David Losh

We spend a lot of time on the internet building a web presence. It has to be done consistently, because it is a constantly changing media.

People learn about us through social networks, and media. When I meet a new person who has asked for a quote, or a consultation, they know about me. They talk about my wife, like they know her. She spends more time with FaceBook than I do.

We have a variety of FaceBook pages http://www.facebook.com/SeattleHouseCleaning and a Google Plus account. We are updating our blog here because we have a Google placement for House Cleaning with my name on it. A lot of that has to do with searches people do for my name. I contributed a pod cast to a cleaning web site, and now I get questions from around the country.

The internet is a great place to advertise, but I’m just saying that you have to contribute the time to do it. I did hire two people to work on my social media, but they seem distracted by personal projects. So, I do it myself with my own blogs, and FaceBook pages. It’s a learning curve, but now it is all I do to advertise. In a way it is trading my time for the hundreds of dollars I used to spend each month on say a Yellow Page ad. Do they still have those?

In our business we use two types of vacuums, a canister, and an upright.

We would like to replace the upright, but the choices all have issues for our cleaning company. The canister we are using is made by Hoover, and it seems a little small to do a whole set of houses in a day.

The canister we chose is a Kenmore from Sears. We have used them before, and they work well. Sears had discontinued the style we used, but this seems like a good machine, we’ll see.

We have been working on FaceBook rather than our blogs. Our Seattle House Cleaning  page is http://www.facebook.com/SeattleHouseCleaning

This page has been a great learning curve in marketing because it makes you want to improve your online relationships. It has already generated some business for us, in small ways, but knowing we have a following, with immediate feed back, helps us think of better ways to add content.

We’d love to have you like, and follow us on FaceBook. We’ll continue to add content on all of our internet resources, but I think FaceBook is a great tool.

Yesterday we cleaned a place for a person who hadn’t cleaned in a very long time. She, and her ex boyfriend, had issues around who was going to clean. She was apologetic about the condition of the apartment, and began telling me the story, but it kind of faded away because we started to work.

It’s not that I don’t care about how a place got to be a mess, some times it helps to know the history, so you can know what the priorities are. We are grateful to have the work, and to get paid, so we can pay our bills. If your place was perfect we would be out of a job. Actually really messy places are easier to clean because it is all an improvement.

Who you are is important in the sense that what we clean is to your standards. We do want to know that, we want to be able to make those connections. We are there though to clean, and meet your standards. All the rest of the emotional issues, and there can be many, are something for another time.

Let’s use the example of the rebellious child who doesn’t clean their room, we get that one from time to time. The parents try to figure out if we should clean, or not clean. They have the kids pick up before hand, or the room doesn’t get cleaned that week. Parents can be apologetic, the kids can be defiant. We’re there to clean. We have no opinion about the processes. We are just the cleaners, and will do the tasks you ask for our price.

The most dreaded part of owning any business is paying the taxes. This is a pain, but it’s best to get it out of the way. Figure it into you bottom line that 15% of employee wages goes to taxes, and another 15% goes to your personal tax. Your city, state, and county taxes are up to your location, but mine run about 3% or 4%.

Taxes cost a lot of money, and the more you make, the more you pay. So there is a temptation to try and be creative with taxes, when actually it is just a cost of doing business. If you want to grow it’s best to just figure in the tax rate to your pricing.

The good news for those of you in the cleaning business is that taxes are about 30% of your costs. When I was in the restaurant business food cost was the big ticket item, and I still had to pay taxes. With cleaning you have labor costs, and taxes. You can count your vehicles, but vacuums, and rags are pretty much your big costs.

This is just a caution, and another reason that cleaning is a great way to make a living.

We were working on a construction clean up this week. The company scheduled us for Monday, but didn’t confirm our bid until Tuesday, and asked if we could do the work the next day. I e-mailed back of course we could, gave the superintendent a time line, and we showed up accordingly. Well he wasn’t ready, and hadn’t read my e-mail.

