Starting A Cleaning Business

[Fasted]

Took £570 today, two end of tenancies. Was serious graft and I will be sore tomorrow. Decent pay though for a days work, probably the most I've ever been paid in a day.

@Jockomofino thanks for sharing that. Yeah honestly don't know what the plan is, I guess see what happens. For now I'm enjoying not being told what to do by a boss, pretty much picking my own hours and earning some money. I got totally disillusioned working in corporate environments. I chose cleaning cause I didn't want massive startup costs or risk, didn't want office work and wanted to be my own boss. There was literally a million other things I could've done but I didn't want to piss about planning/mentally masturbating for the next 6 months until I found some big idea. Now I've started I kind've want to see how far I can take this. If I max out at like £2k a month or something and hiring employees is a total nightmare, I'll do something else because I have no big designs to create a multi million pound cleaning company if it's not viable and my heart won't be broken if that doesn't happen. But I've gotta see how far I can take it.

 

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[VinnieJones]

Hey mate,

Great to see you working your way out and making progress. Keep pushing. I am in the progress of starting my own service business asap, I want to start with softwashing and impregnate roofs. Later want to do roof coating as well..

I found this video interesting and I thought this can help you to:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc2QKJaM9Mc

 

[Sbasof]

Background

Just finished reading TMF .

I followed the usual script. I got good grades at school, went to Uni and messed around for 3 years. After leaving Uni I worked in the legal profession as a paralegal on shit pay initially. I was then offered a training contract to fully qualify as a solicitor which I accepted, before realising that I didn't want to be in the legal profession for the rest of my life and I pulled out. Since then I've taken sales roles in IT firms, start-ups, banks and the last role I was doing until very recently was selling life insurance. Hands down the worse job I've ever done, literally had the moment MJ describes in his book, sat in a f*cking cubicle age 30 thinking "How did I get here?". I quit this job to focus on mental health and got sober after struggling with excessive drink/drugs for years. 4months clean. I'm not working right now, I have some savings, maybe like £10k, I recently finished a personal training course because until I read TMF I had this great plan to "do what I love". Now I'm not sure that is the best idea and might put it on the back burner for now.

My skills/assets

- sales skills/relationship building. I can connect with people in person and over the phone. But I'm sick of making someone else rich via selling
- some savings and relatively little outgoings
- good understanding of customer service
- passion for helping others and the knowledge that solving other peoples problems is what makes money

Idea

I think a cleaning business would be pretty easy to set up and could get the wheels turning for me. Equipment would be cheap, I'm good at cleaning and I actually enjoy it. I could do a part time sales role remotely while building this to keep regular money in. I would have no problem knocking on doors and pitching/handing out fliers, could print them off, set up a website easily enough. Read quite a bit of that on here. Read @Tubs posts on that. Also read @Andy Black's post about probably already knowing enough which I took quite a lot from. I definitely don't want to bury myself in excessive research for the next 6months in a library or trying to read every single post on the forum. However I'm also aware that it's obviously a bit unconventional for a 30yo guy to decide to start a home cleaning business. Also think it has issues with making sure people are in etc which @Johnny boy mentioned. I've thought about lawn care/gardening but I think equipment would be £££ initially. I can't help thinking that anything related to roofing would be sketchy in the UK weather.........could be wrong about that though. Still a lot to learn regarding marketing/google ads, I don't really know about any of that right now.

I don't want to waste time, I feel like I need to start something. I'm here to learn and execute ASAP.

Any suggestions/tips would be greatly appreciated, glad to be a part of this forum.

Good afternoon, I am currently working in a cleaning company as a Development Director. Passed the way from sales manager, development manager, etc. I know all the intricacies of this business, how to work with individuals, commercial firms, government agencies - from small one-time jobs to contracts for several years. I know how to select a team of the commercial department and directly performers. If you are interested in my experience - write to the mail - Sbasof@gmail.com.

Good luck to you!

 

[Fasted]

Can you “grow what you know”? You already have skills that people pay you for. Can you look there first. (There’s a link in my signature about Grow What You Know I think.)

Thanks for this. I listened to that radio interview. Regarding growing what I know:

- the legal aspect to my career was years ago and I never enjoyed it. Besides, I didn't fully qualify so there's no real option to consult/provide legal advice in any capacity.
- sales wise, yes I definitely have sales skills within companies that I have worked for but not sure how I could grow this to be something standalone and not within 7 days. Sales consulting or a sales training business would be a massive stretch I think. I'm not a sales superstar I've just done £25kbase + 7-10k commission for a few years type of thing. I would absolutely be prepared to do remote work part time sales roles though if needs be, while I build home service/cleaning business. But I probably do have enough savings to see if I could get that off the ground without having to work part time, at least for a 1-2months.
- PTing was going to be the one that I was going to "do what I love". But now I kind of feel like it might ruin what I love. And when I'm honest with myself I'm also slightly concerned that I don't really care about others' fitness journeys, I only really care about my own. Feels like I'd just be getting into it for the wrong reasons.

