Filthy Rich Cleaners Podcast E10: Mistakes New Cleaning Business Owners Make

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Introduction

Coming up next on the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast: “You may be the best cleaner in your area, you may be the highest quality. You may care the most, that does not matter over your competitors who have all of these reviews.”

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.

Overview of Common Mistakes

Stephanie: Welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. My name is Stephanie Pipkin, and I’m your host, and today I’m going to be going over more mistakes that you could be making that you should be avoiding as a newbie or really anyone who owns a cleaning business. These are things I see all the time, just talking to other cleaning company owners, newer, more established companies, whatever we all are still making mistakes that are making us less efficient, giving us a harder time, or setting ourselves up for failure.

Mistake #1: Over-Automating Your Scheduling Process

Stephanie: The first one I want to talk about is something I see so often, which is people trying to automate the scheduling process. And I know that this may seem crazy, because obviously I am a lifelong lover of ZenMaid, and they are a scheduling software, and they do make scheduling a breeze in comparison to the alternative, which is pen and paper doing it in Google Calendar, what have you. But I see people trying too much to completely automate this specifically in letting customers book or request a time on the website.

And this is something I know it may seem like, “Well, why wouldn’t I allow them to request a time or request a day on the website? Isn’t that a convenience to the customer?” And you’re right. It is a convenience to the customer, if you could fulfill it, and 99.9% of the time you cannot fulfill the time slot that they are requesting on that specific day because you may have four hours available they need 10. It’s initial cleaning, or you may have six hours available with one cleaner, but the next day you have a cleaner already in that area. So it doesn’t make sense to book that time on that Wednesday, when Thursday would make way more sense from your end.

So all you’re doing by allowing clients to choose a time and day on your website, on your booking form, what have you is you’re setting up yourself an opportunity to disappoint them from the get go. You’re literally setting yourself up to say to the client, “No, I can’t do that.” Or even if you try to do it, maybe it wouldn’t make the most sense logistically for you and your company, and now you are wasting money. You are wasting drive time on your cleaner side, and that does not make sense to be as profitable as possible.

Mistake #1 Solution: Schedule Like a Hair Salon

Stephanie: So I want you to think of yourself like a hair salon. When you call up a hair salon for an appointment, do you get to tell the day and the time? No, very rarely do you get to request that, unless it’s like your wedding day and they block off the whole day. But far and above, you are most likely calling the salon and they are giving you the openings that they have.

And this is how you need to think of your cleaning company. We allow our customers to request perhaps an afternoon or a morning start time. We don’t let them tell us a particular time. And when it comes to days, we ask if there’s any days that do not work. So if, for example, they never gonna have us on Tuesdays, maybe they work from home on Tuesdays, or whatever the case may be. So we make sure that we ask that on the front end, so we’re not offering and wasting back and forth communication time when Tuesdays never work.

And we’ll add that to their customer notes, but we never say, “What day do you want?” Specifically, as much as possible, they can certainly request, but it doesn’t mean that we’re going to be able to accommodate that. Just like the hair salon, we tell them what we have available, and they can say yes or no, and if they say no, we’ll go on to our next available slot.

But it’s really you are trying to make it work for the client schedule, but at the end of the day, you need to be the one who says, “This is what I have available, and this is when we can get you in.” It really puts you in the driver’s seat.

And no matter what, again, you’re probably going to disappoint the client anyway, because, for whatever reason, the day and time that they are requesting is not going to work on your end. And again, people think that you are making this more automatic, you’re actually creating way more headache.

Mistake #2: Delaying Google Business Verification

Stephanie: The second thing I see people making a mistake about is waiting way too long to get verified on Google for Google My Business, and Google My Business and Google reviews are the lifeblood of Serene Clean. We would never be where we are now without hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Google reviews.

And though I got verified right away, before I opened, I did not push people to leave me Google reviews. I pushed them to leave me Facebook reviews. And the reason that this was a mistake looking back, hindsight being 2020, is I should have asked people to leave Google reviews, either in addition to the Facebook review, or if they’re only going to leave one, that Google review is way more valuable.

