How we got started in the business of cleaning
20 years ago, I got into the house cleaning business quite innocently. House cleaning was the one job that fit my need at the time to only work 3 to 3.5 hours a day. Fed up with working long corporate hours and missing out on raising my children I decided to
find a job that I could work around my children’s schedule at pre-school (M-F am’s)
so that I could be home with them the rest of the day.
I started working for a National franchise as a “helper” on a cleaning team, where the person who was suppose to be training me had obviously been asleep during her own training. Within 2 months I became the trainer, and by the 4-month mark I had graduated to doing estimates for clients who were home during the day. Because of my management background previously in the corporate world I knew how a business should be run and about all of the employment laws that governed employers. Needless to say by the time I had been with the Franchise for 5-6 months I had become witness to so many employment infractions that I could no longer stand working for them.
It took me a couple of months to pull together the set up of my own company and in the mean while I helped another smaller company with their phones and estimates while getting my P’s and Q’s all in order.
The day I officially opened my own business I had 4 clients and a dream. Within 3 years of opening I was already employing 15 persons who averaged 30+ hours a week.
My kids were involved in the start up and growth of the company all of the way. When we flyered neighborhoods my son and I would be on one side of the street hanging door hangers while my daughter would be on the other side. It was a slow and tedious effort as I watched her at every house from across the street to make sure she was ok.
My kids were on payroll for estimating, as all estimates were done with the kids sitting nicely in the car while I was inside talking with the client. The deal was they would each get a dollar for every estimate that they behaved themselves nicely in the car. These were the richest kids on the block as they sometimes averaged as much as $20 a week each for their sitting time.
They also earned a salary for maintaining the rags when they were younger, which meant folding the towels into bundles and pre-folding the dust rags. As they grew older they would help with the maintenance of the equipment and supplies by changing vacuum bags and belt and filling bottles.
In the beginning our company rivaled the franchisees for number of employees and clients. Although we maintained a longer retention rate for both. Whereas the franchise was allotting 40% of the gross for wages, I on the other hand allotted 60%. Thru the years though I found that too much expansion was detrimental to the quality of the business and I had to re-organize. In the reorganization I changed my company plan to have quality be the #1 goal rather than the mistaken goal of being bigger than anyone else.
Thru these 20 years I have seen a definite trend away from larger companies and back into the smaller mom and pop owned and operated businesses that can give more individual attention to details. The larger companies while still around are not doing as well in retaining customers over the long haul. In part to the high cost of labor in our area, and the incredibly high cost of workman’s compensation insurance.
The San Francisco – bay area of California has a huge, in fact glutted, offering of persons who will come to clean for you. Some offering to clean for as little as $8 an hour with the average person quoting between $15 and $30. Unfortunately the large majority of those offering to clean are not licensed, bonded. Insured.
Weekly, I try to call any new ads for cleaning that I may see and ask a few pertinent questions relating to licensing, insurance and experience. The ratio of persons not doing it the right way is close to 96% here.
Recently when mentoring a person wishing to open their own cleaning business I found that the State of California wanted to charge them close to 40% of their payroll to cover them for workman’s comp. In total shock and disbelief I started to ask questions to the State Fund insurance board as to why the rates were so high when other states were lower, much lower. The resounding answer that I got was that the housekeeping/janitorial industry was notoriously high in the number of claims processed that were not covered by the owner of the business paying into the fund, therefore the state board had to send all of these cases to court to be reviewed and arbitrated in order to collect the funds to pay for the damages to the worker.
Why is this happening? In a large part because the homeowner is willing to hire un-licensed, un-insured, un-trained persons to clean for them, thus driving the market down to a point that makes it impossible to correctly hire personnel. One day a couple of years ago I happened upon a forum board for cleaners where I befriended others who had similar experiences. With this medium I renewed my passion for mentoring, helping others with my experience. Approximately 1 year after discovering the forums, I partnered with 2 other persons to start our own forum for cleaning professionals (Global cleaning Association). We were successful and developed a wonderful resource for cleaners to go to when needing help or a place to socialize and vent. These past couple of years I feel that we and others like us started to make a difference in the industry. We called others to arms to see that the industry deserves respect. We learned to educate ourselves and helped to educate others. We found friends and alias in our competition. We found dignity in our profession.
Recently I decided that I could use my past experience as a Purchasing Agent as well as my 20 years of cleaning experience to benefit the industry, therefore I started ICPA (independent cleaners purchasing alliance). This is my way of giving back to the industry that allowed me create a wonderful job that worked for me, while I worked at it.
Thank you for reading my story, I hope that you can benefit from ICPA
Theresa
Written for PMAA in 2005
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