Clean Up Academy

I often hear people talk about the insane amount of hours they work for their cleaning company as if it were a badge of honour.

Are you one of these people?

While you are obviously a very driven and determined person, to me it shows you are not being efficient with your time.

To me, working 60, 70, 80 hours + a week isn’t something to be proud of because it shows you haven't got enough systems and processes in place to be able to work in fewer hours.

If you can get all of your work done in your business within 20 hours, and it still runs smoothly and makes money, that is the dream.

If you continue down this path of wearing all these hours like a badge of honour, you will very quickly burn out and have a business that feels frantic and chaotic.

I’m sure you didn't start your business to feel stressed all the time, so take some time off for yourself. Recharge, find a hobby, whatever you like because working that much is not sustainable.

If you think back over your time owning your cleaning company, was there anything that worked really well that you just forgot about?
Human nature is a funny thing, often we do something that works really well, and then for some reason, we forget about it and stop doing it. So think about what worked for your cleaning company before that for some reason has just kind of dropped by the wayside.

It doesn't mean that it didn't work anymore. It's just for whatever reason it just got forgotten about and disappeared.

Too often, we spend our time chasing a new strategy or focusing on what other people are doing to even realise that what we had in front of us worked all along.

Often we overlook the fact that there are probably lots of things that we have done in the past which would still work but we've stopped doing it, so have a think about those things.
What did you do across any area of your business that worked well that you stopped doing?

Do you feel like you are always having to put out fires while you try and grow your cleaning company?

Systems are the backbone of any good company, and without a specific set of detailed systems in place, you will always succumb to issues that arise in any field of the business.

Systems are no computer programs, a system is just a means of achieving a consistent result. That may be a good clean, or the number of leads per week, everything within the company should have a system.

This means that everyone will know exactly how to do each task and then if any issues do arise, you as the business owner do not need to be the person rushing to put out the fire, because all your staff are well trained in the system to know exactly what to do.

And what’s more, once you have the system, it’s so much easier to teach others how to work it as it’s so clear and concise.

One thing I often see is once people have made their system of how things should run, they don’t update it. You need to constantly test it and tweak it because the system you created in month 6 of business will be massively different to year 3 or 4, you will have grown so much that the original system will not sustain that growth.

So always remember to test, tweak and update your systems or once you start to grow, you will easily fall back into your old patterns of running to put out the fire.

Do you feel like you have been working IN your cleaning company rather than ON your cleaning company?

It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day running of the business and spend your time putting out fires, that you end up missing out on doing the things you actually created the business for. You stop planning, and trying out new systems and implementing ideas, because you’re so caught up in the smaller things that could most likely be outsourced.

Remember, you didn’t start your cleaning company to work yourself to the point of burnout.

You need to start outsourcing. Get the right people in, teach them your well-thought-out systems and processes and then you can start to relax and take time back for yourself.

Don’t waste your time on menial admin tasks that can be easily done by anyone else, don’t pick up the tools and start cleaning because you think you’re the only one who can. Instead, spend your time fine-tuning all the processes required to make your business run smoothly and efficiently.

The sooner you learn how to outsource tasks properly, the easier your life will become.

Lots of us thought running a cleaning company would be so easy, but do you ever feel like you’re just winging it? If you don't have much prior business experience and this is your first business then it can be really overwhelming.

When you started the company, I’m sure it wasn’t to work more hours, tire yourself out and miss out on family events.

I want you to go back and remember why you started this company to begin with - it could be more financial freedom or more free time, or anything.

Over time, the business gets complex and difficult and that way of thinking goes out the window. So I want you to reflect and reinspire yourself!

Get back that fire in your stomach that made you do this in the first place, and then get help.
Seek out mentors, and business coaches, join support groups on Facebook, and get in touch with other cleaning company owners, because they will all have gone through this before and you can learn from all the things they did right, and wrong!

Don’t bury your head in the sand and give up - find the fire again and find the guidance you need to feel confident with your company.

If you own a cleaning company, you've probably been undercut on price when you've submitted a quote for a contract. And I hear this all too often.

You need to learn how to sell yourself from a VALUE perspective, rather than a cost perspective. If you do this, you will win more contracts and won’t be undercut on price again.