When people are searching online for a cleaning company, they are intent on finding something. They are not just randomly scrolling and stumbling on your Facebook page, your business Facebook page, and finding you that way. They are trying to make a decision. They’re doing research. They’re looking at companies, and they are much more likely to buy.

Most of our leads from Facebook do not close, at least not right away. If we get a lead from Google, meaning they search for cleaning companies in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, and of course, we’re going to pop up because we have the most relevant web pages, we have the most Google reviews, we have our images up today, we’ve got videos on there, all of the things you can do on your Google My Business, that’s absolutely free, so that you show up in the search results, and you show up on the map of results of cleaning companies in your area.

Mistake #2 Solution: Building Google Reviews Early

Stephanie: All of those things are leading them to you and they’re ready to buy. They’re actively researching. They’re trying to get pricing. They’re in the mindset of being further along in the process, compared to somebody on Facebook who’s just again stumbling upon you.

So do not rely on your Facebook page for getting your leads. I know you may be getting a lot of leads there, but you’re going to have to work a lot harder for them. Getting a review is going to work for you for years and years to come, because they build upon each other. So reviews I got five years ago are now adding to the mass of hundreds of reviews that we have now.

And you may be like “Stephanie, I can’t get 100 reviews. I have two customers.” I know you gotta start somewhere. For me, I set myself a reasonable goal of getting one review on Google per week. And you just have to ask your clients when they’re happy and they’re most likely to leave you that review.

Ask them for that review, because if you are not getting Google reviews, you’re going to have to work so much harder, you’re going to have to spend more money on advertising, whereas, like our leads just come to us and they are so dazzled by the sheer amount of reviews and the quality of them, as well as having a nice website. When they do get to our website, they’re sold. We hardly have to do any selling.

Obviously, we send them an estimate and a nice sales email and things like that, and we do follow up, but it’s so much less effort because we don’t have to convince them. The social proof is already there.

Mistake #3: Avoiding Free Cleanings

Stephanie: And then finally, this tip right here, this mistake that I see being made is people balking at the idea of providing free cleanings. This was how I got momentum right away, starting at 22 years old. April 2019, that’s when April 1 2019 is when Serene Clean officially opened to the public. But you know what I was doing? In March of 2019 I did 10 free house cleanings.

And I know that may sound crazy and you’re like, “That’s a lot of work.” You bet your ass it was a lot of work, but it was so worth it, because just like I have said in previous episodes, being able to practice your cleaning and take notes and see how long things take you that is worth its weight in gold, getting confident practicing cleaning.

Because a lot of people starting out have never professionally cleaned before. I certainly didn’t, and that’s totally okay, but that doesn’t mean the client should get mediocre results. So you need to practice and practice in other people’s houses seeing different situations, so you can learn and come up on situations you never experienced before.

Like the first couple houses I did, they were out in the country, and they had like rust in all of their water. I’d never seen that before – everything was stained like pink and red and had these hard water stains. And I was like, I don’t know how to deal with this, so I googled it, literally learning on the spot. But I’m so glad that that wasn’t a paying customer I was learning at and maybe not doing the perfect job of getting rid of that because I didn’t know what I was doing.

Getting Started with Free Cleanings

Stephanie: So these are the opportunities to practice. You need reps. You need to have situations that make you uncomfortable, that you put yourself in, so that you can practice before you get to paying customers. Because, frankly, your service may not be the best right now because you don’t have any practice. You need to put yourself out there, and free cleanings is a great way to do that.

Secondarily and most importantly, free cleanings is a great way to get some social proof before you even open because if you provide them that service, and then you say, “If you are willing to leave me a review, that would be wonderful, and a video review would be even better.”

I’ve talked about video reviews extensively, as you guys all know. If you’re like, “What the heck’s a video review?” Go to my website, serene-clean.com click on the testimonials, you will see dozens of happy customers from Serene Clean telling you how wonderful we are, and it’s probably going to convince you to move to Wisconsin and hire us. I would imagine, I think that’s probably the logical thing that’s going to happen. But that’s how compelling video reviews are.

