{"id":17830,"date":"2026-10-08T14:17:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T14:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/?p=17830"},"modified":"2026-10-08T14:17:02","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T14:17:02","slug":"should-you-buy-a-cleaning-company-do-your-due-diligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/should-you-buy-a-cleaning-company-do-your-due-diligence\/","title":{"rendered":"Should You Buy a Cleaning Company? Do Your Due Diligence"},"content":{"rendered":"    <div class=\"zm-cta\">\n      <div class=\"zm-cta__head\">\n        <div>\n          <div class=\"zm-cta__eyebrow\">ZenMaid<\/div>\n          <h2 class=\"zm-cta__title\">Brought to you by <em>expert cleaning business owners<\/em><\/h2>\n        <\/div>\n        <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zm-cta__mark\" src=\"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/themes\/zm-theme\/assets\/images\/zenmaid-logo.png\" alt=\"ZenMaid logo\">\n      <\/div>\n\n      <div class=\"zm-cta__list\">\n        <div class=\"zm-cta__item\">\n          <svg viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"21\" height=\"21\" fill=\"none\" stroke=\"#01676c\" stroke-width=\"3\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><path d=\"M20 6 9 17l-5-5\"><\/path><\/svg>\n          <p><strong>Tips and advice shared here have helped us grow our own maid services.<\/strong> The ZenMaid team currently has 5+ current and former cleaning business owners on our team, including our Founder and CEO, Amar. We&rsquo;ve been in the maid service industry for 10+ years and counting.<\/p>\n        <\/div>\n        <div class=\"zm-cta__item\">\n          <svg viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"21\" height=\"21\" fill=\"none\" stroke=\"#01676c\" stroke-width=\"3\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><path d=\"M20 6 9 17l-5-5\"><\/path><\/svg>\n          <p><strong>We partner with amazing leaders in the cleaning industry,<\/strong> including Debbie Sardone, Stephanie Pipkin, Angela Brown, Chris Schwab, and many more &mdash; all to provide you with the latest industry insights.<\/p>\n        <\/div>\n        <div class=\"zm-cta__item\">\n          <svg viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"21\" height=\"21\" fill=\"none\" stroke=\"#01676c\" stroke-width=\"3\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><path d=\"M20 6 9 17l-5-5\"><\/path><\/svg>\n          <p><strong>We&rsquo;ve built the easiest-to-use, comprehensive cleaning business software, built specifically for the industry!<\/strong><\/p>\n        <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n\n      <div class=\"zm-cta__actions\">\n        <a class=\"zm-cta__btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.zenmaid.com\/\">Check out ZenMaid<\/a>\n        <div class=\"zm-cta__chip\"><span><\/span>Easy 5 minute setup<\/div>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n    \n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Listen on: <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/filthy-rich-cleaners-the-cleaning-business-podcast\/id1791590022?i=1000793855075\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/70usfETiFda0RQQ7gG1HpR\">Spotify<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=q3OKAt3628M\">YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: #181: Should You Buy a Cleaning Company? Do Your Due Diligence\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/70usfETiFda0RQQ7gG1HpR?utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Introduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stephanie:<\/strong> Hello, my friends. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean, and today&#8217;s episode is going to be my thoughts on buying cleaning companies. This is a topic that has come up several times throughout my time working with you guys, doing consulting calls, as well as just being asked my general opinion on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And actually, I did have an opportunity to buy a cleaning company, and I want to talk about that. Unfortunately, it got taken away from me, it seems, so I did not get the chance to follow through. That would have been a really fascinating, I guess, experiment. But it did not happen. But I want to talk to you about why I considered it, when in general I am going to say that I would almost never buy a cleaning business. So let&#8217;s get into it, guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And if this is your first time listening, welcome! I&#8217;m so excited to have you. I own Serene Clean, which is my cleaning business in Western Wisconsin. I run it remotely from Savannah, Georgia. I have 30 staff members. There are three regional locations, and we should be on track to hit $1.5M revenue next year. We will be over $1.4M this year. So, welcome! I&#8217;m excited to have you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To all of our new listeners, I would love to invite you to the ZenMaid Mastermind on Facebook. Lots of great advice given there. I post exclusive videos there as well, where I am showcasing different processes, sharing my screen, showing you guys how I do things, because sometimes the podcast is tough, where I am trying to describe a process where really you need to see it. So I&#8217;m trying to be better about recording more stuff there. But regardless, there are over 10,000 cleaning business owners there, of all phases of business, of all backgrounds. We would love to see you there. That is in the show notes, the description. You can click that link, join.