Carpets accumulate a lot of dirt with time. In offices, there are always people walking up and down at all hours. Things are dropped and spilt all the time. If the weather outside is inclement, as it often is in London – the signs will surely show up on the carpet! On the domestic from, whether you’re talking about a bedsit or a mansion, things are even more complicated. Dust, spillages that cause all sorts of stains. Dirt gathering in dark corners and under furniture; the amount of gunk on carpets is just amazing. While some people can’t be bothered to give their carpets a thorough clean, usually making just a quick sweep of visible areas, then replacing the carpet after some time. That’s an option if you can afford it, but there’s another option that works just as well. Cleaning even a small rug is no easy task by any means, but there’s an easy way out. Get a professional in to do the job! For a reasonable fee, your carpets get a new lease of life, and your home or office feels and looks refreshed!

Put it Down on Paper

As the saying goes, “If You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail.” Writing down a business plan helps you get a clear picture of what will be involved in starting up your carpet cleaning business. This will include the costs of purchasing equipment and supplies, setting targets in terms of growth, getting the required training and certifications and other legal issues.

A business plan helps you plan for future growth and expansion. A simple search on the internet will yield lots of great sites and apps that ease the process of creating a plan to suit your particular needs. It will help you identify your market and find your niche. Most successful businesses are those that identify a need and find a way to provide a product or service that fulfils that need.

Find your niche and fill it well! The carpet cleaning market is huge, but this also means that competition is fierce. Having a targeted plan will get you off to a better start than fumbling about in the dark.

Getting Started

You can easily start small and grow with time and experience, as the guys at CleanCarpets.co did. Your immediate neighbourhood is a good place to get started. This will mostly involve domestic cleaning. People who know you are more likely to trust you and give you work.

As you learn the ropes, you can them expand – don’t forget, the best advertising is word of mouth. Do a great job and your customers are bound to recommend your services to friends and colleagues. Social media presence is a must in this day and age, and posting “Before, On The Job and After” pictures and videos, perhaps with happy customers exclaiming on the job, is a great way to attract attention. Set up a simple website giving details of your services and your location.

Branded merchandise such as t-shirts, caps, work clothing such as overalls and so on give you presence and a professional look. Another great way to build your customer base is to give incentives to your existing customers. Offer them a discount on the next job if they refer customers to you. Give them discount vouchers and flyers to give to friends and colleagues. In the beginning, you may be alone, or perhaps with a partner or friend or two. The products and equipment you require to start are quite basic and can be bought at any supermarket. As you grow, however, you must register a limited liability company. As the name suggests, this protects you from personal liability as it is a legal entity in itself. Having a registered company also gives potential clients the impression that you are professional.

Insure Your Business!

As with any business, insurance is obligatory. You work will involve going into peoples’ homes and offices in different locations, probably driving around in a van. Two types of insurance that are vital for a cleaning business are Professional Indemnity Insurance and Public Liability Insurance.

Professional Indemnity insurance covers you against claims made by customers or employees. This typically involves customers dissatisfied with the work done or employees having issues with working conditions. This insurance pays invoices should a customer refuse to pay you and also covers your company should a customer make claims for damage caused at their premises by yourself or your employees. Your business is protected from disruptions in the day to day running of operations. Public Liability insurance protects you from claims made by third parties against you for personal injury or property damage.As your business grows and you take on employees, you are obliged to take out Employers Liability insurance.

The Future

As you grow, you must refer to your business plan from time to time to check that you are meeting your targets. The plan may need amendments as you go along. This is normal; unforeseen circumstances do happen and you should plan for them and react as necessary. Reward yourself and employees for meeting targets on or before time.

Enjoy Yourself!

This is the single most important thing in anything you do. When you’re enjoying yourself, it’s no longer a hard slog and you can’t wait for the day to end so you can put your feet up and enjoy a cuppa. Time just flies! People who enjoy their work are happier, more satisfied in life and do better work, so have fun!

When it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO) and digital marketing in general, we often hear the term ‘website crawling’ and similar terms. However, what does this actually mean and how can you ensure your website or that of any of your clients is crawled?

