Unsure About Starting a House Cleaning Business

Special Report #1

What You Need to Know if You’re Unsure About Starting a Cleaning Business

Anne-Marie Moore

What You Need to Know if You’re Unsure About Starting a Cleaning Business ________________________________________________________________________________

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Getting Started Although my specialty was house cleaning, the business information, cleaning

procedures and the information on employees that I provide in my publications

can be applied to any type of cleaning business. The cleaning industry is littered

with businesses that did not succeed for the following reasons:

• Weak Organization

• Undocumented Cleaning Procedures

• Lack of Experienced Management

• Untrained Cleaners

• Inability to Meet Customers Needs

• High Employee Turnover

There are many different ways to build a cleaning organization. To have a

successful business, you must be able to meet your customer’s needs and manage

a staff that is willing to follow the policies you implement to create the reality of

your vision.

Who Excels in the House Cleaning Business If you have an obsessive-compulsive personality, then you are ready made for

building a house cleaning business. This is tedious work and you will be cleaning

houses everyday if you are lucky. If you are sloppy, unorganized or tardy, you will

not last long because your clients will replace you.

Your clients and customers will expect everything to be perfect. If you are just

starting this business then you need to begin by doing the work yourself or with a

partner. You will never be able to manage employees in this business if you do

not know how to do the work yourself. It’s one thing to know how to do the work

by reading instructions, it’s quite another to implement them efficiently and

understand how they work in client’s homes.



The business information contained in this book can be applied to any type of

cleaning business. Just make sure that you are suited to the type of cleaning you

decide to perform. Here are some of the qualities you will need:

� Attention to Detail

� Cleanliness

� Organization

� People Skills

� Strong Visual Ability

� Physical Capacity and Strength

� Trainable

� Patience

� Dexterity

� Desire to Grow as a Person

Attention to Detail When your customer reviews your work, they are not looking for problems. They

are admiring the cleanliness of their home. However, when they find something

out of place, a rag left behind or a smudge on the mirror, they magnify every

problem they find. If you have the ability to concentrate on details, you will have

happy customers and more referrals.

Cleanliness In this business you must not only clean well, you must do your work in a clean

manner. You must be aware of what you are doing while you are cleaning to

ensure you do not leave any problems behind. What would happen if you were

through cleaning the shower and stepped out onto white carpet? That area of

carpet may become damp and a mild stain or impression might be left behind.

You must anticipate these things and do your work in a clean manner to prevent

such issues and possible damage.



Organization You will be using organizational skills all day, every day. If you are taking your

own products and equipment, you will have to organize them in your vehicle to

prevent tips and spills. When you first walk through a site you plan to clean you

must identify where to start, how you will proceed and where you will end. You

then organize your equipment to meet this plan so that nothing is left behind.

When you schedule your clients, you will organize them by location to eliminate

long travel time.

People Skills You must be willing to increase your people skills. Your clients and customers all

have different personalities and needs. You on the other hand, have a set routine

and a schedule to follow. It will be up to you to decide how you will accommodate

the individual situations that may arise with your schedule.

Strong Visual Ability If you do not see the dirt, you will not be able to clean it and you will not have

happy clients. One of the important things I teach is how to improve your visual

skills. You can’t go into a client’s house every appointment and clean the same

things like a robot. It’s not practical and you are probably spending the same

amount of time doing the same things on every appointment. That means you are

missing other items that need attention infrequently. You must be willing be

improve your visual capacity to become the most efficient cleaner and the best

cleaning company.

Physical Capacity and Strength If you want to make money then you have to keep moving. Do not expect to clean

a few rooms and take a break. Taking a break will cause you to lose energy and

the willingness to continue. If you are not in good shape now then you will have

to plan on starting slowly. You will ache in places you never thought could ache.

In fact, you may not be able to get out of bed the next day!



Trainable If you are not trainable then I suggest you not purchase additional Special

Reports or books. Not only will I be training you but you are going to get an

ongoing education with every house or business you clean.

Patience You are going to be cleaning for a profit and the better you get the faster you will

want to work. However, an experienced cleaner knows when to slow down and

have patience. Without it you will break all the knick knacks your client has

spent a lifetime collecting.

Dexterity Along with patience, you are going to need dexterity. There are large spaces to

clean and little tiny spaces to clean between. The best house cleaners move every

object to clean under and around it. There several ways to do this quickly but if

you do not have dexterity, you will crash through the shower door in the process

of cleaning the walls; you will let a tiny crystal object slip through your fingers or

you will knock over the mop bucket while mopping the floor. And then you will be

spending extra time cleaning up your mess or paying for all the damage you do.

Desire to Grow as a Person You are going to learn a lot from the houses or businesses you clean, the

employees you hire, the houses you bid on that never make an appointment and

the clients you just cannot keep happy. Your road to success is to grow from

these challenges; you will be amazed and pleased with the changes you will find in

yourself. Fight it and you may not be growing a business at all; you will be too

tired and frustrated for success.

Defining Your Cleaning Business What are all the different types of cleaning services you can specialize in?

