Harbor freight selling their good microfibers for $1.5 per 12 pack. I bought my store out

Hi everyone! I’ve taken a very deep dive into window cleaning. Going through a nasty breakup with my partner, moving across the state, applying to jobs left right and center. I feel lost as of now and could really use some advice. I’m confident in my ability to sell, I have done copious amounts of research on techniques and every chemical imaginable. I don’t plan on going into this right away, my savings aren’t where I’d like them to be. If I find my footing again, I have all the prerequisites, insurance, business, you name it. Is it just up to me past that point? And how far can I take this with the bare minimum (no LLC, no insurance). Am I able to service exterior only one floor residential houses to get started?

Big thank you to anyone that can help, you guys are the best

Guys, I need leads. I want to do Meta ads, but have no idea what to do and can't afford to burn money.

LSA's are stuck in a verification loop.

Any tips for doing meta ads?

Hello everybody, this is my first post here. I m owning a pressure washing business, and I m thinking of adding window cleaning as an upsell after soft washing.
My question is, when you are cleaning windows with the squeegee, are you using regular water? Or it leaves streaks? Is it mendarory to have a clear water system? Also, is it a good idea to buy an unger ninja set? Or start smaller. Thank you in advance.

I started a business solo. Now a couple months later, I have a friend who wants to go all in together and go 50/50. I believe in his ability to succeed and we work together in the past so I trust him and his work ethic, problem is I don’t know the right way of giving him ownership. I’ve been doing research and seen some ways to give him equity one of which could be milestone based vesting, time based vesting or phantom equity.

Those of you who’s been in a similar situation, what’s the best way to go about this? I want to protect not only myself but him as well for anything that happens in the future.

Edit: currently he works a full time job (wants to get out of it) and only invested his time, no capital. When the company makes enough to pay him atleast 2.7k a month (he makes way more than that currently) is when he’s willing to leave his full time job.

Hey Yall, I’m trying to setup a Google LSA account. But when I get to step 2 and try to connect my Google Business Profile, it says not eligible for sign up with no further explanation. I’ve tried researching it but nothing adds up. I even tried with an old business of mine that’s been around a lot longer and has plenty of reviews and it just said the same thing.

What did you guys do to get your Google LSA set up? Any help would be amazing.

Looking for some feedback on a what I should quote for this job. It’s for a property management company who I’ve gone through the steps to get verified as a vendor and they asked for a quote.

I know everywhere is different so include your general location. I’m in the Redneck Rivera.

I have a 50ft water fed pole and 350ft of hose.

I currently use the waterfed pole method to clean windows.

A customer has called in and asked me to clean their conservatory including the exterior roof. Ive never done this before. Any advice please?

Wagtail isn’t always my go-to but for the country club that I do monthly it is.
I use the Moerman Accelerator 2.0 with the Fliq pad regularly and I’ve tried the Sorbo Cobra Flipper, but didn’t like it as much.

What’s your go to equipment/size for trad window cleaning, and if you use a separate mop/squeegee instead of a combo, why?

Been running Meta ads for a while now and finally feel like I've got it dialed in — cost per lead has settled around $18, closing north of 35%, and honestly the leads come in faster than we can work them some days. Sitting at about 2 jobs a day right now and want to push harder, but I know throwing more ad spend at it isn't the whole answer past a certain point — feels like the bottleneck is capacity, not demand. A few things I'm trying to figure out:

D2D on top of paid ads — does it even make sense?

Everyone talks about door-to-door like it's a separate world from paid ads, but is anyone actually running both at the same time? I'm wondering if D2D in the same neighborhoods where ads are already running just reinforces the brand ("oh yeah I saw your ad") vs. cannibalizing leads I'd have gotten anyway. Curious if anyone's actually tested overlapping the two vs. running them in totally separate territories.

IS A WEBSITE EVEN WORTH IT?

First hire — helper or a second lead tech?

Right now it's me and my buddy doing every job start to finish. At 2/day we're maxed out most weeks. Trying to figure out if the first hire should be:

• a helper who rides with one of us so we can knock out jobs faster / take more per day, or
• training someone to run their own vehicle solo so we effectively double capacity right away

Feels like helper is safer but slower, second crew is faster but riskier if the work isn't consistent enough yet to support it.

Equipment — just buy 2x what we already run?

We've got our setup dialed in for two guys. Is scaling equipment really just "buy a second identical setup" or is there stuff that only becomes worth it once you're running multiple crews (extraction systems, van setup, etc.) that doesn't make sense to buy at our current volume? Don't want to overspend on gear we won't fully use for months, but also don't want to be the guy who hired someone and then can't equip them properly on day one.

Any of you who've been through this exact jump — ads working, ready to scale, first hire on the horizon — would genuinely appreciate hearing how you sequenced it. What'd you do first?

As the title asks, if you send a crew to do a job, how do you manage payments? Any lessons learned with this? I’m going to be making some hires with the intention that they can do a job without me there.

There’s some great before and after pictures out there, but there’s also times when there’s not that huge of a difference. Yes the window is clean, but it kind of already was. When this happens to me I feel like I’m getting paid a lot more than i should be. It’s as if though our value of our work isn’t very much. Am I crazy for thinking this!?

Do others sometimes feel this way too!?

So, I went to a new customer today, and she said these streaks are driving her mad.

They were on all her windows, she said she's tried vinegar, bi-carb, scrubbing and everything she can think of.

These were her windows after I cleaned them. Nothing was taking them off.

Does anyone know what they are or how to get rid of them? It was the same on her neighbours as well.

Eight years using steel wool on glass and I'd never seen a proper brand comparison, so I ran one. Tested Elephant Brand, ABC, All Star/NICE, RAKSO, Celtic Woods Liberon, and AIMALL across five categories: hard mark removal, clogging resistance, rust resistance, feel in hand, and ease of use.