What is ‘Website Crawling?’

Website crawling refers to the process by which search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and Baidu can read, process, understand and therefore rank the website in question. ‘Crawling’ is often used by those in the SEO and website marketing industry; it is fundamental to the very essence of what SEO is and how search engine marketing functions.

All search engines function through algorithms, which automatically read and understand [crawl] websites; their content, the words on the website(s) in question and the overall theme and focus. For example, if you are running a website in Brighton as a psychologist’s practice (find out more), you wouldn’t want search engines to misunderstand the site and rank you as if you were a website in France selling mobile phones.

Does Website Crawling Affect My Website’s Rankings?

The short answer here is yes. Ultimately, if Google, or indeed any other search engine is unable to understand and crawl your website, it will not be ranked properly if at all. Hence, this is one of the first factors which should be taken care of when revamping or just looking to improve your website’s online standing.

What Can I do to Improve my Website’s Crawling?

There is no single thing which you can do to improve and increase your website’s funding. However, there are a number of practices which undertaken, certainly increase your chances f being crawled and may even improve your rankings and positioning online. These include:

• Meta Data – This refers to the specific data [meta title and description] which should be assigned to each and every page on your website. Optimising your meta data helps search engines to read and understand pages on your website and therefore help rankings
• Website Speed – The speed and overall performance of your website is another important factor which implemented properly, can help search engines favour your website in rankings more than others who do not pay attention to their speed
• Errors and Broken Links – By ensuring there are no 404 errors or other error response codes across your website, you allow the algorithms and specific search engines to follow an unbroken path through your website, helping ensure it will be better understood

The Big Debate

As a business owner, you want nothing more than to catapult your business into success. That is why it is of critical importance to invest your money wisely. One of the questions we get asked, as a finance broker, is how businesses can do just that! More specifically, whether purchasing assets outright or whether financing the assets makes the most financial sense… This is the big debate.

Below, we stated points on either side so that you have the tools to make the right decision.

Purchasing with cash:

• Purchasing outright may seem like the best option from the offset- and that is understandable! For instance, you get to own the asset without incurring an interest rate. This means that in the long run you end up saving money instead of paying over the RRP.

• You will also have ‘peace of mind’ as you are exempt from monthly payments, saving you the worry if at one point in time you cannot afford the payment.

• Owning the asset directly contributes to the overall value of your business

However, after having invested the majority of your capital into assets, what would you do if something were to go wrong- for example, if a system breaks, an asset fails, or you receive a significant VAT bill with demands from HMRC. Just how long would you have to wait for your cashflow to be replenished before investing in other areas of your business?

Whilst purchasing outright may seem preferable, it is important as a business that you prioritize your cashflow, leaving space for a contingency if unexpected costs arise.

Why should you choose to finance?

• Financing supports you in making smart business decisions. For instance, if you are a start up business a commercial loan may help you to conserve your cashflow whilst investing in multiple areas of your business-helping to get your businesses feet off the ground.

• Having a working capital equates to having financial health. Agreeing to a finance arrangement means that cash is readily available to facilitate the running of your business, support your growth ambitions enabling you to keep up with demand- in turn generating revenue.  An example, if a business was generating a 6% profit margin, it would be beneficial to retain the capital through the financing of critical equipment. This will help you to invest in staff and your growth ambitions- highlighting how the reduction of an upfront cost will support business growth through cashflow.

• Aforementioned, finance packages allow you to have a safety net of funds just in case the unexpected crops up. Having the means to stabilize your business and to maintain a high level of productivity is vital for when a situation occurs.

• Finance doesn’t just have to be a linear process of making a new asset affordable either… Finance can be utilized in ways to make use of what you already own. Refinance has the ability to release capital from assets you have purchased, so you can go on with upgrading machinery to execute your business plans.

Chatsbrook understand that even as a business owner, the prospect of finance is very personal. That is why we assess your business on what IS affordable for you, your trading periods and your requirement of the repayment period.

What Chatsbrook create is a perfectly tailored finance arrangement to suit you and your needs.

