Do You Need a License to Clean Houses?
There is no such thing as a national cleaning license, which is why the answer online is always contradictory. What exists is a short list of local requirements, and they are easy to check.
How to Ask for Reviews Without Being Awkward
Almost nobody leaves a review unprompted, and almost nobody asks. The gap between those two facts is where most small service businesses lose their easiest advantage.
Do You Need an LLC?
An LLC is worth having for specific reasons and useless for the reason most people form one. Knowing which is which saves you either a few hundred dollars or a great deal more.
Residential or Commercial Cleaning — Which Should You Start With?
These are not two versions of the same business. They differ on when you work, how you sell, how fast you get paid and what happens when you lose a client - and the right answer depends mostly on your circumstances, not your preference.
Should You Start Part-Time or Quit Your Job?
Almost everybody asks this as a question about courage. It is a question about two numbers, and once you have them the answer is usually obvious.
What Insurance Does a Cleaning Business Need?
Four coverages come up constantly and they protect against four completely different things. Most people buy one, assume it covers the rest, and find out otherwise at the worst moment.
How Long Does a Cleaning Job Actually Take?
Every time estimate you can look up was measured on somebody else's work, in somebody else's houses, at somebody else's standard. Five timed jobs of your own beat all of them.
What to Do in the Off-Season
A seasonal business does not stop having costs when it stops having revenue. Pricing as though the year is nine months long is the single most common mistake in seasonal trades.
How to Get Your First Ten Cleaning Clients
The first ten clients almost never come from advertising. They come from a short list of unglamorous things done consistently, and knowing which is which saves you a year and several hundred dollars.
What It Actually Costs to Start a Cleaning Business
The equipment is the cheap part and everybody focuses on it. The costs that sink first-year cleaning businesses are the two nobody puts in the spreadsheet.
Pricing Your First Commercial Cleaning Contract
A commercial cleaning bid is one number with four inputs behind it. Get the production rate wrong and everything downstream is wrong, which is why the published rates are a starting point and not an answer.