Frugal Side Hustle: Cleaning Business with Ken Carfagno

Published Mar 17, 2023, 7:00 AM

Starting a cleaning business is inexpensive that's why it’s one of the fastest-growing industries since the pandemic struck us. We often don’t hear about cleaning businesses as much as the popular side hustles that are digital, but for those who are drawn into hands-on side hustles, this one’s for you! Listen as we talk and deep dive into setting up your own cleaning business as a side hustle with Ken Carfagno. 

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Episode two ninety three, Frugal Side Hustle Cleaning Business with Ken Carfagno. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, rice and liver rig your life. Here are your host Jen and Jill. Mmmmm, Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are talking about another frugal side hustle in our Frugal Side Hustle series. These are side hustles that are where Jill likes to say the juice is worth the squeeze and not expensive to get started. And I don't think cleaning businesses are talked about enough. I am really fascinated by them, and so I'm super glad to have my friend Ken come on, who is an expert on it and really dive deep. This is such an interesting one that I particularly love. I can't say all the reasons why, I probably don't even know, but I feel as though a lot of times when we talk about side hustles or starting a business, so much of it is digital, and I think I'm really drawn to this very hands on labor as a service, being engaged with other people and in their homes, and this one really makes sense to me, and I think it will be really excellent for others who are similar to me, who are like I don't want to create websites for other people. I just want to go in and clean. I want to be able to see a start product and an end product and a before and after, and I want to work with my hands and the ability to make really decent money as well. Hear from Ken is exciting, So I'm really excited to present this to others. And really it's for myself, that's why we do interviews. Yes, but first, this episode is brought to you by the Three Day Spending Makeover. If you are tired of busting your budget every month but don't want to live under a rock while getting your finances together, the three Day Spending Makeover is for you. By the end of this free three day challenge, you will find what you value spending on, learn strategies for saying no to the things you don't, and create a plan for guilt free spending that won't leave you broke. So if that sounds like everything to you right now, head to Frugal Friends podcast dot com Slash Makeover to start the challenge today free. I love that. What I also love is situations that don't leave me broke. So absolutely, I'm here for it. Absolutely. And if spending is not your issue, maybe it's earning money. That's why we do the Frugal Side Hustle series. Well, we think everyone could be better at being intentional with their spending all the time. Sometimes you can't cut anymore, you gotta work on earning more. And so if this is you, and maybe you listen to this episode and you're like, I don't think cleaning is for me. We have several other episodes. So we've got two fifty seven, which is freelance writing with Miranda Marquet. Freelance writing is how I was able to leave nine to five workforce and earn money at home, and then episode two forty two creating and selling digital products with Ledap. That one is a really good one, and we've got this one's a great hands on one. We do have a few more digital ones in the works, oh my gosh, the one we did on Salesforce with Brad Rice. There are several of them and we've got more to come. So we're not going to leave you high and dry on the side hustle front and we're gonna we're gonna show you how to do it frugally. So, without further ado, our friend Ken Carfagno is the host of the Smart Cleaning School podcast and he's really passionate about helping people start cleaning businesses and helping those people grow in their business mindset because it's it can be easier to start a business and then it can be to maintain and grow it, and so that's where his passion really lies. So he has a podcast with like over two hundred episodes and the first one hundred and fifty of those were literally just step by step walking people through the starting and growing of a cleaning business. And so he and his wife, Teresa have five kids, so they know what busy looks like, they know what to prioritize. And I'm just really excited for you to meet Ken and hear about his philosophy and strategies for starting a cleaning business. Let's do it. Ken, Welcome to the show. We are super excited to get into this topic that we don't hear about a lot, but really is a very cool frugal side hustle and I'm very intrigued because I have friends who just launched their own cleaning business. Shout out to the Rigleys and Rizzos, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts in the behind the scenes. And I hope they'll listen to this. They're great friends. Who knows, Maybe they will, maybe they won't. I'm here and I'm excited to learn more and maybe I'll start my own business. They're in Pennsylvania, why not why not start one in Florida too. That's wrong that I'm a Pennsylvania Yeah, awesome, Ken, Well, thanks so much for being here. We are curious you're here to talk to us about the side hustle that you're an expert at and what you've done with the businesses and the way that you're training others. Can you just jump right in tell us what does it look like to start a cleaning business? What a time commitments, logistics, duties, all the ins and outs. Yeah? Absolutely. First of all, thank you so much Jen and Jill for having me on the podcast. You guys have had extreme success in this medium. I'm also a podcaster, so you guys are like big sisters in a sense to what I'm when I'm putting together. So thank you for having me on the show. It's an honor, and this is a this is a great segment. I mean, I remember, Jen, when you and I were at a retreat business retreat seeing Augustine last year. I kind of pitched this to you, like, hey, I have an idea for your show. It's awesome. I'm so glad we're able to pull this off. So to dive into your question, this is an awesome side hustle, I would say, like when I teach people in a course format or in a group, this is what I've personally done twice. I used to be a mechanical engineer, so I'm very analytical with things. But I've also spent time in MLM. Prior to starting a cleaning company. My wife, actually my wife started the company, and that I always say, well, my wife started a cleaning company. Teresa, give her the shout out. It's everywhere, It's on my Interrow podcast. So what I had before I started was some good analytics on how to process. I had some decent business. I came in. I had to learn people skills. I read a lot of books. These are all important things. Don't just jump into any side hustle with an employee's mindset. I don't recommend that you really want to learn and grow and develop your mind to become the type of person that can grow a cleaning business or any kind of a business. But it's a really great side hustle. The numbers. This is one of the one of the fastest growing industries where there's over fifty thousand people joining or starting a cleaning company right now. Every year that number has exploded since COVID. I mean we used to I used to it was tracking statistics. Maybe it was twenty thirty thousand per year, and then COVID it shot up to fifty sixty thousand, and I don't I don't expect that to drop when you have been big names like Mark Cuban during the pandemic talking about cleaning. I mean, that is a cool