Starting a $120K/Month Cleaning Business From Scratch
want to know how you too can start a cleaning business and scale it to a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a month in a little over five years the owner of queen bee cleaning services who started from home achieved just that with a startup cost of five thousand dollars [Music] in this episode we are talking to chris about how he managed to scale from zero employees to 25 in such a short time chris started out as an immigrant working different jobs until him and his wife started this home cleaning business in 2015. with a total sales of 3.2 million dollars chris was called to the annual maid services summit as a guest speaker the cool thing about this platform is that these customers are ready to buy i use a lot of text marketing instead of using email marketing what would be the secret you would say to be successful to be most profitable you will see the sales within two months and you'll thank me later it's being one of my keys to fast growth in this episode we're going to talk to chris about the mistakes he made in the business one small mistake also that led to a hefty fine and how he used marketing to make things work in his business and how you guys can start your own cleaning business and not make the same mistakes what are you doing that's working on craigslist a job like this will we will run about 400 to 500 i think it's the best time to start a cleaning business not everyone is doing that it's definitely something that every every business you'll implement i promise you guys if you work your database it's a goal mind there this is the key to grow your business to the next level make sure you subscribe to our channel like this video hit that bell you don't miss any videos and let's go talk to chris about their incredible growth story in this business hey chris hey i'm paul good to meet you good to meet you how you doing good let's dive into it all right sounds good [Music] all right you guys we're not going to slow chris down he's got a busy day ahead of him so we're going to ask questions and work at the same time uh chris let's dive into your story about queen bee cleaning services and how you ended up starting it yeah can we can work and yeah so it's it's a pretty fun story you know i was selling cars all the time um you know making good money uh my wife was the one who started the idea he's like we should start a clean company i just didn't see myself doing it i said no but i'm glad that she convinced me because i decided to observe uh the website and just taking the calls myself and three months in you know she was making more money than i was at at that time i decided to quit my job and go full in is it a good time to start a cleaning business or not i think it's the best time to start a cleaning business um you know after pandemic it seems like everybody wants their home clean uh you know to give an idea on how much of the demand is or last year or our monthly revenue was 60 000 now we're like 120 a month so it's like double and sometimes we turn jobs away so you can start a job tomorrow and i promise you you will have your first customer within days i bet and we'll talk about the expenses the startup costs everything you guys need to know to be successful [Music] all right chris let's talk about uh your startup cost and break down the 5000 how you invested that for sure so the original investment investment was five thousand dollars so it was four thousand dollars for a honda court i remember it's a black court okay 2003 i remember it very well a professional vacuum was 500 bucks about another 300 in uh supplies and the rest was just uh flyers and business cards and that's it so that's it the car costs the most yeah i think so yeah so if you don't have a car you don't get in this business what well a thousand bucks i well you know you can start using your your by the time you know i had a big truck it was not a good idea to use a big truck driving around you know the gas yeah so that's why i i decided to buy a small car but yeah you can you can start with a you know small thousand dollar car it doesn't matter i mean you're going to make money very soon and then you're going to upgrade your vehicles nice what i'm saying for those that do have a car right oh yeah they can start they don't need to yeah so they can start with a thousand dollars for sure let's talk about how your customers today find you what platforms are successful for you what are you guys spending and anything else you can share on that yeah for sure you know so we only use three channels for marketing okay so our main one is google ads specifically google local leads so very important for home services it's a new platform that google came up with and you get chairs by call but the cool thing about this platform is that these customers are ready to buy the second platform it will be facebook and the third one will be geld yeah okay so we're spending about four thousand dollars in google ads about seven seven hundred seven fifty in yelp and uh a thousand in facebook got it what's bringing in most is it google google that for sure yes well don't say much because we got that hack coming up oh yes for sure i'll have a hack for you guys you're gonna love it everybody who has a home service business this is the key to grow your your your business to the next level sounds like we're going to go to your storage that's right area yeah or whatever you would want to call it uh tell us a little bit more what we're going to see there how important it is maybe to get a storage unit yeah instead of having everything