Regarding what you said about caring what others think, yeah I think I do care what others think and that has been a problem in the past.

 

[Fasted]

I know if I spent 8 hours in the gym + 1 for myself, I'd get pretty sick of it fast.

Thanks for commenting. Yes, I think I'm (slowly) coming to this realisation.

 

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[Fasted]

I really appreciate you talking the time to write that out, there's a lot of value and common sense in what you said.

Well I don't have 1. so that's out lol.

I also like home services because it's not cutthroat like trying to sell on Amazon, and you can get started with practically no money. And you'll be pretty much guaranteed to make some money if you're not dumb and can handle some elbow grease. You can get a brush and a ladder and make a grand a day cleaning off roofs. Not bad at all. You can get a recurring business going like I have and not really have to work at all and have employees do it.

Yes this. Like you said I can just start walking with it. But I'm thinking internal domestic cleaning will be what I will start with initially. I think it's the most viable option based on where I am for a few reasons:

- Currently a massive property boom in Manchester, new apartment blocks going up all the time and the city is growing. A lot of them don't have gardens or standalone roofs, they're obviously just in blocks.
- the weather is bad in northern UK, especially at this time of year (having said that that could mean roof clearing could work even better...)
- But it just seems risky lol. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I think the roofs over here might be steeper than yours, are yours not quite flat??
- I've had a couple of quotes for regular cleans where I've rented and they just seem extortionate, I think I could undercut them. I had an end of tenancy quote recently for a one bedroom apartment, £150. No way it can take more than 3 hours to clean a one bed if you get your shit together.

So yeah I'm not saying that roofing/other outdoor services wouldn't work and I imagine I could charge more with those too. It's also possible all these are bullshit excuses but I think cleaning might work better out of the blocks. I can literally just get a decent hoover and supplies and go. If it doesn't take off with some graft the outlay would be minimal and I could pivot.

 

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[Fasted]

Maybe I'm being too generous with that hourly rate. National min wage increases in April 22 to £9.50. So I could maybe give them £10.50ph and profit the difference, again 8hrs a day that gets £232 per day where I get £148 and they get £84.00. In that example they'd be bringing in over the equivalent of $300 per day which would meet your x20 criteria @Johnny boy. But not easily. Any issues like customer not in or only having say 6hours work on a given day would obviously affect what they could bring in. I don't know how that would even work, an employee expecting a full 8hrs a day work and pay but me only having 6 or less on some days......what then?



This is a flier I found in my apartment blocks. I guess I'd be looking at around that for starters. She doesn't mention hourly rate. Hourly rate becomes more relevant once I start to employ someone. She might be charging equivalent of £25ph, where a regular weekly clean for a one bed tends to take an hour. One offs she just charges more because there's no regularity. I presume for it to be regular they have to commit to a minimum of 4weeks/months direct debit or something otherwise they pay the one off rate, not sure



Maid2Clean are one of the biggest in my area. Again they must want a direct debit commitment for the regular ones to avoid the booking charge. They charge a booking fee for one offs and then put the hourly rate on top, minimum of 2hrs so thats £64 for a one off clean. Using that model, doing two "one offs" a day would be good for starters and I could just look to grow from there.

Just throwing out some ideas.

 

[Andy Black]

Yep commission only sales absolutely there’s opportunities there, I’ve done some of this previously. Will start picking up the phone after Xmas/new year. Would work well just as casual remote work while I try and build the cleaning. Thanks for your comment.

Many businesses are prepared to pay for leads, booked calls, or sales. Or even just for a marketing or sales related service.

There’s many ways to get paid too. By hour, by project, by task. Flat monthly fee, fixed amount per lead/booking/sale, % of revenue/profit, etc.

 

[DMass]

That’s great work. You’ve literally created money out of nothing! It’s a great feeling when you do that!

 

[Ing]

Very good! You have started! Respect!

 

[BulkPaintings]

great job.

 

[Fasted]

Lets say you grow your cleaning business - which I think you can. You need a way that some one who has very little cleaning experience can come in and do a sufficient job and to your standard in the shortest period of time.

It also means you can manage complaints when a customer says (shower was not done) and your worker has ticked all boxes that they have ownership and a system in place - I hope this makes sense

This is a very good idea, thank you.

