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Introduction
Stephanie: Hello, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean, and I want to continue on the thread that I started pulling last week’s solo episode with decision-making points that we have as cleaning business owners because there are so many ways to skin this cat or peel the apple, whatever saying that you like when it comes to running our businesses.
There’s a lot of decisions we have to make and there’s a lot of options when it comes to the operations of the business that we need to make or we need to experiment with. So I want to just continue on more decisions that we have to make. And I’ve picked three more areas that I think it is very important to think through thoroughly, experiment as I mentioned, and then stick with it once we do make that decision, right?
Table of contents
- Introduction
- Solo Cleaners Versus Team Cleaning
- Pros of the Solo Cleaner Model
- Cons of the Solo Cleaner Model
- Deciding on Work Vehicles
- Pros of Team Cleaning
- Cons of Team Cleaning
- Analyzing What Works for Your Business
- Transitioning Between Models
- Deciding on Cleaning Experience Requirements
- Analyzing Your Hiring Patterns
- Final Thoughts on Decision-Making
Solo Cleaners Versus Team Cleaning
Stephanie: So the first area that we need to make a decision on is going to be solo cleaners versus team cleaning. And I know that I have had many, many guests on this podcast who have wildly successful businesses that run it completely differently than I do. And that is just the point of this whole conversation is that you can make this work in a variety of different ways for your business. And it just depends on a lot of different factors and what you feel comfortable with and what you think is the right decision. But the point being is both of these could be right decisions for you. It just depends, right?
So in Serene Clean, as you guys know, we run a mostly solo cleaner model, meaning one cleaner in the house at a time. We do not run teams very often. The only reason that we are running team cleans is going to be on anything that requires more than eight labor hours to accomplish a job, right? So that’s most likely going to be first time cleans of homes, as well as move out cleans, or perhaps a post construction clean. The only other reason that we are having team cleaning outside of a training situation is going to be if we had to smush the schedule or change something last minute, and we need to put cleaners together to get through more jobs in a day. So that would be an example where we do that. But really, truly, it’s most likely going to be a first time clean or a move out clean. That is why we are utilizing team cleans.
So from the beginning, this is how I have done it, again outside of a training situation, it’s going to be an individual cleaner as much as humanly possible. And this is how we actually like it.
Pros of the Solo Cleaner Model
Stephanie: So the pros of running a solo cleaner model, meaning individual cleaner, I know I’m using different phrases and I just want to iterate we are a company, we’ve been a company since day one. So a lot of times people use the phrase solo cleaner to indicate that this person is not an LLC or a registered company, a licensed company in the state. I am using this phrase or terminology as in there is one cleaner from my company in a house doing the entire cleaning, right?
So the main pro that I really like about the individual solo cleaner in the house model is going to be the fact that the accountability has to be sky high. There is no one else to point the finger at when you are the only cleaner in the house. There’s no argument. There’s no, well, somebody else did that area, that’s why it didn’t get done properly. There’s nothing to be said. It’s fully on you. And I am a big fan of that because it cuts through a lot of the, frankly, bullshit that could come from having teams. Not saying it always does, of course, but we just completely eradicate that even being an option. So full accountability is really nice.
Additionally, for our cleaners, it’s very nice because there is no coordinating. You do this, you do this, or I’m doing this today or what have you. It’s no, the entire house or the entire scope of work that has been agreed upon with the client is on you. And that’s very nice. It is very nice. And although it may seem overwhelming, especially to many of you who have only run team cleans, I’m expecting a cleaner to get through an entire house. Well, they’re doing at most two houses a day. That’s going to be the most typical appointment range. Some of them are only doing one house a day because maybe they’re only available for four to six hours. So they just have one appointment that day. That’s very common. Or they could be doing a vacation rental or a small commercial space as well on that particular day. So that is a normal day of work.
And that is something that I have seen difficult for companies that I’ve done consulting with where they’ve ran team models and they want to give individual solo cleaners a run is that cleaners who are trained on teams oftentimes feel very overwhelmed going to cleaning an entire house on their own. It’s just a mentality thing. It of course can be done. Obviously it’s totally physically possible. They’re just used to having other people in a house. So that can be overwhelming.
Jenny is just wilding out. Are you guys seeing this right now? Jenny. Oh, that is funny as hell. I love when she does that. She just freaks out and runs around the entire house. So fun to learn a new cat’s personality or just the new pet’s personality because she didn’t seem this animated, of course, when I first brought her home. And so now that I’m getting to see her get more comfortable and relaxed, she sits on my lap for a lot of my workday while I’m sitting at the computer. She walks all over my keyboard and now she apparently is attacking that pen. So for our listeners, she’s just wilding out. That’s how I would describe it. There is a pen on the floor and she is really intrigued by said pen. So that is the cat commentary for this episode.
The other aspect of it when it comes to how the cleaners feel about it, it’s just nice to show up, do your job and not have to coordinate with anybody else. Of course, the limitations to that is the teamwork and the camaraderie is lesser when you’re just cleaning by yourself most of the time. But then when they do end up on a team clean for that first time or move out, they genuinely enjoy it. They like that. Now they just get a smidgen of their coworkers. But a lot of the people that are drawn to our work, they really like working on their own and being independent. So that is a really big positive.