at home what can you share yeah yeah so we're actually gonna be dropping off all this uh dirty laundry over there okay uh we're gonna be picking up new laundry this is i'm gonna show you the setup i have for my airbnb customers uh what do i do what do we do for them and oh you know you know it it's going to be pretty exciting okay well let's go let's hop in our cars all right you guys i'm excited we've done a couple of these interviews with cleaning businesses it's always interesting to see how people do differently and what we can learn so let's hop in and go all right everybody this place is actually familiar we've done an interview here so check out that video as well hey chris give us a tour what's your side airbnb and everything else for sure let me show you [Applause] so this is storage we use this is um so this is the laundry cart you know we have a laundromat that is very close they come and get it they come and drop it off in bags and then i have one of my employees actually make those packages so all these packages what they have it's uh pre-made packages for the airbnb customers so yeah they have towels linens pillowcases uh du-bets everything um we have supplies for the kitchen so for example we have this washer the detergent this is what you use to then clean the dishwasher uh well essentially you do replenish the airbnb with all this so this is for the guests essentially so we provide like a white glove service for the host they don't need to do anything we take care of the cleaning the laundry and and then the supplies chris curious what sets queen bee apart from your competitors what do you do different more unique that sets you apart for sure so there's actually two things i will say the first thing it's having an exceptional customer service uh if you have a good customer service you will see the difference in within days so my customer service uh answers the phone from seven in the morning all the way to 11 pm seven days a week wow so yes uh there's people you know that get off from work late and when you know when they try to call a company who are they gonna call right the guys who's actually answering the phone so definitely that sets me apart seven days a week seven to eleven and the other one it's i have an online booking system so you can go to my website and if you don't want to talk to anyone you can just go enter your uh information so how big your home is it will throw you the price and you can look and there right there and then not everyone's doing that not everyone is doing that it's definitely something that every business should implement online booking what about your monthly overhead though now that you're at 22 to 25 employees what is the overhead monthly just to cover costs and what's the most expensive thing every month oh so our most expensive thing is the labor um it really is it comes down to you know we have to pay good wages otherwise we don't keep good people or expense on labor is about 60 60 a month and then i will say supplies that's another 10 percent and marketing operations another you know 10 so you end up with uh ideally 20 on the lowest 15 net gotcha okay so your profit margins are in that 20 to 20 okay [Music] for example if you want to run facebook ads if you send the people from facebook to your website most likely you they will not convert because you have too much information on your website i see what you want to do is get click funnels create a funnel which has only one action and it's just you can generate your quotes so what i do i just create a funnel people click on my ad goes to click funnels they enter information and within five minutes they get the quote that's awesome uh you guys click funnels actually happens to be our sponsor today and if you are a business and you want to grow your customer base 100 people maybe the next 100 days click funnels is the place to go it's not only for brick and mortar by the way they're giving away 96 hours of free brick and mortar training for you guys but even if you're not a brick and mortar business there's a ton of tools out there that will help build your business so check it out the details are gonna be in the description below so thank you for that [Music] you guys we're about to take you to the actual airbnb house that chris and his team are going to be cleaning so follow with us we're on to the next steps anything else you want to add no that's it just follow us [Applause] okay you guys we're here at this gorgeous building that is currently an airbnb house your cruise here chris why don't you take us inside and kind of explain what they're doing and anything else you want to share with us absolutely this and going over come on so how many people usually for this size of a house would be working here within about three people per unit because usually we deal with big units like this you know like three four bedroom with two three bathrooms so we usually spend about three to four hours in each home because we literally had to deep clean it top to bottom uh to make it uh guest ready again so we changed the laundry supplies you know all the supplies for the for the bathrooms and also the kitchen supplies so we take time to do it because we want the customers to get five star reviews so what would a customer pay for this kind of job a job like this will we will run about 400 to 500 per turnover but that's included everything that's laundry supplies and cleaning and what would you then i guess profit or net profit after everything um you end up with about twenty percent uh of that so we eighty dollars per job and we do about uh 18 jobs of this yeah [Music] chris can you share any top resources for small business owners out there that really helped you as well yeah for sure you know i i wish i would have learned about this website it's called score.org it's a hub where you can find anything from how to create your business plan how to create your marketing plan nice and how to run your uh your number so definitely it's free most of the content is free and it's a great resource that i still use to learn more about my business okay that's awesome you guys should check that out but most importantly as well check out upflip.com forward slash blog is very
