Clean It Up
UK General Cleaning Forum => General Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: josie on February 28, 2005, 06:43:11 pm
-
I have a Domestic Cleaning business and im thinking of a change,
i still want to stay in the cleaning trade but want to start cleaning public areas like flats/appartments stair and walk ways, offices and maybe building cleans (not sure on that one yet). i think it would be easier to employ staff to do that than work in peoples houses.. just would like to hear what you all think really...
-
Hi Josie!
You are probably right, but doesn't that bring into consideration the increased public and employers liability insurance, the various different Health and safety rules and regulations, and god knows what else. If nothing else running a domestic cleaning service (once it is well established) has got to be the easiest of them all (staffing problems aside of course), hasn't it? :-\
-
Hi All
I think you should go for it Josie, my company has its fingers in all pies in cleaning so to speak, apart from carpet cleaning, but I am considering this line of work also because of the amount of work we sub contract.
Personally I think the Domestic side is a pain apart from prompt payments, I make a lot more/easier money on the commercial side of my business, I can’t comment on insurance because I started doing both from the start.
H & S wise if you employ more than 5 staff (I think) by law you have to have a H & S policy statement and risk assessment my insurance company asks this as 1 of its 100’s of questions.
As I said go for it and good luck!!!!
Paul
-
Hi Josie
If you would like to pursue other aspects of cleaning....then as others, i would recommend it as the more feathers to your cap, the greater earning potential for you and your business.
However, why do you wish to stop the domestic cleaning side of the business?
If you wish to do other things, then why not get someone else to do the domestic cleaning for you, while you take your cut of the profits!!
When you do the communal cleaning for apartment blocks, there is a large opportunity for increased business for the domestic side because they can see your work and they will come to know and trust you...!!
If you were to start....say, carpet cleaning, you have a customer base already with your domestic.....and also the other way round when you clean the carpets.....an opportunity to get more domestic cleaning from these clients.
What I am trying to say is do not be too hasty to get rid of the domestic cleaning....
All the best
Tim
-
I know I'm going to get moaned at for this, but..... Josie, get your domestic business running first. Try running it for a while without asking basic questions on here. What happened to your web idea? Another pie in the sky idea gone belly up?
At least try to walk before you can run.
Don't do it, you're not ready
Gary
-
hi there,
product mix is very important, we have a core business, supplemented by special short time frame contracts, and other reactive works.
we have all the marketing, and paperwork sitting ready to go for a domestic cleaning side, as i have said on here before a product mix acroos several different business sectors is the ideal, as the differing busienss sectors compliment each other through cash flow.
i wouldnt throw any business out.
regards
martin
-
I agree with you Martin 100%. But YOU have everything in place, a plan for your future and struture.
Looking back through Josie's posts, in my opinion she should NOT expand until she has at least an idea of what she is doing.
If she expands with the little knowledge she has, she is surely heading for disaster.
Gary
-
Hi Josie :)
Jump but not too high!! The best things come to those who wait ;)
Like Tim has said you have taken the first step don't about turn!
Use your contacts, employ more people to continue your domestic side and then add on. You would be mad to throw it all away. ???. These clients will serve as good references for the future too!
No business becomes successful overnight and everything takes time particularily if it is to be done well.
Good luck
Maggie :)
-
hi guys, thanks for all your posts, im still going to continue with the domestic side but want to push for office work etc...
as for my other business idea its gone all to plan, got my paper work and research in place just the case of makein the web site live. but before i do any thing i want to get cleaning business booming first and domestic cleaning isnt that much money in it thats why i want to do other cleaning things first, i want to walk before i can run, other wise ill fall flat on my face!
-
hi there,
josie, "isnt that much money in domestic " how wrong can you be.
we have fully discussed this before on here and the maths has been shown on how to achieve it
50 clients- 3 hours per week at £12 per hour (which is too cheap ) equals
£93600 turnover, less wages £6 per hour less 4% for materials equals
GROSS profit of about £42k obviously deduct operasting costs and then your wages
then target to 75 clients, the maths rolls up.
how many of those private domestic clients work in offices?
hey ready made potential commercial clients, and it works the other way round aswell
regards
martin
-
Here here Martin :)
We are no fools and have done the maths!! ::)
Personally I think it is easier to keep long term staff with this type of cleaning than with office work too?