Another huge positive of running individuals is there’s no need to coordinate carpooling. Or also sometimes if one person always drives and that person is out, then what happens with that? Yeah, so just from a scheduling perspective, I find that it is easier to coordinate, especially because of our service range being rural and our cleaners being all over the place. It’s not like we’re in a concentrated city where it’s just the city. Our cleaners could be all over the place. And so it’s just a lot easier for us to schedule really efficiently when they potentially could be going from their house. We find it just easier on the scheduling side.
The other positive that I have seen just colloquially in the ZenMaid Mastermind, as well as our experience, has been that individual cleaners are the most efficient cleaner that you’re going to see. For some reason, and we can all speculate what these reasons are, when you put multiple cleaners together, the production rate goes down. It takes longer to get the same house done from a labor hour perspective when you have multiple cleaners on it. And it could be the talking, it could be the coordinating, it could be that they mentally know that there are other people who are there to pick up the slack if they slow down. So they maybe don’t have the fire under their ass. And again, this is not always the case. It’s just something that I have observed. It’s something that many of you guys have observed. And perhaps there is no logical reason for it. And it’s just a mystery of the universe, but probably not. I think it’s the reason I just said as to why this happened. So I truly believe that a solo cleaner is the most efficient cleaner model that you will have.
So again, when we think about the labor hours required to do a house, if I have two cleaners on it, generally speaking, it’ll take longer to get that house done than if I just had one cleaner doing it. So when you’re thinking about like, oh, well, we could get it done in half the time if I just put two cleaners on it. And I’m not saying it doesn’t work that way, of course. But it’s important to think about, okay, what is actually going to happen? And I think that if you do that analysis, you will find again, that it’s not necessarily the case, that it’s not exactly as the math would add up to be. So with individual cleaners, I am able to charge less per labor hour because we are just more efficient about it. And so therefore my estimates actually end up being lower, even though I’m talking about some of your guys’ hourly rates being $25 to $35 an hour. And I’m at $45 to $55 per labor hour. My pricing still tends to actually come in at a similar range, if not lower, when it comes to what we’re quoting for your home, just because our cleaners get through them so dang fast because they are highly efficient.
Cons of the Solo Cleaner Model
Stephanie: So again, when we think about the labor hours required to do a house, if I have two cleaners on it, generally speaking, it’ll take longer to get that house done than if I just had one cleaner doing it. So when you’re thinking about, oh, well, we could get it done in half the time if I just put two cleaners on it. And I’m not saying it doesn’t work that way, of course. But it’s important to think about, okay, what is actually going to happen? And I think that if you do that analysis, you will find again, that it’s not necessarily the case, that it’s not exactly as the math would add up to be. So with individual cleaners, I am able to charge less per labor hour because we are just more efficient about it. And so therefore my estimates actually end up being lower, even though I’m talking about some of your guys’ hourly rates being $25 to $35 an hour. And I’m at $45 to $55 per labor hour. My pricing still tends to actually come in at a similar range, if not lower, when it comes to what we’re quoting for your home, just because our cleaners get through them so dang fast because they are highly efficient.
However, there are some absolute downsides to that. Typically, okay, there’s several, I’m not going to keep saying biggest or whatever. One of the main downsides is then your clients can get particularly attached to their individual cleaner. Whereas when they are used to it being a team, they don’t necessarily get so attached. They could get attached to the team, but it’s not like, oh, this person is so special to me and I want only this person. And it makes transitioning them off of that person for whatever reason, they’re sick or you need to fire them or the person just no longer works for you. It can be harder on the client, but when there’s a team, it kind of buffers that emotional attachment because they know there’s multiple people. It just doesn’t feel the same, particularly like an individual would.
The other downside that I would say from an individual standpoint is there could be more burnout 100% because it can be a bit overwhelming that I’ve got all of these houses on me by myself where there is something to be said of having that camaraderie and that teamwork and you look forward to it and it doesn’t feel like it’s all on you. So that is nice. You can have that chit chat. You can have that banter and whatnot. So that is definitely a negative of solo cleaning.
And then honestly, I think the biggest negative of solo cleaners is potential safety issues, frankly. And you guys know how I feel about safety. You know that this is a huge thing to me to make sure that my staff is safe. And of course, I’ve described the different issues that we have had with clients being inappropriate or just whatever, even cleaners getting hurt, right? I have had cleaners get knocked out because they ran into something. And luckily, they had a coworker with them to take them to the hospital. That literally has happened. And so that is an absolute real disadvantage of individual cleaners is going to be safety. And that is something I definitely consider.
