we did with this complaint was is to email our out sourced social media company asking to remove any reference to her which they did within 15 minutes, I also emailed the lady complaining to offer a free roof clean / treatment which she agreed to but have not herd from her to book it in. Now this is the best or worst part which ever way you see it. I believe she has complained to the New Zealand Advertising complaints authority about the post.

Now with these two complaints i believe we done everything we could to keep both party's happy, one of them where happy and one was not. So the moral of this story is you cant keep everyone happy all the time.

Thanks

Troy Hillard

Wash Rite - House Wash

www.washrite.co.nz

                                                    

THE WINTER GRIND IN THE HOUSE & BUILDING WASH INDUSTRY

As you will know work slows down in the winter months and depending on how cold and wet winter is will determine how much it slows down.

Wash Rite is based in Hamilton New Zealand and our winters are not bitterly cold and the temp ranges from 0 to 6 degrees Celsius in the mornings with a high of around 13 degree Celsius so all in all not to bad as we don't get snow or very very rarely get it.

This means we only see a drop in sales or around 10% over the winter months. But its enough of a drop to free up some time and this is the time that i jump into sales, marketing and getting quotes done as soon as spring hits the phone will blow up and all this hard work i have done in winter doing marketing and sales and even SEO it all pays off.

Now a key thing i always do in winter is SEO as everyone knows it takes a few months for google to pick up on changes you have made and this is why i do it in winter so come spring all the SEO work i have done starts to pay off and it lifts our organic listing and even if my competition see's this and does there own SEO by the time there's starts to take effect its way to late as i have swept up most of the work... Early bird catch's the worms in SEO

The other idea i have is in winter most people hate the cold and just stay home and no one else in the market is out there pushing there business and most of all pushing there brand, Winter is all about brand awareness and building your brand.

I do this by face to face sales and building a web based brand as below.

www.washrite.co.nz

www.facebook.com/washritenz

Instagram washritenz

Google + Wash Rite Limited 

and much more

So when winter hits to get lazy and sit inside and stay warm, Best to get out there and use the time to build your brand, write policys and procedures for your staff and work on health and safety but DONT site there and get lazy.

Thanks

Troy Hillard

Wash Rite - House Washing

www.washrite.co.nz

NEW TO THE HOUSE WASH INDUSTRY - Wash Rite www.washrite.co.nz

When your new to the house wash industry or roof cleaning and treatment industry there is very little information out there in regards to techniques or how to clean certain materials. There is always heaps of before and afters but most people don't share there secretes with the new guys. As most new guys are seen to be bucket bobs.

This picture might be a set up but most new guys don't have the newest or even the right equipment to wash a house or clean gutters or do a moss and mould roof treatment but they make do with what they have got and build from there. When i started Wash Rite in Hamilton New Zealand i decided i wanted to be the most professional looking acting house wash and exterior washing business in my area. This meant i had to invest in that idea by investing my money into new or modern second hand equipment , Lettered and signed written service vehicle and uniforms. Most of all i had to invest in my training and my teams training so we got a reputation to be the best house washing business in our market. This investment in my team was the best money i could have spent and will continue to invest time and money into them. It is also important to select the services you want to offer and master them. The services we offer are .
- Soft Wash house washing (low pressure house wash)
- Soft Wash Roof Washing
- Moss and Mould roof treatments
- Gutter cleaning
- Window Cleaning
- Driveway and concrete pressure cleaning
- Fence and deck cleaning
- Exterior spider spraying
for more information on our services check out our website www.washrite.co.nz for all your house washing requirements.

Now you have the services you will offer sorted out now you need to market them. What Wash Rite did was build a website www.washrite.co.nz and spent some money getting some SEO done on it and list that site on as many business directory as we can. Get your website up asap as age of domain is very important. Next is get a Facebook page up for your business. Wash Rite page is found at www.facebook.com/washritenz and as you will see from the Wash Rite page we post almost daily on there and content is key.

Now we have been going for about 12 months we have forced our way into the top 3 company's in our area and have a great reputation for quality of our work and being a great community member.

Also a key thing to do is get listed on google, Join and open a google plus page, Wash Rites can be found easily and so can our address and contact phone number of 0800101216 this is important is a client wants to talk to you.

Now you need to build a sales funnel to get people to request a quote or your services, We use many ways to get these leads, Website, google ad words, door hangers, lettered trucks, work uniforms, networking and much more but we allways funnel the leads to two locations first is our phone number 0800101216 or the second is our request a quote page on our website washrite.co.nz/request-a-quote/ once people contact via these two locations than the sales team kicks into gear.

Now to get advanced make some short videos of your team working and post them to you tube, this will help with SEO and it will start to build a audience and a client base, Over time you will become the authority on house washing in your area.

Now if you have any questions on building your house washing business please just ask in the comments guys.

Thanks
Troy Hillard
Wash Rite - 0800101216
www.washrite.co.nz

House Wash Soap Mix

I see many people ask about what people in our industry use for there soap mix and it seems no one wants to tell how and what they use to make there soap mix. Well ill tell you how i make ours at Wash Rite.

Firstly you start with a 20lt / 5 gallon bucket or drum. I fill 30% with SH (sodium hypocloride ) and top up with water and than i ad about 200ml of surfactant to help the mix foam up and stick to the house.

