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#87 - College Student Earns $20,000 a Month Cleaning Houses

2017-03-28

After recognizing some major issues within the cleaning industry, a D.C. student sets out to start a customer service driven cleaning company that fills the void that other cleaning agencies leave behind.

Side Hustle School features a new story EVERY DAY of someone who started a hustle without quitting their job. You’ll learn how they got the idea, how they overcame challenges along the way, and what the results are. You need a hustle!

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Twitter: @chrisguillebeau

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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Maybe meetings and welcome. You are listening to satisfy school. My name is critical about. I have a pretty awesome story for you today mean yes, pretty cool about the guy. You made a million dollars selling dry wash, but I really think you gonna like today's as well, and not just me with a reminder that every story featured on the show is true got a complaint with some of the other day. We set our story, sound fake, they sound manufactured, but that is not the case at all. These people are real. Their stories are true. You can go and let them up yourself. Ninety five percent, have websites or social media accounts. So I know that most of you know that, but just to be clear in case you meet someone who is sceptical, you can say yes, in fact it is legit, and I proposed today story with that statement, because I mean to tell you about a car
who makes twenty thousand dollars a month with a very common business, something that doesn't sound exciting at all. He didn't make an app he's, not selling his website to Facebook he's managing a cleaning service when he's also able to take off and go to Japan and not stress out about this business, that's making so much money for him back at home. So I'll be right back with this. Pretty awesome, true story. In just a moment. Today, story comes from Christopher Swap inside us off, which is turning it. Its main gag in a very short period of time is called think: maids, a local residential cleaning service, atomic area of Washington, Dc Maryland and Northern Virginia Christopher started. Think maids very recently was just July twenty. Sixteen during his last semester of college, even as a college student, he saw huge demand for transparent, high quality.
Services, every city like DC, has a ton of cleaning companies, but many are unreliable or they have hidden costs. Christopher believed he could fix many that complaints, people had about cleaning companies and he also thought the cleaning industry was a safe option for a hustle, because there is no shortage of people who need their homes cleaned. So he thought it was just a matter of being able to reach out to them effectively with the right message. Christopher spent a lot of time researching the competition and mapping out how he deal with a common problems are the industry who really want to understand why cleaning services are often proceed is unreliable so that he could truly presented countermeasures, a benefit related directly to the problem that allowed people are having not research from the most important things he did. But after that he made a website with instant online booking. He then added his business profile to yell. And other leading online sites, where customers actively look for cleaning services, nor is there a lot of other cleaning services had websites that were greatly outdated and they didn't accept any kind of online booking. So he addressed that right from the beginning and while he was doing
He also working to find reliable quality cleaning teams. He pushed recruitment ads on Craigslist and carried out come said interviews and even had applicants clean his apartment to see how skilled they were, he paid them for that cleaning regardless whether they were hired after that or not, and he learned lesson by doing this, you said earlier, there are a couple of me: who said there are experienced in so actually didn't go through the interview process. I didn't have them coming clean. My house, and surprisingly, none of those people worked out. The people who became the most reliable cleaners actually had no experience, and so he learned to look for people who are prompt attention to detail and our friendly instead of people who had worked as cleaners before. So we talked about a couple of problems with the industry: reliability, the hassle involved with booking all those clear that don't have your websites and just kind of a perceived lack of honesty or integrity. With the process.
So another thing he did and starting up his made service to counter this concern of reliability is Christopher is great at communication. He sends reminder emails to clients three days before one day before and then on the day of their clean. They also get text messages when the cleaners on their way they get an immediate feedback survey after the cleaner leave their home and instead of saying here's how you have to contact us, he tries to be available for contact by phone email untaxed and get this with the goal of responding within three to five minutes. But that was pretty awesome after each booking Chris what follow up sending out a discount for their friends and family and then the next day they'll get a phone call just confirming everything went well and asking them if they want to sign up for a regular service right now here
ten people who clean for him on a regular basis and to assistants who help with that booking scheduling, immediate responses to people when they email are taxed in general administration. If there's ever any problem, one of those assistance will call our tax the customer as soon as they find out about it and work to make it right for them. Sometimes even that same day in just a few months in this crowded can a boring industry, Christopher Think, Its hustle had more than foreigner. Customers, as I said, is earning twenty thousand dollars a month. A big part of that is focusing on recurring cleaning services, which accounts for about six thousand to seven thousand dollars a month, He also focuses on move, moving or move out cleans the last week of each month where their weekly income is typically twice that of the other weeks. He make sure to have extra availability during that time, because other made services tend to get booked up most of its customers. Company referral, but after setting up his profile on Yelp, he's also found customers through Google Adwords and about a dozen small platforms, including next door, which is a social network where you can communicate with your immediate neighbours to talk
I shared issues and offer refer us like the clang service. He's also worked hard on automating and delegating wherever he can. He recently took a ten day trip to Japan, He was admittedly a little worried, but ass, he put it. His business didn't burned. While he was away. His goal is to grow, think maids from twenty thousand dollars to fifty thousand dollars a month, while still only working half the day, but You do with the rest of his time. Well, he'll do whatever you want, but is also putting thought into a second side hustle, which will complement this one. Pretty amazing, but it is an optional story, of course, the kind of speaks for itself. I do think that it is amazing that extremely common industry has such bad practices
just by doing a decent job and being hyper reliable. You can essentially disrupted and capture so much market share in a major city like Washington DC, so good for him, maybe he'll franchise at some point, and my favorite part is his three to five minute response time. I think that his genius and remember he's not necessarily on call himself twenty four hours a day he's just set up the structure of the business to wear at any. Given time there is someone who is able to respond to these really chosen to focus on that customer service, and this is not hard to do if you prioritize it and if you can build it and from the beginning, a cleaning service leisure dies by customer service, so doing something like that: has a ton of value for customers and for potential customers acacia. What else can you take away this helpful when you can learn to think like Christopher and make your list of all the businesses and industries?
I kind of suck or just not awesome and understand that you're not going to fix every one of those things. But someone needs to and someone going to have, a story of fixing that problem and hopefully making all the money from it. So why should it be you?
I hope that every day he wasn't really stories you feel excited by the possibilities. You know that creating a side are so important and hopefully also go away with some better idea of how to proceed. Christopher took action on this idea and I hope you do to three more about historic, because it is in fact true. You can check out the show, no expert, today's episode, accidental school dot, com, slash. Eighty seven, you are a rock star uncritical about and I'll see you tomorrow.
Transcript generated on 2020-08-07.