It’s why at first time cleans, I do like to have a team, not just from a labor perspective, but this is a new client to us, right? We don’t know them. So if we have multiple cleaners, actually not always, but more often than not, we are going to have a client issue when it comes to being inappropriate on those first time cleans, because we don’t know them, right? It’s going sight unseen. So we have had issues where that has been a very protective mechanism is having multiple cleaners. So I don’t take that as a small decision at all. And so that is something that you can do is make sure that first time cleans always have a team on them as much as possible because one, it’s necessary from a safety perspective. That’s a huge disadvantage to solo cleaning.
So as you guys know, my cleaners all get pepper gel when they come on. If they are willing to have that, they are allowed to carry whatever makes them feel safe. And I know maybe my international listeners may be like, what the heck, Stephanie? Oh, sorry. I’m trying not to say the F word. Sorry, grandma. I’m trying. Already failed. We are 12 minutes into this, but I’m working at it. Okay. I am working on not saying the F word as much. It’s really hard. It’s one of my favorite words.
So I would say that I still am happy with our decision of solo cleaners. I will never switch to a team model. I’ll never say never, but I will very likely never switch to a team model. I don’t see the benefit for us to transition to that at this point. I don’t. But when it comes to positives, obviously for team cleaning, it’s going to be the work feels blunted. You can also fit more houses on a team. But the way I see it, again, coming back to that efficiency, oftentimes you’ll be able to fit two houses a day on an individual cleaner. Can you do double that with a team? Maybe some of you guys are, but that burns them out. Usually you’re only getting three houses out of a team as opposed to four, which would be from the math perspective, this doesn’t make sense, right? That if you lay those two things out right there, the individual cleaner is superior because I can get two cleans out of them. I can only get three cleans out of a team typically, unless you guys are really slamming them through.
And I thought, for me as a cleaner, this is my personal thoughts and feelings. The less houses I have to do in a day and transition between houses and do everything over and over again, even if it is logically the same amount of work, it just feels so much more. If I have to go into four houses, even if I have teammates, it just, I find that very overwhelming. I have done that before in the early days where I had me and two other cleaners and we just slammed through a bunch of houses because it’s what we had to do. And it was so overwhelming. I was just, that day. I remember that day very specifically. It was quite overwhelming.
So that being the case, I still feel like individual is superior, right? So it is nice though, again, from a safety perspective, that is going to be the biggest positive to team cleanings and then just having that camaraderie. And then obviously the negatives are kind of what I described as the positives of solo cleaning.
Additionally, from not only just the accountability, but the drama, the drama of when you smush all of your cleaning techs together, you’re going to have more interpersonal conflict. You’re going to have more management that you need to do because there’s issues that brew when you put people together. When you are working by yourself, there’s no one to get in arguments with. There’s no one to miscommunicate with other than obviously the management team or the client. But we’re adding another layer of potential issues when we start putting teams together because obviously different personalities do not jive. And so you can run into a lot of issues that we simply do not have to deal with as much because our cleaners are rarely working together. So that is something to keep in mind is that if you are running into nonstop people bickering or getting into snafus or whatever is happening, let’s just avoid it, right? It is natural that that’s going to happen. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just more management labor on your part.
And so if you’re feeling quite overwhelmed with that, maybe give individual cleaners a go, right? Maybe that is a route that we could take or even at least partial of the week. So we’re not having them all together all the time, right? So for those of you that do run team cleans and that, you will always run teams of two or three or whatever it is that you do. Let me know what are the biggest benefits to you. And obviously a lot of you feel very strongly that this is the route to go. I would love to hear, I’m not one to poo poo on anything necessarily super strongly because I know it can work again. There are thousands of successful cleaning businesses that exclusively run teams. So I know that I’m not necessarily right in this. It’s just the option that I’ve chosen. And that’s the whole concept of these, this episode and last episode was, we just need to make a choice here. But it’s something that you need to think about, especially for our newer owners here, or maybe you just haven’t even opened yet. And you’re just watching to do your research and development and trying to make these decisions. I’m just trying to lay these things out for you. So that is going to be the first area of decision in this particular episode.
Deciding on Work Vehicles
Stephanie: The next one that I want to talk about is vehicles, work vehicles. You can either have your cleaning techs required to have their own reliable vehicle, right? They’re not getting dropped off for work. They’re not having to carpool with somebody else. They have their own vehicle, or you can have a fleet of vehicles, right? And that is what a lot of franchises do. They have these gloriously beautiful, sexy wrapped cars, and they look so good. And ego Stephanie is like, I want that. I want a fleet of wrapped cars, but I will never have said fleet of wrapped cars, unfortunately, because then logical brain Stephanie kicks in and says, absolutely not.
So when it comes to pros of having your cleaners be required to have their own form of transportation, meaning own vehicle, it’s just so positive in my mind. That’s what we’ve done since day one. We do not have public transportation here. Some of our listeners in a city, I know that some of you guys, your cleaners are riding the bus or they are riding the train or what have you. We don’t have that. There is not great public transportation where we are. And because it’s so rural, I mean, it might be a house out in the boonies that they’re driving to. We need them to have their own vehicle. So that is a requirement of the job. We won’t even interview them if they do not have that. So you can absolutely require people to have that. Lots of companies do that. So because it’s just what makes sense.
