More Than A Side Hustle
More Than A Side Hustle
5 Mistakes We Made When Starting Our Cleaning Business (And How You Can Avoid Them)
Our latest episode dives into five crucial mistakes we made while starting our cleaning business, sharing valuable insights on how to avoid these pitfalls. From the importance of delegation and proper pricing to the need for reviews and embracing automation, we cover the essential lessons learned for anyone looking to thrive in this industry.
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Starting a business is hard, so don't make it harder by repeating these five mistakes that we made. That nearly cost us our success in the very beginning. So we're going to talk about how we turn these challenges into lessons, and it helped us scale a seven-figure cleaning business without cleaning a single home. You guys are new here. We are the Heart Zogs. My name is Anthony.
Speaker 1:And I'm Janoka, and thank you for returning for another episode of More Than a Side Hustle podcast. As you said, we're going to be talking about five mistakes that you shouldn't make when starting a cleaning business.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So before we get to that, we want to just thank you guys for being here. If you are brand new, we promise as you go through, we're going to talk about five closing mistakes that we made starting a cleaning business and, more importantly, how you can avoid them as well, but then also, we're going to give you a lot of game, a lot of insights on how we scaled our business over seven figures. No-transcript. What was the one? What is the? What was one of the most challenging things about a business?
Speaker 1:and he said the people yes, and I was like even as a barber.
Speaker 2:he's like the people and people and I was like yeah.
Speaker 1:What else did he say?
Speaker 2:So, no, I don't want to get into too much, you know as a person, but I just think about any business. I was like the next business we start, how can we do one without people? It has to be AI, it has to be automations, it has to be technology, it might have to be robots, but people no. No matter what business you start, people are going to be one of the most pressing things that you guys could deal with in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 1:Service-based businesses I mean, which almost every business deals with people, but specifically service-based business. You see people are going to. You see the range of emotions, attitudes, moods, all of the things. So if you're one like I, can't handle that maybe don't get into a service-based business or have someone else do the people-facing part for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was talking to a cleaning business owner and she was like yeah, I think I'm doing well, but the hardest part is hiring and people.
Speaker 1:And I was like, yeah, yeah, we mentioned that from the very beginning. The hardest part of the business is hiring good people, and of the mistakes we made in regards to just hiring and just people in general, that you guys can learn from um.
Speaker 2:You want to dive in? Yep, we. The first thing we're going to start with is delegation but.
Speaker 2:I think that before we get there, I want to give people some some background. Oh, okay, so if you guys don't know, we started a, an online cleaning business, back in 2017. You may be asking what's an online cleaning business? Essentially? Um, you've seen the word remote cleaning business around a lot, and essentially we delegate the workout to team members and they go out and do the fulfill the jobs for us.
Speaker 2:So if you think about the Ubers, you think about the lifts, you think about the Airbnbs, you think about DoorDash, all these companies have the same exact business model. Uber doesn't own any cars. Airbnb doesn't own any hotels. Doordash doesn't even own a single restaurant. Essentially, what they do is they connect you with people who are already doing the work. So, let's say, you already have a car or you're already cleaning. We connect you with people who are already cleaning. So that's how we've been running our cleaning business for the last seven years and we've scaled it to over a couple million dollars and we've done over 10,000 jobs, to give you some context. So you're talking, you're listening to people who have done this over the course of almost a decade but then also have made a few million dollars, and also we've done it over 10,000 times, and they say that you should do a task at least 10,000 times to have a mastery of it. So I can say 10,000 is a lot 10,000 hours, it might be 10,000 hours.
Speaker 2:I was to say 10,000 times.
Speaker 1:I don't even know if I worked out 10,000 hours. I was about to say 10,000 times. I don't even know if I worked out 10,000 times and I feel like I didn't tell people.
Speaker 2:I think it's 10,000 hours. You worked out over 10,000 hours maybe.
Speaker 1:Not times, but maybe hours.
Speaker 2:Maybe hours when I was speaking about delegation.
Speaker 1:The first thing is delegation and when I was speaking about that I wanted to bring to the delegation of that. But more about the delegation of the back end and I want to say that the cleaning business was our first business ever, so, starting out, it took us a long time to delegate. And you may be somebody that you're just starting out and you don't want to delegate anything out because you want to keep it all to yourself. So managing the client, scheduling, marketing, all these things, you are like I can do it, I can figure it out, which is totally fine, I get it. Just starting out. You may not have that much revenue coming in and you're wanting to take it all you know, handle all of it, but it also can stop your growth to be handling everything One, you don't know everything. So if this is your first business, the way it was, ours you don't know everything.