thing because we've always been a behind the scenes industry, like nurses, like the people that are out there doing the things every day for people, and they don't get any credit, they don't get into limelight. And cleaning suddenly became very important to people a couple of years ago, so a lot of people are coming in. It's a great industry It's got a tremendous upside for years to come. It is definitely one of the most inexpensive and more most frugal ways to enter your own business. For under a thousand bucks, you can have the basic supplies you need to get started in a cleaning cleaning business as a side hustle, and the income potential is over a thousand dollars a week part time. I personally in our first cleaning company. It took me a while because I had to figure out how to do it. But I was interviewed on John Ley Doomass show for this by four or five years ago. At that point, I was in the process of going from a five to six day a week cleaning job. I'm making about fifty sixty thousand a year part full time at that point, and I'm just working hard. I'm beating on my body. And we transformed that business through mindset and increasing price, decreasing how long it took to clean houses and buildings, and we went from five days to two days on the same income. So that became a part time business, and I had five day weekends with my family. We have five kids. I just I just wanted time, and so that was an amazing season for us, and then we sold that company from almost six figures, which was an upstate New York. I started teaching people that you could start a cleaning business that were new to the industry, that were already a part of the industry, that were struggling solo cleaners, which there's a lot of them out there. They don't have great mindset, They needed mindset, and the podcast started. I want to teach them proper business mindset so you can grow and optimize like I had done. And then we started a new solo cleaning business in Pennsylvania and two late eighteen early nineteen, and in eighteen months we went from the Century zero to a seventy thousand dollars part time profit working two days a week. And that is the first one hundred and fifty episodes of the podcast. It was an accountability tool. Ken says he can do it, Watch Ken do it. And that was the first hundred and fifty episodes where I shared week and week out the actual tactics, trick strategies I was using. So I really believe it's an incredible opportunity side hustle and the upside long term you could grow a company beyond working by yourself, Jill Jen, you can build. I've friends that are doing two million, three million, eight million, fifteen million, fifty million dollars in revenue making, have tremendous levels of freedom. And it starts with just saying yes to this, and I can clean one person's house, so I can clean one person's building. It just starts with that, the basic knowledge, and you can grow it to whatever level you choose. So essentially, we're asking you to summarize one hundred and fifty episodes into this interview. I love that experiment though, that you're doing in front of the people who are following you and listening to you. Of you're not quite sure, but you're pretty certain that you're going to be able to make this happen based off of what you've experienced prior to and I really appreciate you throwing out some of the real numbers here. I think sometimes that's our biggest question when it comes to a side hustle. Is the juice going to be worth the squeeze? How much of a time commitment is this going to be? How much do I have to invest off the bat much can I expect in return? And it sounds like there's a growth that happens, like someone's not just going to dive in and be making a thousand dollars a week. There's a working up to that. But I appreciate how you've described some of the ways that you've been able to trim that and see increased revenue for decreased amount of time. I don't know if there's anything that you can say about that, how you got there, how you can get to the point of shortening the cleans figuring out how to maximize your time well, I mean the skill set. It seems as though this is one of those things that anyone can kind of jump into. There could be a bit of a learning curve, but hopefully we all have a general understanding of how to clean. But then it sounds like there was probably some tips and tricks along the way to actually make this profitable and worthwhile for people. Here's a great example of that last point you made. So we are currently scaling a cleaning company after doing it solo for so many years. Last year, some change and the profile of someone that we're hiring. So our team now has seventeam members and we're going to hire our first manager very soon, and that's allowed us to go from working two three two days a week and having long weekends. We were able to go to Florida, not far from jen for the month of February, and we're going back this February, so we can take a whole month off and have the business still run. That's excellent. So the profile of person that we hire, we have a very very stringent process. We look for professionals. We have a very particular business model, but we look for professionals, and I don't want someone that has cleaning experience. So the secret So anyway, I guess that someone's in my area and they happen here this podcast, they just learned Ken's secret to how to kind of get a job with Carpagner Commercial Cleaning and Philadelphia area. Yeah, you didn't hear it here. But if I see, oh I've got all this cleaning experience, I'm like, don't want you. I actually want someone that has integrity, character, They're professional. They understood like our core values is our ownership, excellence and safety. I want people that take ownership. I don't want to babysit people and professionals usually get that. They also understand that like we do commercial cleaning now, so they're going into buildings that have proprietary confidential information. I sign non disclosures with the that with the customers that we're not going to look at their stuff. We're just going to clean, We're not going to touch. So we need someone we can trust. So if you have good character and you're willing to learn, and you're willing to grow your mind to become the type of person like I think that's what you're kind of asking is who can do this? And I'm saying this is a if you want to clean houses during the day. If you're a mom, you want to clean houses during the day for extra money, this is for you. If you're a dad, you need some extra money nights and weekends after your full time job, this is for you. If you're a college student or a millennial, like people were hiring, they need to be like late twenties, early thirties, just starting their families. They have a professional job, like we've accountant engineers, people that work full time professional jobs applying in the droves for a part time cleaning job because they need extra money. Because what you're doing is important. People are struggling out there big time with the rising costs of everything. So you're helping them save money, and so I'm helping them make some extra money. So anyone can learn how I know for certain. I've done it for many years. I can teach anyone how to clean. It's not that hard. But it's hard to teach someone to unlearn what they've already learned if they have, if they have a lot of experience. That's so interesting. You're just reminding me that when I was in college, I did clean some people's homes. It started out as a babysitting job, and then I didn't really ever like to sit still, so I would clean, I would tie ity, I would do the dishes, and they loved that, and suddenly I