So it’s a huge positive because of the expense and management, as well as they can use their own, you know, don’t have to worry about what they’re doing in the work car, right? Because if it’s their car, they can do whatever they want. So if they want to have their kids in their personal car or whatever, there’s no problem with that. Of course they can’t have kids at the job, but for us, we do have two work cars, right. And those are for either administrative labor or we have it so that our cleaners, if their car is out of commission for whatever, they can use a work car. That’s fine. But we have a lot of rules and stipulations around that work car. They can’t have anybody else in that vehicle. So that means they can’t go pick up their kids after school in the work car because of the liability that that introduces. They can’t smoke. They can’t even vape in the work car, right? All of these things that they can do in their own personal vehicle because it’s theirs, right? So the freedom for the cleaning tech is a lot stronger when they are having their own individual vehicles and there’s no having to worry about switching off vehicles. It’s just very simple, right? So that is a huge positive for sure.
I would say the one huge positive, of course, is the lack of overhead. And that’s going to be the big con when it comes to cleaners using work vehicles is the cost, right? There’s no giant cost. Of course, we do have to calculate mileage and figure out gas stipends and stuff like that. And that is a lot of admin labor for sure. But I’ll go more into the consequences of having a fleet of vehicles. But there’s just a very lack of overhead related to maintenance, gas, insurance, that kind of thing.
I also feel that reliability might be a bit higher because they have to have some skin in the game. And the reason I say this is if they don’t have a reliable vehicle or a reliable way to get to work or whatever, it usually is a predictor of attendance issues. So if they can’t have that, which, you know, I don’t want to judge anybody or anything like that, but if they can’t have a reliable vehicle, they may not be reliable from an attendance perspective. And that’s just what I’ve seen in some consulting calls is that when people do not have a reliable vehicle, well, then they’re dependent on somebody else, right? And it’s just not going to work out. So we don’t want somebody that has to be dropped off or anything like that. That is not going to work for us. Because obviously, you’re going to multiple locations a day. It’s not like just one factory that you’re working that you could just get dropped off or work like a traditional job, right? This is not a traditional job. So we can’t expect traditional type things to necessarily work.
The cons of cleaners using their own cars is going to be you need to watch the pay and gas stipends or your cleaners are going to get resentful, right? So you may have to address this multiple times. It may be why people leave. I would say having to use your own vehicle is a huge negative for the cleaners. Yeah, I labeled out some of the positives, but it is negative. You’re adding wear and tear to your own personal vehicle for work purposes. And of course, they can track that for tax write-offs and whatnot, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re adding wear and tear to your own vehicle.
Additionally, if they have vehicle issues, then they’re going to call out because of it. And that’s why we do have the work car to blunt that as a stopgap that they can use. So perhaps one work car is a good idea to kind of mitigate this. But if you got multiple cleaners with vehicle issues in the same day when you’re at our scale, this is a huge issue because now we don’t have a way for them to get to work, right? And then we’re going to call out, we’re going to lose out on revenue. It’s a problem.
And then finally, the biggest con, of course, is going to be the inconsistent branding. And you are relying on your cleaners’ vehicles, looking at how they look. You know, there is no wrapping. There is nothing. I’ve seen some people who will do stickers or magnets or whatever that their cleaners will put on their personal vehicles. But if they don’t keep their car clean or what have you, it could be a negative brand thing.
I will say the positive, though. This sounds crazy. I know, but it is a fact that, and the reason I say this is because my best friend, her family’s company is a roofing company, a local roofing company. And the roofers drive the work trucks that have the company name on it. And so if the guys drive like a jackass, guess who gets a call? Well, Maddie does and gets that report and they have to deal with an angry person in the community.
So if my cleaner is driving like a jackass in a work car, or they want to go to pick up, you know, go to the bar after work, or they want to go to the strip club after work or all of these kind of optics related things of professionalism, unless they’re cleaning the strip club, which we did clean a strip club for a year there. So all money is good money to Stephanie. So unless they’re cleaning it, I don’t want them going there with a work identification, whether that be a shirt or a car.
So it does add a level of stress of like, okay, is my cleaner texting and driving? They shouldn’t be doing that, right? Is my cleaner cutting people off? Are they speeding? All of these things in a company car. I don’t have to worry about that because it’s their personal car. And if they get pulled over or whatever, obviously, yeah, they have their uniform top on, but it’s not like, again, are they being a jackass in a work car? I don’t have to worry about that, right? So it’s something to consider as a total pro of them having their own transportation, right?
So the biggest pro of having a fleet of cars and why franchises do it and companies do it and why I do have two wrapped work cars is obviously the marketing and branding aspect is absolutely killer. And it is why my ego wants it. My ego does want that 100%. It’s beautiful. It’s strong branding, especially for cities where you’re seeing thousands of people a day and it’s just sitting there and earning you leads. We absolutely have leads coming in from the work cars, 100%. So if I had 15 or 20 of them, could you imagine, I literally can’t imagine what that would do to our lead generation. And so that’s a huge positive. And I will not discount that. That’s a huge positive, because I’ve experienced it myself. However, for me, the positives do not outweigh the negatives, which is going to be costs and things like that.