I'm not on TaskRabbit yet because the hourly rate they recommend I charge looks very low but I should probably get on there as well initially just to fill my diary.

And yes I need to remember the before and afters shots, one guy has just asked for those and thankfully I took a few last week so had some to send. But everyone else seems to have a lot more so need to build it up.

 

[2dads]

Great news Fasted with the wins, in regards to setting times in a room - you are 100% right. As some one who has done a little cleaning I would suggest at the start of the job (quoting etc) walking the rooms - writting down each room.

Draw a quick map of the area and break down of areas of concern.

Say Bed Room One - skuff marks on walls, mark those areas on the walls etc
Put down a time for the room - say it will take you 10mins to do the jobs in room - add 30% for the time, rather have a little more for the unforseen. 13 mins is for bed Room One.

After you do all the rooms you have a rough time allowed - Example:

Room 1 - vac floor, mop, dust, air freshner, scuff mark on wall (x on map) 13min
Room 2 - var floor, dust book shelf 13min
Room 3 -vac floor, mop, dust, air freshner, scuff mark on wall, empty bin 13 min
Kitchen - clean sink 26min
Bathroom 1 - .... 26min

Total time: XX mins

You not have a clear time frame, get a milk crate/clear box, hold some cleaning supplies and your work pad in right and have a small timer (egg timer etc)

Enter the room, set the timer and get to it. If you allow 13 mins to get it done, you will get it done. If you allow 30 mins, you will use those 30 mins. If you finish early, move onto the next room.

This is my 2 cents, this could also be a way to get the most out of your staff and sets it up as a challenge. As a cleaner, in most cases close enough is good enough and some one with OCD is not the cleaner you want *Great you spent 3 hours doing my sink and cleaning the grim - but what about the rest of the house??**

 

[2dads]

Yup I’ve noticed this

Also fall victim to this sometimes and I’ve gotta watch for it. Like today I was cleaning this window panel when I realised I’d spent over five mins on a single panel trying to get it a absolutely perfect - wtf am I doing a need to move on - literally had a whole house to clean and I’m trying to get a speck of dust off

Me and my wife did the cleaning when had a go at it, She works smart and has a high level of common sense - I on the other hand have a little bit more slacker approach. Need to get it to a good enough level, also if the customer does complain take the feedback - right it down. If people keep complaining that you leave smudges on the glass, well - fix it - use a different spray, change your clothes etc until it fixes that issue.

Also flip the feedback, they may want a premium clean and want you there for 4 hours - if they are happy to pay you for that you both may have just had poor communication. Any feedback is good feedback.

Be selective of your customers - I have met some cool people over my time - people pay for service. Save 10-30% to deal with some half whit? Or pay some one who rocks up, get's it done and has a smile

I know which I would choose.

 

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[MattR82]

I like this thread! It's interesting to hear how much opportunity is out there in service businesses.

I know someone that got a small franchise for commercial cleaning and is doing really well out of it. It seems like small to medium sized offices/contracts is a really nice sweet spot as far as profit margin goes, and that the downturn from less office space being used during the pandemic was somewhat offset by businesses needing to get more serious about cleaning to stay covid compliant etc. I literally just read this interview about it today.

I know franchise is a dirty word still lol, but maybe there's some interesting info in there for you.

Article |Transcript: Podcast Ep#196 “In 2020 the commercial cleaning sector evolved. We’re now experiencing a business boom” (ft Damien Boehm, Founder and Director of Urban Clean Commercial cleaning franchises) | BusinessBuyInvest.com

Listen to the audio version here Podcast: Ep#196 “In 2020 the commercialcleaning sector evolved. We’re now experiencing abusiness boom”

www.businessbuyinvest.com

 

[Boogie]

One of my dad's best friends (who is long dead, btw, this was a few decades ago now) was a chiropractor who added in a cleaning business as his second business. He didn't do any of the cleaning himself as far as I know.

One interesting tidbit: When we traveled with him, he always used a fake name so nobody could trace his activities. I don't know why. Maybe he did some work with cash under the table. He used to travel to Vegas a lot. I don't think he was mob connected.

His relevance to the discussion is that he niched down into cleaning banks and that seemed to be very profitable for him at the time. I have no idea if that's still true. But at least the contract would have been a 6 day per week service for each bank.

Ultimately, he left chiropractic and lived on what his crews made for him.

 

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[Fasted]

the first one is already saturated and you can only take away market shares from competitors if you´re better or cheaper.

