How Darren Built a $22K/Month Cleaning Business

Vic: All right, I've hit record, so we're going to get started. We've got Darren Kelly here. Darren owns Divine Shine Cleaning, is that right, Darren?

Darren: Yep, Divine Shine Cleaning, yes ma'am.

Vic: Awesome. You're going to be in the hot seat with us, which means we get to ask you lots of questions. We're going to talk about your successes, your failures, any advice you have for somebody just starting a cleaning company today, and basically the journey from zero to where you are today. So Darren, can you walk us back to the very beginning, why you decided to start a cleaning company, and why in your location?

Darren: My background is in sports. I played professional football, and I also played collegiate football. I came to Minnesota to play football, doing the whole pursue-the-NFL thing, working out for this league and that league. Then Covid came, I had injuries occur, and I thought, okay, if I didn't get millions of dollars from the NFL, I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur as my backup plan.

Unfortunately the backup plan had to kick in, because the world was falling apart with Covid, so much uncertainty, and I thought, it's time for me to hang up the cleat and see what business opportunities could work for me. I researched a lot of different business models. I considered going back to school. I call them the humble hustles, it's cleaning, it's roofing, all the non-sexy businesses.

But I didn't want to go back to school, I didn't want any more certifications, I already graduated college, I just wanted to start making money. I genuinely believe cleaning is the number one business model to get into right away to start making money, because there are no barriers to entry. You can start right away, cleaning yourself or not cleaning yourself. I started cleaning myself.

Vic: So you know firsthand exactly what it's like when you send your cleaners out.

Darren: Absolutely.

Vic: How did you learn everything you know now? Did you take a course?

Darren: Absolutely. I started off with my company, it was actually called Real Deal Services, and I went through a rebrand. I was still taking cash payments, check payments, just out there figuring it out. My boy CJ Smith is a realtor, and I was renting one of his properties, and one day he came over and we were chopping it up, and he said, I started a cleaning company.

I started laughing at him, because I'm like, bro, you can't clean, he was in the NFL. He showed me you guys' course, showed me Rohan and Kevin, the whole course, and he's like, bro, you're cleaning, you don't have a proper website, you don't have systems, you don't have anything. He sent me the link to Rohan's course, and I finished it in maybe two weeks. Because I already had a cleaning company, there were just so many missing gaps of information that you guys helped me fill in, and once I had those gaps filled, I knew for a fact I could do this.

Vic: I love people that have kind of self-taught with the on-demand version, you just watched the recording, so you didn't get to do the live group coaching with Rohan and Kevin, and now me and Jen. We did the exact same thing, except Jen got to do the live calls every day in January, which these guys are running again for January 2024. And I love that you went from struggling on your own to putting systems in place that work, because it's the online booking that is the game changer.

Darren: Absolutely, yeah.

Vic: So what year did you start?

Darren: I started in 2019, and I was still kind of flirting with football, still getting some calls from teams, traveling around. Then Covid came in 2020, and I thought, maybe it's time to go all in on this.

Vic: So now, what's your monthly revenue, if you don't mind sharing, approximately what are you billing per month?

Darren: It fluctuates. Right now I'd say on average we're doing around 22, 23,000 a month. Our highest month ever, I'd say, is 34, 35,000. During the warmer seasons, during moving season, that's when you get those numbers.

Vic: That wasn't obvious to me, Darren. I thought it would be Christmas, I thought Christmas was going to be where you make a lot of money. But August, man, August is good.

Darren: Literally August was my most lucrative month ever, August 2023, most lucrative month ever.

Vic: Same. But it makes November brutal, I'll say that much, because then November comes and you're like, what. The high and then the low.

Darren: You just want it to stay forever. That's a mindset as a business owner you need to get used to, it's not always going to be ups, there are going to be lows, you have to get used to that constant up and down.

Vic: So you're doing 22, how many cleaners do you have a month?

Darren: I'm actually switching business models. I know you guys teach, wisely, to start with contractors, but as I started to grow and make more money, I realized I'd like to have employees, because I want to grow a brand and have more control. We got rid of a lot of contractors, we offered them the opportunity to stay contractors or become employees, but our employees have priority to the clients. Last year when we had no employees, I was leveraging anywhere from six to 12 contractors at a time.

Vic: What percentage are recurring and what percentage are one-time plans?