What are the thoughts of others on this??
Maggie :)
-
I do some freelance work for a guy who runs/ran two businesses. The first is daily office cleaning which is thriving and profitable.
The second was a domestic set up. He worked hard on this applying the same strategies/marketing etc as the daily office cleaning. He gave it up after several years as he simply couldn't make it pay.
Although he had some staffing problems with the commercial work they paled in significance to the domestic side.
I think Martin is looking into this as a utopia rather than having worked in the same industry (sorry Martin as I have respect for your comments on the builders clean work etc).
I find some of the comments on these domestic posts quite scary and believe that some of you are going to have to re-think your short-term career options.
Since the forum has been running there have been a number of 'Domestic Goddesses' that have appeared with a flurry of posts only to disappear a few months later.
I wonder where they have gone...
While I applaud the Go Get It attitude I really think your energies should be better channelled.
Sorry to put a downer on things but welcome to the REAL world.
-
hi there,
musicman, the comments are fair enough, weve had everything in place to launch the domestic service, we have a very tight geographical area that we are focussing efforts upon.
whilst my figures are figures, we have had a pretty good run through the last year, and everything that we have targetted has happened. financially we are within tolerance of our projections.
running your own business is hard work, and you must set yourself the target in order to achieve. commercial or domestic, in essence is irelevant, we are all providing a service to a end user.
You need to run a business as a business and nothing else, 100% committment, cause as you say you see people come and people go.
regards
martin
-
im only charging £8.00 to £8.50 per hour i know that is not much but people round here think this is really expencive.. i live in the shropshire area and thats the going rate round here!
-
Ooooo good grief, at those rates you'll be bankrupt in no time. De' Ja vu
Picked up a job today, 15 hours per day, charging over £13.00 per hour.
-
Hi
As i have said on other postings....why do we let the customer / client dictate how much we are to charge?
We need to educate them on how dam good our services are....but this is how much it costs them!
If you can only charge £8.00 per hour because that is what the client expects from "previous" cleaning companies.....we need to tell them why they should come to us and this 5star cleaning will cost £12 per hour or £15 per hour!!
But we need the educating first, to understand why we are good enough for £12 - £15 per hour...
As regards Martins comments over the past month or so about going into domestic cleaning aswell.....well time will tell if he gets his targets.....but because he has educated himself the believe that his domestic cleaning is going to be better than all the other competitors, he has the determination to make it succeed.
Having said that.....its ok to have figures and projections on the computer but as most of you guys know its tough out there in the real world.
All i can say is good luck to the lot of you in getting your businesses going. I feel the next 6 months is going to be interesting as we all watch how everybody gets on.
I think I need a cup of coffee as i am going to go into one and wear out the keyboard....
All the best to you all out there
Tim Downer
Cleaning Manager
Musicman....I don't remember recieving your email to ask if you could use my surname in your posting!!
-
Well after a few umms and aahs, a few nervous weeks with the prospect of losing my customers and also not signing any new ones, I have successfuly managesd to keep ALL my exisiting customers happy on either new or old rates (better to be getting a little something than nothing at all). I have also successfully signed up 3 new Clients in the last week at my new rate. Just to put things into perspective, If I signed up 1 customer per week for a 3 hour clean every week, I would expect a turnover in a year of approx £73k. Now bearing in mind I have signed 14 Clients in 3 months (fair enough they are not all weekly and not all at the new rate), without any regular advertising bar my Yellow Pages ad (which only went out in January), I don't think that is too bad going. I am about to get myself a deal going with Fulfords, advertising in their literature and being the only dom cleaning business to advertise with them, but purely to the higher spec marker, eg properties over £400k. I have no idea whether this will work for me, and who will do the cleaning. But if worse comes to worse I will employ our local Agency who specialise in supplying Cleaners. Expensive way of doing it initially, will eat what little profits I am making, but there are no initial fees and after 160 hours employment with my I can take them on myself. Sometimes you have to make a loss before you can make any gains. I am also seriously considering the 2 cleaners to one appointment idea, as my friend and best cleaner has gone sick this week, the same week my new lady started, so my friends Clients haven't had a clean at all, and me and my new lady have been up to our eyes with our own..........aaaahhh the joys of business.............ok gotta go clean now ;)
-
This has made for very interesting reading this morning ;)
I am only at the point of putting together my business plan at the moment and find many of the points valid in the thread and many others for that matter, however all businesses have to start somewhere. I have decided to start in 'Domestic Cleaning', however I don't claim to be a 'Domestic Goddess', I am just a professional person and I have the belief in myself that I won't be disappearing :) I am not prepared to do cleaning for people at rates below what I am worth and if people don't want to pay those rates, they are happy to go and find someone who will do a lower quality job at the price they want to pay.....knowing that lower quality is exactly what they will get!
