I Sold my Cleaning Business After 5 Years!

After 5 years of starting and growing a cleaning business, I recently just signed the dotted line to sell it! I have officially exited my first business! Funny to think I stumbled across a Reddit post about starting a cleaning business and did everything that it said lol. Shout out Rohan and anyone who got started from that thread. It only felt right to make this post on Reddit because this is where it all started. This post isn’t a “how to start a cleaning business” or anything, just sharing a few things from my journey. If you have questions you can ask away! When I started, it was at the beginning of the “remote cleaning business” model era. It took me time to get the business started because I was in college. Once I cracked marketing, which was right before I graduated back in 2021, things began to roll. April 2021 I had my first 10-cleaning month. June I had my first 20-cleaning month and July we went up to 30 cleanings. I was all in on the business since then. It was my full-time job, but it was more like a full-time masterclass on business, MBA and the gulag you go through as an entrepreneur. I’m 26 years old now and since starting the business I’ve grown so much when I sit back and reflect. I’m no guru either! I’m from Detroit, I moved to Atlanta to go to Morehouse College, I started my cleaning business my senior year, and since graduating I’ve spent my life up to this point of writing this running the business.  At the height of the business, which is when I decided it was time to sell, I had the business operating on a chaotic rope. I had residential cleaning customers and commercial contracts . At one point we had a number of Airbnb properties we did cleaning for and at another point operated all three at the same time. (Was a freaking zoo!) I had a great office manager named V who was the sweetheart and pitbull for me and the business. I had a great team & rolodex of cleaners who, after all the mayhem, worked with us for multiple years at a time. When it was time to ascend, we eventually got another star named J who was our sales rep alongside me. The business was at a point where a majority of the business was operating on a system and I checked on everything from my phone. This is the point where I decided to package up and get the business on the market for my own personal reasons. It’s so much that I learned from running a cleaning business, but these things are the most important that im about to share.  **Live and die by your cleaners.** It took me years to understand why the cleaners are the most important part of the business. When I started I thought you could just hire a cleaner by the snap of a finger and when I did that I almost lost every time. The cleaners are the backbone of the business. They are the make or break point. It’s necessary to appreciate when you come across great cleaners and keep them busy. Understand that when customers hire a cleaning service that’s a very serious buying decision for them. Imagine a customer books you, you send an unqualified cleaner and the customer is unhappy and never books with you again. That’s what happened with me until I started bringing on good talent. Many will say the most important aspects of the cleaning business are marketing and you need to focus on growing, but the hidden marketing lever is having some Vini’s and Itsmenia’s on your team. That’s what I had. I had cleaners that people knew and loved. When you have that you can almost hit a money glitch. Literally your business can grow through word of mouth the proper way. The cleaners were most important. It’s a grind at first but once you find that space cherish and respect it. **The power of niching is a great power!** When I first started the business I used Thumbtack, I used Yelp, I passed out flyers, I DID EVERYTHING! It all brought in clients. We did whatever because I was hungry and I needed to pay the bills. I didn’t have any other job, I did the cleaning business full time, so if you called we were going to clean it. It took me until about year 2 to understand the power of niching. When I finally understood, it’s like we hit another money glitch. Business got a little easier and we gained more money that made complete sense! I figured out which customer we were going to serve. We had services tailored only to their problems and aligned our systems towards solutions for only the problems they had. When I did this people found us vs us looking for them. When things got slow of course we always got back out there and took whatever that made sense, but we stayed true to the niche we chose and that’s when I started benefiting and growing the biz. **It will behoove you to become a local superstar!** If you run any type of business and you get customers that are paying you cold hard cash and using your services or whatever you sell, pat yourself on the back! Because people online make it like getting customers in your business is easy the shit is not easy! It’s only when you finally crack it is when it becomes easy like playing a video game. What I realized is that you have to become a local superstar and get your business out there as much as possible. You need to shout and let everybody know what you got going on. IDC who it is because when you do, eventually you will become known for what you are doing. That’s what happened with me. I let everybody and their mother know about my cleaning business. Not only that, I invested heavily into my marketing skills. Here are the areas I can turn on with a push of a button (Facebook Ads, Google Ads and SEO, and Thumbtack and please don’t put me in a room full of people because I will get business from an event too). I will go over this in a moment. But becoming a local superstar and known for what you do is a compounding effort. If you take your business serious the support you get is the gift you receive from being undeniable. I lasted 5 years, you will be surprised how many people don’t even start. People will recognize you! People will need you and soon people will start calling you. It’s up to you to step to the plate and perform. **You need flow.** Whenever I expressed hardship in my business, my friend who runs a million dollar + landscaping business would always say fill up your pipeline. A pipeline in business does solve problems and should not be approached lightly. I will say you need to approach this as if someone is trying to take literal food from your loved one’s mouth. As if it’s life or death because truly if you aren’t getting customers you will eventually go flat. This means you need customers coming in from multiple areas. What I did was have paid ads and organic flows. For each area I put a system in place. I learned and put time into each area and it wasn’t all at the same time either. It started with the platforms like thumbtack, then I got decent with organic social media, decent with paid ads (FB & Google Ads), then I met the Yoda of Online Marketing, SEO. I wasn’t good at the beginning but over time I got good at each stop, built a system around it and kept it going. I’m not saying go and do all of this because it’s time consuming. What I am saying is that each system that got built all went into either the residential pipeline or commercial pipeline. My main goal was to get new people in the doors that I can talk to. I kept my pipeline full!  A glitch is letting people know about your cleaning business on stage at local events. I constantly went to business events around ATL and every chance I got I grabbed the microphone and introduced my business with everyone looking. At these events people have bumrushed me for my information, to the point where I had my iPad ready to collect info and sell on spot. Take that information and do with it what you will. Then I began to get the soulful nod that it was time for me to depart from the cleaning business. It was such a journey. I once read in a book that once you finally get your business to the point where it’s running without you and things change, you can become more motivated to continue to grow that business. Not me. I’m forever grateful to the cleaning industry and have no ill will towards it, but I was able to see that it was time to go elsewhere. The journey led me to the stop to sell my business and on Nov 3rd, after months of work to sell the business, a contract was signed! At that moment the relief I felt was so reassuring that I hit a money dance!  I’m so happy to have been in the industry and started my business journey here! For all the cleaning business owners and aspiring, keep pushing! This is an industry that is in demand. A cleaning business is a business that can provide you with whatever you need during the time of your life. Need extra money? Pick up a few houses to clean. Want to build a multi million dollar cleaning business? You can literally sign a few contracts and be at a million with a cleaning business. It’s whatever you want it to be. Not saying it’ll be easy but the money is there! I wish you all luck! And if you read this far, thank you!