then was getting hired on Saturdays to come back and do a full clean of their homes. And they paid me more, every single one of them, to clean their house than to watch their children. I don't know what that says about people and their values or the skill set that they think it requires. I don't know, but I'm like, why would I come and maybe see your kid now? I'd rather just like throw in some headphones and wipe down some counters. This is great, but think of it like this. I we had a customer in our first business, Alicia. I share the second episode of our podcasts way back in nineteen called It's called Moms Helping Moms Helping Moms, and it was an interesting dynamic of there's moms out there that need cleaners. Okay, there's there's moms that are needing to make extra money, and that's a perfect like niche. I was starting to teach people, not Niche. I've expanded since then and the third mom or the moms that are already doing solo cleaning at that point, cleaning at different levels, and they're helping the newer moms learn how to clean, to help the moms out there in the homes. And when I learned from Alicia because I would always actively here's a tip, okay, tip from cant I'm cleaning right, it's not how to clean. I'm always listening and I'm pointing to my ears for those that here in the audio version. I'm always listening, ear to the ground of what my customers are telling me. I'm always asking questions. I'm being curious and Alicia shared a story and I asked, I said, I've been cleaning your house. This is early on cleaning your house for a couple of years. You know what value is this to you? She's like, oh my gosh, you've no idea. Ken. I'm like, okay, please share. My husband. My husband and I are very busy. We have full time jobs. We have three kids, and we're taking them everywhere. They're the soccer mom, back and forth everywhere, and they want to have their house clean. And so what they were doing is they were busy all week. Finally, the day that they have to themselves on Sunday afternoon, they go to church, they come back and they spent the whole afternoon on Sunday cleaning their house. It took them, because they're not trained professionals, it took them like six hours to clean their house every Sunday. They said, we hire you. You're in and out in two two and a half hours, and it looks better than we could do, and we pay you. We pay nothing for that, like maybe it's one hundred and fifty dollars every two weeks. I would clean and they get the peace of mind of knowing that the house is cleaned. After I leave for two weeks, it's in better shape. Than they could do, and it didn't cost them a lot that you know, the opportunity costs essentially of them having to do it was greater and they got their Sundays back. And so that's how I can do and that at the time, there's there's value to that. There's absolutely valued to that, both monetary and otherwise. Yeah, so Ken, that kind of leads me into my question, what are the different types of cleaning bitnesses? Because you've touched on it so far. You've got your commercial, your residential, like, so tell us about the types of cleaning business and who, like who's best for each. Okay, there's there's a broader industry of cleaning where you're gonna have a home and office, which is residential commercial. Then you have carpet cleaning, floor refinishing like you know the tiles and the grocery stores. There's people that go out with these big machines and they do floor resurfacing. There's carpet cleaning, upholstry cleaning, window cleaning. There's a lot. It's bigger than you think, but I know I'm speaking to a general audience, so I'm just gonna shrink it down into the realm. Of we're going to go inside and clean houses or offices, and we're not. I'm not going to go much into like carpet upholstery, floor cleaning, steam cleaning windows, just like actually bathrooms, kitchens, like the dusting, the main components of a cleaning service. So here's what I would divide the two categories. One time recurring. Those are the two things you want to consider. I am all in on recurring. I am not going I'm going to be very biased because when I want to want to teach someone how to start a cleaning company, how to grow one successfully, I really like predictable income. I like to get a new office contract that I'm going to keep for five or ten years and it's month in, month out month. I like that versus like a carpet cleaning job of a window cleaning job. Or I'll share you something that are in than the cleaning space that are one time. That also it's like, well, what's my next job. I remember early on that I didn't have recurring set up, and I was trying to hire and everything, and it'd be Friday, so ken where we work on Monday. I have no idea. I don't know, but I'll get I'll get a call over the weekend and I'll know where we're going Monday. Like, that's how bad it was, and it was stressful. It was eating me up. I don't like that kind of life. I don't recommend it for somebody. Recurring is better. So in general, you make more profit on one time, but you make more long term stability on their curring. So I'll put I'll put them in those two buckets. All right, it makes sense. Good, So we'll do one time first. I guess I'll include the other ones. Like window cleaning is obviously a one time service, although you can set it up. There's window cleaners that can sometimes get they get contracts for office buildings. They can go in once a month, sometimes once a week, so that can be recurring, can be twice a year. On carpet cleaning, you can get contracts that's like twice a year, but typically those are one time things. And then you have someone needs to have their house deep cleaned for a spring spring cleaning. That's called a deep cleaning. That's a one time thing. Someone's moving you you're helping a realtor to do a move out cleaning or actually move in cleaning and move out cleaning someone that bought the process of buying and selling a house. Right, so someone's getting a house ready, Hey, help us get the house look amazing for the sale. I call that a sale red cleaning. Then that couple sells the house and moves out, that's a move out cleaning. It's totally empty and you clean that to a level ten detail because you wanted amazing for the next people moving in and to move in and then to move out as the people backwards people moving out have it, have it barely cleaned enough to satisfy the contract at the real estate deal people move in. Those are all one time things. Post construction cleaning. So new houses are being built and you've got contractor cigarette butts and all kinds of sandpaper and stuff the building supplies that are stuck in the you have to pull up the vents and stuff. You're like, ooh, look at that all that stuff down there, and you have construction dust, the white powder everywhere. You rub the wall and it's like an inch thick. That's post construction. Great money, Jenna, and I know nothing about the type of dust and you're talking about Okay, I flipped flip the script as the interviewer. Now, so tell me the story. I want to hear this one. I'll finish mine. We'll do that post show. But our listeners know that we both Jen and I are in the midst of our own renovations. D I y ing it though so not as many constructions. We are our own cleaners for that. See okay, so you so you understand that's post construction cleaning. That's another one. People love those airbnbs. This is like the big thing I want to do Airbnb cleaning. I'm like, no, thank you, vacation rentals. Airbnb's like, you can't keep me far enough away. But people love those. That's fine. Are they recurring? They can be, for sure because people depending out how if it's