Depression/Financial Independence

how do you get contracts? around here everything is contracted out and you're hard pressed to get anyone to switch since most of these contracts were gotten through nepotism, so if they don't get renewed someone's feelings get hurt.

>so I'm assuming you started a business in which you supply office cleaning services and have a team of amigos doing the work for you.
yes, that's how I got out of office cleaning.

but even when I was doing all the work I made more than a geologist does in far fewer hours. The job sucks but nobody gives you any trouble and there's no real stress.

I personally offer the same level of service for 20% less than the going rate.

doesn't matter if it's your family doing the work when someone else will do it for 1/5th cheaper.

I also bid a lot of government and industrial work where nepotism doesn't fly.

so you actually did the cleaning yourself in the beginning? didn't that limit you in terms of what jobs you can take on, and what jobs did you take on in the beginning?

I'm not sure I'm comprehending this correctly. You're telling me the woman who vacuums the office at 6pm potentially makes $125/hr?

Also this seems like a competitive field, do you young guy with some savings can get into this today? You started as a cleaner but eventually employed people to do the cleaning for you?

Interesting stuff.

I bought an existing business by doing all the work that the owner had under contract for free for a year.

I wasn't allowed to drop clients, I couldn't hire someone to do the work because I was broke and not making any profit. There was no point in growing the biz the first year since any extra money went to the previous owner.

so yeah, I personally did all of the work the first year and most of the second when I dropped most of the clients and bid bigger jobs. By the end of year 2 I had hired people to do the actual cleaning. I haven't worked an 8 hour day or 40 hour week in the 13 years since.

>You're telling me the woman who vacuums the office at 6pm potentially makes $125/hr?
If it's a small office or a government contract, yes. It's possible.

what's more likely is she's making $12/hr and her boss is charging $100/hr.

It is an extremely competitive field, but there's so much work available in the $100-$125/hr range that most people won't lower their prices. There's huge and constant demand.

so if i wanted to start from scratch what clients should i approach?

I would search government contracts in your area using FedBizOpps and I would talk to small offices and banks. Post offices are good too, but there's an entire segment of contractors like myself that bid on those from all over the country.

>what's more likely is she's making $12/hr and her boss is charging $100/hr.

That makes much more sense, still very surprisng that $100+ an hour is the industry average for a cleaning service. I'll look into it further. Seems like starting up and getting your first employee/contract is the hardest part.

>Seems like starting up and getting your first employee/contract is the hardest part.
it's mostly a matter of disbelief.

it's hard to believe people are charging that much and getting it. The reason is people don't know how long it takes to clean something.

say you want a maid service to come in and clean your house. They charge $75 per time. This seems like a good deal to you because it's not much money and it saves you hours.

but your maid comes in and cleans the entire thing in 45 minutes and moves on to the next 5 houses.

she's making bank doing work 4 times faster than you can. And really that's what a professional is for.

can you shed some light on what equipment is needed to start out?

for small jobs you need a couple vacuums (I like the bissel helix from Walmart. throw it away and buy another when it breaks), mop and bucket, cleaning supplies (glass cleaner, bowl cleaner, neutral cleaner), bowl brush, scrub pads, rags (lots of rags), miscellaneous brushes and detergents. A floor buffer is a good thing to have as well, but not needed for a lot of jobs. Window washing and carpet cleaning rigs are optional. If you need them you can always hire someone else to do the work, but most janitorial contractors eventually buy that stuff.

lots of places provide supplies and equipment though.

i was thinking about giving it a go myself part time just to see how things work. there's nothing in my state on fedbizopps but i could try talking to local bank managers to see if i could secure a gig there. most of the banks around here are just one large lobby with a couple cubicles, counter, and a space in the back for employees. i have a feeling though that individual banks might not contract out the cleaning and it might be done regionally. maybe the credit unions do it on location by location basis.