You know, it definitely solves a huge recruiting barrier as well. So if you’ve got a great market of people who do not have their own vehicle and who can just pick up the work car, they can get dropped off, grab the work car, get picked up at the end of the day. Well, you just opened yourself up to a lot of potential hires that I cannot have, right? So that’s a strong consideration.
And so another thing is you can track your work cars perfectly because it’s a work vehicle, right? You are perfectly in your rights to track the work car as opposed to you can’t really track your cleaner’s personal cars, or we don’t. We only track when they’re clocking in and clocking out with the GPS tracking in ZenMaid. One of the hugest benefits of ZenMaid is that the cleaners are tracked with GPS tracking when they’re clocking in and clocking out, not during the entirety of their day. And that’s fine with me. I don’t need that as long as they’re at the job when they’re supposed to be at the job. But with the work cars, you know exactly where they are. And if they did go to the bar after, you’d know that, right? So that kind of mitigates that a little bit, but you’re still going to have to address it if they do have that.
So yeah, honestly, the marketing is the biggest reason followed by the secondary reason, which is going to be you’re going to open yourself up to more people because they’re not having to deal with one of the biggest negatives, which is the wear and tear on their personal vehicles, right? So that is something to definitely consider. So the biggest con for me, 100% is going to be cost, the cost and management of a fleet of vehicles. Oh my gosh, my manager Crystal and I, we were just talking about this actually in last week’s operations meeting. One of her job duties at her last role was to manage a small fleet for that particular business. And she said it was an absolute nightmare. And it is a nightmare because of all the maintenance issues, even just with our two work cars. It’s like, there’s always a recall. Something always needs an oil change or tires or some other third problem. And it’s just really annoying. And we’ve only got two to manage. So could you imagine? You almost even need a fleet manager at that point because there’s just so many things. Just think about with you and your personal car, it’s annoying enough to have to deal with oil changes and maintenance issues, or if there’s a breakdown. The cost of maintaining that is so expensive.
The cost of our insurance, I literally cannot fathom what our vehicle insurance would be every single month. I mean, literally we cannot afford to have a fleet, not just the insurance, but the car payments. You got to pay for the cars too. You got to pay for the wraps. It just simply is not financially feasible for us as much as my ego would love to see a fleet of Serene Clean vehicles. I would love that, but it just does not make sense dollar and cents wise.
So yeah, then just general liability is so much higher in all of these areas because it’s now the company responsibility. Now, if my cleaners are being silly in their cars, well, now that’s on me, right? And it’s opening yourself up to so much risk. And that is why I never say never, but 99.9% sure that we will never have a fleet, right? It’s always just going to be a couple and used for the purposes that I have described.
Additionally, when it’s not theirs, cleaners may treat it like shit. You know what I mean? Just like how they toss the vacuums around, it’s WWE showdown, that’s what they’ll do to your cars potentially, because it’s not their car, right? So I just don’t think that this is something that we will ever do, ever, but you know, something to consider. I would suggest doing a couple cars if it’s within the realm of possibility financially, but that can be kind of a good middle ground instead of having just one or the other, and it protects you from when call outs happen because of vehicle problems. We can still have our cleaners, that happens. I mean, a work car is always in use from a cleaner at our size. So it really does help us a lot, but we’re keeping it limited when it comes to the cost.
So yes, that is what I think about that. So you guys just have to make that call as well. If you do have a bunch of work cars, let me know down in the comments, what do you guys think about that? Or is that something that you aspire to? And why do you feel that the pros outweigh the cons? Let me know in the comments, we can have a discussion down there.
Pros of Team Cleaning
Stephanie: So now what are the positives of a team model? Well, the positives that I have seen and talked with people like is the comradery and like the morale of the group. It’s very positive when people feel like we’re all a team, we’re all working together. And so that’s very nice. Additionally, from a quality perspective, not saying that you can’t ensure quality with solo, but the quality can be easier because if somebody does miss something, another set of eyes could catch it, right? So from a quality perspective, it can be really great.
Additionally, when it comes to training, as I mentioned previously with solo, the training period’s more robust because you’re training somebody to be self-sufficient. And so with a team model, you are able to phase them in quicker when it comes to you being able to make money off of them cleaning, right? Because they’re able to help and assist, even if they don’t fully know what they’re doing. It’s less pressure on them that they have to know everything. And so that could be a really, really good positive because I know for a lot of you guys, especially when you’re smaller, it’s like taking somebody off of cleaning to train somebody is a big sacrifice from a revenue perspective. And so if you are able to get them productive quicker, then that may be advantageous to you.
Of course, another positive when it comes to team is they are able to generally speaking, get through more jobs in a day, right? They’re all going to do two or three jobs as a team every day, whereas with solo, they’re generally speaking, gonna do one or two. Now, the thing that I will always fall back on is that from a labor hour perspective, again, that those teams generally speaking are slower. But the positive is like you can get more jobs through in a day because you’re having this larger group of people all together versus just the one person.
