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Scaling a Cleaning Service Business

Royce2

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Hello forum!

My wife has her own business of cleaning post construction houses. In our area this is a massive niche because of the housing market. Currently she does this by herself and spends typically 10 hours per house, depending. Charges .30 per square foot. I’m trying to find ways to scale the business and have her take on more employees and get more projects going on at a time.

Any ideas on how to scale this? I think that she doesn’t charge enough in order to do that.

What are your thoughts.
 
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Timmy C

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10 hours per house seems like alot of work.

I would definitely consider getting employees, to take on some of that load as that's a big time trade by the looks of it.

Dont know if your service is online but @Andy Black might be someone to ask for help possibly using Google AdWords, to target other suburbs possibly and expand that way.

I would imagine franchising might possibly be an option to?
 

Supercar

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$900 to clean a 3,000ft^2 house in 10 hours is $90/hour. Sounds reasonable and competitive to me.

It's a human resource business. To grow this business she would have to hire good workers, most likely Mexicans, and managers.
 

The Abundant Man

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Royce2

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I would imagine franchising might possibly be an option to?

I would not consider franchising however I will get into adwords and online marketing. Thanks for the tips very useful.
 
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Royce2

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$900 to clean a 3,000ft^2 house in 10 hours is $90/hour.
What I forgot to mention is my wife is extremely fast and really thorough with her cleaning and 10 hours for a 3ksqft house is damn impressive . The only thing I’m afraid of is finding good cleaners that will work for less than half the price.

2 cleaners will take lets say for full days sake 16 hours to clean the house.
Our minimum here in Washington will be $12 and we would be paying 13 and forking out a total of 15.50 for L&I and insurance etc

So total earned - $900
Employees paid $496
Profit earned $404 per 3ksqft house
Seems good but like you said. I need good cleaners to offer something others don’t. Insanely thorough and fast. Our Mexican friends definitely are my best bet.
 

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What I forgot to mention is my wife is extremely fast and really thorough with her cleaning and 10 hours for a 3ksqft house is damn impressive . The only thing I’m afraid of is finding good cleaners that will work for less than half the price.

2 cleaners will take lets say for full days sake 16 hours to clean the house.
Our minimum here in Washington will be $12 and we would be paying 13 and forking out a total of 15.50 for L&I and insurance etc

So total earned - $900
Employees paid $496
Profit earned $404 per 3ksqft house
Seems good but like you said. I need good cleaners to offer something others don’t. Insanely thorough and fast. Our Mexican friends definitely are my best bet.
Don't be afraid to pay well for quality workers (of any nationality).
Low turnover and employee reliability will go a long way towards growing your business.
 
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Royce2

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Don't be afraid to pay well for quality workers (of any nationality).
Oh absolutely! I am definitely going to pay well to the star workers no doubt. However there is a period every one of us 9to5 workers had to go through to prove our worth.

Heck if I am able to find enough work for them and if they work twice as fast as I think they will I would double their wage and tell them that too.
 

Supercar

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Oh absolutely! I am definitely going to pay well to the star workers no doubt. However there is a period every one of us 9to5 workers had to go through to prove our worth.

Heck if I am able to find enough work for them and if they work twice as fast as I think they will I would double their wage and tell them that too.
Keep in mind that real estate construction is an extremely cyclical business. You need to be able to attract qualified cleaners quickly when you need them, and lay them off or reduce their hours when nobody is building. Or branch out into office and residential cleaning to reduce the effect of the business cycle.
 
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