Darren: The specific percentage I'm not sure of, but we are more one-off cleans than recurring, and the goal is to flip that around. You want predictable income. Making 20-something thousand a month off one-time clients is very nice, it keeps the bills paid and keeps you enthusiastic, but as you get some skin in the game, you're like, I want to be able to maybe sell my business one day, I want to predict my income. That's why you see that book back there, trying to get my leads up and build the culture so we can retain more clients and grow the brand.

Vic: You're in Twin Cities, Minnesota. Do you know the population of your area?

Darren: It's in the millions. It's a pretty big city. I'm located in Minnesota, but we're probably the highest-ranked cleaning company in St. Paul, and we're not even there, so a lot of ours comes from St. Paul.

Vic: Where are your leads coming from, if you're doing so many one-time cleans? You must be generating a ton of leads.

Darren: Google Local Services. Now we're starting to change up some stuff, because Google Local Services is getting really expensive and it's hard to track, but it works, I cannot deny that. So now we're trying some different methods, but the most consistent lead generator by far is Google Local Services.

Vic: What is your marketing budget per month?

Darren: Right now it's between three and five thousand a month.

Vic: We've got to talk more, Darren.

Darren: Talk more, yeah.

Vic: Just to compare with what Jen and I do, our ad spend is about $300 a month, and it's all organic leads. The reason we stopped doing Google Local Services and everything else is they stop them from going to our website, and our website is beautiful and optimized for our target demographic. We don't want everybody, we want the right clients that are going to be recurring, who are now 80% of our revenue. That's the magic for us, organic leads rather than paying for leads that haven't done any research, they don't know your business from anyone else, they're just calling for quotes.

Anyone calling for quotes, I'm like, we don't have time for that, it's on our website.

Darren: I'm assuming you put a lot of money into SEO, newsletters, backlinks. How are people organically coming? Maybe it's because of where you're located. I would love to do the more organic thing, but I don't know how to actually get people to my website. I can do the newsletters and the backlinks, but that's still competitive too.

Vic: If you've got 20 recurring doing it your way, if you could get 40 recurring doing it the easier way, which we can show you, plus your 20, now you're at 60, now you're beating us. Any sauce you've got, we can exchange sauce. It's not that hard. It's something we use every day, we update.

Let me Google you right now, I'm going to share my screen and find your business. So what I was saying, up here, these are all ads, we don't even look at them, our eyes are so trained to skip over ads. We stop here. Merry Maids and Molly Maids are always going to be first, but your target demographic, if they're like me, they don't want those big companies, they want your small local companies, especially post-pandemic.

This one down here is doing a great job, and you're not coming up. If you can fix this, you're going to start coming up, and you're going to get all organic leads, and this is all free. To get to number four or five or six, you have to be in the top three, and you do have some pretty heavy competition because of these reviews. So it's partly reviews and having them be active, that's what NiceJob does for us, it's integrated with our Convertlabs, so it just runs and we get reviews consistently every week, even if they're bad, it doesn't matter, just having them come up.

Let's look at somebody who's got an actual listing. She does updates, she's done it since 2020. Every single week, we do it about three times a week right now, but you can probably get away with one, nobody knows for sure. You're going to use a lot of keywords, but organically, best cleaners, cleaning services in Minneapolis.

We do that consistently, we update Yelp, we update Google, that's it. We're not posting a gazillion times on Instagram, we don't TikTok, we don't Facebook, this is it.

Darren: Wow. And I can have my VAs do this stuff.

Vic: Of course you can. My VAs do all this. Can you pull your business up so we can do a little review?

Darren: It should be Divine Shine Cleaning Company.

Vic: There we go, looks great. That is gross, I hate seeing a dirty toilet coming up first, but I get what you've done, you've done before and after, that's great. Okay, so you don't have products, you do have services, good. The products are also free, so you can add. Here are all your reviews, good job. Do you have any updates?

Darren: I am taking me some notes. Love this.

Vic: Down here you should have updates, that's what you're missing. Your reviews, you've got 4.9 out of 107, that's awesome. You beat us on reviews, we're down to 4.8 because we got a couple ones in there. In your updates you can literally, there are keywords in here, cleaning services, cleaning company, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, one-time, standard cleaning services, you have to make it seem like you're having a conversation with Google, but you're adding a lot of keywords.

And the updates are just new pictures or new stuff. Ideally you wouldn't be using stock photos, we're lazy, we use stock photos, and we use ChatGPT sometimes, and I'm like, we probably shouldn't, but the internet is so filled with people debating it. Google used to have products, which meant we had photos of bi-weekly cleaning services, and we'd list what's in the product, tons of keywords, and it took you directly to our booking page. They must have just changed it, because I've been coaching people on doing it, like, last week.