The other thing is that like you can tackle larger jobs easier. I like again, obviously we can do first time cleans and move out cleans and our VRs and other things with an individual. But if I have larger commercial spaces or I have a really massive house and we need to do a first time clean or just massive house that we clean every two weeks or every week, I could potentially need to put a team on it. And so that is something where if you like taking on those larger spaces, then it could be more conducive to have teams be the norm. Or perhaps on the other end, if you have a space that has like a lot of people and you need to be there after hours or before opening, you need to get in, get out really fast. Again, time is going to be of the essence and you’re going to need to have teams on that because they’re going to need to get in and out as fast as physically possible. So that’s another area where a team is going to make sense. Again, it’s the whole time versus labor hours thing. So from a time perspective, yes, teams are going to be able to get it done much faster. But again, from a labor hour perspective, that is not typically what I’ve seen.
Cons of Team Cleaning
Stephanie: So what are the negatives of a team model? So the negatives of a team model, first and foremost, being the accountability. I have talked to many cleaning business owners who run teams, especially larger teams, where the accountability can be difficult because you have all these different people working on different areas of the house. And then when something is wrong, everyone’s kind of pointing the finger saying, well, that wasn’t my area. And so I didn’t even clean the bathroom. They cleaned the bathroom. So if there’s something wrong with the bathroom, it’s not my fault. And so then the accountability of quality can actually be kind of difficult there. So you might need to implement a buddy system where it’s like the two of you are responsible for inspecting each other at the end to make sure the quality is there. So again, it’s just more training. It’s just more implementing of systems. It doesn’t mean it can’t work. It’s just something to consider.
So the other downside when it comes to teams is you generally speaking, especially if you get up to three or four plus people on these crews, is that you are going to have a dedicated driver. And so a lot of times it’s easy for people to not show up. And if you have somebody who’s like really highly dependent on like, I need X, Y, Z to show up so that I have a full crew. And if one of those dominoes falls, then all of a sudden I can’t have a full crew. Or if my van breaks down or if the driver calls in sick, who’s going to drive them? So there can be complexities when it comes to that. So again, just something to be thinking about, not to say it can’t work. It’s just something to think about.
The other negative, of course, that I have observed is, again, as I mentioned previously, the teams generally speaking take longer from a labor hour perspective to get a house done. So that can be a negative. And so if you’re thinking you need to charge more because you’re sending four people in there, yeah, you potentially do need to charge more because it’s going to take longer because of all the things that I mentioned previously, right?
Analyzing What Works for Your Business
Stephanie: So point being is this is what I encourage you guys to do on both of these, whether it be team or solo model, is to run a report, is to analyze, right? Analyze everything that you guys are doing. And I know for solo operators, if it’s just you out there, it’s harder to necessarily do this analysis. But in the case that you have a couple of people, if you notice that when you go out with your cleaner and you guys clean a house together, why does it take so much longer than when I just let them clean the house or I just clean the house on my own, right? So you start to see how that slows down. And so really start to pay attention to how the production rate is affected, right?
And so if you can look at the labor hours required to do a house when it’s solo versus team, look at that and really get an idea of like, okay, what would it look like if we tried the other one out? And I know that a lot of you guys listen to this podcast and I know that some of you are considering making this flip and so really need to think about how is it going to alter your estimates? Is my pricing going to change? Yeah, it probably is going to change a little bit. Can I stomach that? Is that okay in my market? Probably, right? If somebody else can run a different model than you and still be successful in that same market and you’re successful, it’s like pricing is not really the factor that is making you win jobs.
Transitioning Between Models
Stephanie: So you should be able to, if you’re wanting to make this change, is to think through, okay, how am I going to start experimenting with this? And so maybe with your next hire, you are having them paired with your best cleaner, and you’re seeing how does that cleaner like running solo? Is it something that they like? And you’re just starting to phase in. And just because you guys start running teams doesn’t mean you have to always run teams if you guys are currently running solo. And vice versa, just because you’re running solo doesn’t mean you always have to run teams, right? Like, it doesn’t have to be so black and white.
And so the positives of being a smaller company is that you can experiment with it, right? You can have a cleaner that generally speaking goes out on their own because maybe you just have two cleaners and one of them likes going out on their own. So the other one, then maybe you as the owner are cleaning with them, or you have another cleaner you hired and they work together. And then eventually as you grow more, maybe you hire for the solo person to have somebody that also wants to run solo. And then you have these two people who are running teams, and then you hire another person. And there’s three of them together. And now you have this team model and a solo model running at the same time. And so it doesn’t have to be like, oh, we are a team company or a solo company.
Like, yeah, you generally have to make some sort of decision when it comes to attracting clients. Are we going to have a team always show up to your house? You know, that is something that I know a lot of team model, specifically ones that run larger crews, they do advertise that we are always going to show up as a crew and you’re always going to have a full crew there. That can be a value proposition that you use. Similarly, hey, it’s always going to be the same cleaner. I can be a value proposition. So I know that, yes, when it comes to the sales and marketing side, you may want to pick a lane. But behind the scenes, you can absolutely have variation that is totally, totally fine. And then you figure out what you like and what works best for you as you continue to go.
