When it comes to starting your own cleaning business it is important that you understand that this is broken into two groups, commercial and consumer. One segment, the commercial niche consists of mainly janitorial services, window cleaning, and carpet cleaning. The consumer cleaning has more of a maid service feel to it handling house cleaning duties. When you plan to start a new cleaning business it is important to decide on one niche and stick to it until you have found some success.
One thing about starting a cleaning business is that it is possible to make a lot of money fairly fast. Some owners choose to operate full time while others opt for part time. The main location can also be run from an office location or from a residence. This is a very flexible business which is one reason that it is so attractive.
Some Considerations
It is important to decide early on if you want to be part of the business where you get right in there with the others and do some cleaning yourself or if you are more of a manager that would be better at managing teams, creating schedules, and making payroll. The extent of what needs to be done depends a lot on the style of cleaning service you choose to establish.
Residential or Commercial?
If you are measuring simplicity then residential cleaning might be better for you because it doesn’t require buying any special equipment or supplies unlike commercial cleaning does. This means that the start up costs is much more manageable and less training is required.
Both businesses require that the person in charge has some specific qualities such as good time management skills, organization, dedication, and the ability to build relationships with both customers and employees.
When starting a residential cleaning service it is easy to start off small by managing client’s right from your home. You can set up a separate phone line to take incoming calls and since the clients never come to you they will never even know that you are working from home. Later, as the business prospers then you might choose to rent an office.
Ideally, a residential cleaning service would have one person that handles scheduling, ordering supplies, giving estimates, answering the phone calls, and payroll. Hired staff is generally who visits the residences and does the actual cleaning. It is very difficult, if not impossible to manage both jobs.
The Demand
In the past few decades more and more women have entered the workforce which has created an increasing demand for house cleaning services. The typical client that would hire a residential cleaning service would make in excess of $50,000 annually. Other clients will be made up of well off families where the wife does not work but spends her time doing other things and many single people that work but live alone could call on you as well.
Another thing that you will find when comparing residential cleaning to commercial is that commercial cleaning has to be captured on a much larger scope. In other words, it is not just limited to cleaning homes. You have to target to hospitals, offices, restaurants, salons, etc. Of course once these accounts are landed, the profit margin is a lot higher. You can put together a very thriving cleaning business on recommendations, but remember that you need those initial customers to get started.