Now this mix is not always set in stone as if its a really dirty house i mite put 35% or 40% SH so you can play with the percentage of SH you put in, Unless your experienced i would not put any more than 40% in, Best to wash the house twice than damage anything.

Below ill link a you tube video that you should watch as well.

Now this mix is what i use every day for your standard houses, If you have to clean oil or oil based mess that don't use SH use a mineral based de-greaser in the same ratio and that should do the job.

Also not guys the SH i use is 12.5% so its strong if you use cheap 10% or 8% you may want to up your percentage to 40% to get the same results.

Any questions just ask guys

Troy Hillard

Wash Rite NZ

www.washrite.co.nz

Door Hangers and flyers.... Do they work????

I get asked alot about do handing out flyers and hanging door hangers and if it works????


Well the answer is yes it works, But you have to be smart about how you do it. Firstly we have a company policy that the workers MUST hang a door hanger on the doors of the next door neighbors and the 3 houses across the road of the house there washing. this is a very cost effective way of doing it.

Next is that we employee a person to work one day a week hanging door hangers and they are able to do about 1000 in a 8 hour day, It works out great for them as they have the day off from uni. We really make sure the door hangers are hung on the door knob and not put in the letter box as our hit rate for a flyer in the letter box is 1% and the hit rate for a door hanger on the door in 10% so a massive difference.

 These on the side are the door hangers we hang and we have a great result out of these and will never go back to flyers in the letter box.

We do have standard type flyers but there not handed out in a mail box form, these are only handed out when someone quires about our services and wants more information than we will hand out the flyer as it holds all the information they want. These flyers are great to inform people but not very good in grabbing there attention.

Now you are ready to hang door hangers the next major this is what areas to hang them. My rule is never hang them in the poor areas of town, Even though we do heaps of work in those areas we find most houses in the poor areas are rentals and the people getting your door hangers dont make the call weather to spend the money or not. We target the landlords in other ways.

We will always target middle class to upper class areas as most of these peoples own there own home and can make the decisions to spend the money or not , plus these people have spare money to spend on the maintenance of there home. And there homes are always larger so the charge amount for the                                         job is always larger as well.

The time of the day is always important as well, I try and hang door hangers around 2pm to 5pm, This means the door hanger has less chance of blowing away in the wind and it there awaiting the home owner to come home from work and its right there for them to see.
We also boost our effort in the first 3 weeks of spring and we hire an extra 3 people for 3 week straight to hang door hangers and we normally get about 7500 up per week and with spring people are back out side looking at there house and checking how dirty and how much moss and mould has grown over the winter months.

Simple rules with design, keep it simple and try and grab there attention with the design instantly.

If you want any information just comment and follow the blog

Troy Hillard
Wash Rite
www.washrite.co.nz   0800101216

Money Money Money What to do with it?

Now you have your pressure washing or softwash business and your starting to make some money and you find you have a little bit left over at the end of each month and the big question what to do with it?

In my experience in the house wash business i have learnt that you have to always re invest in your business by buying new equipment, advertising, promo material. But you also have to hedge your money, You may ask what do i mean by hedging your money?

What i mean by hedging my money is that i split my profit into two potions both equal 50% each and with one lot i plow it back into the business and re invest in equipment or marketing?

With the other 50% i invest in either term deposits, Shares, Bonds or real estate this spreads my risk over a few sectors and i find when one sector is down 3 others are up. With the profits from my shares, bonds and real estate i re invest back into more assets in that area.

With the profits from the profits i re invested back into my business i always re split it 50% /50% again.

Remember your business is just there to earn money to buy assets that make you money, But never ever take all your profits from your business you MUST always re invest in your business so it can keep the money making cycle happening.

Thanks
Troy Hillard
Wash Rite
www.washrite.co.nz

Employee time theft in your house wash , pressure wash and softwash business

I have come across this video about employee time theft and i could not of said it any better, As an employer it is your right and duty to snap your staff out of it as it is just costing you money and lots of it.




Hope you enjoy the video and get something out of it.

Troy Hillard
Wash Rite - House Wash specialist

www.washrite.co.nz
http://washrite.co.nz/services/house-wash/

House and pressure Washing Equipment

There seems to be two areas of thought when it comes to equipment for house washing, First is high pressure is better and we are talking 5000psi and up, The other is less pressure but higher water flow around 3000psi.

As we all know when you lift the pressure you always drop the water flow, you cant have both.. Now one of my competitors likes high pressure and advertises he uses 6000psi and it can cut concrete. Now i don't think that's a smart way to go as damage is always on the mind of the home owner and that's the sole reason the whole soft-wash industry has formed and grown where it is.

Now personally i use pumps that run 3500psi and flow 7 gallons a minute and i find this a great set up for washing house and the chemicals and soaps we use do most of the cleaning and if pressure is needed than 3500psi has always been heaps to get the job done.

Plus with high pressure above 5000psi i don/t know to many hot water systems that can handle that high a pressure so you loss that whole section of the market.

But in saying this a little bit higher pressure could come in hand when your cleaning concrete or stone.

I would like for you guys to comment on what you use and what you find that works.

Thanks
Troy