The Four Stages of a Cleaning Business: Which One Are You In?

If you're watching this, you're either thinking about starting a cleaning company or you already have one, and maybe something feels stuck. Either way, you're in the right place. We knew nothing about this industry when we started. I was a school teacher. My sister writes full time. But we launched our cleaning business in July 2021, and since then we've generated $2.6 million*.

We started this YouTube channel a couple years ago, and 144 of you have booked discovery calls with me where we sit down and talk about exactly what you're going through in your location. Whether you're about to launch a cleaning business or you have multiple locations, every single person falls into one of four phases in their cleaning company journey. I'm gonna break down exactly what each phase is like, what you're feeling, what the complications could be, and what mistakes you can avoid. Once you understand these four phases, everything else becomes a lot clearer, a lot simpler, and you'll be able to understand what to focus your energy on. Stick around to the end because we have a big announcement to make and I don't want you to miss it. Okay.

So the four stages that every cleaning business owner goes through, let's go. Four stages: the leap, the engine, the boring phase, and the other side. So the leap is when you're just thinking about it, you're doing your research, you're figuring it out, and then you finally take the leap and you start building your website. You start getting clients, you start getting cleaners. It's all the little things that lead to you actually making your first $10,000 a month.

So the leap can take a while, but anywhere between zero and 10K month. So let me know below if that's your stage. The second one is you pass 10K month. Now this thing's getting real. Now you're in what we call the engine. The engine is fine tuning things, making things a little smoother. Once you pass 25K month, you go into what we call the boring phase.

This is where you suddenly have free time on your hands because everything's so fine tuned. Your cleaners are working, your bookings are coming in, and life gets a lot easier. This is typically where people quit their day jobs. And then once you pass 50K month, now this gets real. You're in the other side. You have a successful cleaning company, lots of other people probably asking you questions about it.

So we'll talk more about what each of these phases are like, what the dangers are, where the mistakes get made, and what you can do about it. So let's talk a little more about what the leap is. So again, that's zero to 10K month, so you're just starting, or you're getting your first clients. This is where most people are at that are watching our channel, I suspect, but I could be wrong. So let me know again in the comments.

Here's what's probably in your head. You're thinking, what if nobody calls? Am I pricing this right? You're constantly tweaking your pricing, second guessing, doing tons of research. Maybe you're thinking, I can't quit my job yet, but I really need this to work. And so you're very busy. You've got a full-time job. Maybe you've got kids, maybe you're struggling to pay the bills and you're all in on this cleaning business.

And then you're also maybe comparing yourself to others. You're saying, everyone else seems more ready than I am, or everyone else is making more progress than I am. So you're comparing your stage one to someone else's stage three or four. So remember, when you're in stage one, there's really only three things to focus on: get clients, hire cleaners, and get reviews.

Now, of course, there's a lot more to this. You've got your technology, your phone line, your website, all of those things. We have a 22 day checklist that outlines everything to actually focus on in this time, so that if you do wanna start one of these businesses from scratch like we have, then just grab the checklist below and follow it in order. A lot of people try to do this in one weekend.

Many people have, but I really do recommend you just slow down, take it one step at a time, and then you'll build your business up for success. And then the same thing with getting your first revenue, your first clients, your first reviews, your first cleaners. That's a lot. And so just take it easy. Slow and steady really does win in this game.

For stage one, these are the things I want you to ignore. A big mistake is over automating before you've even talked to a single client. I don't know where people got this. Maybe it's Reddit, but people have it in their heads that you don't have to ever talk to anybody when you start a cleaning business, and it's really not true. You need to talk to human beings in this business.

There's a lot the software can do for us. There's a lot of automated texts that go out automatically if you're using the software we recommend. But you certainly don't wanna be using AI and over automating everything, because in the beginning in particular, you need to be proving that you're running a professional company. People are gonna phone you and you're gonna have conversations with them.

Okay. So if that scares you, this might not be the business for you. And the second mistake I see is outsourcing your SEO to an agency. My sister Jen and I talk a lot about SEO on this channel. It is how we've grown our business so fast. And we don't have to spend money on marketing anymore.

But in the beginning we certainly did. And so I don't want you to go, okay, I don't understand SEO, I'm gonna hire someone else to do it. Not in this stage, okay? So if you follow our 22 Days to Launch Blueprint and this channel, we have outlined exactly what you need to do to lay the foundation for your SEO for the long game.

Everything from how you name your company to how you work with your website, your headings, everything is all laid out so that you're beginning the foundation of your SEO. And SEO takes time. So if you follow our challenge, you follow the blueprint, you will be doing SEO, just not at an agency level. You just don't need it in this space. The third mistake: making TikTok videos about how to clean.

And I know, maybe you watch videos like that and you think that'll help me grow my cleaning company. Or you've seen a cleaning company that's been incredibly successful making TikTok videos in this space. When we're talking about online bookings with transparent pricing and answering the phone, you really don't need to be making TikTok content. If you love it, go for it. But it's a little bit of mixed messaging.

So what we wanna really demonstrate in our marketing is always book online. It's easy, set it and forget it. And we're attracting low maintenance clients. By doing that, if you're teaching them how to clean, you're attracting people that like cleaning, and that's great if that's your hiring process. But if it's how you get your clients, then you're attracting high maintenance clients that really care about the nitty gritty details of how you clean.