It depends what you want to earn etc, I have a very similar plan to Martin in relation the domestic side in terms of earnings as myself and my Husband have both had good careers in Management, stressed ourselves out and realised that is not what we want from life as it didn't give us the quality time we have with our Daughter and as a family. It was nice to have already put similar figures to Martin together with the same amount of staff etc as he already has experience before reading this thread, only I based on £14 per hour. I am toying between £12 - £14 at the moment, it depends on researching my area really. I have no doubts this will also bring me times of stress, however I will build at a pace that suits me and ensures quality is kept to the highest of standards.
I have been researching everyday now from dropping my Daughter off to School until 10pm at night and won't go into anything built on dreamy ideas of this type of business. I am prepared to put in hardwork to get where I want to be, I think sometimes, people don't take that seriously enough. I know of so many people disatisfied with the cleaning services they receive and they need to be re-educated into realising you get what you pay for! An example was an ad I saw in a local shop window, lady advertising her cleaning services, it was written on a scruffy piece of paper, torn from a notepad with just her name and number....these details were scrawled across the page :o If you can't be bothered to use quality in your advertising, then how can you expect anybody to believe that you will provide a quality job.....I am sure she is charging peanuts.....what a fool. I would never call anyone to clean my home from an ad like that, as if that is the standard of advertising, the cleaning is bound to be of just as low a standard if not worse, probably the latter. This is an extreme example but something that is quite common and even other better ads I have seen have not been what would draw me to call never mind executive clients!
I am lucky to have time on my hands to get things right, I already have my good friend wanting to work for me and I will be paying her well, with benefits to make her feel appreciated and motivated to perform to a high standard. My friend is very house proud and actually enjoys cleaning, what a bonus eh :) She has experience of cleaning too and when she cleaned her local snooker hall to make some extra money as the previous cleaner had done such an appalling job, they could not believe how well she had done the job, as she was bright enough to realise the legs of the snooker tables actually need a good polish being just one of the points. For me having myself and my friend on board is already a great position to be in as staffing seems to often be the issue within this line of business. I also have good management and people skills aswell as interviewing skills from my previous career which I feel will all help me to ensure I only recruit quality staff.
Another thing on my side is I have friends and family mixing in the right circles ;) A lot of our friends are big earners and my Husband is sure many of them would love me to clean for them. Also my Husbands friend is a huge earner working in the Management of properties so long term I would look to expanding my cleaning services in this area and am literally guaranteed he would use me as he not only works for a large organisation in a top position but also has is own business running alongside in this area. All this adds to my confidence in reaching my goals.
I don't want to be mega rich, just have a happy fulfilling life, only growing at a pace that allows me to continue in that way, however I expect to be paid for the quality of work I can provide. We all want different things I suppose.....
Just wanted to try and give you a bit of background to me, I don't want as a newbie to be seen on the MB as another fly by night. I actually agree with most of the advice I have read that may not be so good for the receivers, however I find they are sometimes put over a little harsh at times. I do have to admit Gary for one does make me chuckle with his blunt responses when he disagrees with a post and is probably right to disagree but some people may be sensitive to that response unlike myself ;D It is easy once you are well established and doing really well to put down others and their dreams and ideas.....the advice is great but please give me the opportunity to prove to you that I mean business before assuming anything about this newbie eh ;)
Anyway back to my research I go, currently looking at steaming equipment, cleaning equipment, uniforms, etc, etc.
Sarah :D