Joe Polish posed the question , where is the money made, in the marketing or the cleaning?
One without the other is inefficient, but until that wand hits the floor, you can book 1000 jobs and no money is made.
Yes, there is a lot of work to marketing and in the office. If I applied 20% more effort into that area of my busn I'd prob get a 40% return.
Your "busn" is marketing Brian. I would imagine that 80% or more can be done from the seated position. Nothing against that, just the nature of the work.
So, if you land the job, there is always someone else that can clean it, the "cleaner" is replaceable. In that busn set up I can see justifying the 50%.
What I was thinking more of was another cleaner that gets a referral from a client to do a portable job and he doesn't want to do it, or he has a night job he doesn't want to do, so he hires someone else to do it. In this scenario I believe the cleaner should get more than 50%.
If a guys truck breaks down and he needs help, 50% is fair.
I help a friend out with porty work, we both go in together, he owns the portable. He pays me 40% of the job. If its my portable job, we split it 50-50.
It would all depend on how busy the cleaner is. If he can fill his slots with jobs paying him 100%, for him to sub himself out at 50% is counter productive. If he's not working, then 50% is a bonus, somewhat.
Ellen Rohr pointed out that there are a lot of behind the scene expenses in running a busn. Part of it is marketing, but just in the operation of a TM, as the owner/operator, I've got 5 insurances to be payed, licences, equipment payments, repair and maintenance costs, chem costs, fuel, plus I need to keep myself physically able to do the work. It costs me less than $20 to do any one job, but overall, its a lot more.