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I also want to invite you to subscribe to the ZenMaid newsletter. You do not need to be a customer to join the newsletter. Anybody can join and read. It goes out at least once a week, and it is very actionable, practical advice written by Amar. And it is fantastic. Amar is our CEO at ZenMaid, and he is a cool cat. Shout out to Amar! Alrighty, let&#8217;s get into the episode, guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-2\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Consulting Client&#8217;s Experience Buying a Company<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Okay, so the reason this came top of mind is one of my consulting clients, who is incredible. I am going to keep it anonymous, but she has experienced this firsthand over the past several months. She bought a cleaning company that was, I believe, mostly residential. She already had a cleaning company herself. This was another local one in her service area, and she bought this one as well. And I have learned a lot just from looking at her experience of what that&#8217;s looked like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I also had a really great conversation with Marco in Chicago. That episode, we&#8217;ll link down in the show notes as well. He bought a very long-standing cleaning business, and it has gone very successfully. So it can be done. It absolutely can be done, and done well, and be successful. So we&#8217;ll link that one down below if you guys want to hear a success story of buying a fairly large cleaning company, and it&#8217;s gone very well for him. Kind of what changes that he has made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sorry if my camera is, like, bouncy for any of our visual watchers slash listeners. The cats are, like, jumping on and off my desk repeatedly. You just saw Bassett leave, so that&#8217;s why the camera is shaky, guys. And I&#8217;m not starting over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Okay, so that is a success story. But this story, it&#8217;s still playing out. But I think I have enough information to talk about it and talk about my thoughts. So, my consulting client, let&#8217;s just call her Anne, and she had a cleaning business that did mostly commercial. She likes commercial. She does a decent amount of residential, but this opportunity came to her to buy a mostly residential cleaning business, and she ended up moving forward with it. And there&#8217;s a lot of lessons learned from this experience, specifically when it came to lack of processes, lack of documentation, and really looking at every single client individually as to what is the profit margin, how much is being made there. So that is going to be where we start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-3\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why I&#8217;d Rather Buy Commercial Than Residential<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, my first thoughts on buying a cleaning company in general is that, because I do commercial and residential, I would be much more attracted to buying a mostly commercial, janitorial accounts cleaning business over residential. And my thought process with that is, commercial is much stickier. They&#8217;re going to stick around. It takes a lot more for them to leave. They also are a bit more, like, protected from those kind of internal changes. It&#8217;s easier to, quote-unquote, like, hide it, if you will \u2014 not that I mean that in a bad way \u2014 but, like, blunt the effects of a changeover like that. I find that would be much easier with commercial. They are a lot less personal, I would say. When it comes to \u2014 I just don&#8217;t think they would really care about this as much, meaning a new owner or some changes being made in that manner, compared to residential. Residential is very particular in a lot of ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My biggest reason for being attracted to buying commercial cleaning businesses is the \u2014 not contracts, per se \u2014 but things are set in stone, and they&#8217;re just less likely to drop unless you&#8217;re really messing things up. They typically aren&#8217;t looking at pricing or anything like that more than once a year, when we&#8217;re renewing our agreement, that type of thing. A lot of companies that you are considering buying, they may have people locked in. So, like, you have this guaranteed cash flow and revenue unless something insane happens for an extended period of time. So it just feels less risky, but there is still risk, of course. And I&#8217;ll talk about my experience looking at a commercial cleaning business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So that is one thing \u2014 this business that Anne was looking at was mostly residential, and so she ended up buying it. And the experience after was, frankly, kind of a clusterfuck, if I do say so myself, because of the lack of documentation, the pricing situation. It was just \u2014 it was a mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-4\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">First: Dig Into Every Client&#8217;s Production Rate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so the two things I really learned, or what I would caution you about if you are buying a cleaning business, or considering buying a cleaning business, is really pushing for that internal information. Now, you are most likely going to have to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement). That&#8217;s totally normal, so that you can look at the information, and there may be some other things that you need to sign to really delve into the information. But there&#8217;s two areas that I would be most concerned with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Number one, like, top of the heap when it comes to what is important, is actually looking at the finances and production rates of every single client. Okay? And I know that sounds tedious, but when you&#8217;re about to spend potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, don&#8217;t we think it&#8217;s worth due diligence, right? And so, what I mean by that is, a lot of times when companies want to sell, they will position themselves as, &#8220;This is a profitable cleaning business,&#8221; right? They will give you the P&amp;L. They might give you the balance statement, and on paper, you&#8217;re like, &#8220;Wow, this looks good. This is a profitable company. This is a sound investment.