WEBVTT

NOTE Easy to start
NOTE Narrated by Callum. Generated from public/films/voice-takes.json
NOTE by scripts/build-film-captions.mjs. Edit the narration, not this file.

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Cleaning is one of the easiest businesses in Britain to start.

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That one fact explains nearly everything about the market.

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Its trade group opened 14.4 per cent of its businesses in a year, and closed 13.5.

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Read those together. It is adding firms, but only just. That is not growth.

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That is churn.

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A cleaning business can start with a van, a phone and some insurance.

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No qualification gates it.

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So there are always new firms arriving, and always firms quietly going.

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Which means a list of cleaning companies is wrong within months.

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Build one in January and by the summer a real slice of it has stopped trading.

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So never buy this list once.

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And check a firm is still there before you write to it, because emailing a company

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that closed months ago costs you more than the wasted minute.

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Easy to start. Hard to stay in. Work from something that keeps checking.