--The people who I've helped get into the window washing business have heard me talk about when I was in the Insurance business. One of the things I used to do at the beginning of my insurance career was actually shut down my marketing efforts during Thanksgiving week and not crank it up again until after the last college football bowl game was played at the beginning of January.

I just sat around for six or seven weeks or so getting fat on all the Holiday goodies, and alhough it was great just kicking back on my little mini-vacati

I've been in a number of businesses as many of you probably have, and when making the comparisons between window washing and some of the other lame businesses out there, you have to admit that window washing comes up smelling like roses.

BUT...us window washers will still face challenges.

And I'm not talking about the challenge of cleaning a window. Anybody can get a window clean with a little elbow grease and the proper tools.

No, I'm referring to the ability to clean windows and market your business at the same time. This is the ultimate juggling act.

If you stop marketing your business for any length of time, it's only a matter of time before calls from interested prospects dry up, and consequently, so does your calender.

I saw it happen very recently with a guy who had a good 3 weeks of window cleaning jobs lined up. He used every marketing technique outlined in my manual How to Start Your Own Residential Window Washing Business. He lined up all kinds of jobs. But then he decided to focus his attention only to window cleaning, not to marketing. Oops.

To make a long story short, after that 3 week spurt of business, he woke up one day to find no customers on his calender, so he essentially had to start over. Now of course, he'll have those customers to come back to again and again on a repeat basis, but I'm talking about right now having gaps on the schedule which really shouldn't be there.

And it's harder and more time consuming to start over then it is to just keep the gravy train rolling.

Let me explain with a couple of stories.

--Master motivator Zig Zigler talked about "starting over" in one of his speeches I heard recently. He used the analogy of one of those old fashioned Wells you may be familiar with.

These types of Wells have big 'ole handles you need to crank in order to draw water from the Well.

When first wanting water, you have to really pump fast and furious. But once you have a constant stream of water coming out, then it just takes a little pressure on the pump handle to keep it going. The hard work was already done at the beginning. BUT...don't stop. Because the water will go all the way to the bottom if you do, and you'd have to start all over again with serious pumping action.

--The people who I've helped get into the window washing business have heard me talk about when I was in the Insurance business. One of the things I used to do at the beginning of my insurance career was actually shut down my marketing efforts during Thanksgiving week and not crank it up again until after the last college football bowl game was played at the beginning of January.

I just sat around for six or seven weeks or so getting fat on all the Holiday goodies, and alhough it was great just kicking back on my little mini-vacati

If you stop marketing your business for any length of time, it's only a matter of time before calls from interested prospects dry up, and consequently, so does your calender.

I saw it happen very recently with a guy who had a good 3 weeks of window cleaning jobs lined up. He used every marketing technique outlined in my manual How to Start Your Own Residential Window Washing Business. He lined up all kinds of jobs. But then he decided to focus his attention only to window cleaning, not to marketing. Oops.

To make a long story short, after that 3 week spurt of business, he woke up one day to find no customers on his calender, so he essentially had to start over. Now of course, he'll have those customers to come back to again and again on a repeat basis, but I'm talking about right now having gaps on the schedule which really shouldn't be there.

And it's harder and more time consuming to start over then it is to just keep the gravy train rolling.

Let me explain with a couple of stories.

--Master motivator Zig Zigler talked about "starting over" in one of his speeches I heard recently. He used the analogy of one of those old fashioned Wells you may be familiar with.

These types of Wells have big 'ole handles you need to crank in order to draw water from the Well.

When first wanting water, you have to really pump fast and furious. But once you have a constant stream of water coming out, then it just takes a little pressure on the pump handle to keep it going. The hard work was already done at the beginning. BUT...don't stop. Because the water will go all the way to the bottom if you do, and you'd have to start all over again with serious pumping action.

--The people who I've helped get into the window washing business have heard me talk about when I was in the Insurance business. One of the things I used to do at the beginning of my insurance career was actually shut down my marketing efforts during Thanksgiving week and not crank it up again until after the last college football bowl game was played at the beginning of January.