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But \u2014 and this is a huge but \u2014 we need to dig deeper than simply the P&amp;L. We need to look at the jobs. We need to look at what they&#8217;re paying their cleaners, and we need to look: is the owner doing any cleanings to basically subsidize that P&amp;L? That is a huge aspect of it. We also need to ensure \u2014 you know, what is the turnover like with staff? Because that could be a huge indicator that they are not paying market rates. So, even though they are profitable on jobs because they are paying so low, they&#8217;re having turnover, which is going to be a huge headache for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So you really need to dig in. You don&#8217;t even need customer names, if they are, like, really leery about that. You could just say, &#8220;Label all of the customers. I want to see the data of how long these jobs take, because we need to figure out how much are these jobs making per hour.&#8221; I know you guys are sick of hearing me talk about production rates, but this is a key example of why it&#8217;s so important that we are doing that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because if I were to buy a company, I would want to see, what are these clients? Because, cool, they&#8217;re bringing me in $240 a month. That&#8217;s great. That&#8217;s a, you know \u2014 okay, great, that&#8217;s a great number. But without context, that means nothing. That means absolutely nothing. How many hours is that, labor hours? Is that job taking how much? Are we bringing in how much? Are we paying the cleaners on that job? How far are we having to drive to that job? That&#8217;s not getting charged, and that&#8217;s getting eaten up from the bottom line. So it can look profitable as a whole entity, but when you dig into each individual job, there may be some glaring problems, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There could be a couple clients that they&#8217;re charging correctly, or overcharging, you know, whatever, and those ones are making, like, the bulk of the money, if it&#8217;s some commercial accounts, right? And they&#8217;re kind of, again, subsidizing the jobs that are not doing well. So I want to look at all of the clients. That&#8217;s exactly what I would do. I would say, &#8220;I want to know, what are the production rates? How much is each job making per hour? How much are we paying the cleaners?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-5\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">When a Price Increase Comes Right After the Sale<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Okay, that is going to be the first line of defense to really dig in and make sure. The reason is \u2014 and this is exactly what Anne experienced \u2014 when she bought the company, got all of those clients over, they were not making shit on a lot of jobs, and she had to immediately look at doing a price increase. Which means, as we all know, as I have outlined, when you do a price increase, you are likely to lose some clients. Like, that&#8217;s natural, of course. So it&#8217;s like, great, you just bought this company with this client list, and now it&#8217;s going to go to this, because they were not charging appropriately, and you had to do a price increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Especially the state that Anne is in \u2014 the laws are tough. The laws are tough when it comes to what she has to pay, as well as once you hire, like, benefits or certain requirements with PTO and things like that. I don&#8217;t know all of the specifics, but I know it&#8217;s a much more difficult state than Wisconsin is when it comes to laws, or even Georgia, where I am now. So I would not want business in this state. When it came to, like, being able to afford to pay her staff the way she needed to and cover all of the laws appropriately, it was going to be an immediate price increase. So instead of this giant client list, or this really robust client list, all of a sudden it&#8217;s gonna go to this, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And she is also going to have to call attention to that, you know, there has been a management changeup. There has, like \u2014 it&#8217;s just a lot of unrest when you want to do a handoff like this of selling a company. You want it to feel like just another day of business to the clients, right? And so it&#8217;s just a very confronting thing. Not saying that the price increase shouldn&#8217;t have happened. It absolutely should have happened. Like, she made the right call there. She did. There was no other choice. Like, that was the choice. She wasn&#8217;t going to make any money on these jobs. She had to do a price increase, but that is very unpleasant to do as a brand new owner, because I would feel so disheartened if I had, like, a giant client drop-off, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because of this, where that should have happened long ago, or it should have been looked at ahead of the purchase, of like, okay, cool, you&#8217;re making \u2014 but you&#8217;re only charging these people $35 an hour when you do the actual jobs. Like, that&#8217;s not as attractive to purchase, and maybe it could have been a conversation about the purchase price, right? So it&#8217;s like, cool, I&#8217;m still interested, but these price increases have to happen. Or you could be like, you need to do these price increases, and I want to see what happens, right? So just that instability when you&#8217;re buying, of what is going to have to happen. And most likely \u2014 even from the conversation with Marco, I believe he had to do a price increase on some of the clients, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So it&#8217;s not