Speaker 1:So if this is your first business, the way it was ours, you absolutely do not know everything. You may speak to people, but at the same time there are people that can do things better than you and at the end, at the end of the day, that ends up bringing you even more revenue in. For example, you know, at one point we were taking all the phone calls. Totally fine to take all your phone calls, but it was something in our growth because we started to lose calls. And then we also started to think well, nobody's going to close these leads as quickly as we will. You know are as good as we will. No one's going to get the jobs as good as we will.
Speaker 1:Got a VA in place eventually and they started killing it. We couldn't pick up all those calls, so we were already losing money in that way. So delegation in different parts of the business is necessary to grow, I would say. But I know that for us starting out it's a hard concept to want to give up One money-wise, and two. You just feel like you can do it better, which you may, but it still may be stopping you from growing and doing better and getting more money in your business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the things about and so one of the questions I'm going to ask is well, how can I delegate if I'm brand new and I have no money coming in? So I would give everyone, if we can make this actionable, like a task list so you could write down every single task you do in your business, like literally every single task you do in your business. And I'm literally reading this book called Buy Back your Time and you guys can actually take this exercise. It's over here. It's not that that's not the book, it's over here.
Speaker 1:There's another one, though that's not the book. Yeah, but I was going to show another one.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so you could take every single task that you're doing. So right now I'm doing an audit of my time and column number one is going to be the task and column number three is going to be the dollar value that you assign to that task. So let's say, picking up the phones like that's sales. So column number one like you're going to say 12 to 1230 sales calls or 12 to one sales calls, and dollar value is going to be probably the highest amount of value that you can create in the business is sales calls that's going to be $4 signs. And let's say you're taking out the trash or answering emails, that might be $1 sign. So you're going to sign every single part of your day and a dollar value amounted to it.
Speaker 2:And you're also going to decide is this a task that gives me joy or do I absolutely hate this task? So if it's a $1 sign and it's red, meaning you hate it, you're going to start delegating those tasks so you can go through your. I'm literally going to exercise myself so you could use this framework to kind of go through and see the things that you need to delegate. But start by creating a list of all the tasks you have day to day in your business so you can start to see what can be outsourced to people and I think too many times we tend to outsource when we reach our breaking point.
Speaker 1:so, for example, that time when I remember it was valentine's some year, let's say I want to say 2020, maybe.
Speaker 2:No, I think the trip we went on was the breaking point.
Speaker 1:Which one?
Speaker 2:I don't know what trip we were on, but you were answering a client call.
Speaker 1:Houston for my birthday.
Speaker 2:We wasn't in Houston, we were in somewhere tropical.
Speaker 1:Mexico.
Speaker 2:No, it wasn't Mexico.
Speaker 1:I remember overseeing water.
Speaker 2:I could pull up the picture. So I wasn't it Mexico. I could pull up the picture it might have been Mexico, but anyway, no, it wasn't Mexico because we had poor reception. Essentially, we were somewhere tropical enjoying our trip, and what happened was is that a client had an issue and we decided that we were going to fix it.
Speaker 1:The part, the one that I was thinking about was it was Valentine's Day of 2020. And we had a client issue that was ongoing and it spilled into us not doing anything or wanting to go out at all, and after we're like we have to go out, it's Valentine's Day, we don't want to stay in this house, but more than likely a lot of times we don't get the help or delegate until it's a breaking point and then you're like rushing to get you know to delegate it out, versus doing it ahead of the time, when you have time to kind of make your SOPs or think about how you do things. So that's another thing. Try to get ahead of that. If you see calls are starting to rev up, don't wait to the point that you absolutely can't take calls and you just want to pour it on someone, because then that becomes poor training, that becomes frustration, all of those things. So I think that's important as well. Whenever you are getting to that point, try to delegate prior to the point of when you absolutely need it.
Speaker 2:And that happened with two of our students as well. They were on vacation just like us, and before they went on vacation, oh, they were like on a catamaran.
Speaker 1:They was on a catamaran when they was on vacation.
Speaker 2:It was like we're trying to do these customer services while we're on. This catamaran Service is rocky and now, as soon as we get back, it's like we got to hire, we got to get somebody in, we got to rush the training process. It's like whoa slow down there On vacation getting calls.
