Is an Entrepreneur Born or Made?
20/02/12

We often look at successful business tycoons like Richard Branson and Alan Sugar, making the assumption that those guys were just born to be rich. That they had some gift divinely bestowed upon them that makes them superior to us mere mortals. To a large degree this assumption is probably correct.

What is commonly forgotten however is that not every business person is as successful as Richard Branson, most small businesses that make a comfortable, as opposed to exorbitant profit, are run by people just like you and me.

Before the recession even started, Dave Jenvey, the founder of ShineTime, was struggling to find a job that was of any worth.

Although he did have a job at this time, it was dead-end one in a badly managed and going-nowhere company. Being intelligent and hard working, Dave felt he was wasted in such a position.

At the same time however, Dave found that there were no other jobs out there for him, employers simply weren’t interested. It was then that Dave realised a startling and disturbing truth at an age much younger than his contemporaries: that he was considered expendable by the society that had nurtured him to adulthood, and now he was alone in a very cold, barren world.

There was the university option open to Dave, but he didn’t want to go down that road for two reasons, number 1: it simply wasn’t for him as he had always despised the monotony of formal education. And number 2: he sensed instinctively that the acquisition of a degree no longer guaranteed financial success as it has done in the past (his instincts would prove correct later of course).

Dave’s father a couple years before had suggested to Dave to start a window cleaning business. Initially dismissing the idea, but after finally realising nobody was going to give him a chance, Dave decided to go for it.

So…by looking at the example of Dave, we can see that in truth, he was never born to be an entrepreneur at all, in his case it was pushed onto him by outside economic circumstances.

Dave’s Birmingham window cleaning, gutter cleaning, pressure washing and conservatory roof cleaning business, ShineTime, was pretty much an instant success. His intelligence, hard-working attitude, attention to detail and dedication to quality, proved a winning combination.

What was his local employers’ loss was Dave’s gain, as he became the head of a successful company whilst still a youngster. And in a turn of poetic justice, those same businesses that before wouldn’t let him through the door when he wanted a job, were now eager to employ the cleaning services of Dave’s company.

When evaluating someone such as Dave, it must become apparent to others, that if just another average Joe like Bromsgrove’s Dave Jenvey can create a successful business, then surely they can too.

What is the Point of Running my own Business when the Economy is in Ruins?
10/02/12

For many at the moment getting a steady job and earning the most basic of livings is proving difficult, even for those that are prepared to earnestly work hard in any job given to them. The reason for this is that there are more jobs than there are people. The workforce is surplus to the actual work.

Almost every day we hear of more layoffs and redundancies in just about every sector of the economy.

For a true entrepreneur however, one blessed with focus, drive and unbridled ambition, even in the gravest, most dark of times, opportunities should present themselves. If anything, that individual should revel in difficult economic times, because after all, the business of making money is merely a highly-addictive, albeit at times, very stressful game.

We should feel and embrace the challenge, not cower and feel chastised. We should face up to the task at hand and believe unwaveringly it will be conquered, just as a rock climber does when confronted with a daunting new cliff face. We have to know, not hope, that we are the ultimate masters of our own destinies.

None of us in the UK are starving, at least not yet anyway, and so because of this favourable situation, we should view the world’s current financial woes as just another cliff face that given time, will become just anther notch on our belt of triumphs. 

This article was written by Dave Jenvey, owner of ShineTime, a Birmingham and West Midlands window cleaning company.

Has the Cleaning Industry become more Competitive since the Recession?
24/01/12

As with any downturn in an economy, people find themselves out of work, these same people then begin thinking of other ways of making money, some of them may decide to turn to crime out of desperation.

Other, wiser, and maybe smarter individuals decide to engage their entrepreneurial instincts. ShineTime has noticed the advent of many new window cleaning careers since things began to get tough. 

Dave Jenvey, the founder of ShineTime, a Birmingham window cleaning company, was apprehensive as the recession in 2008 detonated onto not just British business, but the global economy as a whole.

Being just a young whippersnapper, Dave had never witnessed anything comparable to this before, as he was too young to remember the recession of the early 90’s.

Dave foresaw his fledging business biting the dust under the flood of new competitors, and customers deciding to cut back their household and business expenses.

It was then with pleasant surprise that ShineTime found that while certain areas of work dropped off, namely the large pressure washing work, ShineTime’s Birmingham window cleaning business continues to remain rock solid.

ShineTime is currently busier than its ever been before and continues to grow at an exponential rate. This is in stark contrast to how many other businesses around ShineTime have succumbed to the difficult conditions.

Lets all hope for Dave’s sake things continue in this upward trajectory.

Just Why has the ShineTime Cleaning Machine continued to March Onward & Upward?
15/01/12

There have been proposed several theories for ShineTime’s continued success.