uncommon. It&#8217;s probably more often than not, but I still would want to dig into it. It&#8217;s like, do all of the clients need to get a price increase? Is there a reason that, you know, it looked profitable on paper, but when I dug into all of the jobs, it&#8217;s like, oh crap, these are all making under forty dollars an hour, which, as a cleaning business, that is not enough? That is not enough to pay in today&#8217;s world and make a profit, right? So, all of that said, that is going to be my number one recommendation for you guys: really push. Of like, I want to know the labor hours associated with every client&#8217;s typical visit. That is going to be first and foremost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-6\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Second: Scheduling Software and Client Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Second \u2014 and this one was a clusterfuck too when it came to dealing with it for Anne \u2014 the seller, they were using ZenMaid. Cool, awesome, so they had a scheduling software. At least it wasn&#8217;t just, like, pen and paper, right? Because I would not look at a business \u2014 I would not buy a business that&#8217;s doing everything pen and paper, because, like, how is \u2014 I mean, I say that. I never say never, but very unlikely would it be, like, big enough. If it&#8217;s operating on pen and paper, it would be shocking for it to be able to work smoothly. And also, you&#8217;re going to be introducing a lot of changes. If I bought that client list, they would be experiencing a lot of changes, as well as the cleaners would be experiencing, like, a shit ton of changes when we buy, because we&#8217;re gonna introduce all of these softwares, and that&#8217;s gonna feel a bit overwhelming, even though it&#8217;s what needs to happen, right? So I&#8217;m not saying I wouldn&#8217;t, but I would be very wary if a company did not utilize some type of scheduling software for their operations when I was considering purchasing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So the seller was using ZenMaid. However, once Anne started, you know, she took on all of the clients, and they start going to the cleanings. When I say there were practically no notes on these clients&#8217; homes, I mean it. There was just so little context. And so, as I&#8217;ve said before, the danger zone of pissing off clients and losing clients is within transition periods, right? You put a new cleaner on them, you need to change days on them, there is an ownership change, right? That could be a reason that they&#8217;re going to be looking really intently at what service is being performed, and that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m such a fan of checklists, because that kind of blunts the effects. Because if the same checklist is getting filled out, even if it&#8217;s a different cleaner, it reassures them that at least there is a process being followed, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But in this case, there were no notes, so Anne felt like a damn fool. Like, her words, she felt so stupid, because she had to ask all of these long-term clients of this company basic questions, right? Basic questions on performing the cleaning and making sure that they were getting what they were communicated that they were going to get. Right. So I would 100% be looking at the client notes before I buy a company, to understand how much legwork am I going to have to do with basically backfilling information, right? Because it just makes you feel dumb. It&#8217;s a lot of unnecessary work. To me, that screams a not well-functioning company. Like, I would not want to buy a company that has no, like, individual client notes. And it&#8217;s just very much like \u2014 you know, in ZenMaid, how you can choose the service type \u2014 if it just said &#8220;standard cleaning,&#8221; right, and there were no notes on anything about what the clients like, what they dislike. Are there any rooms we&#8217;re not supposed to do? You know, the contact information, and, like, the pets&#8217; names. Like, all of the things that we put into our ZenMaid notes on all of our clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-7\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why Detailed Client Notes Matter Whether You Sell or Not<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like, here&#8217;s the thing, guys. Here&#8217;s the thing: a well-running business is something that I could sell a lot easier, even if I have no intentions to sell. Right? Serene Clean is in a very sellable state, because we&#8217;ve put so many things in place. And because of that, regardless of the fact I don&#8217;t plan to sell anytime soon, it means my business functions better, right? So, because we have extensive notes on all of our clients \u2014 even like, &#8220;has a finished basement, don&#8217;t let the dog out of this room,&#8221; right? Like, they have meetings at this time, vacuum at this time, naptime is this time. Right? Like, that type of shit. That is what allows every future cleaner in that home to be successful, regardless if that is a fill-in because somebody called out, regardless if that is because you had to switch cleaners altogether, which is going to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some of our clients have had, like, a dozen different cleaners, right? But they stayed with us because, one, we are communicative. Two, we use standardized checklists. And three, we set up the future cleaner for success by having extensive notes so that they can succeed. And that is how we communicate as a team and really push our cleaners to think about, when you can&#8217;t come to this house for whatever reason, what would your fill-in need to know to be successful? And they are expected, and really praised, for updating those notes, for calling attention, to look ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s something I actually, you know, really