Speaker 1:You're like, ma'am, I don't care what cleaning you just had, that's what you're thinking tasks earlier, sooner than later, even if you don't have the money yet, so that you can you realize you will make more money off the things you delegate, because now you could spend more time doing the things that actually bring you money and I also think the other other thing is the thought of vas and ai and the world that we live in now. You, a lot of people, don't even know how much it costs. They're like I can't afford a va. Right, you may have come into this business with a substantial amount of money ready to invest into your business and things like that. You may have the money for a va. You're just assuming it's way too expensive.
Speaker 1:You know, if you're going out of the country, it doesn't really. It's really not, um, that pricey. Maybe you just have somebody part-time. It doesn't have to be full-time. So try to think that way. Think of it in that way that everything you may be able to afford it and you don't even know it. You're just assuming that you can't, which I've seen a lot of times with students. When we talk about, they're like oh, didn't think about that, didn't even think about doing part time. You know all of these things, and that's something else to consider.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:So that was number one delegation. You know, now that we've been in business going on eight years, that's a no-brainer for us, like if somebody else could do it, take it. We don't need to do it all. If it makes sense, obviously, we don't need to do it all. If they're expert at what it is, it's going to bring us more money, it's going to bring us more time. Then go ahead.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's the first thing, when you, when you think about delegation, think about it bringing, you're using your time now to do more valuable things in your business and you can offset some of those less monetary tasks earlier on. So we're going to talk about number two. It's going to be pricing too low in the beginning, so underpricing your services impact your revenue and confidence. Where do you want to go with that one?
Speaker 1:So pricing is, I would say, contractors, and then pricing is like the two hot topics in our community almost all the time when.
Speaker 2:I think about that, but the fear of charging too much.
Speaker 1:Charging too much and how it holds you back Charging too much. You think you're charging too much, but you're actually charging too low. And I think one thing that you've said in the past is, if you don't have any room on your books or if you're like whatever it is, whatever you do, you're probably pricing too low. You're probably charging too low because everybody has access to you, everybody can book with you, and I know you may be like, well, I want that, but then you're pushing people out that you may not be able to get, so pricing too low. I think people are just afraid of the whole pricing thing.
Speaker 1:In general, it seems like maybe, oh, I wouldn't pay for this, so this seems too high. Or you know I wouldn't pay for this, so this seems too high. Or, you know, I've never known anybody to do this, so I don't know if I should price this way. And you tend to go lower just to get the customer. But you'll learn, you have to learn it sometimes on your own. Just because you lower the price, that can mean a whole different type of clientele and different demographic that you bring in.
Speaker 1:So being open to that, just knowing that there's a different clientele from a steakhouse than mcdonald's, right, it just is. The way I show up is differently, just a whole different clientele I can wear a tuxedo to mcdonald's you can do what you want.
Speaker 2:It's a different clientele.
Speaker 1:Let's be clear, rolling in there, then rolling into a steakhouse, so it's the same thing in that way. So we tend to, as new business I'm speaking of like a new business owner we tend to kind of price lower because we're scared, um, but price it, test it out and then see right, and you have to cover your expenses. So you scared about everybody else. What about the money that you need to make? That's just as important. Like this is a business. At the end of the day, you need to make some money, money.
Speaker 1:So pricing yourself too low, even though it feels like what I'm getting more people, sometimes it's not the best. It kind of goes back to what we talk about, like all money isn't good money. It goes back to that and I think that people have to learn that. For some reason we try to tell you guys, but you have to feel it and be like yeah, I went down 60 dollars for this customer. We did all these things, we went above and beyond and she still left us a bad review because the door was left open.
Speaker 2:I don't know. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about that.
Speaker 1:But just an example of how things kind of transpire when you go lower and then if you start your business, we always tell people to do market research.
Speaker 2:So if you go through your competitors in your area, no matter you find out what they're charging, you may see a range of people. You may see people charging three, four, five times what you're charging. You may see people charging three, four, five times less. If you find out what the average is, you can see okay, here's what the average market rate is going in my area. You can start there and then decide am I going to go higher than that? Am I going to go lower than that? And that gives you a good range If the Average is, let's say, $250. Like, all right, I'm right where I need to be, because that's where our competitors are charging. And even from there you could also go and see what they're doing well, things they're not doing well, how can I improve on? Like, for example, I just got a message on one of our ads that I called a bunch of cleaning companies in my area and nobody picked up the phone. Like, why is that? And I'm telling you, these are ways that you could beat the competition from day one.