It is so typical of the construction business to be behind schedule, then over lap contractors so you look like you’re doing something, when all it does is get you further behind. Now there are project supervisors who schedule contractor time lines using a software program written by a company that promises higher profits. That may work in theory.

This experience reminded me again why I like the cleaning business. We show up, do the work, and get paid for the time we are there.

The company asked me for a bid which I gave them for twice the price we will actually bill them for. It’s the only way to cover the costs of surprises, like what we just experienced. I have spent more time going back, and forth to see if the project was ready than we spent doing the work.

Tomorrow I’m meeting with a pay roll executive so we can hire more employees. We have had helpers, and independent contractors. My business has always been on a contract basis. Employees are a new world for me.

It adds about 20% to my worker costs, but also increases my State tax, because it will now all be paid by me. We will have to increase business just to stay at evens. This is a scary time for us. We have more business, and have worked very hard to keep business. This is just another phase that has to be passed through.

We added two new workers, and at this time of the year we get new clients. During the summer we lose some, but make up for it by the one time cleanings. We usually grow about 20% per year, so my thinking is we will cover the costs of making every one an employee.

There are good, and bad things about the change. Number one is we will have more control over the work. Second is the State Insurance which is a plus to us. State Industrial covers work related injury. That is a double edged sword that I’ll write another post about. Unemployment Insurance is another double edged sword.

I personally think both State programs are a benefit to us, but we’ll discuss that another time.

In the past two months our business has turned another corner, and we added another employee. Last year my big push was to hire a bookkeeper. It helped tremendously to know where we were financially. It helped me to make decisions about where our company needs to grow.

Today we had our first meeting of this year. We had a lot of controversy the first two months. We had to fire an employee who has been with us for six years. Her aunt, sister, and cousin work with us also, except her aunt quit a couple of weeks later.

There hasn’t been a lot of time to deal with those losses, but we did find two excellent replacements. We are getting better work done.

It’s given us more ability. We have become more agile without some of the groaning we have experienced in the past few months. Every one seems to be more willing to work, and there is much more of a team spirit.

So today at the meeting we talked a little bit more about how to grow. We have the ability to pay more, and get the others more in the way of benefits. It was suggested we get uniforms. Another suggestion was on how to carry ourselves to look more professional. For the first time there is some excitement about the business, and business has been booming.

There is a saying about working with Real Estate agents that they are slow pay, or no pay clients. We have had both over the years.

Our original cleaning company, A Spring Cleaning was a preferred provider of HUD Homes here in Seattle for about 15 years. If an agent needed a property cleaned up, or cleaned out we could be paid directly by the lender by having all information concerning license, bond, and insurance on file. The system changed over the years, but we still appeared on the preferred contractors hand out. That all changed when HUD, and banks, went to a third party provider system when foreclosures got to be so much of the market place.

We finally stopped doing any work with Real Estate agents in about 2008. It got to be harder to get paid, and the home owner was a little put off by having strangers working in the home. Our policy now is that we need to meet the home owner, and have them pay us directly.

Another thing that has always bothered me is that Real Estate agents are pushy. They want everything done now, for cheap. It’s like they all went to the same class. They want cheap; cheap is the operative word. They also always promise that there is more work if you do a good job on this one. Well they are right, there is always more work, but they will stop using you as soon as they find some one cheaper, than you.

We’ll talk about property managers next time, for right now, this is just a warning.

For those of you who are regular readers, and may be wondering about the change in direction of this blog, let me introduce you to http://start-a-cleaningbusiness.com/cb/

Now the picture isn’t of me, but the podcast is. It talks about how to start a Home Cleaning business for fun, and profit. I was paid to do the  podcast, and agreed to letting the gentleman use my name. I’m always interested in feed back on these things.

So if you have come here as a result of the web site, let me know what you think about Home Cleaning, or small business in general.