Lessons Learned Since Starting a Remote Cleaning Business
Not only is it possible to bring in 5-figure months with only a few months of work, but it also provides consistent, recurring cash flow that can allow you to reliably scale the business with very little additional work after the customers and cleaners have been attained. If you want to learn how to do it, check out this blog I wrote on how to start a cleaning company remotely.
So why doesn’t everyone do it?
Great question. Because it’s not as easy as it sounds. Hundreds of things can go wrong with this business model once you get it off the ground. If you don’t know how to handle these situations as they arise, you might be shooting yourself in the foot and hindering your ability to succeed. To help you avoid these “fires” within your own business, here are a few things I’ve learned since starting my remote cleaning company.
Always be hiring
When you’re first starting the company, it’s tempting to hire the first person who agrees to work for you - and often, this might feel like your only good option. However, if you’re not picky about who you’re hiring, you will inevitably bring on some unreliable people. Plus, you never know when someone will quit or stop showing up to jobs. For this reason, you don’t have a stable company until you have multiple cleaners because you need to be able to transfer work to other people when cleaners quit. The cleaning industry has a lot of turnover, so you must be prepared for this.
Understand how the cleaner can plan on entering the job site prior to the start of the job
Another issue to be aware of are headaches like cleaners not being able to get into homes/apartments, and if you’re in a big city, there may also be parking issues. For this reason, before accepting work from customers, it’s essential to ask them how the cleaner can plan on entering the residence and if there is sufficient parking on the premises; this will save TONS of headaches.
Make sure you get billing info before committing to jobs
Always get customers to enter their billing info on your website before the cleaning. I like telling customers that they need to enter their billing information to confirm the cleaning, or I might give it to someone else. If you have people’s billing info on file, it makes it 10X easier to handle billing and eliminates a lot of headaches. Additionally, by getting customers to enter their billing information before the booking, you can discern which customers are serious about hiring you as a cleaning company and which customers may have been trying to get the cleaning for free and never pay you. Occasionally, you’ll lose customers when you require them to enter their billing info before a job, but most of the time, this will be a blessing in disguise. Most people who refuse to enter their billing information are likely never planning on paying you in the first place.
In my Remote Cleaning CEO Handbook, I dive into everything I’ve learned while building and operating a residential cleaning company remotely. In the book, I have an entire section dedicated to “Why Your Remote Cleaning Company is Going to Fail,” where I dive into each of the learnings I’ve described above in more detail, as well as over 20 other learnings that you won’t find anywhere else. Check it out here: https://pontodotdev.gumroad.com/l/yquou.
