🎯 The business: exterior windows in spring and summer, gutters in fall, the same houses every year. A ladder, a water-fed pole, insurance and a steady head for heights. Most homeowners will pay someone else to climb.
Homeowners with two stories and trees. Windows on a typical house bill $150 to $300 outside only, more with screens and tracks; gutters $120 to $250 depending on footage and pitch. Office parks, storefronts and restaurants pay monthly for ground-floor glass, which is the recurring piece.
| LLC, license, liability insurance | $700 |
| Extension ladder, stand-off, harness | $500 |
| Water-fed pole with filter, squeegees, buckets | $700 |
| Gutter scoop, tarps, leaf blower | $250 |
| Magnets, cards, a booking page | $300 |
| All-in | ≈ $2,500 |
Learn the squeegee properly first; a streaky window is a refund. Walk five storefront blocks and offer a monthly price for the front glass. Book homes in clusters by neighborhood, two or three a day. Photograph a clogged gutter and the clean one next to it; that pair sells the fall season on Nextdoor.
A $220 window job takes about two hours solo. Four a day, four days a week is around $3,500 a week in season. Gutters in October and November are faster money per hour but shorter, so the yearly picture is windows in warm months, gutters in fall, and storefronts all year. Pressure washing and holiday lights fit the same ladder and the same customers.
No trade license in most states. Ladder work is where injuries happen, so insurance is not optional, and workers’ comp from the first hire. Some cities regulate water runoff from commercial glass; ask before you bid an office park.
Falls. Rain cancels a week of bookings, so overbook slightly in spring. Screens get bent and tracks scratch, and the customer notices the one window with a run. Hardest of all is the off season; the businesses that last line up storefront contracts before the first frost.