Cost isn’t the only thing important to people, they want value for money. They want their money to give them the best they can get, and people are willing to spend more money if it guarantees them a better result.

If you are being beaten for contracts based on cost alone, then you don’t know how to sell your business properly. You need to know what sets you apart from other companies offering the same for less, and be firm with clients when you are explaining HOW you are better.

If you pitch your company in the same way cheaper companies do, then the only differentiating factor is price, and the cheaper one will always win because they seem identical.

Do not allow your prospects to differentiate you on price. Start pitching your company from a place of value.

Does your cleaning business feel frantic and overwhelming? You need to learn to say NO to people.

It can be hard to say no to clients, especially in the beginning phase of building your business, but if they do not service your needs and make you enough profit, then it’s not worth it.

When you decide to say no to stress and yes to high profit, every single decision you ever make has to be through that lens of “Is this high profit?”

You don’t want to agree to do jobs that aren’t in your wheelhouse, or too far away from where you’re located, because it will be annoying. Not only that, it will cost you more, so you will earn even less profit from it!

There will be moments when you're going to be swayed by clients that are a pain in your ass. They might pay well, but we don't want that.

We want high profit and LOW stress. When you start looking at everything through that lens, your life will change immensely.

Being a parent and a cleaning company owner is hard in August!

You feel like you are being pulled in so many directions and there often can be a feeling if guilt - whether towards your business or family - I don’t want you to feel that way.

You need to be able to enjoy a good work-life balance, because what was the point of opening a business to be busier than ever? You should be aiming to build a high-profit, low-stress company that can run itself and give you your time back, so you can enjoy the summer holidays with your kids.

The good news is at The Clean Up Academy, it usually takes us 3 months to put all the systems and processes in place to help you automate your company and let someone else take the reins, while you enjoy your hard earned money.

So if you are already feeling overwhelmed knowing the summer holidays are just beginning, then have a real think about what you want to do. Reach out to us and get in touch because this time next year - you won’t have that problem. You will have a business that can completely take care of itself, make you a good profit, and give you back the time you deserve with your family.

The cleaning business is not an easy one, and if you own a cleaning company - I’m sure you’ve had days where you feel like giving up.

It is a tiering industry to work in, but it can also be so rewarding when it pays off!

What you need to do is take a breath, take a step back and rethink exactly what it is you need to make your company work for you.,. What are the systems and processes you need to implement to give you your time back?

Finding those systems doesn't need to be hard either, start talking to people! Talk to other cleaning company owners who have been through the same things you have.

At the Clean Up Academy, we have an amazing support system of cleaning business owners who are all eager to help and support other business owners. It’s an incredibly supportive platform.

Sometimes all we need to do is to step back and listen to someone removed from our own situation who gets it entirely, and that is exactly what the Academy is for. It’s a platform to build each other up and help us grow.

If this sounds like something you need, then drop me a message and get in touch - let's see how the Clean Up Academy can help you and help your business grow.

If your cleaning company’s marketing is no good - then you miss out on a lot of money and accept jobs that don’t bring in enough profit.

If your marketing sucks, then you don’t get any inbound leads, you spend too much time and energy chasing clients, and you say yes to any job because you feel like you have to.

This is exhausting!

If you get some really good marketing, then customers will seek you out, they will come to you, and then you get the power to say yes to the clients you actually want and the jobs that bring in more profit for your company.

It's all about being able to generate enough high-quality leads, and being able to create the type of work that you want, when we manage to achieve this, the work is less stressful.

When it becomes less stressful, the less firefighting you do, the more profit it is, and you’ll have a cleaning business that can run without you, which ultimately is the goal here.

If you want your cleaning business to run without you…the most important thing you need is systems!

I’m not talking about any expensive, high-tech computer software. I’m talking about a set way of doing things.

A tried and tested way of doing tasks that anyone can do, from cleaning, right the way to all the admin tasks.

The system can change over time as it needs to. You need to track it, test it and work out the kinks when they arise But, once you have set up a foolproof method, you can sit back and relax while the cleaning company runs itself.

You have to rely on systems if you want a high-profit cleaning company that runs itself. Systems are going to be the thing that means you can bring in other people, teach them your system and they can achieve that consistent result because you know the system works.