1. Unlike large companies that have huge overheads, ShineTime’s relatively small size allows it to undercut larger competitors, whilst still delivering high quality. It’s the old David vs Goliath adage.   

2. ShineTime’s window cleaning service is comparatively only a small expense to businesses and domestic customers, when compared against larger expenses like having new building work done, purchasing new vehicles, or going abroad.

3. ShineTime delivers high quality cleaning services at sensible prices. While it goes without saying that any company that wants to do well needs to provide great products or services, it is also important that this is done at prices that are both fair to the customer and also fair to ShineTime.

It is important that we don’t work hard for no, or next to no profit. This is a completely unsustainable business practice, and any company that operates in this way will ultimately lose out.

At ShineTime we realise we certainly aren’t the cheapest cleaning company out there. Unlike many of our newer competitors, we do our pricing thoroughly to make sure we turn a healthy profit on each and every job. At the same time however, you can rest assured that the work we do will be carried out correctly and to a high standard.  

How to Succeed as a Self-Employed Person by ShineTime
05/01/12

Running your own business can invoke a number of different experiences, it can be very stressful, tiring, require you to work very long hours, wreck your social life, require you to make umpteen sacrifices, and ultimately be very lonely.

On the upside, if you make your business a success you’ll in the long run probably earn more money than most of the employed people you know, and hopefully enjoy the luxuries that go along with financial success, nice car, nice house, etc.

There are certain things you need to do however to make your business succeed, the first is to actually start your business.

It seems an obvious mistake but you’ll be amazed at how many people make it. They’ll pontificate and procrastinate until they’re blue in the face, all the meanwhile watching as time slips away from them, and before they know it, they’ve become too old and haggard to start anything.

The second most common mistake people make once they have started a business is that they are not proactive enough in chasing customers.

They won’t be willing to do things like knock on doors or give out leaflets because they’ll deem those things beneath them. Or maybe it is that they are in actual fact scared to be a success.

Whatever the reasons for it, they will in the end fail because advertising and getting enquiries is the lifeblood of any business. Without paying customers you’re nothing. If you need to dance around in a chicken suit to get customers then do it, or at the very least pay somebody else to. You’ve got to remember running a business isn’t about looking ‘cool’ it’s about making money, and the more money you make the better.

After you’ve avoided the first two mistakes, keeping working hard, once you turn enough profit, employ good people to do the donkey work, don’t do something stupid like cheat the taxman, and most importantly, make sure you look after your customers and do a bloody good job at whatever it is that your business does. 

ShineTime’s Thoughts on Why Free Enterprise is so Important for our Nation
16/12/11

It is a fact that often eludes many people, but the health of a nation’s economy should be our number 1 priority, everything else is secondary, even war.

Residents in developed countries like the UK make the foolhardy mistake of assuming they are entitled to a good quality of life, somehow forgetting the millions worldwide who live in abject poverty without enough food to feed themselves or their families.

This unfortunately is the cruel reality of life in a dog eat dog world. If the UK is to remain one of the wealthiest nations on the globe then it can only be done by encouraging entrepreneurial activity. Without a mentality that helps businesses thrive, then the standard of living for everybody on our tiny island will decrease, and in time it could be our families that are the ones starving.

Without being in the lucky position of a country like Russia that has access to huge natural resources of oil, gas, coal and steel, we are a nation that has to rely on our wits.

It is regrettable then that our country’s intellectual prowess and our ability to outthink the competition, appears to be on the decline.

What everybody in the UK needs to be made aware of is that we are in a global marketplace, business has never been as ferociously tough as it is now, and without discipline, organisation and good old hard work, we will all be poorer as a result. We are in direct competition with every other nation in the world to provide ourselves with the best standard of living we can.

Maybe things have just become too easy in Britain, our bloated welfare state being representative of the soft underbellies we’ve unwittingly grown, just waiting to be slaughtered by our leaner and meaner rivals over in the far-east.

There are other problems of course, the mindset that allowed our banking institutions to give credit cards to people in minimum wage jobs with no discernable assets, was quite clearly suicidal to anyone with a grain of sense. Although it must be said that the banks can’t be wholly to blame for the reckless spending of the masses, individuals must take the vast burden of blame for not living within their means. Thankfully it appears the days of thoughtless money lending are over.

What is very saddening however is a generation of young people that will undoubtedly be wasted to unemployment. With an ageing and unproductive older generation, we need every young person we’ve got to be in work, to somehow fund the huge pension time bomb that is just waiting to explode all over an already crippling budget deficit.

Many young people now reason that the best solution is to hide in education and try and wait it out in the hope the job situation improves. Deep down they know as well as everybody else it is likely their future will be very bleak, even with an admirable education located neatly on their CV.

Instead of shipping thousands upon thousands off to university, has it ever crossed anyone’s mind to inform these utterly lost young people that they can create their own jobs and destinies by starting their own businesses?