Speaker 2:So if your prices are a little bit higher and we're going to talk about a little bit of automation and stuff like that. But if your prices are a little bit higher, you can now justify. We got automations, we got systems, we got team members in place. We got all these things that we're doing to make our customer experience better. You can now justify a higher price target for your services. And even if we talk about if you guys don't know, we have a platform, a program called Cleaning Business University. We teach you how to do these things inside of your cleaning business. You can click the link anywhere around this page. But even inside of that program, we raise the prices over time because we're giving all of our better experience. Now we got a full-time operations manager. We got team members that answer client's messages. We got customer service reps. We we got team members that answer client's messages. We got customer service reps. We got all these things happening that allows us to give our clients a better experience.
Speaker 1:And that's the same thing, just with the cleaning business when you reach to a point where you're ready to raise your prices and you may have some clients that have been on with you for a while I mean, you've all been part of people raising their prices. You go to service-based places You're Nails, you're here. You're Bart places your nails, your hair, your bar, whatever. They raise their prices almost yearly or whatever, and they have an explanation behind it. You either stick with it or you don't, right? So just kind of letting your clients know the value behind the reason you're raising your prices.
Speaker 1:I background check my people, like you know. We have this guarantee. There's so many things and people are willing to listen and flow with it most of the times, but a lot of times us, as business owners, we're too afraid to ask for it or we're too afraid to do it. But don't be okay, um, raise that price and you will find you'll, we'll find your sweet spot. I would say sometimes you may have to go down a little bit, but don't start so low, cause then it's harder to raise your price, right? You know it's hard to tell somebody yeah, we're going to, it's going to be be 50 extra now, huh, yeah, what, like that's a little harder than you starting somewhere and maybe having to reduce by 10, 15.
Speaker 2:So if you think about tesla, their business model was they had the highest end uh, like gas, not gas um, electric cars, and it was 150 000, and then they worked their way back all the way down to 3030,000. And those were absolutely crazy, right, because you wanted that same experience from that higher end car and a more affordable model. And if you think about Vera Wang. Vera Wang has wedding dresses, right, and Vera Wang is very high end.
Speaker 1:But then now.
Speaker 2:But she also has low end ones, yeah, she didn't start from the low end and work till way up. If you think about all the business models that work like that, they usually start at the higher end right. They want the highest end clients and they work their way back to different targets and demographics.
Speaker 2:So you guys can use that same. You can use the Tesla business model today in your business. Start at the highest end and work your way back. You want to be the what was it? The Model S, whatever it was to start, and then now they got the Model.
Speaker 1:The little baby one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the model, the little baby one, yeah, the little baby tesla. Right, so the little baby tesla. Literally, when I see him I don't want the little baby tesla. But listen, if you can't, everybody can't get the model x, some people gotta get the little baby tesla. So think about it that way, guys that's a good one.
Speaker 1:That needs to be a clip so the first two we just spoke about in regards to mistakes that we've made in the cleaning business, one was not delegating quick enough and then number two was, I forget, already pricing too low. The third one now is not focusing on reviews and that's social proof that's such a like a simple thing, but it doesn't happen.
Speaker 1:And the first thing I try to tell our students, or just try to tell yourself, is, when you are looking to buy something, go somewhere, the first thing you do is look at the reviews. That's the first thing you do. If it's on Yelp or Google. If you're going somewhere a restaurant, whatever TripAdvisor, tripadvisor, any of these places or if you're buying something from any of these platforms, you look at the reviews that they've given the clothings or the bags that people have written Like platforms. You look at the reviews that they've given the clothings or the bags that people have written like. You always look at reviews. So it is just as important for your business to make sure that you are getting reviews and focusing on getting these reviews.
Speaker 1:We always preach that we call every single client after every single cleaning. Maybe not our reoccurring is not so frequently, but we still call them just not every single reoccurring. And we have students that are like, oh well, I didn't just call them because I'm like, okay, you're just starting out, you have 20 clients, you have the time to call them, you have the time to focus and find out how your services is doing. How does the client feel about booking online? How does the client feel about the emails, about you guys coming on time about the products you're using? I don't know the clean, all of these things?
