Why is it so hard to get started in the house cleaning business and how do you find customers?
We're going to talk about that today.
Hi, there.
I'm Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question
and I get to help you find an answer.
Now, if you're looking for customers you can go over to HouseCleaning360.com and you can
list your business because right now we're sending all of our friends and all of our
relatives and everybody that we know to HouseCleaning360.com
to find home service providers.
Not just house cleaners, but professional organizers, and people who do your landscaping,
and people who paint your house, and trim your hedges and your shrubs, and people who
will clean your swimming pool and your hot tub.
It's a way to get your house clean from top to bottom, inside and outside, and all the
extra things that you need.
You're going to find help over at HouseCleaning360.com.
All right, on to today's question, which comes from a house cleaner who asks this question.
Patrice: Hello, Angela.
My name's Patrice.
I was wondering why it's so hard to start a cleaning business.
I have worked a couple homes, but I'm trying to start my own business and it's very hard
to get any customers.
Angela Brown: All right, Patrice, that's an excellent question, but why is it so hard
to get started in the house cleaning business?
Well, it's hard because you're starting something new.
Now, the truth of the matter is, you only have 24 hours in a day, so whatever you were
doing up until now you're probably still doing.
All of the requirements of your day, getting people up, getting them dressed, sending them
off to school, packing people's lunches, doing laundry, housekeeping, dishes, getting your
vitamins ready, going to doctor's appointments, none of that stuff went away.
You still have all the same stuff that you were doing anyway, but now you're just adding
a business onto it, so it is hard.
One of the tricks about this is a lot of house cleaners just think that they're going to
jump in and clean a house here and there, and they don't think of it as a business.
But because it is a business there's a lot that is required.
There's a lot of education that's required, and so you're going to end up spending a lot
of time going on the internet and watching videos, and going through training, and reading
books, and learning about accounting, and taxes, and employees, and management, and
hiring, and firing, and how to motivate employees, and how to do customer service.
There's a lot that goes in with the business, and so if you just think you're going to wake
up one day and you're going to run and go clean a house or two and that's your business,
you're sadly mistaken because that is more like a hobby or a side hustle, and it's not
really a business.
If you are thinking about starting a business be prepared for a great, big chunk of your
time that you don't have right now to give.
You're going to have to carve some time away.
You're going to have to sacrifice some things in order to make this happen.
Now, that might mean you don't watch TV anymore because in the evenings then you will be focused
on learning about your business.
It might be that during the day you don't get to go to the neighborhood socials in the
morning, Mother's Morning Out, or whatever, you're going to be running flyers.
You're going to be doing things that small business owners do in order to get your business
up and off the ground.
Now, you asked the question, where do you get customers?
Well, you get customers wherever you are.
There's a big misnomer in the business that I've got to run all these advertisements and
I've got to go out there for customers, but the reality is if you live in a house there
are probably people that live around you that need house cleaning.
My suggestion is don't go very far.
Stay as close to home as possible, and your question to everyone is, "Who do you know?"
Who do you know, who ... And you can target your market by saying ... Let's say that you're
youthful and you have a lot of energy, and you know that menopausal women do not, or
that they care less about cleaning their house or it's not as important to them.
Maybe they're busy and they have businesses of their own and it's not a priority.
You might say, "Hey, I specialize in menopausal women.
I clean house for menopausal women."
Then you can ask all your friends, "Who do you know that's going through the change in
life who has less time to spend on their house?"
They're going to be like, "Oh, that's like five of my neighbors."
Okay, you're not asking, "Which of your five neighbors needs a house cleaner?"
You're asking, "Which of your five neighbors needs more help?"
Then what happens is they start talking that.
That's weird enough that at the next neighborhood breakfast or whatever it is, they're going
to say, "Did you know that there's a house cleaner in the neighborhood that specializes
in women of a certain age?"
They're going to go, "No way.
I need her help," and they're going to need your help because it is very specific.
I know a house cleaner she specializes in garage cleaning.
That's all she does.
Now, she also cleans houses, but she goes in through the garage door.
She explains to everybody, "I clean garages," and so she gets lots of people who hire her
to clean the garage.
Then, "By the way, I do have a house cleaning business.
Who do you know who," and they're like, "Well, I do.
I have a house cleaner right now, but you did an amazing job on my garage.
How about if you come give my house a try?"
She picks up a lot of business that way.
There are also people that specialize in their church only.
There may be a church that's geographically contained to a small area.
People don't travel 45 or 50 miles to go to this church.
All the neighbors go, and so they'll say, "Oh, I specialize in the church members.
All the church members get a discount.
Who do you know that's here in the church that is looking to upgrade their life or they're
looking for some extra free time?"
Then they're like, "Oh, well, Sister So-and-so," and they recommend you to somebody there in
the church.
There are a lot of different pockets of people.
I know that we had for years a great, big network of school teachers, and so that was
our market.
What other school teachers do you know that grade papers in the evening that are looking
for a few extra hands to come in and clean their house?
They're like, "All of us," and before we knew it, we had the whole entire network of school
teachers and we offered a school discount to that particular school.
Then when one teacher moved to another school
she took us with her to that new network of teachers.
Just be as specific as possible.
Don't try to run all the ads, and do all these mailers, and all these things because if you're
just starting a business you don't need gobs of clients.
You can only clean two or three houses in a day,
and so you're looking for 10 or 20 houses.
It's not gobs of houses.
You don't need to go out and spend thousands of dollars on advertising.
It's sad for me because I know solo house cleaners, they're one person, and they'll
spend upwards of $2,000 a month on advertising.
All that tells me either your scattering your net really wide or you're not very good at
house cleaning because you're not working off of referrals.
Once you start cleaning houses and once you have happy customers, ask them all the time,
"Who do you know who," and then change your sales pitch a little bit.
Maybe you were working for menopausal women and now you're working for new moms.
What new moms do you now that are so tired with the new baby that they need an extra
set of hands?
They're like, "Oh, that's four of my neighbors."
Great.
Then they call their neighbors and say, "I know that you just got a new baby in the house.
My house cleaner specializes in new babies and new moms."
Suddenly, you have a whole new pocket of leads that you can work those leads and you haven't
done any advertising at all.
The best advertising you're going to find is your happy customer telling their neighbors
and friends about you.
You don't really want their friends unless their friends live in the neighborhood.
I don't want to go clean my friend's house who lives 20 miles away.
I want my friend who lives next door.
I want to work in my own neighborhood.
I want to work one street over.
I might go two streets over, and I might go to the neighborhood next to me, but you don't
want your commute time to be 40 and 50 minutes because you don't get paid for travel time.
That's a lot of wasted time and energy in between.
Keep it simple.
It's not hard to start a business.
You are changing your whole life because you're adding a business to it, but the reality is
if you carve out that time and you really focus and your niche market, then you're working
smart, not hard.
The hard part is getting started and being really scattered, and trying to do all things
to all people.
Just focus on a very small, small, small niche and then as that grows your business will
grow and you'll be able to hire more people and you will expand.
All righty, that's my two cents for today.
Until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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