Filthy Rich Cleaners Podcast E8: EXPENSIVE Mistakes New Cleaning Business Owners Make (And How to Avoid Them)

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Introduction

Coming up next on the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast: “You never want the opportunity for anybody to say, ‘Well, I didn’t know I was supposed to do that.’ That could be on the client side, or that could be on the employee side.”

From your first dollar to your first million, welcome to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast presented by ZenMaid. Join your host Stephanie Pipkin, founder of Serene Clean, as she shares proven tips, tricks, and hard-earned lessons. Whether you’re just starting out or ready to scale, get ready to discover how to build your own cleaning empire. Let’s roll up our sleeves and dive in.

Setting The Stage

Welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I’m your host, Stephanie Pipkin, and in today’s episode, I want to go over some of the biggest mistakes I see newbies make when they open or start running their cleaning business. I had a wonderful call today with a lady named Casey who’s about to start her own cleaning company in North Carolina. She had so many wonderful questions, and a lot of it was about some of these mistakes I’m going to be talking about and how she can avoid them.

Mistake #1: Underestimating Initial Cleans

Most people, when they start out, drastically underestimate the amount of time initial first-time cleans are going to take. A lot of times we think, “Oh, a house can’t possibly take longer than eight man hours.”

Let me clarify what I mean by “man hours” – it’s also referred to as labor hours. Basically, if you have two cleaners on a job for four clock hours, say from eight to noon, that is eight man hours or eight labor hours. If you sent one cleaner who went there from eight to four, that would be the same amount of time.

Very rarely does a house take less than eight man hours for Serene Clean, and obviously we sell on high levels of detail and quality. We’re definitely slower, perhaps, than some competition, but that’s because we want to sell on quality, and that way we can charge lots of money and be one of the highest-priced companies in the area.

Early Business Challenges

When I first started out, I was working full-time during the day, and I had to do all of my cleanings on nights and weekends. Every time I would take on a new customer, if they wanted the entire home clean, I would have to split it up over two days. I was cleaning around them while they were doing dinner duties and taking care of the kids and putting them to bed. It definitely was not ideal.

Understanding Production Rates

For Serene Clean, our production rate for an initial clean is 150 square feet per man hour. We can, on average, clean 150 square feet an hour with one cleaner at an initial clean. Obviously, some homes are much cleaner, some homes are much dirtier – this is just an average.

Taking that number, I know Serene Clean wants to make $55 per man hour. So if I have a 1,500 square foot home, and my production rate is 150 square feet per man hour, all I have to do is divide the square footage by 150 and that gets me 10. So 10 man hours is what I am estimating that initial clean to take.

Strategic Cleaning Approach

We instruct our cleaners to do the kitchen and bathrooms first because those are the most time-consuming spaces and the most difficult. Our cleaners can zoom through living rooms and kind of the dry spaces, bedrooms, that type of stuff, a lot faster, so we save those for the end.

The cleaners must check in with us if they do not feel, when they get done with the kitchen and bathrooms, that there has been enough time scheduled. They need to explain why they think they need more time. If they do need to request more time, that is the time they’re to do that.

Mistake #2: No Standard Scope of Work

The second thing that I see a lot of newbies make mistakes on is not having a standard Scope of Work figured out and written down, given to the client, explained to the client. From day one, one of the things that I did do right is I had cleaning checklists that I would provide to the client prior to the cleaning so that they could see exactly what’s going to be included and what is not going to be included.

One of the main reasons that clients are going to have a complaint is that their expectations did not coincide with your expectations. If you don’t provide a very strict list of tasks that you’re going to complete, they’ll be like, “Well, I thought you were going to clean my gutters,” and it’s not their fault – it’s our fault because we don’t explain what’s going to be included.

Serene Clean’s Approach

At Serene Clean, our standard cleaning checklist is much more detailed than a lot of companies do for a standard clean. A lot of the tasks that we include in our standard would be add-ons or deep clean level types of things for other companies.

One reason I do this is I want us to sell on quality. I will say things like, “We’re not a wipe-down service. We clean things that you don’t typically get to. When’s the last time you’ve taken a toothbrush to your kitchen cabinets? When’s the last time you’ve cleaned your ceiling fans?” We do baseboards every single time. We do the ceiling fans every single time.

Mistake #3: Lack of Guidelines and Documentation

Going to mistake number three I see all the time – not having guidelines in place for your clients and documents for your employees that they sign their first day. We do not step foot into a house without:

• Client guidelines being signed
• Card on file
• 50% down payment for that initial clean

I know that might sound scary, and you’re like, “Oh, nobody’s going to give me card on file or nobody’s gonna pay that down payment.” I was scared to do this too. I didn’t have that policy in place right away. But over time, I kept getting burned and I kept having to be like Bill Collector.