similar to what he's talking about it's all free there for you guys how to write a business plan how to operate this this that we're there to make you successful [Music] let's discuss the services you offer i'm really curious and about how you come up with the different packages what are most profitable or more popular than others yeah can you break that down for us yeah for sure so we offer three different types of service which is home service that's for you know homeowners we do move outs and move-ins and we do airbnb cleanings you know our bread and butter will be the recurring revenue so meaning uh the people who pays to clean their home every two weeks or three or four weeks that's uh you know where the money is because essentially you start doing those jobs in a lesser time so you start optimizing the time so you make more money uh mobas they're profitable but sometimes they're trash and it takes longer than it should so you kind of have to balance that and uh airbnb airbnb is a really good business when you know how to do it right [Music] so for those watching right now who want to get into this cleaning business what would be two three pieces of advice to to them well the first thing it's uh definitely start investing in paid ads even though we grow fast i think i spent maybe a year and a half almost two years doing free ads you know meaning craigslist ads flyers posting on facebook groups it works it really works but if you really really want to grow your business to the next level you need to start looking into paid advertising google came up with this new platform which i mentioned earlier google local leads that is specifically for home service business they charge you per call uh if they don't buy the service you can challenge the lead i tried it for like a month i said let's just let's try it again uh i was blown away you know i remember that was on august of 2018 by september i was now strongly finding people because now i had found like the best source of business uh so now i had a problem of finding employees which is a good problem to have how seasonal is it are you consistent throughout the year and if you do have slow seasons chris what do you do to shift during that slow period to still continue to be profitable and make it yeah so we do have a slow season which is uh you know the the winter time the winter months okay yeah december january february usually slow so what i do to help you know during those times i use a lot of text marketing uh it's been three years since i discovered instead of using email marketing text marketing people response to text so what i do i offer you know crazy deals so you know get fifty dollars off today you know and i send that text to you know uh 1500 people at least 10 percent will reply to you okay yes okay i want to i want to save it so what i'm trying to do during those times is just keep my employees busy so they make money and you know i take a little bit of a hit on discount my prices but at the same time i'm taking care of my employees so when the good season comes around you know they're already there for me [Music] what are you doing that's working on craigslist so specifically technical stuff uh well i i disclose my prices right there on the on the price uh on the on the ad that's different from others yes everybody if you go to craigslist you can see other people say hey we clean houses we do this we do that um if you want to see my ass it will say the prices are this and it starts from this what that does it filters everyone who's not uh you know ready to pay for my prices and whoever calls they really saw the prices still the most likely to buy from me nice that's a good trip you guys yeah but what platform are you using and how are you getting that list of 1500 people well it's very important this is another tip guys uh that it's it's it's phenomenal um and many people don't do that it's you have to have a crm meaning a customer relationship manager software yeah where you keep all your customers and all your leads that have contacted you throughout the year doesn't matter if they didn't become your customers you still keep their information because when you have these slow months use this when you do the text marketing uh or email marketing in any case right but text marketing is the way to go guys at ninety percent open rate that's what i've seen on my ninety percent so it's pretty good what platform are you using for crm and then is it different for text to send out that text or is it all through the crm all through the crm so i use a software it's called go high level pretty simple uh platform all i do is download the list of customers and i i segment and for example i have the existing customers who don't need my services because i mean they they already use my services right um i segment the ones that canceled or the ones who contacted me or or or there was just leads and then i send a text blast to all those and i promise you guys if you work your database it's a goldmine