Hey all, long time since I logged on here (January to be specific). Hope business is going well for everyone!
Personally, I can't believe my company has survived this long. I own a small Janitorial/Pressure Washing company here in Baltimore MD where things (mainly on the PW side of things) have been pretty slow. Slow to the tune of not getting any work at all sense last spring. Well, to be honest, I have not been able to aggressively go after any PW work, due to physically working all of my janitorial work. Reason for that? My ex-partner bailed on me and the company about 9 months ago, leaving me to keep the company alive. Yay!
So, here I am, still working these residential/commercial janitorial customers when along comes this great big ol' commercial janitorial account worth an additional 35k a year. Hmm... with me working this thing by myself for 3 months, I could come up with about 9k to buy myself a fairly decent hot water pressure washing rig, so I can actually go after the only work I even started this company for in the first place... commercial pressure washing contracts.
I cannot even describe the sacrifices I have to endure to even survive this long. Well, maybe I can. I moved out of my house and moved onto a houseboat (cheapest possible living arrangement I could think of), scrimped on those little things that ya don't really need (like food/clothing/etc), and basically got up and worked myself silly every day. I guess in hindsight, maybe it was a good thing that I had to fire 10 people (not at the same time, over the coarse of a year, and for things like not showing up to work, doing a half a** job, bad attitude, etc), and just did the work myself. Really, I don't b**tch about any of this. I am a hard headed SOB and would not give up. Now, FINALLY I land something worth a few bucks and have every intention to funnel most (if not all) of that extra money from that big new commercial account, to make something big happen.
What are my intentions, when I finally do get that hot water PW rig? Well, over the course of the last few months, I have had to actually TURN DOWN large scale commercial jobs (Like a large government welcome center in MD, a chain of Dairy Queens, and some other assorted big money contracts), simply because I didn't have the artillery to handle something like that. My loss, and I'm sure someone else's huge gain (that makes me wanna puke).
That's ok. I will stick to my guns and the battle plan in my head and eventually have what I need to go after the coveted PW contracts (that, like I said, was the only reason I even put this company together, almost two years ago.)
*Whew*..... that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Tom Carter
tcarter@ultrabrite.net
www.ultrabrite.net
A veteran owned company
Still Alive and Kicking
Linear Mode