You can trust us to make your aspirations come alive.

Why not contact our friendly team on 01603 733500?

Share your ambitions and see your business thrive.

Gas boilers have been the staple of our households for generations – providing heat and hot water at a relatively low cost. Despite the great functionality of gas boilers, recently, they have been under intense scrutiny. While they are useful, their use comes at a cost. Widespread use of gas boilers poses a dangerous threat to our environment with their ability to contribute to the greenhouse effect and to produce carbon monoxide.

Present Day Gas Boilers

It’s not going to come as a surprise to hear that due to our production and consumption as humans, our world is undergoing some very harmful environmental events. Specifically, in the case of gas boilers, their use of fossil fuels and release of toxic carbon monoxide have not helped in our mission to better the planet. Despite their mass use, if we want to progress in decreasing our negative environmental impact, we must at least plan for a replacement in the future.

I know what you’re thinking. If you don’t have a gas boiler you might be asking yourself, how are you going to take a shower or heat your home in the winter? These are all valid questions that can be answered using alternative heat sources. It all starts with creating and enhancing policies that cultivate healthy environmental practices. Fortunately, countries like the UK have already gotten a head start in this department. In 2008, we passed the Climate Change Act that places the duty of the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to ensure that the UK’s carbon emissions are at least 80% lower than the 1900 baseline by 2050.

Furthermore, this policy goes on to introduce new measures to achieve these targets. Following this policy, the Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) set the objectives to ensure that sustainable goals were being met. The goals set out by BEIS include the following:

Keeping the energy bill as low as possible: ensuring that The UK has a secure and resilient energy system: reducing carbon emission cost-effectively at home; and avoiding unreasonable upfront cost for consumers which could discourage home improvements. Additionally, to observe if these goals are being met, the Climate Change Act carries out an assessment tracking to see whether or not the UK is on course to meet its carbon reduction targets While factors, such as the first carbon budget and marginally changes in carbon change have been met, now, it appears as if our carbon emission has stalled. This means that it is, now more important than ever to grasp alternative methods of heating our homes before it is too late.

The Future of Gas Boilers

Fortunately, for us and our planet, alternative appliances to gas boilers have already started to be invented and even used in real-life situations. Particularly, hydrogen, heat pumps, and hybrids have been undergoing development to tackle this new challenge.

As opposed to carbon, hydrogen is more environmentally friendly and does not produce a toxic gas when it is burned. In terms of being used to heat our houses, researchers are looking to design a Hydrogen for Heat system that has the same functionality of fossil fuel in gas boilers but is much safer. Next, heat pumps are also being crafted because, as opposed to hydrogen, which can be quite pricey and difficult to store, this alternative form of heating is one of the only ones that maintain heating quality and cost-efficiency. Finally, hybrids that are classified as developments in heat pump technology are now becoming available.

Gas boilers are inevitably harming our environment. Nevertheless, despite their mass use, by the year 2025, the Committee on Climate Change estimates that no new-built homes will be equipped with boilers using gas grid system as power source. We must invest in alternative forms of energy that not only keeps costs low but also preserve our environment.

Our team is delighted to reveal that we have teamed up with health insurance firm Equipsme. Tudor Lodge Consultants has been working hard to improve the firm’s online presence through implementing a thorough white hat SEO strategy, using an array of tools that we have acquired.

About Equipsme

Equipsme makes purchasing health insurance for businesses in the UK simple and easy to do.  The health insurance company provides an alternative, cost-effective solution for firms so that they can insure the health of their employees straightforwardly at a low price. Equipsme’s healthcare plans involve no medical jargon, no medical questions and an easy to understand pricing structure and the same premium for those aged between 16-69 years old.

What we have achieved for Equipsme

Improving functionality: one important aspect of SEO strategy is ensuring that a website is running as fast as possible – if it does not, this can impact bounce rates and its Google ranking. As a result, our team has been working hard to improve Equipsme’s site speed. We have also been working on the functionality of the mobile version of the site to ensure it is user friendly.

