Starting a Cleaning Company

[Drwakiza]

Hello guys,

I am creating this thread for several reason, the main one is to keep myself accountable but also so that people can learn from my journey, mistakes and successes, and eventually getting advices from more advanced entrepreneurs. (I will try my best to have a correct english and spelling, please forgive me in advance)

I am currently a student working in "alternance" which is in France a program that gives student a special status that allows them to work while studying. I work for a startup company in the medical technologies industry as a business developer.
I am doing pretty well, making more money than most average people in my area (but still a Time for Money trade..)

A couple weeks ago I got asked several times if I knew people who could provide cleaning services for professional building (offices, showrooms, etc) while at the same time I have been asked if I knew people who were hiring for cleaning jobs... The demand and the solution came to me out of nowhere.

I then decided to take this opportunity and start my cleaning company for professionals. My goal is to help these foreign students work and make money while studying and give them opportunity to grow (as a person and within the company) while providing quality and reliable cleaning services. There is a high demand for these services and it's most of the time long term contracts with recurring payements.

In July, I will have to make a decision between accepting a full time job as a business developer in my current company, or get unemployment benefit while working full time on my brand new business.
Some people are telling me that it is risky to go on my own full time, while I believe that taking this risk is necessary to make that shift and achieve the results, get the freedom and independance I am dreaming of.

Now that I got an official positive answer to my question "Can I get unemployment benefit as a business owner?" I am sure that I will not accept the full time position and just work full time on my cleaning business.

My target is professionnals and office buildings because companies provides stable and long term contracts, pay well, and are more reliable than non professional customers.

I am already negotiating a first contract with my school which has a big building (and is part of a big private school network so has potential other customers). I proposed to them to get some of their students in "alternance" with me (which is how they make their money) to help me with business development. Plus, my employees are mostly students so it serves another purpose more than just getting that building cleaned up.

My girlfriend helped me with our visual identity by making a pretty cool logo and some flyers because she saw that clearly my main focus is to get a first contract signed.

To be honest, I am kind of walking blindly for the rest because I don't have a precise idea on how much cleaning companies charges for their services (I have a price range but nothing really specific has it depends on multiple factors), so I have called some of them to ask them for a quotation so I can compare them together.

The next steps:

1) paying my comptable and get the status officialized
2) Buying the equipment (around 600€ total to start)
3) Have a meeting with my futur employees and the independant workers I will also hire for some specific services (High windows, etc)
4) Get my first contract signed

I will post the different steps that I take, and share with you guys the mistakes and best practices I make along the way

Thank you for reading me

Talk to you soon

David

 

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