short term a long term. I don't like it because you have very little time. It's like, hey, here you go, Ken, you can clean it between one and three on Saturday, thanks so much. I prefer to have its scheduled. I'm at the house every other Thursday for the next five years. So those are the one time buckets, and there's others, but those are some general ones. And I think there's a follow about who would do certain ones. But the recurring ones. The two main are you can clean houses, you can clean offices, commercial cleaning, residential cleaning. Yeah. I mean I think that you've described well the pros and cons of each one, and I think depending on who we are in our own personalities, personhood schedules, we can kind of know based on the pros and cons, what doesn't sound like a big deal and what is a really big deal. Certainly if you want flexibility, Yeah, that Airbnb gig is going to be a difficult one. It is. What this is just a really side question, But do you ever get any concerns about well, you've said one of your core values or I don't know how you described it, but is safety and going into people's homes. I could see that being one of the most draw for people, the reoccurring I'm going into these homes every other Thursday. But yet you're going into people's homes. It's a really intimate experience to be invited into someone's home. How have you navigated that? Like for someone who's thinking about this and that might be a barrier, what do you have to say to that? That was particularly difficult for me in the beginning, So I started cleaning homes on a regular basis in two thousand and six, so we've been in this bit. We've been in the cleaning industry. I left engineering, like I got fired of engineering in two thousand and five, and then two thousand mid thousand and five we started the cleaning business. My wife started. As I said earlier, then, yeah, we were doing apartment cleaning. That's another thing to apartment cleaning. Apartment turnovers. Those are also non recurring. They're just whenever they hey, five units need to be done by the end of the month. So when I was starting out, I had a particular disadvantage because I'm a man cleaning houses. I did that for fifteen years. I do office cleaning now. But in the world of house cleaning, it's dominated by women. I mean I dealt with women ninety percent of time, as far as the customer, sometimes the husband, but usually the wife, the mom, the women, and then the women are cleaning, and so it's heavily dominated by women. And so me as a man cleaning a house, that was a particular challenge for me coming into someone's home, dealing with a wife that has kids, Like how do I build trust? That was a particular challenge so if I can do this, then any mom out there should feel a way more comfortable. So there's the piece of trust and comfort, and then like do I feel safe in this post? Like you know COVID world. There's a two part question. I'll answer the first one. So going into someone's house, if you're a trust if you're a person that's trustworthy, you won't have any problem. It's an honor to for someone to let you in the door, as long as you carry yourself with trust and you do things that you would do, like I would say, treat someone's home better than you would even your own home, Like, treat it like it's your work location. You're not going there to open the refrigerator and get a ham sandwich. You're not you're not there to. I mean, I mean the bathrooms they're not quote unquote public restrooms. I mean, you're not there to. I mean, obviously they're there if you need to and you clean them, you know, but you have judge shower there while I'm yeah, don't get it, don't get in the shower. Yeah, it just just think of it like you're going to going to it. There's some crazy things that have happened, but there's some crazy Oh my goodness. So just treat it like it's your workplace. It's someone else's home, but it's your workplace. Think of it like if you're going to the office, what stuff do you do? What's considered okay? Think like that. Be a mature human and treat treat other people stuff with respect. Obviously, you know integrity. Never to never take anyone stuff. Don't put stuff away. They might leave rings out and jewelry out, or twenty dollar bills out. Sometimes those are tests or they just forget. Just be someone that builds trust and earn the chuck. It really sounds like you're highlighting, though, can the vulnerability on the owner of the house or the rental of the house who's inviting you in to clean the home, and so that can take a level of concern away to be able to enter into people's homes. The majority of the risk is on their part, not necessarily yours coming in with your cleaning supplies. So that's helpful. But I know you wanted to mention the safety aspect related to just sickness and COVID in this post COVID World. Yeah, absolutely, one little extra to last piece to what you just said a huge trust builder, and it's what separates one of the biggest separators of the amateurs to the professionals that are cleaning. And I don't promote anyone. Just start and stay an amateur, meaning you need to become a legit business. I get a business entity set up, it can be a DBAI and I have a whole document how a new cleaner can start it up. It's a quick star guide. But like, get legit as a business person. Okay, there's bank accounts, there's a a N there's a DBA. There's an insurance policy two million dollar general liability insurance, and potentially get a crime bond. Are you afraid that you're going to steal something from them? No? But if they know you have bonding, what does that mean? I'm bonded and insured. Bonded means that the customer knows if something was ever stolen, you have insurance against that. You really don't need it here do you have employees, but it's just something that makes them feel warm and fuzzy. And the same thing with insurance policy is this is a huge because if a homeowner brings someone into their house to clean, that doesn't have insurance. If not if, but when something happens, because it will. Something breaks, that's the smallest thing that can happen a liability claim right, well, homeowner stock paying that. Or what a force case scenario the cleaner leaves some fluids, some cleaning solution or some water on the floor and someone slips, falls down the stairs, breaks a bunch of bones and then the rehab for two months and it's a quarter million dollar bill. Okay if the cleaner's fault, but the cleaner's not going to pay for that. They can try to take them to claims, but I mean it's gonna be on the homeowner. So they're putting a lot of risk. So when they know they're hiring a professional service, even if it's a solo person, they know they're bringing someone in that's a business person that understands what they're doing and they're protected. There's not just the character of the person or the company, but it's what that person a way that they're showing characters that's saying they're also saying, hey, we've also invested in this as a real business. Okay, we're set up. It's not the second part to this is, yeah, COVID happened, and things used to be ali ali oxyten free. We just show up people's houses and we clean. We use the same stuff and well house one house to house, and it's just there's a lot more to think about now. Cross contamination. Not people have always thought about it, but it's just way right there and find you. And it's even receipted quite a bit since COVID. But there's definitely a settling point. I would say in the worlds of house and office cleaning, there's different perspectives, maybe a little bit more intense in a house cleaning situation because it's someone's personal