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So You Want to Start a Cleaning Business?

When the economy turns south, the GNP slow s and it becomes obvious, through loss of a job, we’re in or approaching a recession.

What do some do? The turn to starting an “EASY” business like starting a cleaning company – Right? But it could be all Wrong!

 

Most start out with the noble idea that this is an easy thing, “after-all I clean my house don’t I” is the first mistake many novice house cleaners make. Why? First when you clean your house, you clean to your specifications, to your liking, to YOUR SATISFACTION. You can stop anytime you like, whenever you’re too tired or when you feel you’ve done enough for today.

 

When you clean for a living, you’re cleaning “someone else’s” home, you must be cognizant of their likes, dislikes, wants their needs and most importantly their total, unequivocal satisfaction. If you fail in any of these areas of customer service, you totally fail!

 

A good thing to think about when servicing a client is; “how hard was it to find the client?” Next, “how much did you spend in advertising to get the client to call you in the first place?” “How many times did you have to contact the client to gain their trust?”

 

Now that you’ve taken all into consideration and you’re “firing on all cylinders”, and the client’s like you, you have gained and maintained a good relationship with them and they appreciate your work, your attention to details, your workmanship – Great!

 

GROWING FAST – NOW WHAT?

 

Then it happens, they start recommending you to their friends, relatives, social club members, etc. Now the business starts coming in, you’ve got more work then you can physically possible for you to handle, but you take it on anyway. That’s good – Right!? No, and here is why! You only have so many hours in the day, you only have so much time to spend in someones home, before you have to move on and this is where the “quality” of your service begins or can begin it’s decent and the result will be more clients dissatisfaction, as they notice “skips” and “misses” in one place after the other, room after room, etc.

 

THE OOPS FACTOR!

 

As the client begins to notice more and more of these “skips” and “misses”, i.e., “items out of place” and or “missing” their suspicion arises and their confidence in you and your work you preform(ed) becomes scrutinized. As the client finds more and more to scrutinize, the higher their level of dissatisfaction, the more frequent and the attention level, the emphasis you will need to place on and spend in patching up the problems your growth will have caused you – too fast is not good and too much is not always better.

 

HIRING EMPLOYEE’S – THE RIGHT ANSWER?

 

“Well I know what I will do…”, you say, “I’ll hire employee’s to assist me and that will take care of the quality of my service, and heighten customer care, etc.”

 

Maybe, maybe not! It depends on whom you hire, their level of experience, their honesty, their attention to detail, etc., and then you have worry about “their ethics”? Will they be infected and overtaken by vision of grandeur, think to themselves that they can do it better, that your client “likes them better” and that your client will prefer to hire them and replacing you? Unless, it is family, blood relatives, then it is a fact that at some point each and every employee you have or will hire, will foolishly entertain this notion. Worse yet, some of your client’s may (will) even go out of their way to solicit your business away from you by approaching your “EMPLOYEE”. Why will they accept this proposal? Because 100% of what the client pays for your services, is better if all of it makes it’s way into the employee’s pocket. Or, so they both think!

 

You lose the client, you lose your friend and you’ve lost a measure of your income, with perhaps more of your clients heading for the door. Starting over is bad news, so do all that you must to avoid this trip backwards.

 

HOME OWNERS BEWARE!

 

There are many pitfalls to those on either side of this new arrangement – The home owner, is now exposed to all the ramifications that may come if this newly hired maid, falls and gets hurt or perhaps breaks something in the home, etc. To whom will the home owner lament, get damaged goods replaced, more importantly, what lawyer will they hire to defend their weak position of hiring this new employee of theirs. The problem will exacerbate when and if the IRS challenges their new found employee/employer relationship and reclassifies the individual as just that an employee!

 

Whew! The fines will come like machine gun bullets, and you, the home owner, may well wish that you were in-fact dodging bullets at that point.

 

Then amidst this scrutiny, you the original employer get swept up into this ma-lay of activity and now your relationship come under the same scrutiny.

 

EMPLOYEE’S – YOU CAN KEEP ‘EM!

 

The above is but a small overview of the problems you will be subjecting yourself. Do the rewards outweigh costs? That really depends on you, your personality, your people skills, your management skills, your foresight and anticipation of a problem and the agility to react, to correct or modify in order to minimize the ensuing problem(s).

 

The bottom line is your employee’s will not appreciate what you do, no mater how hard you try to “save their job”, they don’t understand nor will they care the costs you must incur to “keep” them employed. Things like insurance, bonds, taxes, etc.

 

They will always seem to have or create problems with and for you, the company, with what they are being paid, how many hours they’ve worked or haven’t worked, breakage, poor customer service, unsatisfactory workmanship, flagging work, etc. Then on top of that they will complain that you don’t provide them with enough work, even though you’ve offered them “extra cleans”, “extra hours” or “extra days” of work!

 

So what, as employer’s are we to do? Maintain a constant pipeline; constantly solicit for employees. The favored ratio for finding good employees is: 30 phone calls = 5+ face to face interviews = 2 trainees = 1new employee.

 

If someone in the process falls out along the way – round can the application, don’t pursue them any further. If you do, you do so at the peril of you company and your client base! There are other suggestions we could make for a new company needing to hire employee’s, but it would be much too lengthy to elaborate upon here.

 

INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR’S – NOT SO FAST!

 

This is usually the first solution an entrepreneur reaches when attempting to cure the employee dilemma. But, not so fast! In order for you to meet the “acid” test of the IRS, you will need qualify these “so-called” independent contractor’s. The IRS is more then happy to assist you (yeah, right) with this qualification process and you can invite them to do so by going to: www.irs.gov and downloading their form: SS-8. I will venture to say that 99% of anyone you may have thought of hiring under this “independent contractor” classification, will not be classified as such by the IRS. In fact, after reading and answering or attempting to answer some the SS-8 questions, you will lose you stomach and subsequently your heart to pursue this classification for any of your would-be “independent contractor’s”

 

A MORAL TO THE STORY…

 

I guess the point we’re trying to make here is a cleaning a business, is still a business and with it comes all the positives and potential pitfalls, some you may have anticipated and others you might have been totally unaware existed at all.

 

The moral of this story is if you decide to avail yourself of the positives go about it in an organized fashion, stay focused and be ever aware of the pitfalls that lay before you.

About the Author

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