Closing a cleaning company

In March, I documented starting my cleaning company, Stars and Scrubs:

The basic thesis of “why is Kristian doing a cleaning company” is that I’m a systems thinker. The average cleaning company is pretty unsophisticated. They’re probably in the business, literally cleaning, and have a bunch of text message conversations with their clients. So by bringing a process/workflow, we can win on operations. We can scale faster. We do that with tools.

Today, I’m beginning to shut it down. This post covers the good, the bad, and the ugly of starting a cleaning company.

The ugly

Yes, we start with the worst stuff first. Why not? We’re shutting it down, obviously it can’t be going that well!

Per my quote above, cleaning companies are unsophisticated. They’re a people-business. Bad hires ruin a cleaning company. It is really difficult to find non-shitty cleaners. Over the past three months, I hired a dozen cleaners. I did phone interviews, background checks, extended offers, and onboarded them onto our software. Most of them got stuck after the background check. They didn’t want to proceed, they dropped the ball, whatever the reason may be.

Of the cleaners that I hired, more than half of them had issues that made them not viable long-term. They ghosted after their first or second appointment. They took shortcuts on cleans. One of them I eventually had to let go, because she was consistently doing things that clients complained about. I never found a cleaner that I would describe as a great cleaner. Not one that I could be like, “this is the one, they’re going to be my all-star”.

This makes sense. The majority of people who are cleaners are not professional cleaners. They’re people who need money, and cleaning is a way to get it. They’re not necessarily good at it, they’re not necessarily passionate about it. They’re just doing it because they need to.

The bad

I didn’t get enough customers. I think I had a good product-market fit. I had a good website, I had a good process, I had a good onboarding flow. But I didn’t get enough customers to make the business viable. I spent a lot of money on ads, I spent a lot of time on SEO, I spent a lot of time on social media. I got a few customers, but not enough to make the business work.

This is a common problem with service businesses. You need to get customers, and you need to get them consistently. And that’s really hard. I thought I could do it, but I couldn’t.

The good

I learned a lot. I learned about hiring, I learned about managing people, I learned about running a service business. I learned about marketing, I learned about sales, I learned about operations. I learned a lot about myself, too. I learned that I don’t like managing people. I learned that I don’t like running a service business. I learned that I like building things, not running things.

I also made a little bit of money. Not enough to make the business viable, but enough to cover my costs. So I didn’t lose money, which is good.

What’s next?

I’m going to shut down the business. I’m going to finish out the appointments I have scheduled, and then I’m going to stop taking new customers. I’m going to refund any customers who have prepaid for appointments. I’m going to close down the website, I’m going to close down the social media accounts, I’m going to close down the ads.

And then I’m going to move on to the next thing. I have a lot of ideas for things I want to build, and I’m excited to get back to building things.