space versus the office, right, And so because of that, every cleaning company instituted like some kind of a safety protocol. Okay, we're gonna put little slips around our sneakers, a little disposable you know, fabric pieces or a little rubber peat you put right in your shoes to minimize the cross contamination. Or we would do like special indoor shoes. I would carry them in my cleaning bag and I would spray the bottoms of them with rubbing alcohol. It's a very good disinfectant. Clean that off, and now I had a clean surface of a bottom of a shoe. That's the number one that's the number one place that cantamment entered virus bacteria is tracked actually from your feet if you're walking all over plates, you go on lows or home. Do you apell on a wal Mart? You know it's on those floors over there. Don't look at a microscope. But then you bring that in someone's house. So protecting the bottom of your shoes. Masks were definitely a thing. I don't personally use them now unless someone asks or requires them. And also, okay, that's that's fine, but companies are still using those gloves. Protecting yourself is a big thing. So nitrial or latex gloves while you're cleaning is a good one. They're disposable. So and then the cleaning supplies. In commercial cleaning, I actually have a dedicated set of cleaning supplies for every building we clean, and so an employee can go to work, show up and there's the stuff there and there's no cross contamination. We have different sponges for different rooms, separate color cloths, everything set up so that you can minimize that kind of thing. And it's it's definitely and there's a lot of optics there it's almost impossible to eliminate cross contamination, but the optics of it is building trust that you're at least trying and you're doing a good job. And then those are the main things, like you use your hands. And then during COVID for sure the masks and some people were still required that today. And then just having a knowledge, like a basic knowledge of how to actually clean, how to disinfect. In twenty twenty ate rate in aprils, things were getting really bad. I dug in because there was nowhere to clean, I mean, everywhere shut down. So I'm like, what should I do? I invested into learning the fine science and art of how to disinfect properly, and I came up with nine. I made this a podcasts became very popular in my area, which Hill apparently you know my area ball We discovered that, and I taught the chamber. I was on webinars. I was teaching the local pharmacy, like just helping people, like what do you do? I discovered nine mistakes people were making, disinfecting nine of them, and I laid them all out and did a whole talk on this, and ninety five plus percent of people were making one of these mistakes. Should I tell you the number one? Number one? One? Oh yeah, we at least want the number one. Yes, well, yeah, it's it's the number one. It's the number one mistake that people were just shocked about. It's not the one they're doing the most, but the mistake they're most shocked about. And this is part of the knowledge the science of cleaning. Understanding it. Okay, here it is. People think, disinfect I'll use bleach. That's fine. Bleach does work. But you know when you mix a bottle of bleach with water, that's only good for twenty four hours. I did not know that exactly. You would have failed my test either. You both would have failed my tailed Oh maybe, And I can't have that on my record. If you saw my house would be surprising. So that's that's the one that got people. And when you buy a one gallon jug of bleach, it's it only lasts for one year. Shelf life is one year. You see, there's something called a half life. Half life is on the you know. Half life is okay, it's the amount of time it takes to degrade a substance. Bleach bleach water dilution mix has a fast, very fast the twenty four hours, it's it's still it'll still take things and make them white after twenty four hours. But you have to dig into the Clorox's web peach really deep to find the line like in the bottom of the commercials for pharmaceuticals you'll die and have like you'll you'll die right, Well, here's it deep in the clorox is. By the way, this only works for twenty four hours, so that's the big one. Wow. But but yeah, that covers. Those are the main things. It's like like your personal protection masks, hands, feet, and then your actual knowledge of science of cleaning so that you can you can identify a type of pathogen and know what actually cleans it. How to do it? Do you do? You know that you have to clean a surface before you can disinfect a surface, and then you clean it again. Yeah, most people just oh, I got this spray, I'm gonna put it on there. I'm good, or you know, I'm gonna you know, all the people that get you know, for those the hand sanitizer stuff, I'm just gonna pour h Well, you still dirt in your hands, you poor hand sanitizer. It doesn't do that much. Post and get the dirt off, then sanitize, and then rinse. Don't tell my toddler that because sometimes all I can do is get the alcohol on his hands. The well, don't let him listen to this podcast. Then I never do. If you're safe, then So so those are those are some tips. It really does come down to personal protection and your knowledge and then how trustworthy you are, how much of a professionally you are, and are you willing to continue to grow because we don't. I don't know everything. I never will, but I'm always learning. I have to stay in the learning mode, and that's how I can be a better help and service to those around me. Yeah, that's great. So let's talk about like some brass tacks, nuts and bolts. How can somebody who wants to start this side hustle get started. Like I'm assuming we don't need to hire a cleaning team right off the bat, but like if maybe that's our goal, if maybe we do want to scale, how do we just get started just off the bat? All right? First, go get yourself some insurance, get yourself set up as a DBA, and get a bank account. Get the basic things to become a legit business. That is the first thing, and then from there you can go get some basic supplies. I don't think you don't have to go to the level of like a janitorial supply company and spending thousands of dollars. But you will need a vacuum cleaner, you will need some spray bottles and some chemicals, and you don't have to do a ton of research. You can literally take the things that you have under your kitchen sink, put them in a kind of a tope to make them look professional, clean them off, grab your own personal vacuum cleaner if you need to, and then go clean someone's house. I always recommend that you start with someone that you know and just say, hey, can I just I'm practicing, I want to get going in this. Can I just clean your house? Let me get practice? Who's gonna say no to that? Here? And then all all I ask for in return is when I'm done, would you would you be willing to give me a review on my Google page? Set up a Google page, set up a Facebook page, Get some basic like, hey, I have a cleaning business. I mentioned the insurance already, right, it costs about it's different across the nation. But let's say five hundred bucks to eight hundred dollars per year to get a two million dollars policy for general liability, all in on equipment, especially if you're using your in stuff five hundred dollars. If you spend more than five hundred dollars and get started, I'll personally slap you over the head with a vac and cleaner. You don't need it, or with the hose attachment, you don't need to do that. Over time, you get better equipment, you become a professional. But you gotta get started. Don't don't overthink it. Right, well, how do