Finding Your First Free Clients

Stephanie: So what I did is I went to my local community center where I worked out, and I got to yappin, and I started asking all of the ladies who were in my avatar of who I wanted as a client, and said, “Can I clean your house for free in exchange for if you would like to leave a review?”

You don’t want to exchange free things for a review. Google doesn’t like that. Are you going to get caught? No, probably not. But technically it is not allowed to do that. So what I would say instead is, “Can I do a cleaning and if you so feel inclined, after to leave me an honest review?” So that’s what that is. It’s not saying it’s in exchange for this type of thing. It’s all about the verb.

Just to be clear again, are we going to get caught doing that? Probably not. Google’s probably not going to find that. But I’d rather be safe than sorry. I don’t want to recommend anything that’s against the rules.

Building Momentum Through Free Cleanings

Stephanie: So you do those free cleanings, they tell their friends, then you start getting traction. As soon as you announce your business, then all of a sudden, you already have social proof. I already had popular women in our area who were the moms and who were in the PTA and all of that, they went and left me reviews on my Facebook page.

So then, when I announced it, and the community went and looked at my Facebook page – ah, look at all of these women we already know have used her, and they recommend her. Well, I trust that and we got cooking right away, and that was why that happened.

And obviously, in conjunction with having a beautiful website, having a checklist, those types of things. But when you’re trying to get traction in the beginning, it’s very difficult if you have not done things like this, because why would anybody give you a chance? Why would you give somebody a chance if they have zero social proof or anybody they’ve worked with, unless you personally know them? Probably not, because this is your home.

Growing Your Business Through Cleaning Giveaways

Stephanie: And of course, we do cleaning giveaways still to this day, several times a year. It’s a great way to drum up business and drum up interest, as well as getting people to like your pages.

For us, we do basically giveaway videos where all they have to do to enter is like the post, share the post on their personal Facebook and comment “shared” below. And then at the end of the month, or however long of a time period, we’ll do another video using one of my managers’ adorable children. And we’ll do a little bucket of all of the names. The kids pick the names and read them off. It’s super cute. Always gets views.

And then those people win a free cleaning. And it may not be a full house clean. It almost never is. What we’re gonna do is give away six man hours or three man hours, etc. And again, this will just get more eyes and people sharing it. And then if you boost that on Facebook, it just spreads like wildfire. You can get like 20,000 views on those things because of it being shared organically, as well as boosting it to your local area. That’s a perfect example of where boosting can be very powerful and you don’t have to spend a lot of money.

Why Free Cleanings Beat Paid Advertising

Stephanie: Cleaning giveaways, free cleanings, it is a wonderful, wonderful tool in a lot of ways. And I don’t want you to think, “Oh, I don’t want to give that away.” You’re much better to spend the money of giving away free cleanings in labor hours, especially your labor, because you don’t have to pay anyone. Obviously, it sucks to not get paid. But this is so valuable, especially in the beginning, rather than spend money on like Google ads or something.

Because, say, you spend all this money on Google ads, and you get a lot of people to go to your website, and you have no social proof, there’s no reason that anybody would hire you, because there’s no reviews, and so they’re going to click off, they’re probably not going to hire you. So there you just wasted that opportunity, and they’re probably not going to come back to you anytime, because they’re like me. I already looked at that company, not going to give them a try.

So that’s why I would start with this before you do any type of paid advertisement. This should be your paid advertisement, and think of it as research and development and marketing costs, and you get a lot of bang for your buck.

So those are three more mistakes I often see newer folks in our industry making, and I would love to hear your guys’ thoughts experiences. Share them. If you are curious about other mistakes that I see all the time when I’m talking to other owners, or that I myself made in the beginning, or maybe not just the beginning, maybe too far along longer than I should have, go check out our other episode that we have about mistakes.

And I will see you guys in the next one. I hope you are having a wonderful week, wonderful day. Your cleanings are going swimmingly and your employees don’t call out. I hope that for you. Bye, guys.

Closing

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

• ZenMaid
• Google My Business
• Serene Clean
• Facebook Business Pages
• Serene Clean’s Testimonials

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