Full disclosure, we started our cleaning business and had no idea how quickly we would be able to grow it- in less than a year. We went from having a few customers to being at a point where we were in a position to turn down business that was not a good fit. We made some good decisions from the start and instead of you trying to figure it all out on your own, we want to share as much as we can with others to help you all blow your business goals out of the water.
If you want to go from having $2,000 months to having $20,000 months consistently we have 5 key things we suggest you do!
- Residential cleanings will make you money, but it may not be the best use of your time. When we started out we took on ONE residential client and that was it! We realized early on we wouldn’t be able to achieve the kind of money we wanted to by just focusing on regular residential cleanings. Instead, we focused on janitorial/ regular office cleanings, post-construction cleaning, Airbnb, and move-in/out cleanings.
- When you think about how to maximize your time think about location and proximity. Especially in bigger cities, you can eat up a TON of your day with travel. Be mindful of the locations of the clients you bring on. Sometimes this is hard to do when you are just starting out, and that is ok. One solution we came up with quickly was creating our schedule around location and trying to stick to it as much as possible to limit our travel time.
- When we were starting out, we first talked to a business owner who owned a large office building who we already knew. They had mentioned to us they were somewhat happy with their current cleaning team. While we were still in the exploration phase of starting our business, we asked them if they would consider making a change and using our team. We even asked them what they had currently been paying the team who was cleaning their space twice a week. They shared with us they paid $1,300 a month. We made an offer to charge them $1,200 a month for cleanings twice a week. They agreed and we were excited to have our first official client who was going to be paying us $1,200 a month for a total of 16 ish hours of work for the month. Just starting off we felt pretty good about it!
- Focus on the recurring income and fill in the rest of your time with one offs like move in/out cleanings. We set a goal of getting to $3,000 of recurring income when we started off. At first it felt like a lofty goal. Once we locked in the first office building cleaning then it didn’t feel like such a stretch to think we would have another one soon and get us really close to our next $1,200 contract. We thought about other offices in the area that were similar in size. We would first think about if we knew anyone who worked there. If we did, we would ask them to make an introduction. If we didn’t know anyone who worked there we would go into the office and have our business cards we had made on Canva. We would bring some cookies and make conversation with the first person we saw. We would ask them how happy they were with their current cleaning team. 90% of the time their response would be, “they are ok.” We would then ask if they would be open to trying a new team. And guess what, 75% of the time they were open to it! Before we knew it we had reached our goal of $3,000 of recurring income. In less than 6 months we were billing roughly $10,000 in recurring cleanings.
- We never set the goal of $20,000 but rather we achieved it and once we did we knew it was possible. Once we knew it was possible we set that as a marker for a big month and what we would strive for going forward from month to month. The additional $10,000 would come in either through Airbnb’s we cleaned, post-construction cleaning jobs and move in/out cleans.
It has been fun to watch our growth from month to month and celebrate our hard work. We believe you can do ALL of this and grow your business EVEN bigger if you want to-and we are here to help. We don’t want you to feel like you have to do it alone and that’s why we created My Cleaning Village. We wanted to help Go-Getters like you not feel alone and overwhelmed on what to do next to level up your business. If you want to connect and be part of our village give us a shout here and let us know what you are struggling with most right now in your business! We love to help problem-solve and want you to have HUGE months and we can all celebrate together!