thought about in my shout-outs that I do to my team. I&#8217;m looking for opportunities to call them out on that behavior, meaning so-and-so left a note on this client that is going to help all future cleaners. Of, you know, the hidden half bath is hard to find. It looks like a closet. It&#8217;s not. It&#8217;s a half bath. Leave those notes, and then call attention to that and praise your cleaners for that, because that is what the team looks like. We&#8217;re setting ourselves up for success, and as a side effect, it makes us more systematic. It&#8217;s how you take \u2014 you know, for us at this point, we&#8217;re at 360 recurring clients. How do you do that, if not for extensive notes? And that anybody could go into these homes and be successful \u2014 that is the goal, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even if, ideally, of course, we don&#8217;t want any of our clients to have to have that cleaner turnover, but shit happens, right? Every single one of your clients is going to have to have a different cleaner eventually. So if we know that is the reality, fact of the matter, then we need to behave in reality, not ideal. The reality is somebody else is going to go to this home. Great! So let&#8217;s work in that reality. What do we need to do in that reality to make a future cleaner successful? Here: notes, right? Notes. Making sure that they&#8217;re standardized, they&#8217;re easy to read, and they communicate effectively what will make this client happy, where things are. Not only what makes the client happy, but what makes the cleaner&#8217;s job easier. Where are the garbage bags, right? Where does the garbage go? How do you get into this house? Who did blah blah blah? All of the things. The client&#8217;s very particular about the baseboards. Make sure that those are absolutely perfect. Right. Like, we want our cleaners to succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, in this huge tangent, the point is, this is so valuable whether you intend to sell or not. But, if you are looking to buy a company, what notes do they have on these clients? Because it&#8217;s going to be so much overwhelming work when you&#8217;re probably already overwhelmed, because you just spent a shit ton of money. You now have a bunch of new staff members and new clients. Like, the most overwhelming thing would be to buy a company and not have client notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So Anne, my consulting client, she killed it. She did so well. She just, you know, ate the frog, or whatever the hell the saying is, &#8220;eat the toad.&#8221; She just did the damn thing. She communicated. She asked questions, and she is able to get these clients&#8217; cleanings done and make them happy. But there&#8217;s just so much work that needs to be done that, if the seller had just had this documentation in place, one, it would be something like a selling point. You could be like, &#8220;Yeah, and all of our \u2014&#8221; like, it is turnkey, if you will, a turnkey experience, where this was not turnkey whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-8\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Third: The Team and Culture You&#8217;re Buying<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So that is going to be the two biggest areas. It&#8217;s gonna be the job cost, you know? And is there travel? Like, what does travel look like? Are they paying their cleaners between jobs? Like, are they on the up and up with everything? Especially \u2014 a lot of companies that are being sold right now are a bit old school, right? Because people are trying to retire, and so they&#8217;ve been doing things very old school. Not saying that they&#8217;re not doing things by the books and legally, but there could be some things that are just not done in a modern way, right? And even looking at, like, again, the longevity of the staff members. So that is going to be the two biggest areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I would also want to talk to some of the cleaners or the staff, especially any management, before I would go through with an offer, because I wanna understand the culture that I&#8217;m about to purchase, right? That&#8217;s going to be number three: what is the team like? Is there a lot of problems? Is there a lot of unprofessionalism? Is there just simply no team atmosphere at all? Maybe they&#8217;re using independent contractors. That would be kind of like \u2014 I would also not buy that company. But, you know, that&#8217;s just me being a W-2 girly for life. I would buy a company with employees. But, you know, it can be done. Everything can be done. That&#8217;s the thing, everything can be done. But these are the things I&#8217;m cautioning you about. So I would want to know, and really sit down and communicate, like, what is the culture like? What are the problems? What are things that are allowed that I&#8217;m not going to allow, or things that I&#8217;m not okay with? All of that type of thing, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because, again, coming back to the conversation with Marco, if marketing is not extensive, that&#8217;s great. Like, if a company has been successful, and they&#8217;re not doing a ton of marketing, to me, that&#8217;s like, ooh, there is so much opportunity here. The fact that they&#8217;ve been able to get this client list without, like, any dedicated marketing, or the branding is not that great, or whatever \u2014 all of those things, no concern at all to me. No concern at all. Those are the easiest things to build. What&#8217;s hard to build is that client longevity, right? The pricing of it all, the culture of it all \u2014 it&#8217;s hard to turn that ship, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, a lot of times when you buy \u2014 like with Anne here, she, I think, had several cleaners that had to go, like, immediately, right? So again, it&#8217;s taking this thing that seems valuable. You