there you know there's a lot of people who don't know that but if you shake the tree like i like to say you shake that tree you will get some fruit every time [Music] how do you come up with how much to charge i mean you talked about knowing your numbers earlier on yeah what are the tips and tricks and really figuring out the sweet spot yeah definitely so this is what i did and i think everybody should do that i mean i didn't know anything about charging i actually i remember the very first job it was a move out my wife hated me for it i think we charged 90 dollars and uh she literally spent like 12 hours with another lady and uh and so after i was like okay i need to i need to find out what is the market paying so what i did i call companies in my area and i said hey how much would you charge me for a three bedroom two bathroom okay and i got some quotes then from there i kind of said okay well like i'm not at that level yet because i don't have that uh reputation but now i know i'm really on underbidding and i should charge more so i will say you know call a few uh companies in your area and uh you know you get those different quotes that way you see how much uh are charging and that will give you a good number okay we've interviewed other companies as well uh previews are very important they are right there how do you get them and how do you deal with negative ones talk to us about the process first of all getting ready well you know this is this is something he i started doing it last two years when i you know i hired more people all to help me on the administration side of it so what we do you know we call the customer uh the following day used to make sure that he was uh happy with the service to do any any any problems and then at that point we kindly asked in a subtle way if we can give you some feedback uh whether it's good or bad you know it helps us to improve our company um how do you deal with bad reviews uh very very very good question you know some sometimes there's people you cannot make happy no matter what you do you can bend over backwards and at that point the best thing you can do is just respond professionally and ask him if there's something else you can do for them so you respond to each kind each comment online it's very important you know people see that it's being one of my keys to being a such a fast growth because we have a good reputation online and we try to protect it now you guys we ask if you guys want us to ask way more specific questions we do that on our podcast we interview great people like chris other business owners we give you the golden nuggets about anything and everything you need for your business and to be successful so check it out upflip.com forward slash podcast [Music] how is airbnb cleaning different from household commercial offices et cetera for sure so we used to charge very little for it and get a lot of pressure from it and essentially we try to not take those customers but i figured what can i do to solve their problem and at the same time position myself at the guy to go to so i started actually asking those customers what is something that you need so to make your life easier and they're like oh if i can get someone to inspect my unit so i want to do the laundry so i want to do the supply i crunch my numbers and then instead of offering just cleaning i offer to them which is like a co-hosting so most of my customers they live in either china europe i got a lot of people you know on the east coast and so we literally saw hands off a system for them you know we take care of everything uh from welcoming the the host you know doing the laundry supplies and any problems in between states what would be the average cost i mean let's say i have a that 1 000 square foot two bedroom two villa on the ocean or something like how do you how do you figure out the price where are the margins on airbnb cleaning versus house cleaning that's that's a good question so um if you offer everything like i said no just clean if you offer only cleaning the margins are very small so when you make the most money is when you charge a percentage of the management fee so for example we charge in between 10 to 20 percent of the gross of the unit who do that generates i see it and then we take care of everything [Music] today where how many employees do you have what do you pay them and how do you retain them to stay with you and yes yes good question so as of now we have 22 cleaners they all range from 19 per hour you know the the people who doesn't drive okay the drivers get 20 to 22. if they drive my car it's 20 dollars if they drive their car it's 24. so you know it really works out well sometimes they want to use their car and they make a little bit extra money that's that's fine for me so do you offer like any incentives any creative ways of yes this is something very important you know last few years i didn't have what it was called i was not paying attention and creating a company culture now you know it's very important to keep your employees uh you know uh feel appreciated so what i've been doing you know since pre-kobit you know taking him to picnics you know carne asadas of course every saturday uh you know we took him to a bowling game every three months or so and you know we celebrate their birthdays every time you have a software that tells me okay this cleaner's birthday's tomorrow we get them a cake we celebrate real quick in the morning and we all got to go and that my friends is being the key for me to keep the employees longer [Music] all right let's dive into blitz questions if you could go back to