This is my market. What I'm essentially doing is skewing value which is also discussed in the book. It does violate "entry" fully aware of that, to be honest that's one of the reasons I was able to get in so quick and start making money. I'm aware it's not truly fastlane but that does not mean it's not worth doing if I can get in, make money and not have to work for somebody else. All about the value skew.

 

[Jockomofino]

Took £570 today, two end of tenancies. Was serious graft and I will be sore tomorrow. Decent pay though for a days work, probably the most I've ever been paid in a day.

@Jockomofino thanks for sharing that. Yeah honestly don't know what the plan is, I guess see what happens. For now I'm enjoying not being told what to do by a boss, pretty much picking my own hours and earning some money. I got totally disillusioned working in corporate environments. I chose cleaning cause I didn't want massive startup costs or risk, didn't want office work and wanted to be my own boss. There was literally a million other things I could've done but I didn't want to piss about planning/mentally masturbating for the next 6 months until I found some big idea. Now I've started I kind've want to see how far I can take this. If I max out at like £2k a month or something and hiring employees is a total nightmare, I'll do something else because I have no big designs to create a multi million pound cleaning company if it's not viable and my heart won't be broken if that doesn't happen. But I've gotta see how far I can take it.

Sure thing! Anytime you want to ask me a question, feel free to PM me and I'll offer whatever I can. We really did learn a lot from the experience but as I said it is an employee driven business (assuming you want to grow it) so you have to decide (or like my wife, find out thru experience) if you are good at managing people. If you are, I'd say there's no limit to how big you could grow.

 

[Fasted]

I have a couple questions

1. Do you have experience in cleaning or have you just dived in?
2. Bark leads, i was looking and for end of tenancy there is a lot of jobs available, how much have you averaged spending to get 1 job on there?
3. Why dont you just stick to end of tenancy only instead of doing cleans per week?

No problem. No I didn’t have any prior experience with cleaning pretty much just dived in. I’ve always been able to clean well though, I am a quite ocd. With Bark I got results straight away I’ve only bought one set of leads so far on there so the return on investment has been pretty good. Gumtree has worked well too and it’s cheap. I would stick to end of tenancies if I could, literally 10 of them a week and I’d be sorted. But I’ve not been able to get them as frequently as that just yet, I’m averaging 1-2 a week. In between that I’ve taken on regular cleaning jobs which don’t pay as well, but that’s weekly income whereas end of tenancies are one off.

Are you thinking of getting started?

 

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[Fasted]

When I have had to have a (as a renter) End of tenancy cleans, I have always asked the real estate if they have a preferred cleaner.



Normally these cleaners are local and if anything needs to be cleaned work with the real estate to get it rectified, letting me get my bond back quicker etc.



They normally (I would presume and would expect) have a kickback program to the real estate. Each property they do – maybe $x amount goes to the real estate for a referral, no idea the legality of this however I am 75% sure this would be the case.



Ask people in the real estate (renting game or sales) about who they use for end-of-lease cleans. Maybe suggest a referral system, once again no idea if this is frowned upon in your area/country.



A great way to get business is to make it easy for your end-user to deal with you, you take care of it and if something was not cleaned to a level of satisfaction, you go back and clean it – the end-user gets their bond and every one is happy.



Real estate agent gets a cut or commission..

End user gets there bond back

New Tenant gets a clean house to move into

Yeah so this is kind've what I do but I haven't specifically dealt with estate agents yet just landlords and tenants which is fine but not that much repeat. I guess it 's worth just speaking to them.

I'm still trying to build regular ones as well though for like 16-18hr just fill 40hrs. I should be able to do it from bark leads they've been good. I'm happy to do end of tenancies they pay like £200-350 per job when I manage to get them. The regulars can also make money but you need to be booked out like 6-8hrs a day.

 

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[2dads]

@Fasted - how is the business going mate?

Been away from the forums for a bit and want to make sure my main man is still killing it!

 

[Black_Dragon43]

@2dads

Buddy sorry for late response. I f*cked up pretty bad, had a relapse from end of Feb until about a week ago when I got myself straight again. I didn't feel able to respond until now. During this time I did keep working, but as you can imagine I wasn't exactly firing an all cylinders, averaged maybe £300pw and was desperately trying to keep my head above water.

On the positive side, I have managed to find two good clients who contacted me via Gumtree; an estate agency that has been sending me a couple of deep cleans a week, and an airbnb management company that have now given me a schedule via app. I've agreed with the estate agents to give them a lower price as it is regular deep cleaning, and over the last week the airbnb work has been filling in the gaps quite well. I don't really have a regular client base to be honest now, 3 customers fortnightly, like 4 hour cleans so it's been great to have fluked a couple of regular customers when I wasn't really wasn't in a fit state to set about growing the business. Just made my first sales call again today and booked an end of tenancy from bark.com £200 so that's a positive step. And this is a positive step, getting myself accountable on the forum again - I was given so much help and support on here previously - so of course I want to be here.

