You don't have to do it all yourself, or within your own company, to generate income. Assume that carpet cleaning is your stock in trade. You may not have the time nor inclination to do any work on your customers' wood floors. Why not offer wood floor refinishing to your carpet customers via a skilled subcontractor? Example: while I was doing a $590 carpet cleaning & protection job yesterday morning, my wood floor refinisher - Jack - was doing the sanding portion of another customer's wood floors. They have a 900 sq. ft. rental apartment on the first floor of their home. Jack sands the entire area, then applies the first of 3 coats of an oil-based polyurethane on Day 1. Late in Day 2, he returns and applies the 2nd coat. And he wraps it up when he returns for the final time late in Day 3 to put down the final coat. He charges me his wholesale rate of $1.25/sq. ft. I charge my customer a still very reasonable retail rate of $2.15/sq. ft. My profit:
900 sq. ft. x .90/sq. ft. = $810.00!
Then later that same day I visited another customer's home who wants a proposal on a wood floor job of about 1100 sq. ft.
I found my very talented floor refinisher on AngiesList: www.angieslist.com. He has an all-"A" rating (reviews are written by his customers) in every category: professionalism, quality of work, etc., etc. So I knew he would be good.
With the warm weather just around the corner, I'm now looking for a similarly skilled wood deck cleaner/sealer so as to be able to offer this service as well. I tried this for the first time last year, but the guy who told me he knew everything about doing decks turned out to be a bust. Didn't even have his own vehicle! This year I'm going to be more selective.