got all these clients, you got all of these cleaners, right? On paper, it seems valuable, but then when you buy it and you actually peek behind the curtains, like, well, shit, all of these people need price increases. These are toxic succubuses in the business. I need to get rid of them immediately, right? Or a lot of people just quit, because they&#8217;re like, nope, I don&#8217;t want that. I don&#8217;t want to deal with that. You know, I liked the owner, and I&#8217;m not working for somebody else, right? Or, I want to go open my own cleaning business. Whatever, I&#8217;m going to try to take all these clients. Like, there&#8217;s so many situations. So that is the three main areas that I would be looking at if I were you, in considering purchasing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-9\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Equipment, Loans, and Buying a Client List<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;d love to hear from anybody who has considered purchasing, who has looked at companies. What are your notes on what I just said? Are there other areas that you feel are super valuable to dig into? I would also note, if there&#8217;s a fleet of cars, if there is lots of, you know, supplies and equipment, right? Like, really look over what that looks like. What are the payments? Like, what kind of loans does the company have? All sorts of things. Like, that&#8217;s what I would look at too. Of, like, what equipment am I getting? Is it garbage? Is it something I even want to use? And then, just in general, like, again, coming back to the pay of the cleaners. And this is what we&#8217;re gonna get into with the opportunity that I had, for the company that I was looking at purchasing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, let me know in the comments if you have successfully purchased a company. What was the immediate aftermath, and looking back, is there something that you would do differently? And if you are looking, or have considered buying a company, what red flags dissuaded you? What things were you, like, you know, now that I&#8217;m digging into this, this is not the right choice for me, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If it is a fully residential business, like, you&#8217;re just buying the client list, if you will \u2014 I mean, obviously, like \u2014 oh, so this is something I see, is, like, people in groups, especially individual cleaners, where they&#8217;re like, &#8220;I want to sell my client list. I want to sell my client list.&#8221; I almost never would buy that. Like, I would never do that when I could just \u2014 like, the thing is, once you go out of business or whatever. Like, residential \u2014 I mean, I would just rather put that money into marketing, frankly. Because I just don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s that valuable to buy a client list, because they&#8217;re just so easy to move along. Like, residential turnover of clients is just so much higher than commercial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, if there were established staff members with, like, full schedules, who, you know, have been with the company for a long time, that would be more attractive to me. But just buying a 20-person client list or a 40-person client list \u2014 like, I don&#8217;t know. Like, I just feel like \u2014 I mean, I get those leads in one month. Why would I pay for that? Like, I&#8217;m already paying for it in marketing. And I&#8217;m getting those anyway. And they&#8217;re used to your business. And this is why I really want to know others&#8217; experiences of, like, am I just biased against this, or do you feel that this is a good opportunity? Have you ever bought a client list? Did that work out for you? I would love to hear in the comments below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And while you are there, leave me an emoji that you have been listening thus far. I&#8217;m wearing kind of red lipstick, so give me a little kissy, the kissy emoji or the lips emoji. I would love to see it, and please hit that subscribe, hit that like. It really shows ZenMaid why the fuck they&#8217;re paying me if you guys hit that subscribe. So, if you love me at all, please hit that like, hit that subscribe, because, you know, that&#8217;s how I&#8217;m able to put out this content for you guys. ZenMaid is so gracious to actually pay me, and that&#8217;s cool. That is a cool thing. All right, I like it. So show them \u2014 show them why you&#8217;re here. Okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-10\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Commercial Company I Almost Bought<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All right, on to the story of me looking at a cleaning company. So, was this this year? Was this last year? I think this was last year. Time means nothing anymore to me, apparently, because I just don&#8217;t know when this was. But it was in the past year, for sure. And so, I got an email from somebody who is a sometimes client of ours, and they had a contact locally who wanted to retire \u2014 who wants to retire, maybe they still do. And they are a commercial cleaning business within my service area who had over sixty commercial contracts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Okay, so I was very attracted to this opportunity, because they were long-term contracts. They actually had them, like, locked into contracts, which we don&#8217;t necessarily do. Like, we do have them sign paperwork, and a contract \u2014 our guidelines, of course, in the agreement. We have a customer agreement that they sign. But they can cancel at any time with notice, just like we can cancel at any time with notice. Whereas other places sometimes do contracts where you can&#8217;t, like, get out of it. You&#8217;re locked in. And obviously, as a buyer, that&#8217;s attractive to me, right? Because I&#8217;m like, okay, these are, like, guaranteed money. So