After all, what is there for a young person to lose by going it alone: getting a university education only results in huge debts, followed by long periods of joblessness. And if they still live with their parents, then it’s not as if they will be going hungry or living in a cardboard box if their business ventures fail.   

Surely there must come a time when we realise that it’s beneficial to keep ourselves out of expensive, demoralising and pointless wars, and concentrate on building businesses, building our wealth, and building ourselves futures with which we can hold some optimism.

Article & Thoughts by Birmingham Commercial and Domestic Window Cleaning Company ShineTime

ShineTime’s Acqusition of a Gutter Vacuum
07/12/11

ShineTime is proud to announce it has recently purchased a 30ft Clark 20 gutter vacuum. This machine comes equipped with an attachable mirror and weed-removal hook. A very useful tool, it can help us to clean gutters faster and more efficiently than other cleaning companies that use just a ladder and a bucket.

Another benefit of a gutter vacuum is that allows its operator to clean out gutters from the safety of the ground, and to also clean gutters that can’t be accessed via a set of ladders.

It works by having a wet and dry vacuum that attaches to a 30ft aluminium hollow pole. The pole has a U-shaped bend on the end of it that you then place into the gutter. The powerful vacuum will proceed to suck out the mud, leaves and moss.  

ShineTime can clean gutters both commercial and domestic in Birmingham and the West Midlands, so give us a call if this is a service you require.

What if I have Lead Windows?
28/11/11

Most lead windows nowadays, are in actual fact faux lead windows. The lead strips are just glued onto the outside of a regular picture window.

This means the inside of the window will be smooth and you’ll be able to clean them with a squeegee in the normal way.

If however you have genuine lead windows then you won’t be able to use your squeegee.

You’ll wet the window with your sponge or applicator as usual, but then you’ll just use your dry clean cloths to get the window clean. You do this by rubbing them over the glass until all the dirt and water is removed and the window is dry and clean.

You will quickly get through your cloths when doing lead windows as they will get wet very quickly, and once they are wet they are useless.

Window Cleaning for Beginners - Part 2:
23/11/11

1. The first thing you need to do is squirt some washing up liquid into your bucket and then pour some regular cold tap water into it as well.

2.  Take your sponge and dip it into your bucket, then scrub it over the window.

3. Pick up your squeegee, put it at the top of the window, and do one horizontal stroke.

4. Dry off the rubber blade of your squeegee on one of your dry, clean cloths.

5. Repeat the horizontal strokes, drying your squeegee rubber off on your cloth between each stroke.

6. Once you have done the entire window and it look cleans, you may see the odd trail of water left behind by the squeegee. Take your dry clean cloth and mop it up. You might also want to scratch off any stubborn deposits of dirt that are still there with your fingernail or glass scraper. Always wet the window first before using your glass scraper as you could inadvertently scratch your window.

7. The last thing to do is run your dry clean cloth along the edges of the glass where the glass meets the window frame, as there will still be water there that your squeegee couldn’t get at.

Once the dry clean cloth you are using gets too dirty or wet, then you’ll need to use another cloth. You may need a fair number of cloths on standby if you have a lot of windows to clean.

As you can see cleaning windows is fairly straightforward. You will see ShineTime’s Birmingham professional window cleaners using more complicated squeegee techniques that require more skill. They do this to increase their speed on each job, thus allowing them to make more money.

You could try to master these more difficult squeegee techniques, but it really isn’t worth your time if you are only going to be cleaning the inside windows of your house.

Difficulties arise in cleaning windows where the access to the window is awkward and this is where you should employ the services of a professional window cleaning company like Birmingham’s ShineTime.

It goes without saying that you want to employ a professional rather than risking hurting yourself just to clean a dirty window.

Window Cleaning for Beginners - Part 1:
15/11/11

Here at ShineTime, a Birmingham based window cleaning business, we’ll often hear our customers talk about how difficult it is to clean windows and get good results.

If you are going to employ a window cleaner, unless you are at your house when your window cleaner usually cleans your windows, you will need to do the insides of your house windows on your own.

What many people forget is that it doesn’t matter how well your window cleaner cleans the outside of your windows, if you haven’t cleaned the insides properly all his good work will be for nothing.

The truth is however, that you can have pristine windows that will be as clean as done by any professional with just a few simple tools and skills. The only thing you might never quite master is cleaning windows at the very fast speed of a professional window cleaner.

In this article I’ll list the tools you’ll need:

A bucket

Tap water

Washing Up Liquid

Some dry clean cloths

A Squeegee (you can buy these nowadays at most hardware stores. There are also a variety of very good online window cleaning shops). You want one with a 12 or 14 inch squeegee channel.

A Sponge, or window cleaning t-bar/applicator (again you can buy these at most hardware stores or online).