� House Cleaning

� Window Cleaning



� Office Cleaning

� Carpet Cleaning

� Computer Cleaning

� Construction Cleanup

� Janitorial Services

House Cleaning This business is the most thorough of the cleaning jobs. It also has a reliable

customer base that continues to grow year after year. Between 1995 and 1965,

an increase of 53% of households paid for house cleaning. Imagine how many

want your services today!

People are living longer and are either unable to clean their houses or want

someone to do the “heavy work”. Women continue to enter the work force and

they do not have the time to spend on performing the tasks to thoroughly clean

their home. I found that a lot of stay-at-home moms want to spend quality time

with their children instead of cleaning.

These clients are looking for a thorough job. You must remember, any of the

above groups can run a vacuum, dust a little and mop their floors. They will

request your service to perform these tasks as well as the others they do not have

time for. So, you better know what you’re doing!

Window Cleaning This type of cleaning requires an ability to scale an extended ladder to upper

floors in the outside elements and have the cleaning skills to perform your job well

– especially in the clients’ house.

Leave a little water on the floor, carpet or furniture and you’ll get complaints.

Forget to properly lock the windows and you’ll get a call later that day or night.



The jobs go relatively fast, especially if you have a partner and therefore more jobs

can be scheduled into your day.

When a window cleaning is scheduled, you will be expected to remove and clean

all the screens (don’t bend them!), wash and dry the windows without drips and

also clean the window tracks.

You could add this service to your house cleaning business but I do not

recommend this in the beginning. Find a good window cleaner and refer your

clients to them.

Office Cleaning This is actually easier work than house cleaning. Offices do not want to pay for

the thorough cleanings that are performed with residential cleaning. They do not

want you moving objects on the desks or throwing out anything that has not been

placed in a trash receptacle, therefore making the cleaning fairly superficial.

You will be cleaning up the coffee area, mopping bare floors, disinfecting

telephones, cleaning window ledges and vacuuming the carpet. Spot treating any

stains you find on upholstered furniture and carpet areas may also be required.

You will need a contract with these businesses to establish frequency of service, a

fixed price and a payment schedule. Keep in mind that business incomes

fluctuate and many go out of business therefore your payment schedule is critical.

The best way to enforce this is to schedule payment in advance – on the first of

the month, for example. If you do not receive the payment you may choose to

cancel the service until payment for the month is received.

This work is usually performed during the off-hours when the office is empty. If

you do not like the hours, then you’ll need to select another type of cleaning job.



Carpet Cleaning This type of specialized work is best learned on the job as an apprentice. Moving

furniture and mixing chemicals are the main (and dangerous) tasks involved. I do

not recommend adding this to your house or office cleaning business unless you

have prior experience and can invest in the equipment.

Computer Cleaning With the technology boom, this has become another hot market and can be

established as a separate business or an add-on to office cleaning. Computer

cleaning basically consists of disinfecting the keyboard and blowing out all the

dust. Imagine what you could earn in a large office building if you are charging by

the number of machines!

This work is usually performed during the off-hours. The hours may be

negotiable with each contract. Since the machines do not take that long to clean,

it may be appropriate to schedule the work during normal work hours.

Start an add-on service: Computer Cleaning Service

Construction Cleanup This is the most difficult and challenging of all cleaning work. When the work is

near completion, you go into new construction sites to cleanup all the leftover

glue, paint, etc. Harsh chemicals are used in this type of cleaning and a lot of

back breaking scrubbing is involved. In the process, you have to be careful not to

compromise the surface you are working on. If you do, you may be charged back

for the replacement or fixes the developer must make to sell the property.

Most people doing this type of cleaning work for one or more of the developers in

their area and sometimes backfill their schedule with house cleaning jobs.

Janitorial Services This type of work is contracted by an office building. You will be working off-

hours and weekends, when nobody is around. Your duties will depend on the

http://www.computercleaningguide.com/



type of work that is performed in the building and you will need a contract stating

the terms of service and payment.

If the company has a lot of bare floor, you will be using large cleaning equipment

that can be rented by the job, as it is not used on every appointment. The large

square footage makes it necessary to work with a team of people that you must

supervise.

Trash Can Cleaning

This is a new service that you can buy into as a franchise or set the business up

yourself. You’ll need specialty trucks/equipment that have been designed to

quickly and easily clean trash cans that are issued in cities for trash pickups.

Many cleaning businesses are adding this service to their existing business.

For further information:

www.KingOfCans.com

http://www.kingofcans.com/



If you enjoyed this Special Report, don’t miss our other reports, forms and

eBooks. When you need information for your house cleaning business, we’re here

to provide it!

Special Reports

Research and Plan Your Business

Define Your Business and Identify Your Target Customers

Advertising, What Works and What Doesn’t

Pricing and Bidding Your Jobs

Why You Need to Use Business Forms

Your Products and Equipment

Professional Cleaning Procedures for Speed and Efficiency

Hiring and Training Cleaning Employees

Managing House Cleaning Employees

Forms

Pro Business Pack

Just Checklists

eBooks

Marketing Your Service Business

The House Cleaning Pro Business-in-a-Box

House Cleaning Pro Tips and Tricks

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Unsure About Starting a House Cleaning Business