So again, I just encourage you guys to think about that as a decision point. And just maybe ruminate on like, is this something that you feel strongly about? Is it something that works for you? And why or why not? And could you improve upon what you’re currently doing? Could you improve upon it, right? So, because if you’re running a team model and you’re feeling quite overwhelmed with that, maybe give individual cleaners a go, right? Maybe that is a route that we could take or even at least partial of the week. So we’re not having them all together all the time. Maybe that would make you feel better. And similarly on the other side, if you’re running solo and you’re really struggling with like the capacity of a cleaner, like you’re just like, I don’t know how to make more money. I don’t know how to like service more clients. Well, maybe if you start running teams, you can get more clients serviced in a day, right?
Deciding on Cleaning Experience Requirements
Stephanie: And then the final area that I want to discuss in this episode is going to be hiring cleaners or specifically looking for staff only if they have had cleaning experience. And the reason I want to bring this up is because my conversation, let’s see, last week that went live last week, I believe with Cheryl, if I’m getting my timing right, with Cheryl, who is north of Boston, she only looks for cleaning techs that have cleaning experience. And I’m the complete opposite where I’m looking for cleaners without experience. So that is just not something that is important to me.
So here you have two successful owners who are completely opposite on this. And that’s the point, right? Is that again, coming back to it, either of these can work, but we both have our reasons for desiring the complete opposite thing. And that’s okay. And it’s totally okay for you guys to feel very strongly about this as well. That’s fine. You know, it all can work. It all can work. But we do have to think about this.
And so for us, this has been truly just sheer experience and our particular area and population, right? Again, Serene Clean is really rural, totally different market than Cheryl when it comes to who I have to hire. And so for us, the pros of having somebody who is completely fresh and has never done professional cleaning before is that they have not picked up bad habits or been taught poorly or have very strong opinions on things when it comes to how this should happen, right? So we’re not having to deal with a lot of stubbornness or bad learned habits from other cleaning companies that we actually have to reteach because it’s much harder, I find, to reteach somebody when they’ve already been trained as opposed to when they’re just coming in fresh and have never been shown this. But we’re hiring them based on other things, right? Their values, their work ethic, that type of stuff, their consistency across other jobs.
So it’s just not something that is important to me because I have had, you know, just at this point, countless experiences where it is a net positive when they don’t have that experience. And I have had so many experiences where we do have, you know, a few other cleaning companies in the area. And when they’ve come from hotel cleaning, or they have come from having their own cleaning side thing or whatever, which I really don’t like, because that means that they’re really entrepreneurial. And that makes me very sus is if they’ve had their own cleaning company of any capacity or worked in a friend’s cleaning company and they’re coming to us. I really don’t want them because that means that clearly they’ve shown that they have that desire to be their own boss. No shade of course, but I’m not trying to train my own competition. I’ve definitely done that before.
So for us, yeah, it’s just not something that we look for. And there is so few cleaning companies even in our area that it’s just not even that many people to pick from if that was a requirement of our job is that they need to have cleaning experience previously. I would have nobody to pick from, right? It would just be impossible to keep up for our turnover and our rate of growth. If we would just, you know, basically have nobody to pick from. So we have to be open to that. And so because we’ve been open to it, because we have to be, that has shown us that it is not necessary in our area. And actually we like it because now we can mold and shape them to the Serene Clean way. And that is exactly what I want to do. I want to have that super level of control and that they have not learned bad habits and we have to retrain them.
They also can be quite stubborn sometimes when they have been trained elsewhere and they could feel strongly, especially when it comes to quality standards. I have had people who have cleaned at other companies, they’ve come to me and getting them to understand that our standard is going to be higher. And when they’re used to maybe what I would consider a seven out of 10 quality, and we’re expecting 10 out of 10 every time, it’s really hard to get them up to that sometimes because it’s a total mindset shift for them and just a total readjustment. Whereas if they’ve never experienced the seven out of 10, and they come to us fresh, and they just learn 10 out of 10 from the start, we don’t have to deal with that adjustment or them digging their heels in or anything like that. So that’s going to be the biggest pro.
The biggest con, of course, is going to be time training, right? If they’ve never done this before, it takes us way longer to train. The biggest con is going to be, yes, length of time training, as well as the physicality. Meaning if they’ve never done this before, they may think that they can do this. And then they get through our training and they get released into the field. And they’re like, oh shit, this is way too hard physically. I can’t do this. And then we waste that time. Whereas if they’ve done this professionally, they know what this entails. They know that their body can handle this because one of the biggest reasons people leave for us is the physicality, right? They think they can do it. We ask them and we explain as much as we can. But until you actually do a professional cleaning 30 to 40 hours a week, you have no idea how physical it is. As all of you guys cleaning right now are like, yes, amen, sister. This is really physically hard and we need a certain type of person who can handle that. And if they’ve done it before, they already know. They’ve already vetted that for themselves that this is a job that they can handle. So that is a huge negative to having people who are fresh faced, right?
