When you start your new business its status will be that either of a SOLE TRADER, PARTNERSHIP or a LIMITED COMPANY.

A sole trader is the simplest type of business from the point of view of formalities and restrictions for an individual. If you are operating the business on a partnership basis then I would recommend that you have a partnership agreement drawn up by a solicitor.   

Your accountant, solicitor or bank manager will advise you on the advantages and disadvantages to you personally and to your individual business, with regards to the status of your business.

Domestic cleaning franchise opportunity,  Work from Home,  franchise business

Commitment and Attitude required to manage your own Business

The enourmous thrill involved in owning your own business can, for a short space of time, put a gloss over the mental and physical pressures that you will eventually encounter.

You will almost certainly require a change of attitude to cope with the many new situations that will arise. You must quickly become self disciplined and motivated to a very high level to help you deal with these new situations. This will involve planning and forecasting your activities weeks in advance with a list of tasks to be done, organising and managing your time to the best advantage. Remember, this will include delegating tasks (where appropriate) and ensuring that good administrative procedures are in place etc.

If you plan your day and fill it with purposeful activity, you will find the motivation to work hard and enjoy developing your business. More importantly, financial rewards will follow.

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Franchises usually fall into one of these two business format categories

A franchise job (Is where the franchisee actually does all the manual work themselves providing a hands on service to their clients)·

Management based franchise (Is where the franchisee is mainly managing by means of delegating others to do the manual work for them)

It is very important to recognise the difference between these two categories as it will help you to locate and find a franchise that will be suitable for you and the skills that you possess.

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 Regular fortnightly light cleans

A regular fortnightly light clean is usually very similiar to a regular weekly clean apart from obviously been once a fortnight instead of weekly.   The same as regular weekly cleans regular fortnightly cleans are not as intense or as deep as many other types of clean that can be carried out within peoples properties. 

Regular fortnightly cleans are usually performed in properties that are already cleaned to quite a respectable if not actually an high standard.  Usually the cleaning lady/maid will help out by doing regular fortnightly light cleaning tasks such as vacuuming the property, lightly cleaning skirting boards, polishing, general light kitchen and bathroom cleaning maintenance, cob webbing, dusting, mopping floors plus lots of other every day household cleaning jobs.

A regular fortnightly helping hand clean can also be described as a keeping on top of clean.  Properties that are already at a fairly good level of cleanliness a regular fortnightly light helping hand clean is all that should be required to maintain satisfactory cleaning standards within the property. 

Due to the fact of been every other week, fortnightly cleans do usually rely on the householder to be much more hands on in keeping their home clean.

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Franchise confidential questionnaire

The franchise confidential questionnaire is an important document that franchisors require prospective franchisees to fill in prior to having an initial meeting about the franchise business.

The franchise confidential questionnaire gives a franchisor a brief but also very good insight into the background of the prospective franchisee.  The franchise confidential questionnaire helps the franchisor determine how suitable the prospective franchisee will be for working the franchise business model. 

The franchise confidential questionnaire should cover such questions in brief form such as what the prospects name is, address, health, past work experience, qualifications, hobbies, car driver, home owner etc.

Finally the confidential questionnaire is as its name suggests confidential and the franchisor should undertake not to disclose the information received to any other party.

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I have produced a list of domestic cleaning tips to help you in your ongoing battle to keep your home majestically clean! I am publishing these cleaning tips over the forthcoming days and weeks in a easy to digest one at a time manner.

Cleaning tip No36 gives advice on cleaning stainless steel sinks.

You can clean stainless steel sinks by simply wiping them with a cloth soaked in vinegar.

New cleaning tips are always more than welcome.

• Cleaning tip No35 Cleaning shower curtains
• Cleaning tip No34 Cleaning silver stains
• Cleaning tip No27 Tiny scratches on glass
• Cleaning tip No26 Removing pet hair on furniture
• Cleaning tip No18 Heel marks on wooden floors
• Cleaning tip No17 Washing machines
• Cleaning tip No9  Grout cleaning

Please note that I have produced these cleaning tips in good faith and has such will take no responsibility for any failure or damage that may be caused or attributed by the use of any of the tips given.

Cleaning Franchise | Work From Home | Home Based Business | Franchise Business Opportunity | Management Franchise | Franchise Advice | Be Your Own Boss 

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Business marketing techniques

When you first start your new business you will probably be relying to a great extent on business marketing techniques trying various methods of advertising to get your business telephone line to ring.

It is I must stress so very important to make sure that you and your staff are there ready on hand and available to receive your potential customers incoming telephone enquiries. Quite an high percentage of potentially new customers to your business could be lost if you find that you are having to rely on them leaving a message on your companies answering machine.

Even in this modern day world many potential new customers will not bother to leave a message instead they will hang up their phone and move on to your competitor, and if your competitor picks up the phone they will then more than likely end up gaining the customers business instead of your business gaining it!

Make sure that you never miss a business telephone call

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Setting up your Home Business Office

If you are considering setting up an office in your own home to run your own work from home business from it is important to consider a few very important points regarding where you would situate your office.

Where should I place my office within my home?

You should take into consideration the other side of your life if you have one (personal/family), it would not be a wise choice to say partition part of your main living room off as you could well find that in a very short space of time that you are trapped and feel compelled to work all hours, as you would be potentially bothered by your phone ringing at any time of the day/night, also you might well succumb to temptation and feel a compulsion to constantly sit in your office checking emails etc with the door slightly ajar so neglecting your family to a great extent. Also you could well find that during normal office hours intrusions into your working day could become all to common by your family and even friends and this could cause your business problems.