Stop focusing on the revenue you make in your cleaning business, focus on the profit instead!

Profit is the marker of success over revenue. What’s the point in taking a contract for a huge amount of money, if it is going to cost you too much in overheads?

We know that cleaning companies can reach a very high revenue. You can have a company turning over £100,000 to £5 million, but your profit might be very slim.

Why stress yourself out? We want high profit and low stress. Learn to sell yourself and your company for the price that you are worth and say no to the jobs that aren't making you real money.

I bet the reason you started your company in the first place was to live a better quality of life, so if you are working crazy hours for a little reward then it’s time for a change.

Focus on how much profit you will make from each job, stop focusing on revenue.

Work less and gain more…that’s your goal as a cleaning company owner, right? To have a business that doesn’t need you to run it.

There is a very simple formula for doing this, and it’s one I’ve shared with cleaning companies all over the world.

All you need to do is break it down into 3 pretty significant categories… systemisation, software and automation.

Systemization is not computer systems, it’s a set procedure for achieving a consistent result. So if your business is systemized properly, you won’t need to rely on a specific person to complete the tasks because the steps that need to be taken to get to where you need to be are already decided.

Now secondly software, this time I do mean on computers, comes into play. If you get the right software in place, it’s going to make those menial admin tasks become very easy and become far less time consuming.

Lastly is automation, because if you can have a task done by itself rather than having to do it yourself or pay someone else to do it, then why wouldn’t you?

It might seem a bit daunting and scary to start off with, but once you have the tools to do it, you will be surprised at how easy it will become.

Once those 3 things are set up, you can step back and relax and know that your business is running smoothly and is capable of scaling on its own.

If you are reading this and think ‘I want this’, but are unsure where to begin, then drop me a message because, at The Clean Up Academy, we have all the tools and knowledge to give you so you can scale your company on autopilot.

Are you tired of feeling like all the responsibility in your cleaning company is always all on you?

That is NOT how it should be, and you need to find help ASAP. Because let’s be honest….that is not why you started your cleaning company.

Don’t let yourself reach burnout, get some support from someone who knows what they are doing, from people who have been through all those things that you are struggling with right now.

You can reach out to a coach like myself or community support systems for business owners or Facebook groups, there are so many options out there. Don’t think that you need to just work harder, because you need to work smarter.

All you need to do is find out exactly what systems and processes to implement to make your cleaning company a well-oiled machine - then you can step back and let it run itself while you enjoy the life you dreamt of.

If you can relate to what I’m saying and feel like you need some guidance and help, then drop me a message. This is exactly what we do at The Clean Up Academy, we help business owners who feel like they are floundering get back on track and turn their business into the one from their dreams.

Is your cleaning company giving you the life you dreamt of when you started the company?

When you started your cleaning company, it was for a reason, right?

Whether that was to have more money in the bank, or more time to spend with your family, it could be for any reason…are you living that life now?

And if you are not, why not?

What do you need to change in your business to lead the life you really want. Maybe it’s time you take a step back and evaluate what you are doing in your business and what you need to do in order to get where you want to go.

So I want you to analyze your business right now, and I want you to think about if you’re 5 years, or even one year, further along on this journey with this business model, is it really going to give you what you want?

Have you got the right type of clients to give you what you want? Are you working in the right areas? Are you working at the right times of the day? The right days of the week even?

So really think about it. If you are not in a position right now where your business model is going to give you what you want, make some changes. It's your business. Just start to make some changes and start to move it in that direction.

It's not going to happen overnight, and if you need a bit of advice to get you moving in the right direction, then drop me a message and let’s have a chat about how I can help you.

There’s nothing more demoralising as a cleaning company owner than when someone asks if you are ‘just a cleaner’ because you are SO much more than that.

People are often oblivious to the hard work we as cleaners have to do, every single service, store, restaurant, every business on the planet requires cleaning, everything you see requires cleaning, so never let anyone make you think you are less than them because of what you do.

And as a cleaning company owner - you do even more! The systems that you have to put in place and test constantly, managing staff and customers, trying out different marketing ideas to grown the business so you can hire more staff and give more people jobs.

