Starting A Cleaning Business

[Dionysos]

In my opinion you could run the risk of violating "the commandment of entry" (Mj DeMarcos´s book :" the fastlane millionare"). It does not take very much to get started with a business like a cleaning agency. So lots of other competitors have already flooded the market and are likely to do so in the future. So profit could be competed away. On the one hand cleaning is something everybody requires but the entry level to get in as a company or freelancer is very low if not non-existant.

Not every business has to follow the CENTS principle from the start.

Either find a way to eventually apply all the principles and dominate or use it as a hustle to create a lot of money for a true fastlane biz..

To use the books from MJ for reference, overthinking and trying to find a true productocracy will often lead to action faking!

I for one respect you @Fasted for taking the leap, taking action and hustle. Following your journey, you got this man!

 

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[Fasted]

Are you looking at commercial cleaning as well, like small offices attached to showrooms or industrial areas, gyms etc?

Had a couple of commercial customers enquiring, but haven't signed any of them up yet.

 

[pipedream2017]

There's two situations if you're just starting out.

1. You have a unique connection or family business you could hop into. Or you have some unique situation to take advantage of ("What should I do I just inherited 27 rental homes" type of situation). Or you have some insane skill that you can monetize.

2. You have none of those things.

In situation 1, take advantage of it and that is where you should start. I always recommend getting involved in a family business. I have two friends that make mid six figures in their 20's because number 1 they are smart and number 2 they got involved in their family business and did a great job. Not taking anything away from them, they're smart business owners, but if you have something to take advantage of, do it. If you have an actual skill like the ability to build products with a cnc machine, or coding experience, or whatever, use that too.

In situation 2 (which is where I was), where you have nothing other than common sense and a burning desire to be free, I like either high-end sales, home services, or a combination of the two. There's also digital marketing businesses, ecommerce stuff but I am not the expert in those. I like high-end sales (not car sales or selling life insurance lol, but rather enterprise level sales, big ticket stuff) because you can make big big money. My best friend is soon to be an account manager at a huge company that sells telehealth and other stuff to hospitals and the entire VA as well. The top sales guys there make millions each year. He should be in the mid 6 figures in a couple years as a salesman there. He's doing great right now too. We both sold cars before doing what we do now so I'm not saying it's a bad job to start off with for a year.

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.

You can try to build it up like I am trying to, or you can use it to fund other things. When you become a business owner you tend to roll with a different crowd and make new friends. All of my friends are on a different path than the scripted sidewalk/slowlane path. Most of them own a business and are pretty much free. You'll learn from them, see how they do things, and gain a lot of experience just by osmosis. When you grow your own business up a bit and have some actual cash saved up, it will only be the next logical step for you to have another idea, throw a bit of money at it, and have another business going. You may even do some joint ventures. It's good to have friends that are on a higher level. You'll talk about your goals to pull in 275k of profit next year and the buddy with a centurion card will tell you to stop thinking small and be more intelligent. Gotta love that shit lol. Keeps you responsible and on track.

The important thing is to break away and start hustling. It will have 100 other benefits to your life and soul that I can only sorta describe. It will change the way you think and how you see the world and the sooner you break away the better. Even if you just escape the misery of listening to average people talk about their retarded distractions like sports and politics, going out on your own to start a business will pay dividends for you. Trust me.

There's a million different types of businesses and almost all of them are not a great place for you to start. I don't think you'll do very well right now opening up a manufacturing plant to build circuit boards for CNC machines, or opening an oil refinery, or things like that. Those can come later. For now, just get hustling and keep your eyes open for opportunities. You only see them when you think differently than other people. Maybe you start a service business and realize all of the tools you use suck. For example when I was cleaning off a roof, I was annoyed at the brushes I was using and couldn't find one that was effective and made for roofs. I think you could manufacture one that had very firm bristles and was shaped better for use on a roof. Then you use money you saved up to run some ads and make a 3-d mockup and try to get sales to test the market, then you make them and sell them once you've confirmed demand, then you scale up your marketing and now you're making money selling brushes to other roof cleaners. Just an example.

Skys the limit just start walking now.

