Building a money mindset for a profitable maid service

Why your money mindset matters

If you’re a cleaning business owner, you probably love the flexibility, freedom, challenge, and competition that comes with your job. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in this business! And you’re no stranger to everything it takes to run a successful business — it’s fun at times, and at other moments, it’s draining.

As a successful maid service owner, you know that you need to constantly improve and learn more to keep up with our ever-changing world. Marketing strategies change, hiring platforms come and go, and the cleaning industry seems to evolve overnight.

So, you might search high and low for any type of helpful advice.

How do other business owners hire?

Where can I find reliable workers?

How should I format my website?

What should my budget look like?

Can I take my business remote?

What technology should I use?

How can I keep clients?

What should I charge for my services?

The questions go on and on, and while they’re important topics, one of the main things we miss out on first is our mindset. Believe it or not, your mindset dictates how well you do in your business. You need to know where you’ve been and where you want to go.

In this article, we’re unpacking how to have a more positive money mindset so you can build up your maid service from a solid foundation. Grab a notepad and get started! Here’s the five-step checklist we’ll take you through:

Understand your WHY
Define your income goals
Decide what you’re willing to sacrifice
Understand all levels of your business
Use systems to make your maid service more profitable

Understand your WHY

This may sound simple upfront, but can get a little tricky when you sit down with a notepad and actually write your “why.” Ask yourself – Why did I want to start a maid service in the first place? Then, answer the question! You may have more than one answer and that’s fine.

When things get challenging (and they always will), you can go back and look at your answers and remember why you started this business.

Mindset work, like the exercise above, isn’t a one-and-done task. It’s continuous. To be the best business owner you can be, you need to focus on your mindset — otherwise, you’ll get swept up in whatever crisis is in front of you and get stuck in reactive mode.

Define your income goals

With that same notepad as before, take a few minutes to jot down your upcoming income goals.

When you know your income goal, it’s easier to understand what you’re working toward. So, answer the leading questions: What do you need to bring in so that you can pay…

Your employees
Your taxes
Your expenses
Your insurance
Your salary

Additionally, you’ll need to budget a cash flow for your business. With this in mind, do you need to make $80,000 this year? Or $100,000? Perhaps it’s $300,000. Whatever you calculate, you need to work towards that income goal.

Build a budget so that the dream in front of you can turn into a reality. Wishes alone don’t get you anywhere, and neither do dreams. But when you pair a dream with an actionable step, that’s where the real magic starts.

As you continue to work towards your financial goals, look for books, podcasts, and articles to help you build your financial literacy and strategy. Find stories from other service-based entrepreneurs (like our ZenMaid community) who have hit their financial goals and use them as inspiration to stick to the course.

To learn more about financial planning for your maid service, head over to this article in our magazine next!

Decide what you’re willing to sacrifice

This may sound bleak at first, but we promise it’s not meant to: We’re all bound by time.

There are only 24 hours in the day and they seem to go too fast and too slow at the same time. After all, we can’t do everything. So, we have to prioritize what we want in life.

Maybe you need to cut down on your Netflix binges at the end of the day, or your Wednesday happy hour with friends. Whatever it may be, you need to give it up for the time being. Your sacrifices don’t have to be forever, but they do need to happen soon. The stage that you’re in now is just a season in life. Take hold of it and make it count!

The truth is, until you start automating your home cleaning business entirely, you will have to take calls, revise training programs, and even clean homes if that’s what it takes. Entrepreneurs like us have to make short-term sacrifices for our long-term good.

Before we move on to the next step, ask yourself – How soon do I want my business to run the way it should? If you write down a date, you’re more likely to stay on track.

Understand all levels of your business

If you want to grow your cleaning business, it’s important to understand all of the moving parts that make it operate. As the owner, it’s your job to know how everything fits together on a daily basis.

For example, how long does it really take to do a cleaning?

If you don’t know the answer, add it to your to-do list for next week. Time yourself so that you know how long it takes to do the quality job that you are expecting from your cleaning team. Who’s the mastermind behind your business? It’s you!

Understand your home cleaning business from the ground up, what each team member does (and how), and how all these roles contribute to the bigger picture and your income goals. In your notepad, write down every working part of your business which includes a detailed description of;

How long each task takes
The cost of each operation
What systems you have in place
The roles of each job description

Successful cleaning companies don’t magically appear overnight — it’s not about luck. Instead, you’ll find that your company soars in profit when you have a strong mindset and commitment to continuous improvement for both yourself and your cleaning team.

Use systems to make your cleaning business more profitable

Have you ever asked yourself any of these questions?

Why do I spend so much time responding to clients?
What’s the best platform to hire new employees?
Why do I spend a huge part of my budget on marketing and it barely helps?
How can I spend more of my day on the things that matter and not on repetitive delegation tasks?
How do I get more people to look at my website?

If you ask yourself these questions over and over again, it could be a sign that you don’t have the right systems in place.

(We’re not done with that notepad yet!) You need to understand and document how all areas of your home cleaning business are done and what areas you need better systems. Systems, automation, and delegation are the key to a profitable business. So, here’s what you should review:

How you onboard new clients
Your house cleaning checklists
How your employees ask for time off
The ways that potential clients can contact you
Your communication channel between all of your employees

There are so many things to review — these are just a few to get you started. The best part is that you can use automation tools for each of these processes. You don’t need to go at it alone. Remember, it comes back to mindset. Ask yourself how you can make life easier for you, your clients, and your employees. Then, implement the systems to achieve your vision.

Systemize what you do if you want to free up your time to focus on strategy and growth in your business, rather than repetitive day-to-day tasks. (We’ve got more resources about systemizing your maid service right here.)

Next steps

Remember: everything in your business comes back to your mindset.

First and foremost, your business is an extension of you. How you budget, treat your employees, add value to your customers, design your website, and market your business is an extension of your mindset and values. It’s not a burden, but an exciting journey that you as an entrepreneur get to go on every day. Be intentional, look for ways to improve, and enjoy the process!

If you found this article helpful for your maid service, you may also like:

For more resources on how to grow and perfect your cleaning business, check out the replays from the latest Maid Summit, hosted by ZenMaid. The summit featured more than 60 presentations from other maid service owners who shared tools and strategies to help you achieve the highest levels of success in your business.

To hear Caren Fern’s full talk from the Maid Summit, click here.

About the presenter

Caren Fern is the owner of My Cleaning Company and Services and the coach of The Money Mindset Academy. She has a passion to help cleaning business owners realize their dreams of success and create a business they love. In her academy, Caren teaches entrepreneurs to let go of the negative ways they think about money, and instead, use an abundance mindset to grow a profitable home cleaning business.

You and your maid service deserve a little peace and quiet. Try ZenMaid for free today!