So obviously on the opposite end, those are the positives. That’s the positives of hiring people who have had cleaning experience. The training period is much shorter because you’re not teaching them the basics of how do you clean a toilet. Obviously those things you may have to correct and adjust, but for the most part, they just are so much faster to get into the field. So that is really nice, especially if you do not have the ability to train the way that you ideally would want to, right?
In the beginning of Serene Clean for years, our training really kind of sucked. We just didn’t have the capacity to train in the ideal manner. Whereas now we have this big, long, robust training period and people come out of training really proficient and good to go. But in the beginning, that was not the case. So for you guys who are starting out, if they’ve had cleaning experience, that may be a huge positive to you because you just do not have the ability to train like we can at our scale and size now. So it could be something that over time you change, right? You hire for people having that in the beginning, and then once you are able to have a dedicated trainer, potentially that is not something that you’re looking for as much, or you can consider people who have not ever cleaned before. But maybe in the beginning it makes sense. This could totally make sense for you guys because of that. And then of course they already know that they physically can do this job.
And then all of the cons are going to be the positives that I described previously. So it’s just something to consider, guys. When I look at my current staff, I think maybe one or two out of whatever, 28 or whatever we are at today, it changes every day, I don’t even know. Only a couple of them have had previous cleaning experience, right? So it’s definitely not something that you need. There’s positives and negatives to each. And it’s just something I want you guys to consider.
Analyzing Your Hiring Patterns
Stephanie: And also just look for patterns, right? You know, I love the word auditing and it really is an audit of looking at, okay, of all of the hires that we’ve had thus far, have they had cleaning experience? And how did that go? And really start to analyze and look back and reflect so that you can decide if this is something that is important to you. Is it useful to you? And is it even something feasible in your area with the demographic of people that tend to apply to your job? Is it something that makes sense? So just something to consider. And again, there is no right or wrong. It’s just your own experience over time. And you’ll learn that. Just like we’ve had years and years now, and we have made that decision that it’s not something that we look for. We’ve tried it out a couple of times. It usually doesn’t work for us. And so that’s why we’ve gone the route where somebody else may have the exact opposite experience.
Final Thoughts on Decision-Making
Stephanie: So that’s why I’ve been making this video and last week’s video, because I just, I’m not a big fan of being really black and white, I suppose. You know, there’s some certain truths to business 100% that it’s like, no, this is the correct way. That does occur, of course. Like, I don’t know, don’t spend more than you make or bring in, that kind of thing. You should bookkeep. You should keep your finances separate from your personal finances. Those are absolute truths we cannot argue, right? Sales is the lifeblood of the business. Me just making these statements are true. However, everything I’ve talked about today, you can go multiple different ways, right? Last week, you can go multiple different ways.
And I just want you guys to know that if some guru is saying this is the correct way, right? You need to do it this way, you know, just take that with a grain of salt. And I think that we don’t need to make these sweeping statements. And I think that we need to all put our critical thinking hats on and realize, again, that’s a way to peel this apple. And so don’t be afraid to experiment. And as I mentioned last week, the bigger you get, the less easy it is to experiment with these kind of core things or core operational methods in your business. So as you’re smaller, this is the time to play around and see what you think. Do we want to run teams? Do we want to run individual cleaners? You know, fleets of cars, that’s a little bit more difficult because it’s such a financial thing. But do we want to hire people who have a bunch of cleaning experience or does that matter? Do we want to have a job shadow or something like that part of the hiring process, right? That’s a decision. We don’t do that, but a lot of companies do, right?
So just keep that in mind. What I’m trying to say is I want you guys to be critical thinkers. I want you to think through these options. I’ve kind of put some basic things together for you in this episode and last week’s episode. But point being is that you’re all smart. You all have reasons behind what you do and you all have your own experiences in your business. So don’t just take my word for it. Don’t just say my word is law or somebody else’s word is law. Think through what makes sense for you. Don’t be afraid to experiment and then just go for it, right?
Stephanie: So I hope this is helpful to you guys. If it is, let me know down in the comments. As always, I have to update with nails. Look at those gorgeous nails. She literally hand drew that rose. You guys know I love, I’m a big nail girl. So it makes me sassier. So that is the nail update for this week. Sorry to our just listeners. A lot of video stuff going on in this one today as usual. And just leave me a little emoji down below to let me know you listened all the way through. Hit that like, guys. Hit that subscribe. I’d love to see you in the ZenMaid Mastermind.
Also, if you’re interested in some ClickUp optimization and setup for you because that’s how we do our lead management in Serene Clean, definitely just hit me up. Stephanie at serene-clean.com. And I will connect you with my customer relations manager, Katie, who is now doing this optimization and setup calls with many of you guys. And it’s going really well. So if you’re interested, hit me up on email or down in the comments below. And I will direct you to Miss Katie. And we will see you in the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye, guys.
Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.
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