How many roofs do you average a month??

 

[p0stscript]

It does not take very much to get started with a business like a cleaning agency. So lots of other competitors have already flooded the market and are likely to do so in the future. So profit could be competed away. On the one hand cleaning is something everybody requires but the entry level to get in as a company or freelancer is very low if not non-existant.

The thing with cleaning is whilst anybody can do it not many want to. You are correct that it doesn't take much to get started in the business (that is what I liked about it) but it can scale quickly if you are good at it, and gives regular income. Also I've noticed a lot of potential competition has a tendency to quickly come and go, and regular clients remain very loyal.

 

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[Johnny boy]

How many roofs do you average a month??

I run a lawn care company

If you wanted to do roof cleaning I think a reasonable amount would be 1-2 a day for an average of like 10k a month working part time

 

[Jockomofino]

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.

First let me say I would never try to rain on anyone's plans to better themselves by trying to get away from working for someone else and working for themselves. However, let me tell you of our experience.

My wife grew up in a blue collar family in a small Pennsylvania town. Her mother was uneducated but one thing she absolutely knew how to do was clean a house. And my wife learned how to do that very well.

When I met my wife she was director of social services for a large senior living community, and then became the administrator. This was as thankless a job as she could imagine and she never got the support from upper management that she should have. She was on the clock 24/7, working for someone else. But there was something else that would make itself apparent down the road.

We had had discussions about her starting a cleaning company. We didn't know exactly how it would go. We just knew it was a skill she had that she could use to make a living working for herself. As I searched for ideas for how to go about pricing jobs, I came across a YouTube video for a lady who referred to herself as 'America's Cleaning Expert'. She sold a program with full support that taught you how to start and grow a maid service with the goal of becoming an absentee owner in a few years. She broke down the distribution of revenues to various things using industry standards with the idea that you would start off doing it yourself, grow it a little, hire someone and train them, grow it a little more, hire someone else an train them, eventually getting to the point where the revenues would first allow you to get out of the field, and eventually hire an office manager. She laid out the entire plan and as I told my wife later, I believe we got more value from her program than it cost us. We even came in touch with a woman in the next town who had followed her plan and reached a million dollars in revenues in 3 years.

But there was one problem...

Everything looked great on paper. Unfortunately, my wife is not great at managing people, or the stress that that brings. That's probably also a reason she eventually couldn't handle the pressures of being an administrator for a large community with hundreds of employees.

Everything started great. We had great marketing and branding that everyone loved. She got high-end clients in luxury neighborhoods. She built up her account quickly and then hired someone. it was ok for a few months. And then COVID hit. Over the next three years, she hired 3 other people but at most only had 2 working for her at one time, and that overlap was only for about a month. She paid her employees more than what most of the other maid services did on a pay-for-performance plan. Unfortunately, eventually, nobody wanted to work. And when they did work for her, all they did was complain.

Now she is doing it alone, which is easier for her. And fortunately, out of this came a great business idea that we are now working on.

The bottom line is managing people is hard. Even MJ says in MFL that a business that employees human resource systems gets the lowest grade because that reduces a certain amount of control.

Now, if your goal is only to create a business for you to do alone, or you are great at managing people, go for it. But it was a hard lesson for my wife to learn because she never realized that was part of her problem as an administrator until she had to face it working for herself.

Hope this helps and good luck in whatever you choose to do.

 

[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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[pipedream2017]

Well done mate! Thats some serious cash!!! Im in the uk too and am looking to do something similar, where do you find your end of tenancy jobs?

 

[Mark98]

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.

@Fasted, this video can help you solve some of your problems.

View: https://youtu.be/0o0vY_HfzNQ

 

[Fasted]

Well done mate! Thats some serious cash!!! Im in the uk too and am looking to do something similar, where do you find your end of tenancy jobs?

Gumtree and Bark buddy

 

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[pipedream2017]

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?

 

[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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[2dads]

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

 

[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

 

[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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[missinfinity98]

Inspiring, thank you for creating this thread!

 

[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!

 

[2dads]

@Fasted - I hope your doing well mate & keeping safe!

look forward to seen you back onhere

 

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[Fasted]

@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.