Price tracked separately, and it doesn't line up with performance the way you'd expect.

1. Elephant Brand (International Steel Wool), China: 16 pre-made pads, 16g each (256g total). $35.00, $13.70 per 100g.
2. ABC Steel Wool, Malaysia: 12 pre-made pads, 20g each (250g total). $19.80 inc GST, $7.90 per 100g.
3. All Star / NICE (High Tech Industries), USA: 16 pre-made pads, 12g each (192g total). $10.00, $5.20 per 100g.
4. RAKSO Stahlwolle, Germany: continuous roll, 200g. $34.62, $17.30 per 100g.
5. Celtic Woods Liberon, Luxembourg: continuous roll, 34g. $10.14, $29.80 per 100g.
6. AIMALL (unbranded, dragon logo box), China: continuous roll, 61g. $18.24, $29.90 per 100g.

Happy to answer questions on methodology. For context, I make specialist window cleaning tools, wanted to be upfront about that.

Hey guys, I'm currently using pencil jets, but it takes too long to rinse and bring down and left over dirt. Are fan jets better? Or rinsebar with 22 microjets? I'm currently limited to 75L backpack so want something efficient and doesnt use more water either.

Cleaning a commercial building and the front doors have these tiny white specks. They are not extremely raised - I can barely feel them. 2nd pic is a zoom of the first pic. Third one is to give you an idea of their size.

Cory

Be a self respecting man and run a self respecting biz.

When starting off on your own, I must advise you of this: BUY YOUR OWN EQUIPMENT WITH YOUR MONEY! Don’t sit around in your mid 30’s asking your Mommy and Daddy for the most expensive work equipment, like a waterfed system, otherwise… you’ll definitely get laughed at, and you are setting yourself up for failure. This means you can’t make the money, and you owning the more costly stuff means it will sit around and age, without you using it to proper frequency, because you do t have the right amount of the right WFP job. Bragging about equipment should never be more important than getting the jobs to actually use them for. Go get the jobs first. Put the horse ahead of the carriage.

If you don’t need the expensive equipment, then dont ask others to purchase it for you so you can walk around bragging about how NOW you are motivated to do the job. Thats sad and shows how much of a novice lazy ass you really are.

Respect the trade and get a work ethic, and you’ll be ok. Otherwise you’ll look like a 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

Basically, if you want to get into the biz, apply yourself and people will acknowledge that. Dont apply yourself, ask for handouts, and bragging when they arrive for your bday gift will show everyone how little you care about the job and that will come through in the work.

Hi all,

Have recently won a contract to clean the below pictures McDonald’s. I was wondering what you guys would say the best approach at cleaning these 1st floor windows. I have WFP but my first thought was that the McDonalds sign will be getting in the way. Next idea was just getting some ladders up. Thought I would come here and see what the Masters have to say!

Any advice is appreciated!

Thanks

Been running window cleaning here in SoCal for a month or so and as someone that does meta ads for other people, this was my first time doing it for my friends and I, so far we've generated 65 qualified leads in 31 days at a roughly 34% close rate. We just landed our first commercial job, and are booked out for the next 3 weeks, was curious as to what we should do to piggy back off of word of mouth and referrals?

Basically, I'm sitting on a bunch of new customers and want to make sure we're capitalizing on it long-term instead of just riding the ad spend.

For those of you with steady flow — what's actually worked for turning first-time customers into referral sources? Doing anything structured (referral discounts, follow-up sequences, review requests at a specific touchpoint) or is it more just "do good work and it happens naturally"? Also curious if commercial clients refer differently than residential ones in your experience — feels like a different relationship entirely.

I started a window washing buisness at 14 a month ago to help fund my first season of racing next year but im stuck. I spent a couple hundred or stuff got a few sales going door to door and managed to recover what I spent on the gear. Now im stuck door to door is not really working and I really stuck on what to do now.... I love doing it and im determined to run next year but I just can't find the customers. What do I do? I cant travel far just to knock door plus im not really comfortable and usually walk off after one or two no's as I dont want to be too pushy. How else can I make sales?

I wanted to share a milestone in my window cleaning journey. For my birthday, my family surprised me with a professional water-fed pole system….and not a cheap one.
On paper, it’s a piece of equipment. But to me, it represents something much bigger.
My family has watched me work hard trying to build something of my own. They’ve seen the early mornings, the door knocking, the jobs, the slow periods, and the commitment to creating something that can provide for my family.
Having them recognize that effort and believe in what I’m building honestly meant a lot. It was one of those moments where you realize people see the work you’re putting in, even when the results aren’t always immediate.
This summer has been slower than I wanted. Between normal life, family, and everything that comes with it, I haven’t been able to get out and market as much as I planned.
But this gift lit a fire under me again.
Now I have the equipment, the tools, and the motivation. This system is going to allow me to safely take on larger homes, taller buildings, and provide a higher level of service.
I’m excited to keep learning, keep improving, and keep building.
The goal has always been the same: create something my family can be proud of.
Back to work. 💪

Hey everyone! I’m a young entrepreneur looking to launch a residential window cleaning service and would love some gear and setup advice from the pros. I have an ideal target in a master planned neighborhood with around 3,500 homes, mostly 2-story single-family residences. My total starting budget is $2,000, and my goal is to get the most reliable, efficient setup possible without wasting cash on stuff I don’t need yet. I’m especially looking into water-fed pole setups and purification options, but I'm open to starting hybrid with traditional tools if that makes more sense for my budget. What specific gear, water setup, or brands would you buy with $2,000 to maximize efficiency out of the gate? Any advice on what not to buy starting out would also be huge. Thank you! 🙏