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How to Start a $62,000 per Month Cleaning Business from Scratch (Pt. 1) - YouTube
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- How would you like
to make $750,000 a year
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running your own cleaning business?
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On today's episode, you'll
find out how to do it.
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(gentle music)
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On this episode we'll be
interviewing Austin Miller
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who started Spruse
Clean out of a necessity
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when he lost his job.
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And in less than three years,
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it's grown from a one man
operation to a 20 people
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multi-state cleaning empire.
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And he's also on track to break
$1 million in the next year.
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- [Austin] I started with
dollars literally dollars.
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This year I think we're on
track to do close to a million.
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- What are the profit margins
that you're shooting for?
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- Spruse Clean is also
one of the highest rated
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cleaning services in Seattle.
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They've got a record number
of positive reviews on Yelp
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and they've more than
doubled their revenue
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in the last two and a half years.
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- [Austin] We're just so
busy with Yelp and Google.
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And Google even knew,
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we use Yelp for the first year and a half.
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We've done 12 to 17,000 in one day.
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- [Paul] An average cleaning business
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makes 50 to $70,000 a year so
his earnings are phenomenal.
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He's gonna share secrets
about the amazing growth,
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how much it took for him to
get started in the business,
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what he's doing to continue the growth.
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- If you wanna start a cleaning
business, do it tomorrow.
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- His tips will help any
business owner in any industry.
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So make sure you stick
around for this episode.
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Like this video, subscribe to our channel
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and let's go say hi to Austin.
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(gentle music)
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- Tell us a little bit about yourself
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and how you ended up
starting a cleaning company.
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I mean, did you have a cleaning
background in the past?
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- None.
- Okay.
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- So we started as Home Remodelers,
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lost our jobs due to the economy.
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And we had a couple of
clients from Home Remodeling
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that needed their house cleaned.
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Asked me, a year later
hired him as my first hire.
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And then from word of mouth,
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we grew 367 times in the
last two and a half years.
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- 367 times.
- Yeah.
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One of the fastest growing
cleaning services out in Seattle.
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- Did you ever see the
potential of cleaning?
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I mean, when you were remodeling houses.
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- Not when I was remodeling houses
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but when I got into the market,
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I already knew from the get go
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there was a huge untapped market.
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You just needed a little
bit customer service
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and a good cleaning service
and you could do it.
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(upbeat music)
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- Awesome, let's talk
about your initial budget
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when you got started two
and a half years ago.
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What was that like?
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You know, branching out of
renovation into cleaning.
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- Dollars.
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- And break it down for us as
far as how it was implemented,
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how was broken down?
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- So basically for the last
year when I first started
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was all my own money.
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Very lean budget,
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everything I made went
back into the company.
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I started with dollars, literally dollars.
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- Put a number on it,
10 bucks, 15 bucks, 21.
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What do you need to do to get started.
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- I think I had a couple
hundred in the bank
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after I lost my job.
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But cleaning supplies and just decided
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to go full on with it.
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And luckily I got
customers fairly quickly.
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So it compounded, you
know, two to three to four
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to where I'd had enough
to pay my monthly bills.
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And then it compounded to where
I could hire another person.
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We got really lucky.
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- This business sounds like
an easy business to get into.
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I mean, a couple of cleaning
supplies, couple of rags.
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- Yeah.
- Paper towels.
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- As long as you're motivated.
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So if you are motivated and
you have good customer service
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and good quality work,
it's pretty easy to build.
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(upbeat music)
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- Let's talk about your
first year revenue.
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What you're on track to
do this year maybe 2021,
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if you have projections.
- Sure.
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- And what's the secret
to that phenomenal growth.
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- So first year was $96,000.
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This year, I think we're on track
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to do close to a million.
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Like shy of a million like 900
something thousand dollars.
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But 2021, we'll be well over a million.
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It'll be close to like 1.5, 1.6.
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- From a hundred thousand to a million.
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When the average cleaning company
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makes 50 to 70 grand a year.
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What's the secret here.
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- Scaling, again they always
drive me to stop saying yes.
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I just always say yes.
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And I think that's just kind
of got us to a large staff
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with a huge clientele.