that was very attractive to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And as long-term \u2014 they did have some vehicles. They had long-term staff members. Like, everything about it was good. And they are, like \u2014 I wouldn&#8217;t say big names, but they&#8217;ve been just around forever. They&#8217;ve been around forever. So I did sign, you know, the NDA, which is now expired, for sure, because I believe it was thirty or sixty days. And then nothing happened, guys. Nothing happened. I reached out several times. I don&#8217;t know if they changed their minds. They&#8217;re still in business. We did not even get into numbers. Like, of course, I wanted to see financials. I was, like \u2014 I was really excited about this opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You know what? Maybe I&#8217;ll send them an email and be like, hey, you know, I know that this was in the works. Like, are you still \u2014 is this something? I&#8217;m gonna do that. All right, hold me to it. I&#8217;m gonna do it by the time this episode goes live. I&#8217;m going to email them and see if they&#8217;re still interested, because, you know, I don&#8217;t know about the timing of it all, but I&#8217;ll just approach like, hey, still here, still interested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So it was very attractive to me when I looked at, you know, the types of clients. I didn&#8217;t even have the client list, but they kind of, like, gave in generalities some sizable accounts, that type of thing. So I was just very attracted to the opportunity, and I was so bummed when, like, it didn&#8217;t go anywhere. Obviously, I very much feel that if something doesn&#8217;t happen like that, it&#8217;s not meant to happen right then. But I do want to reach out and still have that communication, honestly. I just really haven&#8217;t thought about it since that moment, because that&#8217;s how my brain works. Once I followed up a couple times and didn&#8217;t hear anything, I was like, okay, cool, filing cabinet in the brain. We are taking that file back up, and we are opening it, guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So that is why I was attracted: because of it being commercial. What I was most concerned about was how much they were paying their cleaners. I looked on Facebook. I looked at, like, what I could find about job listings. I think their cleaners were paid a bit low. If anybody came into my business \u2014 and that&#8217;s what would happen \u2014 they would immediately be getting raises, which is good. That would make them happy, right? But all of a sudden, if they&#8217;re going to get raises to be paid what my current cleaners are getting paid, well then, of course, that&#8217;s going to affect those margins on those jobs, right? So I was itching to get into the production rates, itching to get into, like, what is the profit of these jobs? Because I wanted to know, like, great, this is the revenue, but what is the actual profit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I know the owner was cleaning some of the locations, even \u2014 you know, he&#8217;s an older fella, which is, I think, why they wanted to retire \u2014 but he was still doing some of the cleaning. So again, there&#8217;s that subsidizing by the owner&#8217;s labor that I was concerned about, right? So I was really intrigued to get into the numbers. So that was kind of my thought process: just be neutral, look at the numbers, do not buy a company where it does not make sense, especially if they&#8217;re locked into contracts. So I just bought an unprofitable job. Like, no, thank you, right? No, thank you. So that just wouldn&#8217;t have made sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But alas, I don&#8217;t have any more details to give you guys, unfortunately, because it just got cut off right there. They never responded again. They are still in business, so I&#8217;m gonna do the dang thing. I&#8217;m gonna reach out and see, because YOLO, why not, right? I think that would be such a cool thing if it did work out, because I would love to just document that experience for you guys. I would love for that to happen, and when it comes to, like, what that would do for Serene Clean, it would be insane. It would be absolutely insane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And you could be wondering, Stephanie, why don&#8217;t you just wait until the guy retires? Because those accounts are going to go looking for another company, right? Well, wrong, because he&#8217;s gonna sell it somewhere. He is not going to just, like, retire and quit all these jobs. This business is valuable, and he wants to get the value out of it. So that means that these contracts will go to a different competitor, right? Somebody else in the area. So if it&#8217;s going to go to somebody in the area, I would rather it be me, because those jobs are not going to come up for renewal anytime soon. So that is my thought process there, of, like, I still want to explore this, and I hope that they are still considering it. It could be, like, he just wasn&#8217;t ready, and he freaked out when things got real. That absolutely could be the case. So, I hope that opportunity comes around again, because that would be really cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-11\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why Your Bookkeeping Matters When Opportunity Knocks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And this is why \u2014 obviously, you know, I don&#8217;t even know if financially I could qualify, co-qualify, for something like that, because, of course, I would need a loan. I would need a loan for that, and, you know, we are currently in the process of getting a loan for something else, which I will let you guys know about in a little bit. I just got news on Friday about some exciting developments, ah, but I don&#8217;t want to share quite yet, until things are a little further