There are a lot of people that ask that question every single day. How do I open my own cleaning business? How can I start my own cleaning company on the cheap? How do you do that? Now, in a perfect world you would be able to start a business with no money, and no research, and no experience, and all those things. Right? That would be perfect. But what kind of business would you end up with? It would be like trying to cook a meal with no ingredients, and no recipes, and no history of how to cook. You would make something, and it might turn out, but probably won’t. And the same goes for your business.
What you really need to know is this. No business is going to be 100% free. You’re going to have to make some investments. You don’t want to be the cheapest business on the block because you have no advertising, no branding and you have no company image. Because then you’re not really a business are you? You’re a hobbyist. Hobbies cost money and businesses make money. So, to make money, you have to invest some money.
In the beginning maybe you don’t have money to invest into your business but you have time. Time is also a resource. Time is the most valuable resource than anything else and most people will argue with you about it. Because when that time is gone, you’re never going to get it back. Since you have no cash, one of the things you want to focus on, right now as you’re starting your business investing your time to your business.
At the beginning periods as you’re building your business until your business is full of clients and you’re working full time. This is the time when you need to answer all of your frequently asked questions that customers will ask you and get all your rules and regulations in the place. These are things like do you work by the hour or the job? Do you work on the weekends? Do you charge more if you work on the weekends? Do you work around pets or do I need to crate my pet when you come? Do you water house plants? What are the rules and parameters by which you work? You don’t want to show up at a customer’s house and wing it. So, make a list with all those questions and have answers to all of them.
Here’s a list of questions you can answer and be ready when you get those phone calls from the customers.
1. Do you work by the hour or by the job?
2. Do you only clean houses or do you also clean offices?
3. Do you set up for parties or clean up after parties?
4. Do you do moving in or moving out cleans?
5. Do you charge more money or the same money for a moving clean?
6. Do you do random cleanings or do you only have weekly and bi weekly clients?
7. Will you be working if my regular cleaning falls on a holiday?
8. Do you charge more to work on holidays?
9. What hours do you work?
10. Do you work weekends?
11. How long have you been in business?
12. Is there any special training you’ve gone through to learn how to house clean?
13. Are you certified?
14. Do you have references?
15. Do you do laundry?
16. Do you do dishes or empty the dishwasher?
17. Do you do pet sitting on the side?
18. Is it okay if my pets hang out in the same room as you cleaning?
19. Is it okay if my kids are in the same room as you cleaning?
20. Are you licensed, bonded and insured?
21. Do you clean windows?
22. Do you clean out the fridge?
23. What type of cleaning chemicals do you use on hardwood floors?
24. Do you have your own vacuum?
25. Do you bring your own cleaning supplies?
26. Do you do miscellaneous projects?
27. Do I get a referral fee or discounted cleaning if I refer my friend?
28. Am I supposed to tip you for your service?
29. Do you clean out the hot tub?
30. What happens if you get sick?
31. Do you cancel or reschedule on me or do you just show up sick?
32. Do you charge a rescheduling fee if I have something come up and have to cancel?
33. How many people coming to clean?
34. Do I need to be home when you come to clean or can I be at work?
35. Are you the person that is coming to clean my house?
36. Is it just you cleaning or are you bringing a team of people with you?
37. Are the people you bring with you bonded and insured?
38. What is your screening policy for people you hire?
39. Do you do background checks or drug checks on the people you bring with you?
40. Can I do a background and a drug check on you?
41. How do you prefer to be contacted? Email, phone or text?
42. Are you going to reimburse if you break something while you are at my house?
43. Are you going to tell anyone about me or my home and how messy my house is?
44. Do you set times to come back so I know when you are coming or is it random?
45. Do you always come the same time on the same day?
46. Do you show up on time?
47. Do you clean the same stuff each time or do you rotate chores through the house?
48. Do you use green products?
49. How do you know what type of chemicals to use on different surfaces? How did you learn?
50. Do I pay you under the table or do you pay taxes? I’d like to take house cleaning as a deductible expense for my home based business.