Speaker 1:You can do market research by just speaking to the clients and you're not doing it. You, I'm talking to you. I know you're not doing it. You're not calling every client to get the review. You need to call to get a review and ask for the review, because that's another thing I know people get like well, should I ask for it? Absolutely, ask for what you want, absolutely. We went to St Martin for our cousin's birthday and after we did what was it? Atv? I don't remember what we did. We did something. We came back to the store. They're like we'll give you a shot and a t-shirt if you write us a review right now A shot and a t-shirt On TripAdvisor A a little bit.
Speaker 2:They said they will give you a shot and a t-shirt if you leave us a review on TripAdvisor. But they didn't just say leave us a review on TripAdvisor. They said leave us a review now on.
Speaker 2:TripAdvisor In the store Right now. So you are losing out on customers who are extremely satisfied with your services by not getting that review in real time because you are afraid of them saying no or not even. They won't even say no. They said I'll get back to you or I'll do it later. Now, what incentives can we provide the client? You might lose a little money on the front end, but you're like, if I could provide an incentive to this client to just get this done now. It takes less than five minutes to do so and it doesn't even break a sweat for them to do it.
Speaker 2:But we have to put a little bit of pressure and we didn't do this in the beginning as well. This is why this these are mistakes that we made as well. Now we got over 500 plus reviews, but in the beginning we weren't pressing these things, even though if we would call them, we would text them all right. Then they leave us a review. We'll move on. Now you want to, let's say, after every single cleaning. You are now calling the client, you're getting them on the phone. You're asking them to to do this. Today we are able to do X, y and Z. We're able to give you an incentive for your next cleaning or something like that. Okay, cool, we found that we were able to get more reviews by just asking for more up front and giving them something in return, so that they got something tangible that they could use today, and then so do we, so that gives them more of an incentive to leave it today. So do not take that part lightly.
Speaker 1:And when you focus on that, the reviews make you more money. I mean you're thinking of it as like oh well, it's not such a big deal. The reviews make you more money Cause people go on and see the reviews and they're like okay, I trust this company enough to give them my money without speaking to someone. With speaking to someone, whatever it may be, but in the long, reviews is important. So just set something up for yourself Like how can I get five more reviews this month, depending on how many clients you have? Like, what can I do to make sure I get more reviews this month, whenever month you're listening to this podcast?
Speaker 2:Put that in your goal. Put that in your goal sheet.
Speaker 1:What can I do to 10% more reviews than I got the previous month or the previous year? Do you know how many reviews you got last year? We do no reviews. You got last year. I don't do no, we do. You do yeah, for our cleaning business. How much was it?
Speaker 1:uh, 85, 85 no, no it was 105, which was 20 more from the last year, was about 85. So, okay, yeah, so how many reviews did you get? That breaks down to how many. How many bookings did I have? Should I have gotten more? What did I do? I mean, a lot of people don't respond.
Speaker 1:I get that, but, like, is there other things that can be done to make sure that we do get the review if they are happy with it, all of these things being intentional. If you're like, well, we're trying and it's not working, maybe you need to try what you're saying, change up your script, maybe it's tired. If you tried for five months, you're not getting a review. It's something Right. So, all of those things you need to consider when it comes to reviews. That's a huge focus that I think slips by for people because it doesn't seem as something that would make you money right away. But it's just as important because social proof is everything. No matter whatever you purchase online, which we purchase our world online you look at the reviews Amazon, wherever you go, you're looking at the reviews before you do it. So why wouldn't you treat your business the same way and think of how the customer is gonna experience your business?
Speaker 2:all right, and next one is I'll skip this one. We'll put this one last, but I'll, since we're talking about getting reviews and some consistent follow-ups you want to talk about.
Speaker 1:We'll talk about neglecting automation early on well, speak about what automation even is, because I don't think we spoke. It wasn't spoken about as much.
Speaker 2:I feel back today don't worry, I'm gonna do a whole episode on automation, but for example um.
Speaker 2:Automation are things that you would manually do, like invoicing, scheduling, review, follow-ups, lead management, lead nurture. And the lead nurture sequence is just a lead comes into your business. They don't book. They don't book with your services. Now they go through emails and text messages, follow-ups and funnels where you aren't having to manually do that work. So anything that you would think about you were doing manually in your business. That's what automation would take over. So, for example, we just somehow um reviews.