I just sat around for six or seven weeks or so getting fat on all the Holiday goodies, and alhough it was great just kicking back on my little mini-vacati

To make a long story short, after that 3 week spurt of business, he woke up one day to find no customers on his calender, so he essentially had to start over. Now of course, he'll have those customers to come back to again and again on a repeat basis, but I'm talking about right now having gaps on the schedule which really shouldn't be there.

And it's harder and more time consuming to start over then it is to just keep the gravy train rolling.

Let me explain with a couple of stories.

--Master motivator Zig Zigler talked about "starting over" in one of his speeches I heard recently. He used the analogy of one of those old fashioned Wells you may be familiar with.

These types of Wells have big 'ole handles you need to crank in order to draw water from the Well.

When first wanting water, you have to really pump fast and furious. But once you have a constant stream of water coming out, then it just takes a little pressure on the pump handle to keep it going. The hard work was already done at the beginning. BUT...don't stop. Because the water will go all the way to the bottom if you do, and you'd have to start all over again with serious pumping action.

--The people who I've helped get into the window washing business have heard me talk about when I was in the Insurance business. One of the things I used to do at the beginning of my insurance career was actually shut down my marketing efforts during Thanksgiving week and not crank it up again until after the last college football bowl game was played at the beginning of January.

I just sat around for six or seven weeks or so getting fat on all the Holiday goodies, and alhough it was great just kicking back on my little mini-vacati

These types of Wells have big 'ole handles you need to crank in order to draw water from the Well.

When first wanting water, you have to really pump fast and furious. But once you have a constant stream of water coming out, then it just takes a little pressure on the pump handle to keep it going. The hard work was already done at the beginning. BUT...don't stop. Because the water will go all the way to the bottom if you do, and you'd have to start all over again with serious pumping action.

--The people who I've helped get into the window washing business have heard me talk about when I was in the Insurance business. One of the things I used to do at the beginning of my insurance career was actually shut down my marketing efforts during Thanksgiving week and not crank it up again until after the last college football bowl game was played at the beginning of January.

I just sat around for six or seven weeks or so getting fat on all the Holiday goodies, and alhough it was great just kicking back on my little mini-vacati

--The people who I've helped get into the window washing business have heard me talk about when I was in the Insurance business. One of the things I used to do at the beginning of my insurance career was actually shut down my marketing efforts during Thanksgiving week and not crank it up again until after the last college football bowl game was played at the beginning of January.

I just sat around for six or seven weeks or so getting fat on all the Holiday goodies, and alhough it was great just kicking back on my little mini-vacation, come the beginning of January, I had to start all over again generating interest, making phone calls, following up, setting appointments, etc.

Which means that I didn't see the fruits of January's labor until March or so as far as having a full calender of appointments again and banking commissions.

I mention the above couple of stories just to illustrate a point, and that is simply that we can't back off or let up. Because if we do, we could find ourselves with some unwanted vacancies on our schedule. And this is especially true if you're relatively new to the window cleaning biz.

But that's the challenge. Like the person above who had 3 weeks of window washing jobs. How in the world do you wash windows and still market your biz?

The short answer to this is that we need to learn to prioritize and incorporate effective time management principles.

I know, I know. Pretty elementary stuff here, but it really is critical to master them.

One of my most successful students is a guy that plans his entire day around a 2 hour marketing window where he'll distribute flyers, coordinate a postcard campaign, talk to other service businesses, talk to realtors, talk to property managers, talk to builders, visit commercial storefronts, or any number of other things on the marketing agenda.

Time doesn't permit everything above to be done within that two hour time frame obviously, but he'll pick one, maybe two strategies he wants to use that day, and then do 'em.

The 2 hours may be at the beginning of the day or the end of the day, or it may be one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon. That doesn't matter. What does matter is that he'll take ACTION and expose his marketing message for 2 hours each day to prospects.

Mike truly understands that we have no business without customers, so he sits down at night and jots down the next day's marketing goals on a "to do" list. This is as basic as it gets, but hey...it works.

And this is confirmed when he calls and we talk about the fact that prospects are calling (many times as we're talking, we'll be interrupted a couple of times by his phone ringing) and his calender is filled up with window washing jobs.

By doing this, and committing to it on paper, the challenge of finding prospects is null and void. Like my 'ole sales manager used