51. Will it bother you if I’m home the whole time because I work from the house?
52. If I’m working from home, are you going to chat the whole time or will you allow me to get my work done?
53. Do you accept credit cards?
54. Do you offer a guarantee on your work?
55. If I forget to leave you a check, do you still do the work and let me pay you later or do you skip the cleaning?
56. Do you water indoor plants?
There are more questions but these are the most commonly asked. You need to know the answers, and rehearse them so that when a prospective client calls about house cleaning, you are confident and know how your business operates.
All right, since you got all the answers to the questions, now you want to figure out all of the things that your business is going to need. One of those things that you need is number one: How much money do you need? There are a lot of house cleaners that start businesses and they have no idea what and how much they need. They have no idea how their bills actually cost month by month. Or they don’t know how much money they need to bring in. So they settle with however many customers they have. Before realizing, hey wait a second. I need more customers to make some money at the end of the month so in order to pay my bills. And so along with knowing how much money you need to make, then you can start breaking down your time into small segments.
So, you have to figure out how many houses you need in the course of a day and that will tell you how early you need to start in the morning, and how late you need to work at night. So, that when a customer calls and says “Can you come over at ten o’clock in the morning?” You can’t. That’s right in the middle of one of your cleanings. And so it’s going to prevent you from booking appointments randomly to suit the customer, because you’re on a really tight time schedule.
Keep in mind, time is a limited resource, and right now it’s your most profitable resource. So, once you figure out how much money you need to make, and you figure out your scheduling there are a couple of other things you need to figure out. Like, how much money are you going to spend in cleaning supplies? Are you going to have professional uniforms? Or are you just going to buy some inexpensive uniforms but make them consistent every day? Are you going to put logos on your company car? Are you going to be marketing all over town because you’re going to hire a whole bunch of people or are you going to be marketing small in the beginning? Because if you start out really small in the beginning, as your business grows, and as you get more money coming in, that gives you the money to expand.
There are some people who spends $10,000 – $20,000 dollars setting up their company with like wrapped cars and billboards, signs and all kinds of fancy things. But they skipped a whole bunch of steps in between. So they have this amazing marketing plan and no customers. And they aren’t really in business. They just have this great big smoke and mirrors show where people will say, send me your referrals. Show me the ratings and reviews. But there aren’t any. Because they haven’t cleaned any houses. They just have a really expensive flamboyant looking business from the outside but it’s a facade.
So, if you start small, and this is where you want to start because you don’t have the resources to go out and be spending a lot of money. Start small, and build your business. As your business grows, as you have new money coming in, that’s going to allow you to pay your bills, to pay off any debts and to reinvest in your business. So, it’s a whole entire process. Since you starting your business right now you have to encourage yourself and block out some time. The habits that you create right now are the habits that will continue on and serve you for the remainder of your business life. Take an hour or two hours a day to learn about business. It might sound like crazy, “I’m just going to go clean houses.” No, you’re going to start an empire. And if you start an empire it doesn’t happen on zero information.
You just graduated from college, spent four or six years learning a specific trade. So, it would be foolish to think that you’re going to go in and build an empire with zero or no research behind you. You need to study about finances. You need to study about business. You need to learn about management. You need to learn about hiring employees. You need to know what motivates those employees. You need to learn about customer satisfaction. There is so much to learn about business then once you start earning money, how do you do your marketing? How do you do your advertising? Do you know about search engine optimization?
There’s a whole bunch of stuff that you can learn in one or two hours a day if you really focus your time and energy. But that is business time. That is you spending time right now reinvesting that in to your business. And you want to do that. Because if there are house cleaners out there and they are flying by the seat of their pants. But you are spending few hours a day learning the business and implementing what you’ve learned. Suddenly you are going to be so far ahead of all the other house cleaners that are in your market. That you will ace everybody. And you will be the one that builds the empire.
So, it is entirely up to you. But right now you have the studying skills, and you have the time. So create those slight progressive moves right now in your business that will propel you into the future to a really successful company. That would be the best suggestion right now for starting out a business with no money.