Speaker 2:So neglecting reviews or neglecting automation earlier on is something that we we should have definitely taken advantage of. But ai automation was not what it is today, where it was seven, eight years ago. So let's go back to that. Review part of things, right? So if you have this ability to do this today, so after a client says they're extremely happy with your services, you call them and text them. They don't leave you a review. Okay, you're like, all right, most of the time we're like you know what, moving on, we appreciate it. Thank you, maybe we'll get them on the next go around or next thing, right, most of the time that's not going to happen. So, having an automation in place where this client did not leave me a review, now we're going to request it and give them more incentives over the next couple days so that they could go back and leave that review, so that we could be on top of mind when they're ready to book or when they're ready to get their next service or whatever it may be.
Speaker 1:So those are some things that you use automation for when it comes to review, management, reputation management and, like you said, automation saves you on time, so it saves you on money, it saves you on things that and you may be like I don't know where to start. I think it goes back to you what you're saying, like making those that list of things you're doing and if you figure out delegating, does this delegate to a person?
Speaker 1:Does this delegate to automation? You know what I mean? Does it mean that I can have an automatic email that goes out three times a week versus me writing it? Things like that.
Speaker 2:And that's a good point too, because when we ask people and I ask them what's their are you currently emailing and just letting clients know that you exist? And most of the time they're like I was like last time you've done it, like oh three months ago and we made that same mistake too. We had an email list of thousands of people that we never even reached back out to, like year one or year two. It was like, all right, well, they booked us once.
Speaker 1:Hopefully they come back and I always give that analogy with these big companies all of of them Amazon, uber, airbnb, target, macy's.
Speaker 1:Victoria's Secret Sephora Literally all of them are emailing multiple times and these are billion billion dollar companies Emailing multiple times. Target don't text me, but emailing multiple times a week about their newsletter, their ads oh, you missed it. Whatever, it doesn't matter. They're emailing and you are not emailing at all and you think that people are going to remember your services. There's no reason for them to stay top of mind. You don't have to always ask for something, meaning you don't have to always ask for a sale, but there's something called nurturing. So just sending tips on cleaning or whatever. Happy holidays, make sure you book. You know whatever it may be, following up with the clients. Part of that automations is something that was a huge mistake where you're leaving so much money behind. We are specific in breaking down, like okay, between texts, callbacks and emails. How much money are we bringing in every month?
Speaker 1:that's important for us to make sure that we're aware of and sometimes it's fifteen thousand dollars that we brought back in because we decided to reach back out via text, email or phone call. That you are not doing and you're just like, oh yeah, I got it, like he said that we did before. So that is a huge opportunity. Following up with clients is a huge opportunity that we missed out on for years, but we ain't missing it now and we're making sure that you know that if that becomes automated, that becomes manual, it needs to get done regardless, absolutely to clients again and if you guys need a tool to do that, you can check out tidy trackio, essentially all-in-one crm, built to transform your cleaning business, streamlining your operations, automations repetitive tasks, and helps you scale your residential cleaning company.
Speaker 2:This is software that we use and actually we've been using it for quite some time now. We actually own the company. Okay, well, you had a long pause I was going to say, but essentially we created automation because we knew the challenges that our students had. So if you want to check out tidytrackio, we'll put the link in the show notes and it helps with all these tasks we're talking about as well, especially the automation. That's why we built it, because we heard the challenges that our students had, because those are the same challenges we had when we first launched our cleaning business. Like, I don't know what email to write. Here's the emails in a sequence. I don't know what text messages to send. Here's the text messages to send. I don't know how to get reviews. Here's how you get reviews any of these email and text message softwares. But you need to be utilizing AI in your businesses and automation so that you can streamline those processes that you are doing day in and day out.
Speaker 1:But even with those platforms.
Speaker 2:So check out TeddyTrackio, don't check out anything else that I said.
Speaker 1:Even with those platforms you mentioned, you still service to email, but you still gotta write it, the copy. I should say absolutely, um, so where do we?
Speaker 2:oh, number five, so just to recap, oh sorry, recap yeah, because depending on where you start in they nobody's starting the middle of a podcast episode at the end that's fair.
Speaker 1:So number five trying to serve everyone is the last mistake that we've made. Um, when it comes to our cleaning business and getting up and running Back to that pricing yourself lower because you want everybody, all money ain't good money. Trying to serve everyone, like you know, somebody calls in and you're taking off this and I only want one room and I don't want the carpet and I don't want. Sometimes it's okay to say like, okay, I don't think we're the cleaning service for you because we like to do the full package or whatever the case may be. Trying to serve everyone in any business, I think is a mindset of someone that's just starting out. Because you want all the money, you're scared to lose the business. You got a client on the phone, you're nervous, you just want to get them in, but you will realize over time that not everyone is for you and that's totally okay. And that's one of those things again, that somehow some reason people need to learn, versus just listen to us on the podcast when we're telling you this.
