3 Things that Very Nearly Killed My Cleaning Business

Episode 8.

Ray

There are things that any business owner should expect. Certain industries simply have their unique challenges. Starting business all by itself was a challenge.

 

Joel

Oh, without a doubt. Biggest challenge I’ve taken on in my entire life.

 

Ray

As you routinely counsel and work with people who are starting their cleaning business, or maybe they have a cleaning business that they’ve had for two years, but it kind of sputters along. The question is sometimes, “Well, what was it like for you, looking back? What just about killed off the business?”

 

Joel

It’s a great question. There’s actually several things that almost killed off my business. I can remember about year one-and-a-half, when the company philosophy was more of a brokerage. My largest customer came in with my commission check for the month. I had just moved into a larger space. I was only a couple hundred square feet, but my logo was on the wall and he looked at the logo and he says, “Wow, that’s really, really impressive. This is what my money is going towards?” he says. I’ve made a decision. And he took the check out and showed me my commission check, and I went to reach for it and goes, and he tore it up into confetti and threw it up. And he says, “I’m never paying you again.” And because it was set up as a brokerage, the clients contracts they were paying him and I was relying on a trust factor.

Even with contracts in place legally, using an attorney ended up settling on about 10-cents-on-the-dollar, plus the legal fees on top of that.

So there went like 75% of my business. So that was one of the big things initially, and why I decided at that point, it being a business owner having to change on a dime and be in a small business and changing. All right, our business philosophy immediately has to change, and we have to take things in-house so that we could survive.

 

Ray

Okay, now we’re going to think about one more thing that just about did-ya-in. And if you have two, that’s fine. Oh, Uh 15. LOL

 

Joel

There’s been a lot of things that have worked against me over time. It’s kind of funny. You work for other people for many, many years. You work in many roles. I held frontline (cleaning) positions. I worked up to sales positions. I was a vice president in a company. I was a regional director. And you think you know a lot. But then when you start out your own business, you don’t realize that you really don’t know anything. Because owning a business and working in somebody else’s business are completely two different things. So the one thing I can say is choose the people you keep close to you, wisely.

I had my initial business partner and, you know, over time, my vision of the company, her vision of the company were different. She knew it was going to be a lot of work. But she didn’t realize it was going to be as much work to start a business. Because everybody thinks that running a business is they see, oh, the president of the company, the owner of the company. Oh, they drive a nice car or they get to go to this event and that event, they don’t realize all the stuff, like under the surface of what you have to do, all the hard work they’re trying to shuffle of money. So all that hard work over time was taking a huge toll on my business partners health. And they decided to leave. It was bittersweet in a lot of ways because they were 51% owners. So they owned more of the company than I did the company at that point, because it was owned by female and an African American female. We had a double certification in New York State that we were a minority owned and woman owned business entity. And because of that, we were able to take on a lot of work. When that individual stepped out, I had to give up about 80% of the revenue that was coming in. Because now, being a white male, I no longer could serve in the roles that those companies were hiring us. And I call them and said, look, I’m no longer a double certified business entity. I’m a white male and I now own the company.

And if you like the work that we’re doing, we can continue on. But if you have to run it as this, I obviously can no longer be that we lost a ton of work and trying to recover from that. And again, putting your nose to the grindstone and everything else and then starting a hustle just like it was like what, years one, two and three? Again, it was just prior to the pandemic. So I had built the business back. And then the pandemic hit.

A third instance that almost derailed the company was the pandemic. In 2020, a lot of people thought cleaning companies were literally, you know, pun intended, cleaning up, when in fact, in New York State, our governor had closed down New York State pretty much other than essential businesses. Yes, cleaning was essential, but my clients weren’t essential. So everybody was working from home or they weren’t allowed to work. So nearly 97% of the business went away in one month. Being in a commercial lease, I still had to pay the commercial lease money and the money that I did have coming in from the few clients that were left didn’t even cover the amount that the commercial lease was.

So again, being a business owner and having to think quick on my feet and having to pivot in an unprecedented time in history. (There was) nothing that you could even look back on. There was not a lot of information out there about what businesses did to survive. So having two college degrees, having all these years in the business at that point, (seven). I didn’t have enough to pull from to try to figure out how to keep my doors open. Had to lay off all my staff up to that point and kind of refigure what we were going to do, and try to find niche markets that we could coexist in. That was one of the biggest challenges during the pandemic, was to find niche markets so that I could grow again and survive.