How We Built a $2.8M Cleaning Business With No Experience

I was looking at our ConvertLabs dashboard on camera, so I asked Kevin if he wanted to hear our revenue number since day one. I read it out loud: $2,872,116.86, across 12,341 cleans, since our very first booking on July 9, 2021. Jen and I started Oak Bay Clean that summer with zero cleaning experience. I was a burned-out school teacher. My sister Jen was a writer and director, newly single after 20 years of marriage, with three kids and a film industry that had shut down in the pandemic.

Five years later we have 20 cleaners, weekly and bi-weekly clients who make up most of the revenue, and I work about an hour a day. I sat down with Kevin, who built ConvertLabs, to tell the whole story on his podcast. Here is the full conversation, and below it, the systems behind that number so you can build a cleaning business from scratch the same way.

Why would two people who hate cleaning start a cleaning company?

Jen found a tweet about boring businesses, the idea that a cleaning company is safe, steady, and secure. She took a free 21-day Zoom course that Rohan Gilkes was offering at the time, then called me. She was going through a divorce, the film work had dried up, and she needed income she could count on. I told her I hate cleaning, which is true. She said, you are good at producing movies, at teaching, at working with people. Before I went back to the classroom I had run a recruitment agency placing teachers in the UK, so the skills carried over more than I expected.

We followed the model instead of guessing. That saved us from the expensive mistakes most new owners make on their own, and we did not have money to waste. Our first month we did about $1,600. Our second month, around $4,000. Then we put everything into recurring revenue, because one client paying $200 every two weeks is how the business actually grows. If someone else has already done it, why can't we.

What does running a $2.8M cleaning business look like day to day?

It is much calmer now than people expect. When I coach owners who are starting today, I tell them that one hour a day of productive work, following the blueprint, is enough. That hour includes taking phone calls, replying to texts, and managing your marketing spend. Maybe two hours on a busy day.

My first year looked nothing like that. I had all the time in the world and no kids, and I would waste six or seven hours a day spinning my wheels, analyzing every dollar I spent on Google ads, cold calling, second-guessing. Some of the best owners we have coached are busy moms, because they have to protect their time and they do not waste it. Jen wrote her master's thesis in an hour a day while her kid napped. Now my cleaners are out in homes they know, I am not staring at my phone, and I play pickleball in the middle of the afternoon. That is what turning off your entrepreneurial brain buys you.

How do you name a cleaning business so it ranks on Google?

Location plus keywords equals your business name. That is the formula Jen and I stumbled onto, and it is the single most useful thing I can give a new owner. When I say location, I do not mean all of New York City. Pick a small, specific area inside it, and the right people find you.

Dana is one of our coaching clients in New York. She was going to name her company something that mattered to her and nothing to the customer, a grandmother's name, a town in Tuscany she loved. I asked her where she lived. Hudson Yards. Was hudsonyardsclean.com available? It was. She changed her name to match, and within two to three months she was doing $8,000 to $9,000 a month.

Here is why it works. Someone types cleaning services, and Google already knows their neighborhood even if they do not type it. It returns companies that carry the keyword and the area in the name, so you rank higher, faster, and pay for fewer leads over time. I built a free tool called Name My Cleaning Company to do that research for you, including whether your area skews too far toward retirees who will not book online. We aim for millennials and Gen X, who would rather book online than pick up the phone, which is also the edge that transparent online pricing gives you. If you want the longer version, read how to name a cleaning business.

Why does recurring revenue matter more than anything?

Weekly, bi-weekly and monthly clients are 81% of Oak Bay Clean's revenue. That is the whole game. So I say it out loud on the first call: we prioritize our weekly and bi-weekly clients, how often are you looking for?

The pricing walks people toward recurring on purpose. The first-time clean price is high, because a first clean is a full top-to-bottom job. Then I show the recurring price, which is much lower, and people do the math in their heads.

I also set the expectation before we hang up: no house becomes perfect in one clean, and the best way to get it there is regular cleaning, because the cleaner gets to know your home. When I take the card, I explain the hold. We put a hold on the card the day before for the amount of the estimate, and I use the word estimate, then we charge after the cleaners are done because a job can run a little more or less. That one habit stops us from sending cleaners to someone whose card will not go through.

How do you use AI without losing the human touch?

We use AI to uplevel customer service, not to remove the human. Kevin taught me to mirror the client. They say they are looking for cleaning for their house, and I say back, okay, you are looking for cleaning for your house, then I pause and they tell me more. People feel heard, and all you are doing is reflecting what they asked for. I write our emails in that same voice.

The tools help me hold that standard at volume. We use Quo, which used to be called OpenPhone, and Quo connects to Claude, so it knows how I have answered five years of questions. When I say reply to this email, it drafts in my voice. I keep a human in the loop and read everything before it goes out, because the person booking a cleaner wants to know we have our eyes on it. Our complaint ratio is under 0.5%, against an industry norm of 2% to 5%, and a lot of that comes from getting ahead of complaints in the onboarding email. We tell people up front what we do not do: no blood, feces or urine, human or animal, nothing above a two-step stool, and nothing under furniture heavier than 25 pounds.

What are the biggest mistakes new cleaning business owners make?