 

[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

 

[2dads]

I am glad to hear your ok @Fasted - I dont know how your feeling or going through but It sounds like you got your self back in balance and ready to go again.

Just know with the service you offer their is normally a huge pool of potential customers, some not ideal but still will do the job. Let's say you lost all your customers after a episode* - if you can rebuild quickly it shows that when you have your bad days that you can build back your active customers quickly.

head up brother and keep yourself in balance.

Rome wasn't built in a day

 

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[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]

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!

I'm sending you an email. Thanks for offering to share your experience.

 

[Fasted]

Took on first employee this week who is the daughter of one of my customers. She's been helping me out with the AirBnB work I've been doing. The AirBnB cleans can only really be done after 11am unless they check out early - and usually have to be done by 3pm. On my own I can only really manage 2 of these a day and they pay £45-50 depending on size. But with 2 of us cleaning I think 3, maybe even 4 cleans within the 11-3 time slot, is achievable. AirBnB client was keen for me to bring someone on so it made sense, they're still saying they want to help me build my team because they're happy with my standard of work and want me to train people that I bring on. They asked me if i had access to or could get a van. So they're definitely making the right sounds and are keen to grow too which is good. Been looking at vans online which will be my next purchase - i know you can pick them up relatively cheap but i genuinely know F*ck all about cars. Also theres possibly a "clean air tax" coming in soon in my city. If this happens a large estate could be a better option. Lets see.

Either side of these cleans I've been maintaining the odd end of tenancy clean, deep cleans that contact me from gumtree and the few regular cleans that I have. If I can just add a few more regular customers from bark.com that are happy to have me clean and my employee after 4pm or before 11am, I'll be comfortably in that £750-£1000pw bracket. Still lots of scope to grow here, everything very grass roots right now. My momentum has returned and my passion for trying to make this work is strong.

 

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[2dads]

Great update Fasted, keep it up and smash those air bnbs.

Getting a van will be a big investment however could open a lot more work (however if you can keep it to a small run around car it means, re sale value of fleet vehicles in future - and they may be easier to park on busy roads vs vans)

Hope this makes sense

Took on first employee this week who is the daughter of one of my customers. She's been helping me out with the AirBnB work I've been doing. The AirBnB cleans can only really be done after 11am unless they check out early - and usually have to be done by 3pm. On my own I can only really manage 2 of these a day and they pay £45-50 depending on size. But with 2 of us cleaning I think 3, maybe even 4 cleans within the 11-3 time slot, is achievable. AirBnB client was keen for me to bring someone on so it made sense, they're still saying they want to help me build my team because they're happy with my standard of work and want me to train people that I bring on. They asked me if i had access to or could get a van. So they're definitely making the right sounds and are keen to grow too which is good. Been looking at vans online which will be my next purchase - i know you can pick them up relatively cheap but i genuinely know F*ck all about cars. Also theres possibly a "clean air tax" coming in soon in my city. If this happens a large estate could be a better option. Lets see.

Either side of these cleans I've been maintaining the odd end of tenancy clean, deep cleans that contact me from gumtree and the few regular cleans that I have. If I can just add a few more regular customers from bark.com that are happy to have me clean and my employee after 4pm or before 11am, I'll be comfortably in that £750-£1000pw bracket. Still lots of scope to grow here, everything very grass roots right now. My momentum has returned and my passion for trying to make this work is strong.

 

[originalMJT]

First couple of clients today.

2 bed apartment clean. They asked if I do carpet clean as well, which I don't, so just said I'd get someone to do it and include that in the price. Found this old timer guy who said he'd do it for £30, tried to get him to do it it for £20 because it was a really small area but he was having none of it lol. Nice chap though I'm sure I'll need his help again. Charged them for my 4hrs work for the cleaning at £15ph plus added an extra £10 onto carpet mans price. Leaving me with £70.00.

Then went to an end of tenancy clean that I quoted yesterday and started like 2hrs work of it yesterday. I said I'd do it for £225. He pushed me back to 200 and was still umming and ahhing saying he'd call me back next day (which I knew from my sales roles never F*cking happens), so I said right I'll do it for £175. It was A LOT work though, all sorts of shit I had to move, the place was an absolute state. Probably around 6hrs work for £175, that's still around £30ph but really he's got that done cheap. It should have been at least £225 but I guess I just wanted the graft and money.