>i have a feeling though that individual banks might not contract out the cleaning and it might be done regionally
probably depends how far apart they all are.

In my rural area they have different contractors for each branch just because it would cost a fortune to have my people drive 100+ miles round trip each day.

any offices are good though.

try to avoid restaurants and medical/dental offices, they tend to pay far less or have their own people do the cleaning.

nice pepe. saved to Frogfile + new desktop. made an impression on me for some reason :)

yeah, around here major banks will have multiple branches within a mile radius. the credit unions though will typically have fewer locations and are much more scattered.

how do post offices work since i imagine that is standardized country wide? does the manager of each office decide on the cleaning company, or is it done through fedbizopps?

Ha, it's actually my wallpaper too. Spread the feels.

post offices aren't listed on FedBizOpps afaik

you just have to get on their vendor's list, which means going down and handing a business card to the postmaster or whoever's in charge at the time. Ask to be put on their list.

the actual request for bids comes out of one of their district offices. In my area (Colorado) I get invitations to bid from a procurement office in Washington state.

Post office contracts are even more competitive than other gov contracts though. The price still tends to exceed $125/hour though.

so essentially there's no way to secure a gig for a single post office then?

anyways, OP...
my example is just one of thousands.
people are making mad money painting houses and mowing lawns and replacing AC and heater motors and doing all sorts of other mindless crap that you wouldn't suspect pays much.

that may not be for you and that's fine.
but to me it certainly beats the 9-5 game making less.

they put them out to bid every 1-5 years. They do bid them one at a time though. You'll bid on just one office.

nothing is secure in my line of work. People can always underbid you. But there's always more work out there and prices aren't going down.

so i'm guessing you bid on post offices all over the country and then just contract it out to someone locally?

yes. don't tell anyone though, you'll ruin it!

I'm not the only one. Like I said there's a whole group of people that do only that. Win bids and then subcontract the work. Some people netting hundreds of millions of dollars a year doing that. It's almost painful when you think how little they do.

Yeah thanks for the input. I work in Seattle but my parents live in Texas, I could take advantage of the cheaper labor there and start up some kind of service industry like house painting/cleaning/repair. Getting started is the hardest part for me with lauching a company and getting my first clients but I do see a lot of potential here.

>Some people netting hundreds of millions of dollars a year
not just on post offices of course.

it's easy to bid all kinds of contracts and then hire people to do them.

texas is tough. Low cost of living. You'll do much better in Cali or somewhere in between. I don't bid jobs in texas because I can't make money there.

That's actually genius, I could do this on a smaller scale with all the immigrants proving services in Houston, I just need the front of a legit service company then pass on the work to the amigos... hmmm, fuck I should have taken spanish class seriously.

Hmm, I'll have to check the numbers, makes sense though. I feel like it would be harder to find cheap subcontractors in Seattle but at the same time you can charge more, with the opposite of that in Texas

watch your ass. hiring illegally will bankrupt you quicker than anything.

follow the law or at least make sure you can prove in court you tried.

>I feel like it would be harder to find cheap subcontractors in Seattle but at the same time you can charge more
exactly, you're looking at margins.

what's important is that a cleaning service costs more in Seattle but a cleaner doesn't get paid more. Margins.

I have family doing this in your area and in Snohomish. It pays.

If you pass on work to a subcontractor who hires illegal immigrants, are you in the clear?

you'd have to talk to a lawyer, it depends.

Walmart has gotten fined for using cleaning contractors that hire illegals, but other companies have avoided liability. It really depends on the situation.

personally I audit my subs for compliance because fuck it, I get audited so they do too.

Sweet jesus everyone ignore this man. He hijacked a thread while back. He is legitimately autistic and his wife is uglier than a crusty geriatrics's asshole.

u need to go vacation over the weekend more often so that u realize u need a shit ton of money to do that again so that ull feel more motivated at work

I can enjoy a weekend and maybe 2 weeks of vacation a year, other than that my life is pretty much work. Mondays-Fridays are completely shot, I get in around 8 and leave around 7 most days. Sometimes I'll grab a drink after work or hit the gym, beyond that my life is just work.