Your job is important and it is valued - please don’t let anyone make you think otherwise.

When it comes to marketing your cleaning company - don’t overcomplicate it! It’s easy to get caught up in it and we are all guilty of this sometimes.

There are 2 very easy questions you should be asking yourself when it comes to the marketing side of your cleaning business.

The first question you should ask yourself is ‘if potential clients were looking for a cleaning company, where would they look?’

Ask yourself and write down all the results you can think of, whether its searching Google or asking friends and family, have a think and write down everything you come up with.

…All of those things you just wrote down, they are your inbound leads.

The second question you should ask yourself is ‘if I were looking for my ideal client, where would I find them?’
That will then give you a load of ideas for ways that you can reach out and you can contact the people you actually want to work for. Anything you answer within that question are your outbound lead generation activities so that you can generate work through your activity.

So that will give you all your inbound and outbound leads to work through and hopefully that will help streamline your marketing process.

As a cleaning company owner, all you want to do is grow the business and scale it up to become a money making machine, but growth won’t come just by gaining more clients.

If you haven’t got enough systems and processes in place to happily serve the clients you have already, then you will be doing yourself and your company a disservice by taking them on.

When you are the cleaning company owner - you need to constantly be learning what works and doesn’t work for your business and for your customers. You need to retain the customers you get and make sure they are happy before searching for new ones.

You need to understand your skillset and what sets you apart from others - what are your specialities? Check your current strategies and find out what is working and what can be adjusted.

Otherwise, you might get rapid growth, but it won’t be sustainable. You'll pick up contracts and then lose them. Or worse yet, you could get a looking contract that looks great but it’ll go really badly and destroy your business.

So growth isn't just about new business. When you're thinking about growth, you have to think about everything else that goes with it.

Do you think you work a crazy number of hours in your own cleaning business?

Was that why you started your business? I’m willing to bet it wasn’t.

It’s a really scary thought being able to step away from your business that you have worked so hard to grow - but what was the point in it if it wasn’t to give you more financial freedom or time to do the things you love?

The systems and processes you put in place are going to automate so much and will carry the weight of the business so it doesn’t fall onto your shoulders.

Those one-off system creations are going to take some time to create and put into place - and that can be fairly intensive. But once it has been done, you can step back and relax knowing the business is taken care of.

If you feel like you're stuck and you can never get out of it, that's not true - you can absolutely get out of it. You might just need a little bit of help putting a strategy together that will work.

We've been doing this for a long time, and we've helped literally hundreds of cleaning businesses be able to do that. So if you are interested and want to learn how to get back the time to do those things you love, get in touch and let’s see how we can help automate your company.

Everybody that starts their cleaning company wants growth, but growth isn't just about new business. It's about everything, improving what you have and growing at the same time.

What you need to do first is look at your business and find where the bottleneck lies. It could be many things, from outdated systems, to cashflow issues, and more often I see the bottleneck comes from the cleaning company owner.

Where would things start to unravel that would cause the growth to slow down?

So, think about it. What's slowing down your growth? What is it that's causing the problem? Check into it and see how you can remove it.

If you find that bottleneck but can't think of a way to remove it, then drop me a message.

Bottleneck removal is one of the key things I do with cleaning companies when they're building systems and pushing for growth. So even if it was just to bounce some ideas off of me or to see if and how I can help, drop me a message, explain to me what it is that you're going through and I'll offer any support that I can.

As a cleaning company owner, it’s so easy to get caught into the trap of telling yourself that you aren’t doing good enough - you have to stop this!

I see it far too often from cleaning business owners, and most of the time, it simply is not true.

As business owners, we are often extremely critical of ourselves, and it does come from a place of wanting to be successful, but what you are telling yourself is probably not true.

You might need to know a little bit more to get to that ultimate vision for your company. But nothing brings down your business like a bad mindset.

With the Clean Up Academy + members, we do a 90 day strategy session. It's an amazing opportunity for us to sit down and map out the next three months, meaning that there's always clarity. It means that there's always focus It means that there's always something that people are working on to improve the quality of life that they have as a result of having their cleaning business and treat themselves with more kindness.

If that sounds like something you are interested in then drop me a message and let’s have a chat about how The Clean Up Academy can help you.