Darren: This is why us cleaning entrepreneurs got to stick together.

Vic: I did not hire an SEO specialist, because they're good at selling their services, my goodness. I just learned everything off YouTube, and I shouldn't say I, Jen my sister, because we were spending about what you were spending on advertising and doing our head in, because the quality of the leads was really not great. They were cheap, bargain hunting, they wanted hourly, we do packages, so frustrating. Now I've diversified into other things and I'm hiring some people to help, so Google Local Services is not taking as much of my money.

My goal is to bring that marketing budget down. We have the reviews, we do really good work, the proof is there.

Darren: Absolutely.

Vic: Just start doing that every day, and in a few months, with NiceJob running, you'll see yourself get up into the three-pack. Once you get the three-pack, it's like, oh. But Darren, we've lost our spot there many times, where I freak out because the phone stops ringing, and I put all the money in Google Local Services, and then I get frustrated we spend all this money, and then we go back to basics every time, and it works every time.

Darren: Wow. Okay, so you're diversifying. You're focusing a bit more on commercial now, let's talk about that.

Darren: Residential is nice, because it's how you can start and make money right away, but for the long-term game and more predictable income, you definitely want a few commercial contracts, maybe even some government contracting. So I'm working on getting my certifications, like the MBE, the Minority Business Enterprise. If you're a woman-owned business, or a Black-owned business, or any type of minority, I highly advise you to get that certification. Every state is individual, but they're all the same, and the MBE is like $350, $375.

Applying to those certifications is a way, BNI is another way, networking groups. And I have a marketing method I call the Golden Groove that we're starting to use.

Vic: All right, what's the Golden Groove?

Darren: The Golden Groove is a non-stop marketing method, a four-week process. Week one, we send out a sales letter, hey, we're Divine Shine, we're in your city, located near you. It's a letter, and we send them in fancy envelopes, because people will throw away a regular basic white envelope. Our business colors are black and gold, so we use these sleek black envelopes and send them a sales letter, the hope being they won't throw it away because it's personalized.

Week two, we send a cold email. I have my virtual assistants scrape and find businesses, we put them all into HubSpot, so we have maybe 125 car dealerships, a bunch of private schools, bowling alleys, hospitals, the biggest buildings I could possibly aim for. We just got a client from the Golden Groove, a law office, so nice, easy cleaning, cleaners are happy, nighttime cleans, good pay, one of the best law firms in Minnesota, very well connected. The owner's like, bro, do a good job with my office, I'd be glad to refer you to my rich friends.

Week two we send postcards, week three we do a cold email and a cold Instagram message, week four another round of postcards, and we repeat over and over, because the psychology of sales is seven touches. It's like passive marketing, consistent but not pushy, always running. The client we just got hit us up six months later. We were nurturing them in HubSpot, and six months later she's like, hey, are you still interested, I'd love to do a walkthrough, our current cleaning company sucks.

I went up there, did a walkthrough, submitted a proposal, and now we clean their office once a week. The investment is envelopes, I ordered 250 from Amazon for like 65 bucks, and stamps, which are expensive, close to a dollar each, but it's cheaper than Google Local Services. I pay my virtual assistants to do a lot of this, and I just hired a GM to run some of it.

Vic: Interesting, it's a totally different approach, I love it. We have somebody in our community I'm going to introduce you to, his name is Phillip, he has a company that does direct mail, and it's probably going to be cheaper than the way you're doing it, all personalized to that person, they add the stamp. I've been really resistant to the direct mail thing, because our approach has been we want people to be looking for us, finding us on Google, then making the call. The only time I think about direct mail is when it's November and I start panicking, and then I'm like, no, wait, it's just the season, I just have to wait.

And we get commercial clients organically now. Commercial is probably only 5 to 10% of our revenue, but the cleaners love it, because we still charge at least 50 bucks an hour, so the cleaners make 60% of that, about 30, that's our lowest hourly rate, some are 75 an hour, and they're all small local businesses like us, so it's a mutual support thing. They see us on Google, see our reviews, reach out, and I do the walkthrough. Our biggest challenge with commercial, tell me what you think, has been that they want to pay in 30 or 60 days.

We just want credit cards, Visa, Mastercard, Amex, pay immediately, charge immediately, because that invoicing stuff slows everything down. We pay our cleaners same day.