Speaker 2:But for some reason people need to feel that no good, it's telling you guys how it is, and I was. I was literally talking to a student and she said I know I shouldn't have taken this client in and you always know, though, whenever you, you always know, stop trying service anyone. That's how she started her sentence. She went to this long story and I was like everything that you're telling me they told you on the phone and you knew it was a red flag and you felt it.
Speaker 2:You felt it was a red flag and you continued to move on anyway. So stop trying to serve everyone in your business.
Speaker 2:Find out what type of clients are your most your favorite clients to work with your ideal client yeah, your ideal clients where they live at, what do they do, so that you could start to put a client profile together, so that when this type of client comes in, who are we serving? And then your marketing and your targeting could actually be more effective when you know the type of people you're looking for. If you're looking for more elderly people, you might have an elderly person in your ad. If you're looking for moms and pops or busy entrepreneurs, you might have those type of people in your marketing, your ads, your emails, so that you can know how to service those people, because those are your ideal clients you were talking about. We were just talking about trying to serve everyone and challenges. We've done that as well trying to serve everyone, saying yes to people where we knew they were red flags and more than likely your red flag clients will let you know they are a red flag.
Speaker 1:One. Okay, did you have anything else to say with that?
Speaker 2:So be slow to hire and quick to fire. So our hiring process. I want to break down what a hiring process is, because people ask us all the time. It's like, oh, you fire people off the street and you just bring them into the people's homes and I want to say no, stop commenting on ads, thinking you know everything about how we do things, so I'm going to break it down and I personally listen to this, by the way, but't listening.
Speaker 2:I'm sure if you've seen one of our ads you thought like, oh, we're bringing people up the street and sending them to people's homes. That's not how we run our cleaning business. So, for example, we have a very structured job ad that we send to that we post online. No-transcript people apply to the job that they see. Out of those a hundred people, there is a job ad, then there's a qualifier, so they'll see a link and then they go to the qualifier on our webpage.
Speaker 2:On some specific things about insurance Are you background checked? Do you have? Are you willing to get insurance? If you don't have it, how long you been cleaning? Who you been cleaning for?
Speaker 2:That application itself weeds out the other 50% of people. So out of the 100 people that applied, 50% of people are not making it through the application. Let's say 25 people make it through the application. Now there is a interview scheduler so you have to go through and schedule your interview and if you don't show up to that interview actually the day before, are you still interested in this job? Are you going to show up? Respond to this. If you don't, your interview will be canceled.
Speaker 2:Out of those 25 people, we may get 10 people on the phone. So out of those 10 people we may talk to five, because even if they aren't, even if they are qualified and they say they're going to show up, they probably won't be on that call. So out of those five people that we actually interviewed, then we do the background check, we do the insurance, we do the first test job, we do all of those things and then out of those five people you might have one. If that so our hiring process. And now it's at the point where we are not trying to get everyone in, we only want the most qualified people.
Speaker 2:So that's our hiring process in detail, so that we are making sure we are not we are hiring slow and we are firing fast going back to trying to serve everyone we don't need.
Speaker 1:We don't need everyone that's going to be working for us, because that has bit us in the you know what in the past. What was an?
Speaker 2:example of that wasn't? Uh, there was one time somebody didn't have a bank account.
Speaker 1:Oh who. What was the couple?
Speaker 2:I don't even remember so we had a couple that worked with us at one point.
Speaker 1:We had a few couples before.
Speaker 2:Well, one couple. We knew that they weren't a good fit and I wanted to take a chance on them.
Speaker 1:Oh, that couple I forgot.
Speaker 2:I be trying to serve people, guys. I think I am a servant at heart and I think somebody called me a narcissist because I feel like I can save everyone and I didn't example and I was like we could help them out. They're a black, not everybody can be helped.
Speaker 2:Let's give them the benefit of the doubt janelle was like no, they are not a good fit, we should not do it. And she said they're not a good fit because of this, this, this and this. I was like, well, let's look past all of that and, long story short, all the red flags. You sound like a woman. We look past all the red flags and, honestly, they were not a good fit for us and we shouldn't have. We shouldn't have hired them, we shouldn't have kept them so long. But you live and you learn, and that's it. Listen to your wife more of the story.