I find my customer? Go clean for free? If you a friends houses, Join a local networking group, not okay, B and I people, okay, close your eyes, close your ears here, don't join B and I. Join somewhere. That is very loose requirements that you can just get to know some other business people. I'm not sure if you're familiar with a different type of networking groups and stuff for local businesses. But just find a group, join the chamber. These are things you can do over time. Start building your local network to see if of others in business want to grab breakfast, want to grab lunch? Go out find other cleaners locally, connect with them. Figure out who you want to serve. Do I want to be in houses? Do you want to be in offices? Do I want to do recurring? Don't want to do one time? What's my goals? Like? Think about all these things. Like a basic business plan is good to also have, Like you don't have to sit down and write a twenty page report it says in college. But something simple as well, I need to make some money? Well how much money? And I would this is something that I would put in on the podcast or in the course. I call it. I call it the peace factor and the piece factor. And this is for those that are really following budgets. I grew up on the Dave Ramsey experience, and we did the whole thing and all the you know, the baby steps, and we took us like eleven years to earn our debt freedom. It took us a long time. The peace factor is a metric I use breast tacks on how to measure your progress in let's say a solopreneur type of clean business. And as you're growing a little bit too, it's how much money do you need to hit your goal? If you have a full time job, but you need five hundred bucks more to hit whatever goals you have as a family. Five hundred dollars is your number. If you're looking to get out of your job and you're like, hey, I love this cleaning thing to be my full time thing. How much money do you need to run your household? We need forty five hundred dollars a month. Whatever that number is. I highly recommend going the recurring income route and when the prop when the predictable profit. For example, as a solo cleaner, you should expect at least seventy five percent of your revenue to keep profit. I've seen some go ninety percent. When someone says I'm a sixty percent, I'd be like, hey, you're not really doing that great. You're spending too much money. Seventy five percent eighty percent. So if you need to make forty five hundred or keep it keeping numbers easy. If you need to make four thousand to run your home, make it a goal for the profit of your cleaning business to be four thousand. That means you need revenue of at least five thousand per month. That's sixty k in revenue produces four thousand in profit. Per month. That's a piece factor of one hundred percent, meaning I'm making enough to make it. But when when your profit is less, Let's say that person they won five hundred bucks and they clean two houses and they're profiting to ninety or three hundred dollars a month, but they need five hundred third sixty percent piece factor. They're not quite there. They're feeling a little bit of strain that like not peace unrest. And on the other side of that, if they're making eight hundred a month profit and they need five hundred, that's one hundred and thirty percent piece factor, and they're like, this is awesome, we have extra money. There's a feeling of like empowerment. So that's a metric I use. So make something like that very simple as a goal. How much do you need? Okay, what's the how many customers do you need to make that? So if you're looking at the house cleaning world, I would say I put this on a basic blog and one of my most popular episodes is how to start a solo cleaning business. I go through all this. I have a quick start guide as well. You'll find a house cleaning the average house should earn you in revenue one twenty five to one fifty. If you're getting per clean every two weeks is a typic most people get. Most people hire bi weekly every other week in house cleaning, probably sixty percent just as a quick number, sixty percent higher every two weeks, twenty percent higher every four weeks, twenty percent higher every week, just just basic numbers. And one hundred and twenty five is a solid number. One fifties becoming more normal. Two hundred. I'm over two hundred easily when I was doing house cleaning because I'd earned my way up to higher prices. If you're charging under under a hundred dollars, to stop now, just just quit like or just don't don't quit, but change. You don't start under a hundred dollars, learn how to do in the whole house, that's yeah. If you're spending hours. I know when when I when I was doing house cleaning, and I would if someone call me, hey, can you come up for a nest of it? And I find out that their current house cleaner is charging under one hundred dollars, I could figure that out on the phone call. Then I knew that they were an amateur cleaner. Amateur cleaners don't have any expenses. They just they just clean like they just take their stuff. They have no insurance, they have no business and they make like nine percent of what they bring in so they can charge eighty bucks and they undercut the industry and they don't. Some of them do a good job. I'm not saying, hey, don't do it. I'm just saying it's not the way that you're going to want to build and sustain something long term with the potential to grow something for francial freedom in your life. I'll put it that way. You want to know what has grown so much freedom and is our piece factor? Just never all around the board. Never what the bill of the week. That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Duck Bill, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week the week, Yes, all right, Ken. Every week we invite our listeners or our guests to share with us their bill of the week, and we would love to hear yours. Now. I'm so glad you prepared me for this. My Bill of the week is actually a man named Bill. I want to give a shout out to a guy, a new friend of my name Bill, who just came on board our team, the C three team, as the seventh member, and thankfully he's the last member we needed to bring along so that we could go to Florida again in February. So he's going to be cleaning two of our buildings. And here's what's so cool since this is a financial of sorts podcasts, He's a full time accountant works for a major accounting firm, and he has all the right characteristics of someone that I wanted to bring on the team integrity, professionalism, ownership. He's in training right now. So the bill of the week I guess for this podcast is my new friend Bill. Bill shout out. I won't I won't share his last name, James, but I will say but I'm definitely excited to have Bill on the C three team, And thank you for being that last piece so that our family could enjoy a trip to Florida. The Bill who made Florida possible, Thank you. Hat is we are here for that beautible Bill? Is that a good bill of the week. So this is this is sure. My favorites are when we have people named Bill. We don't get them very often, but they are one of my personal favorites. And then a bill that makes Florida possible. Shout out to Bill. Thanks, the children your team are my favorite. Little Yeah, when you name your child after the bill of the week, I'm gonna I'm gonna weep. I'm going to weak. Ed might just need to do that herself. We've got a few money if I'm not willing to do it myself. So nobody has done yet, but I will weep eventually. Well, if you all listening, have a team and you just hired a bill and they're the last final piece to the puzzle that allows your family to go to Florida, I