Thanks for reaching out @2dads and I hope you're doing well.

@Black_Dragon43 i'll be back on the Monday sessions when it doesnt coincide with work I have. I've missed it. Hope you're good.

Glad to hear you’re back and looking forward to chatting again mate! You’ve got this

 

[Joejordan95]

How’s the work going now @Fasted ?

 

[MattR82]

These 8 bar steam pressure cleaners look great. I know some cleaners using them and it saves a huge amount of time, not to mention being a better quality clean without a need for chemicals. Something like 2k USD give or take.

 

[Fasted]

I’ve been “lurking” on here the last few days, it’s been a while. Didn't realise it’s been that long since I’ve posted an update.

The road to my first £10k month is on. Currently hitting £7.5k revenue last 3months which includes around £1k cash.

One full time staff, a couple of part time staff and me. I’m a double full time staff. There is no rest for the wicked.

I’ll do a proper update once we hit £10k revenue. Should be within next 2-3 months.

Keep pushing.

 

[savefox]

(I do have 2 Rug Doctors right now, but they're shit),

Throw them away and look into VLM carpet cleaning. It's perfect for commercial carpets. I'm making like $300 per hour cleaning offices with an Orbot Vibe

 

[Andy Black]

sales wise, yes I definitely have sales skills within companies that I have worked for but not sure how I could grow this to be something standalone and not within 7 days. Sales consulting or a sales training business would be a massive stretch I think. I'm not a sales superstar I've just done £25kbase + 7-10k commission for a few years type of thing. I would absolutely be prepared to do remote work part time sales roles though if needs be, while I build home service/cleaning business.

^^^ This is what jumps out at me from what you wrote.

Is helping businesses improve their sales such a stretch if you’ve already done it before?

I agree that selling a service (aka your time) is the fastest way to get started. Cleaning is a tried and trusted route to get started in business, and you can leverage your sales skills/knowledge.

Also consider asking around in your current network to find out if they know anyone who needs help with sales. As per: HOT! - When your back's against the wall...

Maybe also check out the braindump threads in my signature.

 

[Fasted]

About sales and how to do it standalone - when we had our tech startup (now failed), people just called us and asked if they can help us grow - usually without any flat fee upfront. Not that they brought many customers, but there were some successes, and one long-term partnership.

Yep commission only sales absolutely there’s opportunities there, I’ve done some of this previously. Will start picking up the phone after Xmas/new year. Would work well just as casual remote work while I try and build the cleaning. Thanks for your comment.

 

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[Andy Black]

Maybe I'm being too generous with that hourly rate. National min wage increases in April 22 to £9.50. So I could maybe give them £10.50ph and profit the difference, again 8hrs a day that gets £232 per day where I get £148 and they get £84.00. In that example they'd be bringing in over the equivalent of $300 per day which would meet your x20 criteria @Johnny boy. But not easily. Any issues like customer not in or only having say 6hours work on a given day would obviously affect what they could bring in. I don't know how that would even work, an employee expecting a full 8hrs a day work and pay but me only having 6 or less on some days......what then?

View attachment 41228

This is a flier I found in my apartment blocks. I guess I'd be looking at around that for starters. She doesn't mention hourly rate. Hourly rate becomes more relevant once I start to employ someone. She might be charging equivalent of £25ph, where a regular weekly clean for a one bed tends to take an hour. One offs she just charges more because there's no regularity. I presume for it to be regular they have to commit to a minimum of 4weeks/months direct debit or something otherwise they pay the one off rate, not sure

View attachment 41229View attachment 41230

Maid2Clean are one of the biggest in my area. Again they must want a direct debit commitment for the regular ones to avoid the booking charge. They charge a booking fee for one offs and then put the hourly rate on top, minimum of 2hrs so thats £64 for a one off clean. Using that model, doing two "one offs" a day would be good for starters and I could just look to grow from there.

Just throwing out some ideas.

I’d guess being the cleaner would be the simplest way to start.

 

[Fasted]

Many businesses are prepared to pay for leads, booked calls, or sales. Or even just for a marketing or sales related service.

There’s many ways to get paid too. By hour, by project, by task. Flat monthly fee, fixed amount per lead/booking/sale, % of revenue/profit, etc.

Like this one is definitely worth a shot.

 

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