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And again, we're just not greedy.
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I'll take the 45%.
- That's amazing.
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And then go from there.
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I'm happy with that, I'll take 45% of 1.5.
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- And there's still a big.
- Huge.
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- Market to fill.
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- Oh, there are so many
clients looking for...
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There's, if you wanna
start a cleaning business,
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do it tomorrow.
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I'm not even worried, you'll
find your own clients.
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- There's no competition.
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- Everyone can eat in
this industry seriously.
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(upbeat music)
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- How many clients
currently do you guys serve.
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- About 450 a week.
- 450 a week.
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Okay.
- Yeah.
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- Are those repeat customers
or what's the percentage?
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- Somewhat, I think 30% are reoccurring.
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30 to 40% are reoccurring.
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And then the rest are all new customers.
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- And where are they coming in from?
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- A lot of shit, we're
at number six on Google.
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So we pop up fairly quick on that.
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A ton from Yelp, we
are number one on Yelp.
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And I think the other one
would just be word of mouth
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and just Google searching us.
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A lot of our stuff comes
from those two streams.
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Not much else.
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- What is it about Yelp?
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Cause we're, you know, we're
talking to different companies
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and we're hearing that over and over.
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At least for the Seattle market.
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- Yelp?
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- Have you been investing
in Yelp for quite a while.
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- Since beginning.
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And we do have a secret recipe
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for how we present ourselves on--
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- Oh, secret recipe.
- Yo, yes.
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- Let's try to get that out Austin.
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- They have a formula.
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And we've figured out if you
always go for five star reviews
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they're gonna stick here and there
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but they have a shadow formula
where they won't stick.
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I think a lot of business
owners have seen that,
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where it's extremely frustrating.
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To get around that,
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you're gonna wanna ask your
clients for three star reviews.
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Make sure they're positive
three star reviews
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but nonetheless ask for a three star.
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It breaks the formula.
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As soon as that hits,
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you'll those hidden five star reviews
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will start showing up again.
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I think we jumped almost 20 reviews
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like that were hidden back to our board.
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Because we got those three star reviews,
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but they're formal, they
just want to validate them.
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These are actual reviews and not people
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just spamming you guys
with five star reviews.
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(gentle music)
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- How do you decide on
pricing and estimates?
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Do you charge for that?
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Walk us through a little bit.
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- So that's actually
where we stand out hugely.
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Is we actually designed our own formula
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and a pricing calculator on our website.
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So you don't need to
do an estimate with us.
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It gives you an exact price
based on the size of your home,
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based on the rooms in it
and what extras you want.
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So it gives you the booking summary,
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what you're paying for each room.
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And allows you to customize
your clean based on those rooms.
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So it's not just a one shot
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you know, okay, it's $300 for this.
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No, you pick what you want cleaned
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and the price for that room.
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So it takes out us having to
do an estimate again lean,
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I don't wanna do that.
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You just do on the website.
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So it gives them a quick
price within minutes.
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(upbeat music)
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- What are the profit margins
that you're shooting for?
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What's the sweet spot for you to be in?
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- 45%.
- Okay.
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- We actually pay our staff the highest
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in any state per hour.
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And we're even taking, we're
still taking a 45% margin
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of profit so that's the sweet spot.
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- That's the sweet spot, okay.
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- Not too greedy.
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- Industry wise, a
little lower in general.
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- Yeah, just because in our industry,
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people pay their staff a lot less.
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But again, it's hard work
and we wanna make sure
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that our staff is getting
compensated fairly, if not well.
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So we just take a little bit outside.
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(upbeat music)
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- What's been the most
successful approach to marketing?
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And how are you acquiring
new customers today?
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- Yelp ads.
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As much as Yelp can suck,
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it's a vital tool to have in any business.
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We put a lot of money into our Google ads
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and we put a lot of money in our Yelp ads.
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Aside from that, there isn't
much marketing else we do.
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- What's your marketing budget
per month at this point.
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- It's about two grand.
- Two grand.
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- That's about it, yeah.
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- For a business that's gonna
do cost a million dollars
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in revenue.
- We run very lean.