Got another 2 bed booked tomorrow so that should be another £60. That'll be like £300 quid cash for 2 days work. Not gonna make me rich but it's a start.

Maybe I should move this to execution thread now? Not sure how I'd do that.

There is nothing like the feeling own making your own money, dont forget to keep your contacts phone numbers and email addres,s so you can sent them your upto date price lists and work that you cover/areas that you cover

 

[Fasted]

Took around £700 this week so far. Still waiting on some payments to come through and have like £200 of AirBnB work booked in for tomorrow. So I might just hit my first £1k week. I also didn't work on Wednesday which is a plus.

About two weeks ago I had a car accident and my vehicle is a right off. Looking like split liability. I was super pissed off when it happened but I'm over it now. I had planned on getting a new vehicle soon anyway so now that's just moved that purchase forward a couple of months. The car was only work like £1k. My sisters husband has lent me his ford fiesta van that he doesn't need for a while so I've got business insurance on that until I decide what I need. I've got some cash saved up for a vehicle just need to decide what I need. With the work I'm doing now I need something big enough to fit in loads of stuff - cleaning stuff, linens, consumables etc. But looking forward I also think I need it to have at least three seats, maybe more. Then I can have a small cleaning team in the vehicle and enough space to fit everything in. God knows how I've actually managed over the last few months with a vauxhall astra hatchback lmao.

My main thing at the moment is getting this girl who started for me up to speed asap. She's keen to work, meets me locally so picking her up isn't an issue and she's a good kid really. Having said that she is a bit of a walking red flag - plenty of piercings, bright red hair, chain vaper, addicted to energy drinks and her mobile phone. Oh and she's adopted. So she's got quite a lot going on bless her lol. With her only being 16 I'm really not paying her much right now and what I am paying her she's more than happy with. I don't mind if it takes some time to get her up to speed - she's allowing me take on more work. But I'm done with the F*cking around on the cleans at times and I want her full focus when we're on a job cause the timings are tight. Told her today that starting from tomorrow the phone, energy drinks and vape has to stay in the car when we're cleaning. Hope she responds to this otherwise it probably wont work out. If I can get her up to speed I can pay her more and still have a good margin, F*ck it I'll give her mates a job as well in a couple of months if it works out. If I employ an experienced cleaner right now they'll want pretty much the same rate as me so I'm not doing that until my business is more stable and I'm confident that I'm consistently making decent money.

 

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[Stargazer]

Hello

Is the 16 year old not in some sort of education, training or apprenticeship scheme until Year 13? (18 years old)

How is she going to do appointments throughout the day?

Other than vaping in someone's house, I would not be too concerned about her red hair and tattoos. It's the ones who don't have tattoos that are the rebellious non-conformists these days.

As long as she turns up and does her work efficiently you shold be ok.

As an aside, I don't kow how old you are but in the past, old ladies used to dye their grey or white hair blue which is why they were called the Blue Rinse Brigade.

It's a shame they don't do that now as you could make a play on Red Rinse meets Blue Rinse.

Dan

 

[Fasted]

@Stargazer She’s just finished her last GCSE exams, she doesn’t know what she wants to do yet and says she might take a year out. I’m actually paying her over double the minimum wage for her age so she’s saying that she’s not that bothered about doing an apprentice if I have plenty of work for her. I’m obviously not going to push her down that route it wouldn’t feel right, so I might only have her for the next few months anyway. We’ll see.

It’s not tattoos - I have some tattoos. It’s mainly the facial piercings, she has like 3 in her nose, and in the bridge between her eyes, plugs in her ears etc. Maybe its me being judgmental and my customers won’t bother at all - we’ll soon find out anyway when I start taking her with me on domestic clean. She’s not that efficient yet but think will be able to get her up to speed.

I’m 30 but I think know what you mean. I’m not gonna mention that to her cause I think she would go for that sortve thing to be honest haha