What I'm motivated to do more than anything is quit the cycle of being stuck in corporate work. I don't want to be working a 60 hours a week in a shitty office job until I'm 60 so I can retire and die, I just want enough to pay my rent a little extra so I can just live/travel or do whatever I want.

He's making a fortune in a stress free career.

If that's giving up on life, then sign me the fuck up.

u should be grateful
some people cant even afford a vacation until their 50
some people cant even find a job
some people drop out of college trying to study for finance
you dont know what u have

i have more respect for u than the grouchy old woman who complains when a phone call comes to her desk 10 minutes later and complains that 5 pm is too late

>you should be grateful

Yeah that doesn't help me. I don't give a fuck about consumerism, all I want is enough to have a place to sleep, food to eat and a little money for travel/hobbies. I could easily live on 2k a month for the rest of my life ignoring inflation.

Yes people have it worst, that doesn't mean I can slap a smile on my face and skip to work and stare at my work computer for 12 hours like a zombie and skip home a be happy.

The suffering of others does not make my life any better or worst. Yes I am doing extremely well compared to the average person globally. Does that mean I should just shut up and be a office slave for the rest of my life even though I have the means to give myself greater happiness? Fuck no, if I have a way out I will damn well pursue it.

Utter bullshit

>He hijacked a thread while back
yes, I apologize for that. I did take your bait for fun.

but mostly I post to open people's eyes to the possibility that money isn't usually where you think it is or necessarily where Veeky Forums says it is.

I understand most people aren't going to believe me, I spent most of my life not believing either.

but one day you may find yourself in a management position, perhaps a small office or a bank or a government building.
And you'll find yourself paying a cleaning service $30k/year or more to clean your building an hour or two a day. And perhaps you'll remember me and realize something. And while that realization probably won't make you decide to start an office cleaning company, perhaps you'll learn a little respect for people that are 'beneath' you since they might not be beneath you at all. It's entirely possible your janitor is a millionaire. Or the person waiting your table or remodeling your bathroom. Hard to say. But either way you'll understand your parents and guidance councilors and coworkers were wrong all along. Veeky Forums was wrong all along. Everything you've learned about making money was bullshit. And maybe you'll quit your job and take a chance. If you only knew what it paid.

You've inspired me, now if i wasn't a cripple I'd definitely start a cleaning company, I'm more than willing to work my arse off, but the physical pain is just so overwhelming... so i'm stuck looking for cuck internet business ideas.

Got any advice where to start?
I live in cali in a city filled with offices.
I make 80k a year 9-5 job. I wouldn't mind working 3 nights as a cleaning agent. And i need to supplement my income anyway.

If you have no experience with cleaning I'd start by working for a janitorial company. If you speak English you should make management pretty quick and from there see how to do estimating and sales.

the hardest part to learn is how fast your competition cleans. You need to know what your rate per hour and per foot will be. I can feed you averages, but it's up to you to learn how to make those averages. There is no substitute for experience in that I'm afraid.

there are certain tricks to making money in this biz, but they boil down to working very quickly and skipping tasks that don't need done today. Knowing what you can get away with not doing and knowing how to walk into an office building and quickly clean it are matters of practice.

a cleaning company is mostly operated online, but you're right. it's not something you'd be able to start up easily without being physically able. I could do it from my desk, but I doubt I could walk you through what needs to be done.

Happy new year, mang

I'm 18 and majoring in Finance. This...alternative pathway of yours seems so attractive

Happy new year.
I don't mean to make a bunch of janitorial contractors though. Just be open to the idea that lots of business owners in menial fields are making millions. Snow plowing companies, HVAC, electrical companies, alarm and security biz, whatever.

the money is in owning a business, no matter what it does. Some are just easier to get into than others. The risk is high though. Most businesses DO fail. You need to know how to manage a small company or you won't make it. Even doing everything right it's normal to fail several times before getting it right. And that's what employment is for- learn how to make money on someone else's dime.

best of luck in all you try.

i heard of this before, i wonder if you are the same person.

yes, I've been here for years. Since Veeky Forums began on and off.