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- With a $2,000 marketing budget.
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That's amazing.
- Yeah.
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- What did you start with though
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when you were at a
hundred thousand a year?
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Would you spend anything or.
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- A little bit, I think
we spent like 350 bucks.
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- [Paul] Okay.
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- Cause it was like $15 a day on Yelp,
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which equated to about
three to 450 a month.
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And that was pushing it.
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Like we didn't have the money for that,
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but we did it anyway.
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- So Google, Yelp, not much.
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I don't hear much Facebook or Instagram.
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- They're not buying--
- For service industry.
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- Yeah, you don't need them.
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And we just never, we never
needed them to a point,
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but okay, let's do this too.
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We're just so busy with Yelp and Google.
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And Google's even new,
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we use Yelp for the first year and a half.
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We really just need Yelp.
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- Yeah, just figuring out which platforms
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are gonna give you the
best return on your money.
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(upbeat music)
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Let's talk about your daily,
weekly, monthly expenses.
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What does that look like?
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I mean, how much are you standing?
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- The only expense we have in our business
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is our lease and marketing.
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- That's it?
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- The only overhead we
have is our cleaners
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but it's a direct profit margin
on each job they do anyway.
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The only overhead we
have again is a lease,
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any marketing we do and then
my admin staff in office.
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- So what are you at monthly then with,
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what do you do have a couple
of grand, 10,000, 20,000.
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- I think like for Spruse
cleaning expenses in general,
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6,000 a month.
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- Okay, can you break that down to us?
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Yeah, I would probably say.
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- What's the biggest expense?
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- Actually, you know what?
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I take that back.
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It would be about eight or
9,000 because our admins
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takes up a lot of that.
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- Okay.
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- And then about two to
3000 Google and Yelp ads.
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That's about it.
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(upbeat music)
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- What's a good day for Spruse Cleaning
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as far as dollar wise.
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Is that something you can share with us?
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- Sure, a good day would be,
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we've done 12 to 17,000 in one day.
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That's a motivator, I'm gonna
have a drink after that.
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But we're pretty steady every day now.
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Even I hate to say,
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we're doing better than
we ever had during COVID.
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So we're just seeing a projection
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after this to be even greater.
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(upbeat music)
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- So you're spending two
grand on marketing now.
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I'm curious if you increase
that number to $10,000,
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what would that do to your business?
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(chuckles)
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- Probably 800 clients
a week easily, yeah.
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- A chaotic week.
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- We would never be ready for that.
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It's crazy how the dollar
value per lead actually works.
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It just gets your business
in so many more people's eyes
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that if we go almost
four times our budget,
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it would be four times
the business easily.
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I would probably say over
a thousand bookings a week.
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- Wow.
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- We just don't have the
manpower unfortunately.
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As much as I'd love to be like.
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- But that's awesome
cause you have that lever
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that you can sort of.
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- And that's exactly what
it's a faucet, right?
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Turn on and off whenever we need it.
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So if we have a slow month, on.
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If we don't, off. It's that easy.
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(upbeat music)
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- Okay if I gave you a hundred bucks today
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where our viewers who wanna
start a cleaning business
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I gave, we gave them a hundred bucks.
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How would you recommend they
use that a hundred dollars?
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- Well, you're not gonna live by a vacuum
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for a hundred bucks unfortunately.
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- So let's up the budget a little bit.
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- Let's do 200, you have $200.
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I would definitely get
a vacuum sharp brand
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first and tile I need surface.
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Microfiber towels, don't use paper towels
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and go eco-friendly.
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A lot of products,
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people are super, super like
conscious of eco-friendly
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products nowadays that if
you use harsh chemicals,
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when they may be allergic or two they just
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don't want that in their home anymore.
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So keep it that eco-friendly,
environmental friendly
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and you'll be good to go.
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- I hope you guys enjoyed
this first episode
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of us interviewing Austin Miller.
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What an incredible journey.
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I hope you guys enjoyed it
and took away a lot of things.
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Make sure you check out episode two.
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The link is in the description below.
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Or just hit the thumbnail here.
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And please, if you haven't
already subscribed,
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hit that subscribe button, like this video
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