the pre-pandemic world what's one thing you would do in advance uh hire more people what is one fact that changed your perspective on life forever oh god that's a good question uh let's keep that one okay what is your favorite business book the the next rule 10x rule okay now at this stage of success what advice would you give to your teenage self i will definitely never stop learning look for mentors definitely look for mentors and look for mentors they already went through it yeah they can teach you everything okay what's one thing you can't start your mornings without except coffee meditation meditation okay now this is our fan questions thank you guys for submitting these questions this is from ah this is good uh he or she's asking what's the next target goal uh we're next year we'll be looking at uh trying to get a one 1.75 million in sales total sales just one year yes wow definitely the same same user oh this is good what are the top three lessons learned after the first full year in business learn your numbers learn how to delegate and start investing in and marketing this is from atres if you had to start a new business in a different field what would it be and why uh we'll say carpet cleaning it's there's a huge demand from him actually we're in uh implemented that business next year okay awesome this is from milay marine i think if i'm reading it right uh favorite non-business book uh think and grow reach think and grow rich okay uh and this is from area a how did the pandemic affect your business uh well it did at first uh you know we we really almost lost more than half of our uh customers between the may the month of march to uh june okay but then after that it really changed everything once they're home clean they disinfected so it's it affected us at first but now it's actually uh you know such a good search in in business okay [Music] all right chris curious about the most single important skill or experience that you need or should have or can have that'll help you in this business what can you tell us something for sure you know this is a very common problem i've seen with other business owners and it's very important it's knowing your numbers no no no in your numbers you know when i uh started i just knew that the company was making money i was working with subcontractors and you know i got a letter from the labor in industries department and they find me with twelve thousand dollars for miss classifying the cleaners wow so essentially i guess there's a way that you can hire subcontractors but it's very edgy so they're always kind of watching you you know for making a mistake and then you end up with big fines so if i would have known that you know knowing the rules and regulations and then on top of that knowing my numbers i wouldn't probably got in that situation you know an advice i will give to everyone definitely if you don't have money for a cpa when you're starting well at least get an accountant on a bookkeeper you know and then have them teach you everything you need to know what taxes you need to pay what dates are they do and if you take care of that at the beginning you will say so much trouble in the end um you know i didn't pay attention to that at the beginning and then end up biting me in the butt uh you know at the end of the first year that's great advice yeah [Music] what's your preference like you as a business owner what do you want to see more of coming into the business what type of service and why yeah definitely well you know it's it's been interesting i think i mentioned earlier uh at first the airbnb customers were hard to deal with i didn't really want to be part of it but now that i got the hang of it i think i have a system that works for for us uh i will i would rather stay on the airbnb side of business you know it's pretty they're pretty uh popular nowadays i see more and more coming up every day and if i want to focus on one i will be on the airbnb side are the profits obviously a little bit higher yes they're a little higher than the than the other ones and for the most part you know uh if you do a good job they get good reviews then you get even bonus and whatnot so it works out very well in terms of running a business from home chris what are the pros and cons because you've been kind of utilizing the house for the last five years have you thought about commercial space versus where you're at now i have yes um you know it's it's funny that you ask when we started the operation uh you know i i really didn't think it was going to grow to uh you know to this size so i wanted to keep everything in house keep the the overhead uh you know low now we're you know making a million dollars in sales a year but uh essentially we we now we're in a station we need to look for a commercial uh property so you're looking for one yes now the thing is that i kind of want to wait a little bit because you know there's a lot of retail spaces empty right now um i kind of want to want for wait for the right opportunity uh you know the right cost so we can essentially move all of our operations to to that area so what would be the the pro i guess of transitioning into one space for you as a business owner one of the things i guess is the most important is to separate the business from the home and it it works up until a certain point but now you know in the mornings it gets hectic you know have 25 people in the morning you know just talking and you know you don't want to you know uh you know bug your neighbors so i think it's a good idea just to go to a place and just have everything ready you know you know from there