Speaker 1:That's the end of the story, but the bonus I did have about um one more mistake that we've made in regards to starting our cleaning business was not putting money into marketing fast enough um and that, once again, I think goes back to being the first time business owner and really trying to pinch pennies, if you will.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of times we start. This is our last dime, et cetera, et cetera. And in order to make money, you have to put money out there, like you have to pay to play. You know that's about saying pay to play. So in order to get customers and get clients, you have to market yourself. Now can you do word of mouth? Absolutely Majority of you guys are not going to, though A lot of people say I don't want people in my business, I don't want the person at church, I don't want the person at home at work, I don't want nobody to know I got this business, so y'all ain't telling anyway so can you make money from word of mouth?
Speaker 2:go for it, you should. I would if. If we were back in new york, we definitely would have done that. One of our students, uh, stephanie, she did like 20 clients her first month in business because she told everybody her job, everybody wherever she was at. So that's example word, that's an example.
Speaker 1:But many people do not do that. But you have to put money into. We don't have nobody to tell, that's true. So you have to put money into marketing to get people in to see you, because even if you do word of mouth, at some point that's going to run out. You don't know that many people.
Speaker 1:Putting money into marketing allows strangers and other people that you would have never seen your business, see your business and then book your services because you got all those reviews, remember, um? So then they will book your services. Right, you got to put the money in. Now I'm not saying you jump into $3,000 a month somewhere, but you got to put it in slowly, build it up, build it up. Sometimes you'll be like, oh, I'm losing money, but you're getting leads, right, you're not.
Speaker 1:A lot of times we feel like I put $300 in and I only got $400 in clean, so it really wasn't worth it. But you got seven or eight leads that you can remarket to and send those emails to and text you know. So you are getting leads and it may not feel like an automatic ROI or automatic win where you're getting money back, but you are, you know, in some point. So I think it's important to note. That's something that was, I think, hard for me as well, like putting more money into marketing because it feels like, no, I want to hold on to it and no, I'm not seeing it right away maybe, but that is important for you to get to even have a business Like how do people know you exist if you're not putting any marketing dollars out there? How do they know who you are? They're not going to just find you randomly. So that's important to make sure that's. Number six costing mistake that many people would make, and we had made, is to put money into marketing.
Speaker 2:Marketing is an investment, not an expense. Yes, and going back to what Janoke said, like Facebook ads we were putting, I think the amount of money we put into Facebook ads was I think we tried it for like a month or so, we were playing around with it. I think we put like $300, $400 into it and we had 21 leads and nobody booked. And I'm like these leads are not good, they're not ideal, but then our follow-ups, our nurture, our automation brought us to like an $800, $900 booking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like an $800, $900 booking on the back end of those leads. So you might say today I put in $300, I got nothing. But 30 days from today, oh, one of those leads actually closed. Now does that even become a recurring client? So now you put $300 in, you got that $800 booking and then they booked you again 250, 250, 250, 250.
Speaker 2:So you turn that 300 into a couple of thousand dollars because that client actually closed long-term nurture sequence that you put in place using your automations. So don't think about marketing as an expense. Think about it as an investment in your business, because if nobody knows you, how are they going to support you?
Speaker 1:Yes, those are the mistakes that we've made. We want to make sure that we share that. It's the top of the year. People are starting their businesses. You're getting your goals started and use this information. I'm sure there's something you can take from it that you are not doing in your business right now, and this is just a way to kind of get you jumpstarted into your, your year to make sure you crush your business, crush those goals by not making these mistakes.
Speaker 2:Have you guys made any of these mistakes in the past? Let us know in the comments, and also let us know how you overcame them. What's the mistake you're currently working through as well? Share with us so that we could help you and guide you, and we encourage you to connect with us on social media Instagram, youtube, follow us and also subscribe to the page if you are here. Did you know?
Speaker 1:most people watching our videos are not subscribed, that's shade.
Speaker 2:So just letting you guys know the Heart.
Speaker 1:Chimony is where you can subscribe if you're listening to us, if you go onto YouTube, the Heart Chimony is where you can subscribe and find us at, and we have all of our podcasts there. So if you're looking listening, thank you for joining once again.
Speaker 2:And drop us a five-star review on a podcast platform to check out Cleaning Business University. If you want to learn how to start and scale a remote cleaning business without cleaning any houses Link will be in the show notes See you next time. Peace.