Darren: I used to pay daily, and now I've got an accountant, so I use her payroll software and she pays everyone out. When I first started getting commercial clients I ran into that and got tired of it, so now I want to work with who I want to work with. If you're not going to pay me at least net 30, I don't want to do business with you. When we get to the point of a multi-million-dollar company, I'm not tripping off getting paid right away, sure, I'll take a net 90 or net 60.

But we actually have a late fee in our commercial cleaning contract. I positioned myself as, you're not doing me a favor, I'm doing you a favor. I want to get into banks, because they're really solid, but they pay on net 60s and net 90s, and I don't like that. I'd advise anyone in commercial, if you can't afford to wait that long, just don't.

All business is not good business.

Vic: 100% I agree, and you can fire the clients anytime you want. So let's circle back, and then we've got to give everybody time to ask questions. I wanted to talk about employee versus contractor. You said you want more control, better branding, more consistent staffing. How's that been working since you made the change, and are your employees getting enough work? Are you guaranteeing them a certain number of hours?

Darren: How I do it, I have one lead cleaner, her name's Zeta, she's amazing, a rockstar, and she gets the bulk of clients, she's priority. Everyone else is semi-part-time. It's very similar to the contractor model, jobs come in, and I hire intentionally, so I don't take people that need full-time work. If you're beating down my door for work, we already have a full-time cleaner.

I just hired three people last week, one is a DJ, one is starting a social media management business, and the other works in politics, which can be seasonal. They want some part-time income while their other gigs are slow. I ask, do you want to be a contractor or an employee, it depends how much you want to make up front. I let them know, if you're a contractor you're going to have to file your own taxes, be insured, all that, and clearly you need money, so you probably don't have the money to go get all that stuff, so you have the option to be an employee, and I'll buy your equipment and you'll be insured under Divine Shine.

A lot of people don't know the difference between a contractor and an employee, so I educate them and let them make a decision.

Vic: When they choose to be an employee, what's the difference in pay between contractor and employee?

Darren: I pay employees 43% of each job, and I pay contractors 55%. I don't like the hourly thing, you're going to get screwed or your cleaners are going to get screwed by paying hourly. 43 was the magic number, I talked with some number nerds and business consultants, because as I adopted the employee model I didn't want to underpay people for quality work, but I'm paying thousands for their equipment, workers' comp, and insurance, it's very expensive. So 43% is the number, and everyone's happy.

If I can bring my marketing down, I can probably take my employees' pay up even more. That's why this is really nice, you telling me about the Google updates, because organic leads, yeah. And I don't have high turnover, most of the people I started with are still here, we have a pretty high retention rate for contractors and employees.

Vic: That's really good. We do as well, but life happens, people change, they move. We deal with a lot of people leaving our city because it's so expensive to live in. It's the reality for any worker in 2023 or 2024 in our location, unless you own the business, you can barely afford to live here. It's knowing your numbers, your tax rates, workers' comp, we have to pay it, it's not an option, it's 2.1%.

Darren: Even contractors, you have to have workers' comp?

Vic: I've hired writers, and I have to have workers' comp for a writer at their desk. We have so few injuries that our rates keep going down, we only pay 1.7 or 1.9% now. Our cleaners are really good at safety, and I push hard, you don't get on a ladder, you don't get on anything above a step stool, you know your body best, you know your chemicals best.

Darren: I would love to operate my business 100% contractor, that would be amazing. The only thing is, especially when you're getting started, finding cleaners who actually have insurance and operate as thorough business owners can be a challenge. I've had a cleaner break an $8,000 lamp in a mini mansion, and she didn't have the right insurance.

Vic: So that was on you.

Darren: After that situation, I'm glad we were able to work something out, but I was being a little lenient at first. That's one of the mistakes I made, being lenient on insurance until something actually happened. Now I don't play any games with insurance, either I'm going to pay for your insurance or you're going to pay for it, and I do insurance checks, because you can lapse your insurance at any time just to save a couple bucks, and people will do that. New business owners just don't understand.

I had contractors confused about why I can't do this or that, and I'd explain, if you get your money up front as a contractor, you're going to have to file your own taxes, so you're not making more money, you're just making more money up front. If you become an employee, your paychecks will look a little less, but there's less you have to do on the back end. You have to have a certain level of personal development and discipline to set money aside for taxes and insurance, and a lot of new business owners just don't, I didn't.