you know all the operations [Music] curious about what your day looks like yeah at this point and how is it different from before i mean how many hours of work yeah do you put in a week so i would say i work about even between four and six hours a day yeah so it's not bad you know sometimes i i i really don't have to go uh out uh today is one of those days because it's the end of the month usually by the end of the month a lot of people move out so usually they get busy towards the next the towards the end of the month and but the first two weeks i literally work three hours four hours a day yeah it's pretty good it's pretty good balanced life work um i think uh right now uh you know i i have found a balance between my work and my family so i'm very i'm grateful that's awesome yeah so chris since your income on the airbnb side of things is dependent on the income of the landlord right how do you have that transparency and know what they're earning so that you can take your 10 to 20 for sure so whenever i import someone i you know they have to tell me the unit and then i use a software they call air dna their dna so it tells you how much their you know the house are renting from in that area the nightly rates so that gives me a rough idea how i'm looking to make and then the number uh two thing is to have an agreement in place you have an agreement yeah without having agreement it's three months minimum you know if you don't like it you can you know stop our services but we really believe that uh if you stay with us for three months you'll see the results and then you see your income increase as well so if i want to pursue airbnb what would be the secret you would say if if any to be successful to be most profitable for sure i actually do have a really good secret but make sure to comment below because i'll be answering those secrets directly all right you guys heard it from chris comment below to get the answer [Music] so you guys this is the this is the tip hack that we talked earlier uh in the video definitely yes at first i was trying to do where many hats you know making the phone calls uh talking to customers charging customers uh responding to customers and it gets used also overwhelming it's too many things so what i end up doing is i i look for hiring people overseas so i can maximize my profits i was very lucky to hire a lady that uh her name is sheena she's from the philippines lovely she's very smart um you know i i hired as i'm a customer service representative and then within two months she learned the ropes super fast six months in after she's she's working for me uh the sales were like at 30 increase wow and and then here's the thing though i you know i pay five dollars an hour and there's like super well competitive uh race for them um you know as of now i actually have five uh customer service representatives working from seven in the morning to 11 pm and really having a fantastic customer service responsive customer service uh be someone that's always responding to any web chat text it's key and they're answering from philippines that's right you know uh we use a system is called ring central very essential okay you know we bought some uh some extensions so each of the users have extension if a calls comes in and one of the person is already in a call it directs to the next person and so on so the tip trick is delegate delegate over season yes i think every business owner you're not just cleaning every business owner small business owner or big business owner can uh you know take advantage of the global economy you know there's people who are very well prepared that can do a good job most jobs can do be done you know online nowadays anyway so you know why no delegate one of your most important ones which is customer service and make it the beefiest customer service in your town you know we answer seven days a week from 7 11.
you will see the sales within two months and you'll take me later wow so you were invited as a guest speaker for the maid service summit tell us how that happened and what is the value for you as a business owner to be at these conferences speaking or attending et cetera for sure yeah i was uh invited this year by the made summit it's an event that happens every year where made service business owners all experts get together they share their tips and ideas this year actually i chose how to i you know in my in my talk i actually taught people how to hire your customer service va the first time and it's totally free so if you guys go uh to customer service va.com you'll find that the guy you you know enter your information and download it and i'll send it to you it's a step-by-step process that works for any service business owner and it will tell you where to find these people okay how to hire the right one how to pay them and how to train them awesome for sure well chris this has been amazing what an incredible story of uh thank you startup cost of five grand and now you're you know in the millions with the goal of mine so yeah it's been great thank you so much for inviting me and guys uh thank you so much for watching this video thank you well that's a wrap of queen bee cleaning services i hope you guys really enjoyed it what an incredible story by chris this is the land of opportunities he started out as an immigrant worked multiple small jobs but now he's got some high goals to reach millions of dollars in revenue we do this for you guys please subscribe to our channel hit that like button and the bell so that you don't miss any of our amazing content we do this for you thank you for watching
2021-10-24 19:03
