A little bit of background: I have been working part time as a residential house cleaner for 10 years as a side hustle to fill in employment gaps. I started out in my hometown by cleaning restaurants and transitioned to houses when I moved to a HCOL big city. I have worked for a couple of large, well established cleaning companies that were decent-ish. However, the cut they took was quite large, the hours sparse, and I found myself very demoralized by the lack of control over my schedule. I had about 5 long term, recurring clients of my own on the side.
To make money while I acquire my own clients, I’ve been working as an IC with another large franchise in my city. Almost every client I have worked with so far has provided me excellent feedback and rebooked with me specifically! My current rating with this company is 5 stars and I feel great. This is what really encouraged me to finally pull the trigger and start my own legit business. My wife has been extremely supportive and is all in with me as a business partner.
At this point, we pretty much have no budget for ads, so my wife put her skills as a graphic designer to work and created us a beautiful website and a batch of flyers. So this week, we bundled up and took transit to neighbourhoods we’d love to work in and put up a bunch of flyers in high traffic areas (public message boards and transit stops). We know that this time of year is rough for getting new customers, but we wanted to give it a shot to see if anyone would bite.
Well, our website has only been live for one week and we just got our very first booking from our flyers! I know it’s only one, but we were so happy we were in tears. I also posted in my complex’s FB group (there are 6 large loft buildings) offering a neighbourhood discount. So far, we completed our first commercial quote, and booked 2 regular clients in the buildings next door! Through my existing clients, we also have leads on 2 more large jobs that I’m going to follow up on this week.
I’m so excited to keep hustling and to keep growing and fill up my schedule. We’re just waiting on our Google business listing to be verified so we can start trying to get as many reviews as possible. Next big step is getting insured ASAP so that we can add that to our website. Even though I’ve gone a decade without incident you just never know. I want my both me and my clients to feel protected and secure.
I just wanted to share my happy news and see if any other small business owners have tips for folks like me who are just getting started. Any recommendations for podcasts or books are greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!
To make money while I acquire my own clients, I’ve been working as an IC with another large franchise in my city. Almost every client I have worked with so far has provided me excellent feedback and rebooked with me specifically! My current rating with this company is 5 stars and I feel great. This is what really encouraged me to finally pull the trigger and start my own legit business. My wife has been extremely supportive and is all in with me as a business partner.
At this point, we pretty much have no budget for ads, so my wife put her skills as a graphic designer to work and created us a beautiful website and a batch of flyers. So this week, we bundled up and took transit to neighbourhoods we’d love to work in and put up a bunch of flyers in high traffic areas (public message boards and transit stops). We know that this time of year is rough for getting new customers, but we wanted to give it a shot to see if anyone would bite.
Well, our website has only been live for one week and we just got our very first booking from our flyers! I know it’s only one, but we were so happy we were in tears. I also posted in my complex’s FB group (there are 6 large loft buildings) offering a neighbourhood discount. So far, we completed our first commercial quote, and booked 2 regular clients in the buildings next door! Through my existing clients, we also have leads on 2 more large jobs that I’m going to follow up on this week.
I’m so excited to keep hustling and to keep growing and fill up my schedule. We’re just waiting on our Google business listing to be verified so we can start trying to get as many reviews as possible. Next big step is getting insured ASAP so that we can add that to our website. Even though I’ve gone a decade without incident you just never know. I want my both me and my clients to feel protected and secure.
I just wanted to share my happy news and see if any other small business owners have tips for folks like me who are just getting started. Any recommendations for podcasts or books are greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!
I love how supportive this sub is!