Your entrepreneurial brain tries to help and sends you off the plan. So you spend $5,000 wrapping your car because someone at an event said it was the best thing ever. You do not need that. You rent an office nobody sits in. You dump $5,000 into Google ads you have never run before, when you should be learning with $50 or $500 first. A lot of that spend is ego, and ego does not feed your bank account.

Over time, if you name your company right and take care of clients, you get found online and you stop paying so much to advertise. Think about the last time you searched for something and clicked the first result marked sponsored. You scrolled past it and read the reviews. Your ideal clients do the same. In the beginning you still pay to show up, because you have to tell Google you exist, and some of those early leads are people who need someone today. That is fine, you need money in the bank. But the reason I can sit and record a podcast in the middle of a workday is that the recurring clients keep coming without me buying every one of them. More on that in what actually grows your cleaning business.

The four phases of a cleaning business

I did 150 discovery calls and went back through every one looking for the pattern. People quit between the first two phases, almost never later, and it is usually because their expectations did not match their results. Knowing which phase you are in takes a lot of that pressure off.

I watched a ConvertLabs member at $40K a month pull off his booking page and swap in a lead form, telling me he was just testing it. At $40K a month you do not test away the online booking that made you money. Do your fine-tuning in the Engine. Once you reach the Boring Phase, pick up a hobby instead of touching the business, whether that is golf or learning AI. When you get to the Other Side, that is when you decide whether you want a second location, a different business, or to coach other owners the way Jen and I do. Do not tinker with what is working. If you want to find your phase and the move that gets you to the next one, read the four stages of a cleaning business. Working through these phases with other owners is the whole idea behind our Inner Circle, which meets on Zoom every Wednesday.

Who is your ideal cleaning client?

We have two customer avatars, and naming them changed how we sell. Jordan is millennial or Gen X, makes a good income, and loves booking online. Jordan is set it and forget it, stays out of your way, and is the easiest client to work with. Nancy is older, often retired, has cleaned her own home her whole life, and resents paying someone to do it. No cleaner will ever meet Nancy's standard.

Every other cleaning company in your town is built for Nancy, with lead forms and phone tag and a cleaner she can supervise for three hours. Build yours for Jordan and that is your edge, because nobody else is set up for her. There is also Lazy Larry, who books same-day, insists it is not that bad, and pays happily without complaining. We know how to deal with Larry. I go deeper on this in Jordan vs Nancy.

How do you pay and keep good cleaners?

We pay cleaners 60% of every clean. On average that is $28 to $45 an hour, and one crew recently earned $71 an hour on a job. In an industry that has traditionally underpaid and undervalued cleaners, paying well and treating people well is how you get and keep the best ones, and the best cleaners are your product.

They are independent contractors, so I treat them like it. They choose which clients they take, when they work, and what products they use. When a cleaner tells me she is taking a week off next month, I say good for you, where are you going. My job is to write great notes and filter out clients who are a bad fit. Their job is to clean. I fire more clients than cleaners, and when a client complains I believe them, when a cleaner explains I believe them, and I trust the reviews to tell me the truth over time. For the hiring side, see how to find cleaners for a cleaning business.

The hardest part was never the cleaning

So much of this business is emotional, especially in the first year. You are dealing with clients who are emotional because it is their home, cleaners who are emotional because they are dealing with those clients, and your own pressure about how much you want to make. Managing that mindset is the biggest thing I have learned in five years of helping people start.

That is why we built a community where owners meet the same people every Wednesday, somewhere between the Leap and the Other Side. It is a lonely place to start a business, and being in a room with people running the same race matters as much as the coaching. Jen and I give the whole model away free on our YouTube channel, including an almost four-hour walkthrough from day one, because we started from desperation and we would rather pay it forward. It should cost you less than $1,000 to start one of these. You just have to do the work.

If you are at the very beginning, start with how to start a cleaning business and how to start a cleaning business with no experience. And if you want the anniversary version of this story, with the dashboard screenshots and where we are headed next, read how we built a cleaning business to nearly $3M in five years.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to start a cleaning business?

Less than $1,000. You hire independent contractors who bring their own supplies, so you are not buying equipment. Your real costs are booking software and a small marketing budget you test in $50 to $500 increments.

Do you need cleaning experience to start?

No. Jen and I had none when we started in July 2021. I taught school and Jen made films. You run the business and support the cleaners, you do not clean.

How do you name a cleaning business for SEO?

Location plus keywords. Pick a specific neighborhood and pair it with a cleaning word, like Hudson Yards Clean, so Google matches you to local searches and you pay for fewer leads.

How many hours a day does it take to run?

About one to two focused hours a day once you are set up, covering calls, texts, marketing, and onboarding. The cleaning is done by your contractors.

How much do you pay cleaners?

Sixty percent of every clean, which averages $28 to $45 an hour and sometimes more. Paying well is how you keep the cleaners who make your business.

Is a cleaning business profitable?

Yes, when you build on recurring clients. Oak Bay Clean has done more than $2.8M since 2021 with 81% recurring revenue, and margins in this model run about 28% to 32%.

A note on links: we use ConvertLabs to run Oak Bay Clean's online booking and payments, and some of our links to them are affiliate links. We only point people to tools we use ourselves. You can compare the options in the best cleaning business software.