I also lurk Veeky Forums sometimes and /an/ daily.

and I don't mean to push people towards toilet scrubbing or whatever. It's just one example of how business owners make money.

I've personally made most of my money in environmental contracting for industrial mining and remediation. But that distracts from the point of my posts.

How can someone mitigate their risks in pursuing a business venture? That is to say what steps can one take in order to recover from a failed endeavor within a reasonable period of time?

mostly it's a matter of perspective.

did your venture make you a profit for a period of time? Then it wasn't a failure.

whatever money you put into a business needs to be considered gone, it's lost. Don't worry about making it back. Then there's nothing to recover from.

unless you borrowed money to make money. In that event you declare bankruptcy and move on to the next project. Which you presumably won't be borrowing money for. Which is fine, a good business shouldn't need to borrow. The whole purpose of the thing is to make money.

the next thing to consider is startup costs.

I could start a business just like mine on about $2k. I guess that might seem like a lot to lose but it's really tiny compared to the millions my business has made over the years. It would take me less than a month to make back that startup investment.

recovery from failure goes much more quickly if you didn't lose much in the first place.

Reviving thread, any more ideas besides starting a cleaning company pls

Hold up mang, this contracting is amazing and we all have something to learn from this guy

Also who the fuck insults people's wives, and on appearance, too?
>autistic

And successful. Jesus.

It's cool, most people that start contracting companies will fail. Usually several times. It's a lot of work to get started and there's significant risk.

This is true of any biz though, whether it's dropshipping or daytrading or houseflipping. Most people will fail repeatedly. And those that succeed will work their ass off to get there. OP might as well concentrate on something he likes, there's a good chance it'll take up all of his spare time and bankrupt him several times over.

>timeshare
>financially savy
pick one

Oh I never intended to give the impression that successful people are financially savvy
or that financially savvy people become successful.

those are two of Veeky Forums's biggest misconceptions.

wealthy people trying to save money?
getting wealthy by saving money?
you're joking.

>this much larping going on in a single thread
Jesus christ, post proofs or fuck off mister janitor.

Nobody pays 100+ usd/h for a fucking cleaning lady, don't be fucking retarded. It's minimum wage work and even if you're a middle man the most you could charge before classic capitalism kicks in is around $15. Let's not forget insurance and bonuses which make your income even lower.

I own a business with around 20 offices and I pay 12 usd an hour for the cleaning ladies.

I'm all for trade meme posting but do it properly please.

>I own a business with around 20 offices and I pay 12 usd an hour for the cleaning ladies.
that would be employees, not contractors.

hire a service to do the work and you won't be paying by the hour.

>post proofs or fuck off mister janitor.
sure. Here's an award notice for the cleaning of 6 Forest Service buildings ranging in size from 1500-4000 square feet.

you'll notice that the buildings are cleaned 5 days per week in the summer and 3 days per week the rest of the year.

cleaning this much office space takes 1-3 hours per day on average.

notice the awards are for $20k-$40k plus. You do the math. The most generous reading of this award gives you an average of $75/hour. In real life the work is going to be done in an hour or less and the contractor will be grossing over $100/hour. Which is low due to the huge amount of competition for Forest Service jobs and the fact that they don't require liability insurance.

fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=36271727c5916c22ddd1d19ea3b500a1&tab=core&_cview=1

also
>pretending to be a business owner
>doesn't know the difference between contractors and employees
just sayin

my mistake, the $20k job was for cleaning 2 times per week. Meaning 104 cleanings.

if we assume 1 hour spent cleaning the tiny office it averages almost $200 per hour.