Why did you open your cleaning business? Was it for more financial freedom? To have more money in the bank or more free time to spend with your family? Whatever it was, I can guarantee it wasn’t to stress you out!

What I see time and time again is people opening their company and not long after - trying to take over every job and deal with each individual part of the business then you end up more stressed than you ever were before.

You need to stop spreading yourself so thinly across each task and haphazardly building your cleaning company as you go.

At The Clean Up Academy, I help cleaning company owners get back to that vision they had when they first started so that we can re-architect the business and build something that actually works for them.

So if you are in that situation and you want a stress-free business, a stress-free cleaning company, but you're thinking that you don't know how to get there, go back to those basics and really start to understand what is it that you want.

And if you still don’t know which direction to head in, then get in touch because helping people is what we do at the Academy.

Let’s be honest, marketing your cleaning company properly can be extremely difficult.

The issue is that there are so many different ways to market now. You could post ads on Facebook; go out flyering; your website’s SEO is on point; attend various networking events; or post on LinkedIn (one of my own favourites) but with so many options available - how do you know you are choosing the right method?

No singular method is best and they all work great together as a team but if you start to track your data and results you’ll stop spending time, money, energy and resources on marketing that isn’t helping your business thrive.

If you know that something works, then you can accentuate it. You can do more of it. You can put more money into it, more time into it. And if you can see that something doesn't work very well, then maybe you avoid it, or maybe it's something that needs to be improved upon.

We need to track the data to understand how marketing is changing and how well it's working.

At the Clean Up Academy, we give you the tools and the skillset to be able to ascertain that information for yourself and make changes to your strategy if you need to. So you can move ahead and understand how to find out what works best for you.

As a cleaning company owner - how often do you reflect on your own skills and take accountability for what YOU need to know?

Often, it’s so easy to get lost in the day to day running of the business, that you forget to stop and take stock of what you know and what you need to know.

Are you able to delegate? Are you able to outsource and automate? Or are you stressed to the max trying to control everything at once?

This is why I am such an advocate for business coaches or mentors. Seeking out someone who has done what you are doing before is the most beneficial thing you can do, because they’ve been there, done that and got experience and knowledge they can pass down to you.

Running any business can be overwhelming and a cleaning business certainly is no different so if you are feeling a little lost or you don’t know where you should be focusing your energy, then get in touch ad drop me a message and together we can see where your business is going and make sure we prevent you from becoming the bottleneck in your own company.

Does the thought of growing your cleaning company make you feel scared or nervous?

It can feel incredible daunting to find more employees or take on big contracts. You could be scared to diversify your services or move into a new area that you aren’t familiar with.

And the one thing that will combat all these fears of the unknown is KNOWLEDGE.

Knowledge is so powerful, it’s the key to understanding, and once you understand something, you can master it and make a lot of money form it!

This is why training is so important. This is why mentorship and coaching is so powerful. It will give you knowledge, perspectives and insights that you just don't have yet.

If we can give you more knowledge, and we can give you everything you need to know about running and growing a cleaning business, that fear is going to disappear. And will be replaced with excitement.

It's going to be replaced with strategies, processes and systems to make your company flourish and give you more free time and more financial freedom.

Is your cleaning company healthy? Or does it feel like there are major blocked arteries and you don’t know how to unclog them?

There are a few really important things to maintain a healthy cleaning company - and you should make sure you are doing ALL of these to keep your business running well.

Firstly…numbers, finances and KPIs. You should also always be analysing your involvement in the business. You should have all the systems and processes in place to be able to have anyone step in and take over any role, and if it can be automated then DO IT!

Another thing you should be doing sounds a bit cheesy, but you should constantly be checking that you are moving towards your dream vision for your company - otherwise you’ll end up saying yes to every job that comes in and you will end up with a frantic and chaotic company that will be highly stressful to manage and run.

If all that sounded a bit daunting, or you just want some help to focus on where to even start with it all then that's what the Cleanup Academy is all about. It teaches you how to have a cleaning business that is better in everything. Lead generation, sales, marketing, service, delivery, finances, everything.

Then what it does is it gives you that high profit, low-stress cleaning business that can run without you. So if that's what you're interested in drop me a message.