along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah, this is a great reason as to why bookkeeping is so important, guys. Get your finances documented and in order in the business. It&#8217;s so valuable. If you didn&#8217;t watch the YouTube video where I talked about managing my finances \u2014 I did a whole, I think, live, like, thing, and it&#8217;s on YouTube. We&#8217;ll link it down below, of just, like, managing your money as a cleaning business owner. This is a perfect example of why it is so important. If you are not bookkeeping, if you&#8217;re paying people under the table, if you&#8217;re doing anything, you know, just, like, accepting cash, like, all of that \u2014 this is where that bites you in the ass, is when an opportunity comes and you cannot pursue it because your financial documentation is not in order. All right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you want a mortgage, if you want a loan, if you want anything where somebody is going to lend you money, this is where it bites you in the ass if you don&#8217;t have that documentation, because they&#8217;re gonna ask for that. They wanna see profit and loss. They wanna see business taxes. They wanna see your personal taxes, potentially. Like, they need to see this shit, otherwise they&#8217;re not gonna loan you money. And when you are self-employed, it is so much harder to get a loan. All right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This house that I am sitting in now \u2014 I swear to God, I needed to, like, do a blood oath and, like, swear over my firstborn in order to get this mortgage, despite the fact that financially it was not a problem for me, and despite the fact that I had been self-employed for five years and been doing everything right, right? Like, everything right, and they still were like, oh, I don&#8217;t know, I don&#8217;t know. And I&#8217;m just like, what the fuck! Like, I have all of the proof. And, like, I actually had to get my accountant to, like, step in and vouch for me, and basically go to bat for me. Thank you, Angie, I love you. You&#8217;re amazing, and you&#8217;re also a fantastic client. You&#8217;re amazing. I know you&#8217;re not going to watch this, but she stepped in, went to bat for me, of like, this is ludicrous to not give this woman a mortgage. And especially, like, I had more than 20% down. I could go on about getting financed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So getting financed as a self-employed person can be very challenging, especially if you&#8217;re going in alone, right? So there&#8217;s no other person co-signing with you. So that&#8217;s why, like, if nothing else has been the catalyst, let this be the catalyst of vowing to yourself and putting a plan in place to get the financial documentation in order. If you need to hire a one-time bookkeeper to go through and get it up to date for this year, do it. Okay? Please do it, because you don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s coming down the road, guys. You don&#8217;t know what opportunity is just around the corner, waiting for you, that you&#8217;re not going to be able to take because you can&#8217;t get a loan, right? And, obviously, you know, there&#8217;s risks to everything. But I just don&#8217;t want that to be the reason why you can&#8217;t do something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"heading-12\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I hope that this has been interesting, guys. Please, please, leave your experiences down below with buying or selling cleaning businesses. I would love to hear. I know some people are perpetual buyers of businesses, and they turn them around, and it&#8217;s a great opportunity for them. So I am not saying that it&#8217;s not a smart decision. I am saying, please be cautious, do your due diligence, and push for information. And if they are not willing to give, like, this basic stuff before you make a giant financial purchase and possibly destroy your life, then maybe don&#8217;t make that decision, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And you&#8217;re not going to know everything. There&#8217;s always a risk to things like this when you&#8217;re taking an opportunity like this. So don&#8217;t be alarmed. Please, just be smart. Use AI to bounce ideas off of, right, guys? If you don&#8217;t have somebody that you can go to, like, think about the risks. Ask it, what about these? What about these? Use it as your thought partner in, &#8220;What should I be doing here?&#8221; And there also are brokers as well, for buying businesses, if you&#8217;re interested. I think that they can give you advice. You can hire them and have them do an audit, basically, of the health of a business before you buy it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I hope you guys found this interesting. To the consulting client: you are incredible. You are one of the hardest working women I have ever met. I don&#8217;t know how you have not worked yourself into an early grave. You work so hard, and I know that this has been getting turned around because of all of your hard work, right? So, none of this is to say that she was not intelligent or anything like that. I think that this was just a great learning opportunity, and she has been able to turn this around, do price increases, and make the damn thing happen. And she is killing it! Okay, so I love you. You know who you are. Hit that like, guys, hit that subscribe, and I will see you in the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Introduction Stephanie: Hello, my friends. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean, and today&#8217;s episode is going to be my thoughts on buying cleaning companies. This is a topic that has come up several times throughout my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":17834,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"Should You Buy a Cleaning Company? 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