Perhaps they average 2 hours per time, though I somewhat doubt it. It's tiny.

I pay a middle man for the cleaning ladies because the insurance I would have to pay for them would make it more expensive to hire them and it gives me someone to sue if they steal/destroy something.

I'm not from America, but the thing with government funded jobs is, that you usually have to participate in public auctions that almost always well established companies will win because of their low operation cost and high quality equipment.

In general, you shouldn't advice someone to try to chase a market that only exists because of government subsities. My business is buying ruins all over Germany for 20k-100k each and getting public funding of around 250k-1 million each for renovating them. Then I rent/sell them, making much more than you.

The thing is, nobody can enter this market anymore, the companies are way to well established and have fun getting substities if you're not a million dollar company or not having a friend that is a high up official.

I provided government jobs as proof because how much they pay is public information freely available on the internet.

In my experience Forest Service jobs pay LESS than average for my field.

But you asked for proof so I delivered.

I'm skeptical of how anybody would find enough high paying gigs to work full time for $75/h 160h/m. Maybe I'm wrong and there really is such a market in the US, but in Germany cleaning ladies are usually one euro jobbers. It's better to hire them from a middle man, it's just so much less work.

The US market is pretty weird, I have no idea why trades are so overvalued there. Trades in Germany are pretty normal priced. I think it's the school system

>Maybe I'm wrong
no, you're right. Say each 2000 square feet of office takes you 1 hour to clean and makes you $100.

that means you could conceivably clean 8 office buildings that size and make $250,000 just working by yourself.

in reality you'd never get that many. I have 5 jobs in that size range and I employ 6 people to do them. They get very few hours but very good pay.

Damn mate, that's good shit. How much do you pay them? Why don't you get a few mexicans and pay them minimum wage while you get the juicy 100 dollars an hour for their work?

>How much do you pay them?
I pay them on average $100/hour as subs.
I don't get Mexicans because that's illegal and I work for the government and companies that audit me for legal compliance.

I charge more than $100/hour though. In part because I have to work legally and that costs more. I also do a lot of specialized industrial work that pays more than regular janitorial work because of additional hazards present. I'm not strictly a janitorial contractor, most of my money comes from environmental contracting.

There are legal mexicans my friend or legal negros. Get yourself some wagies already and make mad bank.

also mine is a very small business. I don't usually gross more than $250k per year and I usually only have about $1 million in work under contract. I personally made less than $100k in 2016. I'd guess it will come out to about $90k net before taxes.

you undoubtedly make more than me. The only real advantage I have is that I do very little work for my money. I consider myself retired.

>Get yourself some wagies already and make mad bank.
no real need.

as long as I keep a million dollars worth of work going I can borrow pretty much anything I want from the bank and probably afford to pay it back. I prefer not working to making more money.

I can totally respect that mentality, early retirement seems great.

I like it. I've gotten so lazy I probably couldn't work a real job anymore though.

You say environmental contracting, and google defines that as, "Environmental contractors are usually hired after a building or land area has been deemed unusable or unsafe due to chemical or biological contamination. They perform required restoration or cleanup activities to make the area safe or suitable for use."

So I'm guessing this business has extremely high startup costs and lots of liability so you'd have to be very well established to get contracts?

What exactly do you do? Clean up oil spills and dump the waste somewhere in the Rockies?

How the hell do you clean 2k sqft of office in an hour?? Just the tiny firm I work at has four bathrooms, a fuck ton of windows to clean with blinds to dust, about 40 trash bins to empty, carpet to vacuum, etc... It takes me about 4 hours to clean my 2k sqft apt. too and I have that down to a science after 2 years of doing it once a week. Not doubting its possible, just extremely interested in doing this since I live in the PNW and could potentially pick up a bunch of these cleaning contracts for the forest service and all the military bases around.