In my own case I have recently finished building during my spare time an extension to the rear of my property to serve as my work from home, home based office. This extension is an integral part of the house and designed in a way that if we were to move it would swiftly be able to convert into a large dinning room or even an extra living room etc. The office is designed so as there is only one door for entering or alternatively for exiting. For potential fire reasons the main window opens to a 90-degree angle to enable any staff to be able to escape if disaster struck and the means of escape through the only door were subsequently impaired. At weekends and during the evenings if I so desire I can now lock my office door and retreat to the front of the house and lead a normal family life.

An ideal room to run your work from home business from within your own home is also a small bedroom if you have a spare one available. Again like my office you could shut the door and leave your business alone during your out of work hours and so devote your spare time to your family.

Personally although my ideal location, although others may well wish to disagree would be to build a purpose built office or convert an existing building such as an old stable block into an office on my land but independent from my household. Unfortunately I did not have this option available to me but I do know that there would be many people out there who would have. This option although would certainly have extra security and insurance implications connected to it so it would be very advisable to do research into these added implications before commencing with your work.

Other outside options are porter cabins and even converting old caravans. Personally but mainly for appearance reasons I would never ever consider this option, as I do not think that it is ideal in ones garden! Maybe I am a snob as I am aware of home based businesses that have gone down this route, but unfortunately its not a route that I would go down.

Cleaning Franchise | Work From Home | Home Based Business | Franchise Business Opportunity | Management Franchise | Franchise Advice | Be Your Own Boss

Robin Harrison is the managing Director of Dolly Char (UK) Ltd. Dolly Char (UK) Ltd is one of the fastest growing domestic cleaning franchise companies in the UK today giving people the opportunity to work from the comfort of their own home.

domestic cleaning franchise blog, franchise business tips blog

I have produced a list of domestic cleaning tips to help and assist householders in their constant and ongoing battle to keep their homes spick and span and domestically cleaned! I am publishing these cleaning tips over the forthcoming days and weeks in a very easy to digest simple one at a time manner.

Grout can be cleaned by using baking soda and peroxide. You need to make up a paste using both ingredients and then using a toothbrush apply it to your grout. Once applied leave for about an hour before removing. You can also apply bleach using a toothbrush on to your grout if you feel that the grout is unsanitary.

New cleaning tips are always more than welcome.

• Cleaning tip No8  Cat and Dog hair removal
• Cleaning tip No7 Small stains off carpets 
• Cleaning tip No6 Removing dents in carpets
  Cleaning tip No5 Clean a kettle
  Cleaning tip No4 Cleaning stained saucepans
  Cleaning tip No3 Removing stickers from wood
  Cleaning tip No2 Window Cleaning
  Cleaning tip No1 Bath Stains

Please note that I have produced these cleaning tips in good faith and has such will take no responsibility for any failure or damage that may be caused or attributed by the use of any of the tips given.

Cleaning Franchise | Work From Home | Home Based Business | Franchise Business Opportunity | Management Franchise | Franchise Advice | Be Your Own Boss

Robin Harrison is the managing Director of Dolly Char (UK) Ltd. Dolly Char (UK) Ltd is one of the fastest growing domestic cleaning franchise companies in the UK today giving people the opportunity to work from the comfort of their own home.

domestic cleaning franchise blog, franchise business tips blog

Recruiting domestic cleaning maids to undertake the domestic cleaning of your family home is becoming increasingly common these days. The domestic cleaning industry is estimated to be worth somewhere between £4 to £8 billion pounds according to various sources and it is still growing at a very rapid pace.

Many people who decide to use the service of domestic cleaning maids often find that their cleaning maid is unreliable, turns up late, leaves early, or doesn’t even turn up at!

If you are advertising locally to recruit your own domestic cleaning maid then it is completely in your own hands to check out each individual candidate.

Personally I would recommend that you conduct every interview at the candidates’ own residence, this will give you a good idea of each candidates own personal hygiene standards.

Be careful to look out for tell tale signs of unreliability, with experience these can become only too obvious to you.

Ask to use their facilities whilst you are conducting your interview and take a good look around for cleanliness

Carefully formulate the questions that you are going to ask your candidate to get them to open up about their past work or personal experiences, its amazing with the right questions how some candidates will gladly tell you how they have let various people or companies down in the past!

Make sure that you request and check references from the candidate and always follow them up.

Request identification from candidates to make sure they are who they say that they are!

Request that the candidate obtains for you a disclosure form.

Formulate a written contract for the domestic cleaning maid to sign this should cover various eventualities to safe guard you and your rights but also take care to also safe guard the rights of the domestic cleaning maid.

Employ the cleaning maid initially on a trial basis.

Of course you can always employ the service of a professional domestic cleaning company to do this for you, there are many of these companies up and down the country and most will have rigorously checked out their domestic cleaning maids and so save you the stress, time and effort.

Please feel free to add to my checklist.

Cleaning Franchise | Work From Home | Home Based Business | Franchise Business Opportunity | Management Franchise | Franchise Advice | Be Your Own Boss

Robin Harrison is the managing Director of Dolly Char (UK) Ltd. Dolly Char (UK) Ltd is one of the fastest growing domestic cleaning franchise companies in the UK today giving people the opportunity to work from the comfort of their own home.

domestic cleaning franchise blog, franchise business tips blog