mean, call in. This is a great bill, or just any other bill like Jen said, you got a new baby you named it Bill. That's great too, or you know you paid off a bill, Classic Bill Stuff, Frugal Friends podcast dot com, slash Bill. Leave us your bill. We actually really do need them. You've heard us. We were at two episodes of week Friends. We need your bills. Call it in and now it's time for Bill. All right, it gets intense this last unraffles. There was there was no sound effects there. That was all their natural voices, by the way I watched it natural. Yeah, we don't pay for that. No synthesizers. Nope. All right, So this week's Lightning Round question, what's the worst thing you've ever had to clean up? Oh? Gosh, A dear carcass in a house or where? Context? A context. I was cleaning for a property management company to one time move. I was apartment turnovers and I was in with an employee. As soon as we got in and were like, what's the smell? That's like death m And we just cleaned. But we're so in the modal, like we gotta get going and get a good going, and I'm just cleaning and cleaning. I was like, oh, I was getting bad. We're like covering our covering our mouth and our nose and trying to clean. We get to the kitchen. I'm in the bathroom and I hear his name is Cole. He's like, oh, I'm like, oh, well, what is it. I run out to the kitchen and it's like the freeze that the freezer and fridge had some leftover dear Carcass me in there that the fridge and everything was unplugged probably three months ago. No, and so when the when you opened the freezer to clean it, it just dripped out. It was like it was like it was like red rum, red rum. It was. It was not good. So that was the bad. That was a pretty bad one. Will I will give a caveat your bill of the week. My version is the funny papers and I have done about one hundred plus funny stories of my own and I and I sourced them from other cleaning companies. So if you just want to hear like Dear Carcass and one hundred other if you want to tune into our podcast just to hear the funny stories, they're always in the beginning, so you can you can just listen to the funny stories just as some just as a little bit of humor. But there's some crazy ones. There's a reason for the side hustle just to like be in other people's homes and see how other people live and collect your own crazy stories. But with that recurring, you're not going to run into dear Carcass, deer carcass that's been left in no unplugged freezer for three months. Yeah, so that's another pro of going recurring. And so if you want to work and move in move out cleaning, the money's great, but just make sure you have a good mask and good gloves. Yeah, yeahs gloves. Okay, Okay, top that, Jill oh Man. I had opportunity to think on this, and I've engaged with a lot of really gross stuff. I'm trying to think, like what you know, You've got the poop and the vomit and the dead things, and I think I've engaged with all of it. But I think one of the grossest things to me is sludge when you when it really smells and you don't know what it is. And so my experiences with sludge, there's a variety of examples I can give. You know, snake in a drain is really gross. Yeah. We lived in an RV, so we were always really, really deeply connected with our waste. There was one time, this might be the grossest. I did a project in school of composting, but I apparently didn't learn enough through that project where you have to, you know, combine the wet and the dry, and it was just a bunch of wet that then I left in my locker for the whole rest of the year. Like this was early on first semester, and I didn't see it until the end. And it was the grossest smell mold go and juice and solids too still somehow, and that was probably one of the worst things I've ever smelled in my life. I'll go with that one. And I was responsible, Like no one was going to clean for me. I had to clean it. Now you did that, but now I know how to compost. Well, I learned learned the hard way. Don't do what I did. Put it in a plastic tupper where in your walker for the rest of the year. Oh okay, okay, go ahead, Jen. I mean you're a mom, so you've engaged with it all. So for me, it's gonna be poop in two ways. So the first, oh yeah, the first was actually I didn't have to clean it up. But when we were renovating an RV before we had kai this RV, this man who had owned the RV before flushed things down the toilet that shouldn't be flushed, like paper clips and aluminum foil, And really I think he just used it as a garbage can, so trying to clean that out. Travis is still scarred by like having to getting a masticator and just all the things. So so that's more his story, though mine is during so potty training with poop has just been so degrading to my life, to me, um, to my mind. And I think the worst one was we had our power out during Hurricane Ian and Kai woke up no no lights in the house. This had to that. This was obviously he had to do this when there was no power and he his entire pull up was just full of poop, like not explicit. We don't have an explicit rating, chen um, So that's all I'll say about it. It was um sorr. When they're an infant like versus they're three and a half years old, they just proticial there they're suddenly a full grown adult and it was just not formed. It was everywhere and there was no light. I just put him in a dark tub, like thankfully there was a window in the bathroom, but that was all we had. And it was the first thing in the morning too, so it was like the first thing I did for the day. So like that and the times where he just like poops his underwear three times in a day, and I'm just like, I give up, I quit parenting. Yeah, I'm done. Yeah that I decided to have it done. Yeah we have. We have five of those and every single one has done what you just said, and add the stomach bug in. When they do, they explode it both ends. And your wife, Teresa, who started the business, doesn't want to touch vomit or that. So I'm doing all the clean up because I'm the professional that the life of a parent. Yeah, that's a problem. When the teacher becomes the master, when the student becomes the master. Fun fact, I also have a son named kai We talked about this before. Oh that's so cool, but we spell them differently. Mind's kye okay, Mind's kai Ya technically kai r ro os tyros. Yes. Yeah, Ken, thank you so much for coming on and sharing this wisdom with us. Where can people find your podcasts? Find more from you find all of this goodness that we could not get to on the show. Oh well, thank you so much for having me on the show, Jill and Denett was an honor. And you guys are doing great things. You're educating the masses that are struggling out there, so we keep doing what you're doing. Thanks for bringing me on for this feature on side Hustles. The best place to find me is just go to the Smart Cleaning School podcast. You can go to the website Smart Cleaning School dot com. There's links there, and then you can go to any major podcast player and find us. We're over three in fifty episodes as we speak, and I believe we're the second second largest podcast in our industry. So it's a good one. It's a really good one because I bring on the best and brightest. I'm an ambassador for the industries. I'm bringing on the best coaches, performers. I kind of look at like I'm like a Tim Ferris in a sense for the industry, Like how can I bring the best from our industry and showcase them and have them teach and then I'll do solo episodes to teach the solos and teach mindset. So check out Solo Clean School dot com and just look up our podcast and yeah, check it out. You want to reach out to me. There's places you can on the website you can