The interesting thing about this award is that it pays a total of $211,187 per year for the cleaning of 6 Forest Service office buildings having an average size of about 3000 sq ft each.

the award is for a 5 year contract, base year plus four.

which means the contract is worth over a million dollars by itself. You could make a very nice small business off just this one contract.

fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=7e69ebc1160ddc6738e6cb084a83059e&tab=core&_cview=1

Am I reading this right when it says this contract was previously awarded to pay over 2 MILLION dollars?!?! What specific steps would I need to take to win this contract and how exactly do I find the details?

Debating showing up for the site visit on january 4th just for the fuck of it

>I'm guessing this business has extremely high startup costs and lots of liability so you'd have to be very well established to get contracts?
yes.
>What exactly do you do?
I don't say because I'm one of very few companies in the area doing it.
>How the hell do you clean 2k sqft of office in an hour??
Forest Service buildings are mostly empty except in the summer, so they don't get a lot of use most of the year.

but mostly you skip cleaning things that don't need cleaned. The government has mostly gone to performance based contracts, meaning I have to provide a certain level of cleanliness but that doesn't necessarily mean cleaning everything every day. Rotate some tasks, clean one part one day and another part another day.

also cleaning contractors work on average 3 times faster than employees because we're not on the clock. So there's no incentive to go slow.

You read that right.

I posted the award letter, meaning this job has already been won.

I looked at it this year and decided not to bid on it myself. I could win the thing but I don't need more work and it pays less than I like.

if you want to bid government jobs see pic related I made. You can always ask me about details, it's one of the few things I'm an expert at.

but yeah, the thing is for 5 years, it was given to 2 janitorial companies, and the total value is $1,056,000.

Damn this shit is crazy... Reading the contract, you'd have to comply with over 100 government regulations down to the cleaning supplies you use being eco-friendly... Submitting a 40+ page written proposal... get the right licenses which I don't even know what they are.. haha I see now best way to get started really is from the bottom, but that's not even that bad since the contract mandates you pay your workers at least 20.10 per hour with fringe benefits...

>.>

Once you've done one government job you learn how to do all that. It's no big deal.

the written proposal is standard boilerplate, I copypasta most of those 40+ pages. The actual part of your proposal dealing with a specific job is usually just 2-4 pages outlining how you're going to work and how much you'll charge.

I bid one or two of these sorts of contracts every year, it takes me less than 40 hours to go through the whole process.

I spend way more time bullshitting on Veeky Forums than I do bidding jobs.

Thanks for the info. Got my BS in Chem E, checking out some of these environmental jobs now, thinking of applying to some then maybe looking into the contracting later on. Some refineries around here are looking to clean up and maybe I can take advantage. A metal recycling plant is also offering 115k for a chemist lol...

>a 40+ page written proposal...
they don't use real paper anymore, but for comparison here's a gov contract I won in 2006 I think. It's pretty heavy reading, but I've got industrial contracts that are over 2 inches thick.
I did a BS Geology, I found there's more money in owning your own than working for others.

$115k is damn good money though. More than I usually make especially if there's beni's.

Hey post a pdf or something of what the 40 page paper is. Or post a link. I really like this idea.

sorry, I didn't see you had posted a different RFQ

that one is an 8(a) set-aside, meaning you have to have prior 8(a) certification with the SBA. This isn't difficult to get, but it's sortof the "medium sized business" class. If I understand it correctly you won't be able to bid on small-business set-asides with an 8(a) certification. You can only bid on 8(a) contracts and bid against other 8(a) contractors.

on the plus side, most 8(a) contractors start off as millionaires and end up multimillionaires on a much larger scale. The program is meant to grow businesses from local companies into national competitors. Even international. And it tends to work.

also, yes. $2 million over 5 years.

It will generally contain all of the information listed on this page and parts of the next:

acquisition.gov/far/html/52_212_213.html

i hate to be that guy, but it's "worse," not "worst".

kill yourself