Keywords: we have also been carrying out keyword research to make sure that the health insurance firm is ranking high for terms related to the health and medical sector, so that Equipsme ranks higher in SERPs.

Links: Tudor Lodge Consultants understands just how vital having strong links can be when it comes to having an excellent SEO strategy. That is why we have been working on making sure that we have been finding Equipsme reputable and trustworthy links within the health and medical sector, as well as carrying out link reclamation. This also helps make the site easier to crawl for Google indexing.

Site fix: making sure that response codes have been fixed, as well as meta descriptions and titles are of an adequate length with relevant keywords, is important for SEO. This is something the team has been changing on the Equipsme site.

Norfolk is home to an entrepreneurial spirit that’s the envy of the United Kingdom. We’re a county that loves business, and that knows how to do business, but like the country as a whole, we’re having to deal with economic uncertainty. The impact of Brexit on Norfolk is yet to be seen, of course, but it’s sure to bring opportunities as well as challenges for its business leaders. One way our businesses can keep ahead of their corporate rivals is by avoiding wastage and saving money without impacting on their products or services. With that in mind, here are three simple yet effective ways for Norfolk businesses to save money.

Don’t Pay Too Much for Your Energy

All businesses should know exactly what their overheads are, and use this to ensure that there are no areas which leak money. One of the biggest overheads that most businesses face, whatever sector they operate in, is their energy costs, so it’s important that you don’t pay more than you really have to. The best way to get the best deal is to compare commercial gas suppliers and electricity suppliers via a specialist comparison website like Utility Bidder. You’ll be able to see which suppliers offer the best service at the lowest price, and make an informed decision about who to sign up with. Don’t forget to compare energy suppliers at regular intervals, as prices and deals can change rapidly.

Use Modern Marketing Methods

The world around us is also changing rapidly, and that means that traditional forms of advertising and marketing may not be as effective as they once were. We consume media differently, so adverts on radio, television and radio may no longer be seen or heeded. An increasing number of businesses in Norfolk and beyond are using the opportunities that social media brings to promote their products, and this can allow you to reach a much larger audience for a significantly smaller outlay. You’ll need to have an active presence on all the main social media platforms, and remember that your posts should be vibrant, eye catching and entertaining as well as informative. Social media marketing can bring rich rewards, and it can also be an effective way to reach Millennial customers.

Make the Most of Outsourcing

Outsourcing some of your business functions can allow you to obtain high quality work at a very competitive price, so look for areas of your business where you can outsource tasks rather than recruiting directly into your company. This not only gives you added flexibility in that you can hire people nationwide, it also cuts down on the time and expense that a recruitment campaign can cost. Typical areas where you may be able to outsource include design, customer support, event management and accounting.

Don’t Use Overtime Unless Absolutely Necessary

Plan for the business so that overtime work and overtime pay is not required. While it’s commonplace to see companies resort to offering overtime to cash strapped employees in place of taking on someone part-time, it’s a bad idea. Having already completed their normal day’s work, the extra hours are sub-optimal. The overtime worker cannot perform at the same level and will likely be working early mornings or evenings to get work done. The altered hours lead to an increasing number of mistakes which may exceed what is gained. Also, their regular work will eventually suffer too when they don’t get enough rest.

Use Co-Working Arrangements to Save Money

Co-working is the idea of allowing full-time employees to work from their home office. It cuts out the commute and the need for a permanent desk for them. When either used as a strategy to reduce the office space required, or to manage rapid expansion without requiring an office move too soon, it can be a cost-efficient move.

Using co-workers is different to outsourcing because the staff still work for you. They’re under contract, receive most of the same benefits and can be expected to deliver when needed. Freelancers receive much less commitment from you or commitment to you. By mixing a little of both, companies can manage their costs and office footprint better while not sacrificing control of their operations.

Creating a lean, efficient company with the help of outsourcing, adopting social media marketing, and using a comparison website to find the best business energy supplier can save you significant amounts of money, year on year. That means that you’ll be competitive whatever Brexit and other economic factors may bring our way, so that you can continue to contribute to the Norfolk business success story.