you can do a free coaching call. There's a link for it. So I look forward to hearing from you and hearing what you think of the show. Thanks so much, Ken. Okay, I think I might leave you to go clean. It's so satisfying clean my house. Don't leave me come to my house, let me come practice. Oh I I would love to have someone just come practice on my home. That I appreciate all the different directions you could go. I think I had a much more simple view of cleaning, and my horizons have been broadened with what can be done with it and the fact that you could start a business like this and eventually hire others to do the cleaning and you just run it and it is even more passive income. Obviously that's going to take steps and learning along the way, but so much opportunity here. I'm so glad to have heard from Ken and find out and this was off the recording that we have a lot of mutual friends, me being from the Philadelphia area as well. But that was just fun for me. I hope it was fun for you. Thanks for listening. We also love, love love reading all your kinder views and especially this one. Poodle Crab. You know it's a good one. Poodle Crab leaves you five stars here for that says, I kept hearing commercials for this podcast on other podcasts I listened to, and finally decided to give it a try. After a few episodes, I was still in denial about how bad my finances were and wasn't really considering their advice, but kept listening. After a few more episodes, I realized the host felt like my friends, and I began to open my heart up to their advice. Now I'm back on my debt payoff journey and feel so much better about my life choices. I'm still quite always behind on episodes, so you ladies will keep me company for months to come before I'm caught up. Who knows, maybe then I'll go back and start over again and keep myself motivated. Heart emoji, So many heart emojis for you, poodle Crab, and also the celebratory emojis and the hug emojis and the gratitude emojis. Poodle Crab. I don't know if it's because of the pregnancy, but this makes me want to cry. You look like you're holding back tears right now. Actually, I oh my gosh. This is everything is this is everything, This is why we do what we do. And I always say it's It is so encouraging to hear your reviews and to get your emails and to talk to you guys, because like sometimes it's it's easy to think that maybe our best episodes are a hundred episodes behind us, and we're kind of just like I don't know, doing this thing, hanging on right, hanging on so that we can hang out with each other. And then to hear this, this is what I want to do all the time, is just inspire people to make changes so that they can feel good. Yeah, well say the safety that you feel and the fact that we feel like friends and that I couldn't ask for more. Yes, we are the frugal Frist. So glad you found friendship and safety here. Good job, poodle Crab, keep going. Thank you so much for listening everybody, And if you enjoyed this show, please take a minute, like poodle Crab to leave a rating and a review. It does help our show so much. It helps other potential new listeners, other frugal friends know what the show is all about, whether or not it's gonna be a good fit for them. So if you like the show, you've got some insight onto Here's why others might like it. Please let them know and we can just make this community even bigger. Amen, we'll see you next time. Be Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni Jen. Yes, I have a frugal fail. It happened to me, and it happened to me recently. Okay, I needed I need stamps, and I've needed stamps for a very long time. I don't often send letters, so you know, one book of twenty stamps usually last me a good long while. But now we're running out, and stamps have been on my list for a very long time. But I never find myself with the post office. I apparently Walmart cells stamps, but waiting in that customer service line. And then by the time I'm going out with my groceries, I don't remember when I'm coming in and when I'm leaving, I got frozen stuff and I can't wait in the long line. And whatever the thought occurred to me, why don't I buy stamps online? Surely that's possible. Usps literally they deliver things to people's door, for that's their entire job. They should be able to bring stamps to my door. So I go along line and I don't know, I get all caught up with the pictures of the stamps that suddenly thinking about wanting forever stamps leaves my mind. And I'm so confused at why there's so many different prices for all these different stamps. And I'm like, well, how about these stamps. They're like ten dollars less for the same amount as all these other stamps. Like, I'm gonna get these stamps. They're coral reeves. Look at this. Look at how pretty they are. They're so pretty. They are beautiful. I'm looking at them right now. They are beautiful. And then they show up at my door and I'm like, wait a second, what are these stamps? They just look like stickers. Can I even mail anything with them? Yes, I can mail something with them. And I'm still uncertain. I think I'm going to have the postcost office. They're postcard stamps, but I can't figure out what the value of them. Is. Then, anytime I look on the internet, value one postcard? Yeah, okay, so on the internet, they're like, it's the value of whatever's listed on the stamp. That's not what's there's no value listed on the stamp. Okay, so it's just whatever the current rate of a postcard is I don't. I never knew mailing stuff was so complicated. And I'm getting into like the deep web of USPS where they're like, this is how much to send this kind of envelope, this is how much to send this some level of ounces this is and I'm just like, I don't know just what what is a stamp anymore? And am I going to have to use? Am I gonna have to like buy a scale to figure out how much it's going to cost to mail this thing? So now I think I'm gonna have to just put two of these stamps and like hope and cross my fingers they put two of the stamps on a regular envelope. Google doesn't like I can't like it. I can't. It's not saying information anything real. It's like the matrix and spreadsheets and no real information. I am this close and if there, if you could imagine video, it's like a very thin closeness, like a dime's width of closeness too. Just going to the post office and asking them solve this riddle for me. If I forever stamps while you're there, If I have one hundred postcard stamps, how many regular letters. Can I send this is treasure or check like outline at publics? Should I just stamp? I don't go to publics? Should I just only send postcards? Would it be good for any postcard? Is it a forever postcard stamp? Or is it only the amount of money that you would spend on a postcard stamp in twenty nineteen because it does say twenty nineteen on it. You have to figure out the answer to this question. And you're listening still Friends podcast dot com wants to know how new the postal ser This was such a riddle to figure out. I got caught up with beauty, and beauty steered me wrong. I should have just went with the American flag, even though it's not what I wanted. I wanted coral reefs. It's what I got. But who knows if I can send a letter now? Yeah, I wish i'd known. I was just at the post office and I just picked up some forever stamps again. Or I make a life shift where now all I send is postcards. I'm fine with that. I'm not writing anything that everyone else can't read. Fantastic, and if I am, it's just good. You know. My other favorite words, salacious material for the Postman. They love that stuff. Yeah. Stick figure drawings

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