Those of us in the carpet and upholstery cleaning business are not in that business at all of course. We're in the same business as every other small business owner... the MONEY business.
If income does not exceed expenses... well, we don't have a business! At least not in the long term.
I find that many carpet cleaners simply do not know the cost of being in business and as a result are slowly going broke.
Let me explain...
If it costs you 40,000 per year (pounds, dollars euro's, whatever...) to run your business and the wand is only going over the carpet for twenty hours per week (4 hours a day) then you have 960 billable hours. (20x48 working weeks = 960). Dividing the 40,000 by 960 gives you a breakeven figure of over 40 per billable hour. This is an "on the job" figure.
In fact, if you want to pay yourself just 20k each year... then the billable hour cost to just pay your wages is over 20 an hour alone assuming again that the wand is only moving across the carpet for four hours a day. (measure it... it might surprise you!)
Why then do so many carpet cleaners insist on being a hero by taking on work that they perhaps would be better off giving a miss? Like spending hours cleaning filthy carpets that really should be replaced or trying to remove stains that the homeowner would be quite happy to live with or cleaning cheap rugs that would be more cost effective to replace? Of course, it's great when a customer tells you that you've removed a stain or cleaned an item that a previous cleaner couldn't.
I've read recently about a number of carpet cleaners who will attempt any job whatsoever regardless of whether it proves profitable. They say that they love a challenge! I'm guessing that they hope the customer will appreciate them for the professional that they are even more and imagine that they will be the talk of all their friends and neighbours. And I realize that there are times when it CAN be good business to please a customer in this way. However, for much of the time all it's doing is eating into profit.
I clearly remember in the 1980's getting a call about removing fake blood on a carpet (used by actors apparently). I responded that I would do the job at the end of the working day. The distance to travel was over thirty miles... but I wanted to be the hero by removing the red stain. It was the early days of red stain removal and I had just been trained in a new product virtually guaranteed to remove the American drink "Kool-Aid" which was a problem across the pond.
I worked on the stains (plural) for well over an hour and could not remove them at all. As such, I felt I couldn't charge for what I had done. The homeowner clearly felt sorry for me and gave me five pounds.
But even if I had been able to remove the stain, what reasonably could I have charged? Well the travel time was over two hours plus nearly an hour attempting stain removal. That's over three hours plus fuel!
I've never forgotten this. Nowadays I'm not interested in small stain removal (alone) or problem cheap rugs. Or even problem carpets. There's more than enough well paying "normal" carpet cleaning out there. I don't care whether a homeowner will think that as a professional carpet cleaner I should be able to clean anything and will think less of me (more than likely they're not thinking of me at all!)
I realise that I'm in the MONEY business and it's a lot cheaper to be rich than famous.