Learning the Hard Way

I literally have a picture – I should see if I can find it to insert it – I’m dressed up kind of like Dog the Bounty Hunter. I went and knocked on this lady’s door because she wouldn’t pay her bill. We didn’t have card on file, so I couldn’t charge it. I knew her and her husband were in the house, and they were months overdue on this bill. They would not answer the phone, but they had dogs in the house. I just stood there at their door and knocked and kept setting the dogs off. Every time the dogs would stop barking, I would just knock on the door to get them to start barking again, so that they couldn’t have peace till they got me my money.

Essential Guidelines

You need to have guidelines that explain exactly what you are going to hold clients accountable to:

• What if you get locked out and there’s no way to get in
• What if your cleaner feels uncomfortable
• What if they don’t plow their driveway
• What if there’s safety issues
• What if there’s poop or pee on the ground or blood
• What if there’s fleas in the house
• What if the client wants your cleaners to be moving furniture or climbing on top of things

You need to explain all of these things. What if the client has an issue – how should they communicate that to you? And what’s your policy on technology? For example, we use GPS tracking with the cleaners using the ZenMaid app. That is a selling point, and we want to explain to the clients that the cleaners are going to be GPS tracked, and we know exactly when they are at the house.

Employee Documentation

On the cleaner side, you need to have cleaner policies in place to cover yourself. There are so many situations I have had that I was kicking myself after because I didn’t have the cleaners sign something. Over time, we have so many employee documents they sign when they onboard with us. That is because those lessons were very hard learned over time, including:

• Quality standards
• Attendance and behavior
• Code of conduct
• Vehicle usage
• Dress code
• Language requirements
• Discipline procedures

You need to spell that out so that when they do start behaving poorly, you can say, “Hey, you signed this, and this is the plan of action, and if you don’t change, this is what’s going to happen.”

Protecting Your Business

Things like – if they don’t return your kit, you can’t dock their paycheck. That’s illegal unless you have them sign a document that says, “I understand if I don’t return my kit within 24 hours, the police will be called, and it will be classified as theft.” All of a sudden, all of our kits are returned, and we’re not out hundreds of dollars between the vacuum and all of the supplies—especially when employees want to start their own cleaning business and leave you hanging.

Preventing Business Exploitation

Not that I’m salty over multiple instances of this happening and them using our supplies to do their own cleaning business. Either way, they all fail. Don’t worry, that always happens. But I’ve got stories for days about that type of thing.

Key Recommendations

A lot of your issues could be avoided if, right now today, you got some guidelines in place that are signed, and you got some employee policies that are signed. If you don’t know what you should be having, I got that on my website. You can just go look at that list. And if you don’t want to pay for any templates, or you can’t afford that at that time, go to AI tools. Go Google. What should this happen? And what should this happen? You can find free versions. Obviously, I have serene cleans that are tried and true, and you can look at those if you want, but no pressure. I just want you to have these things in place.

Additional Business Advice

Honestly, I’m going to cut it off here. I have so many other mistakes I want to cover in future episodes, but I want to keep these short and sweet for you guys practical. So just make sure you are doing your production rate audit. Start taking a notebook to your cleaning and tracking how long things are taking, or track how long it takes your cleaners. If you do have cleaners, how fast are they at cleaning and is it consistent? Get cleaning checklists in place so that you can hold your cleaners accountable, so that you can provide the client with exactly what tasks are going to be performing. And then if they do want to add things on, you have a thing to point to and say, “This isn’t included, I’m going to be charging you more, and this is the price increase.” And then they can agree or disagree, but at least you’re not being taken advantage of.

Final Call to Action

And then finally, get those guidelines in place, get employee documents in place. I hope you guys do these things. Please, please. Please, do these things. If you have questions or comments, leave them in the comments below, or if you have ran into any issues, would love to hear the stories of why we should have these things, because I like to hear from other people validating my ideas on this. Anyways, guys, I’ll see you in the next episode of filthy rich cleaners. Bye, bye.

Podcast Outro

If you enjoyed this episode of The Filthy Rich Cleaners Podcast, please be sure to leave us a five-star review so we can reach more cleaners like you. Until next time, keep your work clean and your business filthy rich.

Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

1. ZenMaid Software
2. SignRequest (e-signing tool, ~$8/month)
3. Serene Clean Website
4. Serene Clean’s Cleaning Checklist

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