Vic: You don't know until you screw it up and then you have to pay for an $8,000 lamp. Okay, so does anybody have any questions? I'll throw this over to everybody else who's here.

Community member: I do. Outside of not being lenient on insurance, what else would you recommend for somebody just starting out?

Darren: Just starting out, I would say if you're willing to get in the field and clean, you'll go so much farther and build relationships with some of your clients, and even get more recurring clients. I teach a hybrid business model, some people have money and want to grow it passively, and some people are broke, some are getting out of jail, some got fired. I'd advise those people, or people who need money now, if you're humble enough to get in the field and work your actual accounts, your business will be better in the long term. I'm not telling you to do that, I'm just saying, if that's your personal situation, it'll pay off really well in the long run.

Community member: All right, thank you.

Vic: Anybody who's actually gone out into the field and cleaned, even just one house, you gain an enormous amount of respect for your really good cleaners, the ones with a smile on their face after dealing with the stuff they deal with.

Darren: It's so hard, and I go to bat for my team. I don't take any disrespect. I've fired clients. I've had cleaners tell me, this lady is being racist, this lady is being aggressive, she's watching over my shoulder. I will fire a client like that, because cleaning is such hard work. It's not rocket science and it's not saving the world, but it's such hard, detailed, tedious work, and it should be respected and paid a high ticket.

This is a luxury service, cleaning. For everybody listening, if you have a cleaner come to your house, that is a luxury service, just as a massage would be. It's a high-ticket luxury service.

Vic: Kevin, you got anything?

Darren: Thank you so much for daring, taking the time and being here with us.

Vic: Thank you, man. I love your setting, by the way. I remember when you were getting it set up the first time, this came so far, it looks super dope.

Darren: The lights, I can change the colors, make the background purple, blue. It's a work in progress.

Vic: I will say, you've been very active in our community, which is always really helpful, having people voice what's working and what's not, having that 400-some-odd people who all own cleaning businesses at various stages. I remember when you were starting out, posting about the things you were doing, it was really helpful, and I remember being like, oh man, I really like that guy.

Darren: Thanks for sharing. Same. Sometimes you feel like you're talking to the void, hey guys, I'm doing this thing, and you don't know if it's working or not. It's crazy, I actually thought you and your sister were a married couple, because it's Vic and Jen. I'm like, okay, that's cool, good to meet her and her wife, they're running a nice business.

And then you're like, oh, that's my sister. So have you ever been in the field, have you ever done any cleaning within your own business, or did you start completely hands off?

Vic: We tried to start completely hands off, and then we'd get a last-minute booking and not have cleaners to go out, and it's a $500 job, we'd have paid the cleaners 300, so we'll make the 300, let's just figure it out. To be fair, we know how to clean our own houses, so we figured it wouldn't be that hard, but it is really hard, and it's hard to be efficient with your time, to know left to right, top to bottom, which products are for granite, which for marble. We did it a few times, and I'm glad we did, but I'll never do it again, because it is so physically and emotionally demanding. That's something we talk a lot about with our cleaners, it's not just physical labor, it's hard on your bodies, and also hard on your minds and your souls and your hearts, because you're in somebody's house dealing with whatever they're dealing with, and you take that home with you.

Sometimes cleaners will call and say, man, I need the biggest shower, I need to douse myself in bleach because of what I dealt with, and I'm like, okay, go take care of yourself, do you need a day off. Having that heart-centered approach has been our number one best way to lead. The best leaders are lovers, empathetic, compassionate people. We fire clients before we fire cleaners, but if I have to fire a lot of clients for a cleaner, then it's the cleaner that's the problem.

Darren: Exactly.

Vic: Well, this has been awesome, thank you so much. If anybody has any last-minute questions, reach out to Darren in our community, you can DM each other. I've got more I want to discuss.

Darren: Same. If you want to do a Space or a Zoom, I'd love to go deep, and maybe we can flip it so you guys can come on the Humble Hustler. I'm learning a lot right now. Are you truly in what you're doing if you're not constantly learning and comparing what you know to other people?

Vic: What we're doing here works in other places, what you're doing there works in other places, there's no reason we can't share the information. Are you going to Colombia?

Darren: Yes, absolutely. I'll be your practice buddy, seriously, I get up every morning and practice, I'm using Duolingo right now, and I'll be in school five days a week when I get there.

Vic: I love it. I'm actually taking Spanish classes in January again too, I've got my textbook coming. All right, thanks, guys, and coaching folks, we'll see you next Monday.

Darren: See you guys. Thank you.