And our blueprint is all about low maintenance clients. They don't care. They just want it done. So it's a little counterintuitive there, but I've seen a lot of people make that mistake. And then the last one, hiring someone to manage your ads for you. Again, take it in bite-sized chunks. Do a little bit every day. You don't need to understand Google ads or meta ads all in one day, and you won't.

But if you lean on the community, and I think you'll notice throughout, this community is everything, then people are a lot more likely to help you and save you a ton of time. So you can repurpose other people's ads within our community. You can meet other cleaning company owners who will say, hey, this ad worked really great, why don't you try it in your city? So you definitely don't need to outsource that to an agency that's gonna cost you so much money, and you're just not gonna see a return on ad spend quickly enough to justify that spend.

Hey, if you're rich and you wanna spend all the money in the world, you can probably hire me to do that, but I'm joking. I really don't want it. I don't wanna run your ads for you. You can do it. It's not that hard. Just trust and lean on the community. That's what it's there for. Stage two.

If you get to stage two, and a lot of people quit in stage one, I'm not gonna lie. A lot of people start these thinking it's gonna be super easy. They're gonna be billionaires in the next year. And it's not. It takes time, it takes perseverance and it takes patience. But if you get to stage two, first off, congratulations.

That's amazing. Your profits are now probably really helping you to pay your bills. The engine is about 10K to 25K month. And this is where we get to fine tune all of the things that we learned in stage one. So in stage one, you probably made a lot of mistakes. Maybe you got your first complaints, your first one star reviews on Google, along with a lot of five star reviews, but maybe you got one or two one star reviews.

And these mistakes are really helpful. They help you learn what you need to fine tune. So the engine is where we get serious about fine tuning things. A couple things to note here: change your focus from just getting clients to trying to get recurring clients. So this business, the beauty of it is in recurring revenue. That's how it can grow so high.

Because one person paying 200 bucks every two weeks adds up, and you add another person, you add a third person, you just keep going, and then it keeps growing that way. So this is where we start to say, okay, time to focus on recurring revenue, not just any revenue, but recurring revenue. You're gonna start setting stronger boundaries with clients. Those one star reviews taught you, hey, I needed to set a boundary there that I didn't set. 90% of the time, that's what happened.

So you start getting better at setting your boundaries. You're also very clear about what you do and don't do. Again, that's a lot like setting boundaries, but I wanna be clear there. You have to tell people what you don't do. So in my case, I used to get uncomfortable saying this. Now I just say it easily, and my line is, we don't clean blood, feces or urine, whether animal or human.

Can you imagine? Four years ago, that would've felt really weird for me to say. Now I'm just like, we don't do that. And I tell them. Okay, so you wanna be really, really clear. You're gonna get better at hiring and vetting your cleaners. So in stage one, you probably had some cleaners not show up for interviews. You probably had cleaners that you hired and you thought, oh my gosh, this one's amazing.

And then they turned out to not be so great after all. And so again, you've learned a lot in stage one. Stage two, you're gonna get better at hiring. So you're attracting the right people to work with your company, and it's a really great time to be fine tuning the systems that you're developing. And again, something every day, that's the difference.

Stage one, you're probably doing a lot and then a little bit, and then a lot, and then a little bit. And you start getting into a rhythm where it's like, okay, I do something every single day to grow my cleaning business. And that perseverance is what we're talking about when it comes to really growing the revenue so that you can free up your time and focus on other things.

Here's a great example from Nakita. I just did a hot seat call with her. You can watch the interview, I'll link to it below, and she says, I kept thinking I needed to figure it all out before I hired anyone, but the business didn't grow until I stopped being the one doing the cleans. So a lot of people who start this cleaning company are cleaners themselves, or maybe they're like, hmm, I can probably figure it out. And they start doing the cleaning and then they never get out of doing the cleaning.

So Nakita was smart. She was like, I started doing the cleaning, and then she went, wait, if I'm doing the cleaning, I'm not growing the business. And so that's really in stage two where you're going, hey, I can't be the cleaner anymore. I have to grow, add more cleaners to my team and get out of the way. So you're building an engine here.

You've got a repeatable hiring process. You're figuring out what works and repeating it over and over again. Remember, hiring never stops. You don't just have a team and then stop hiring. You're always hiring. In order to grow, you have to always be hiring. You've got online booking. So now maybe you're fixing things like your frequently asked questions.

Now you know what they actually are. You've had enough experience talking to your clients and going, huh, this is something that they keep asking. I'm gonna fix this in my frequently asked questions. You've also got a better system for quality control. So these are things like, what do you do when a client complains? How do you handle your 24 hour guarantee?

Do you send a cleaner back within seven days to reclean that missed spot? Does the client have to send you photos? All of this gets fine tuned in the engine phase, so you have a stronger client communication rhythm. This is less difficult for you now, and it's really the time to focus on these things. Here's the trap in stage two.

Forgetting how simple this business is. It is so easy to get so stuck in fine tuning the engine that you're adding all this extra stuff and you really don't need to. So remember, you're getting clients, you're hiring cleaners, and you're getting reviews from both. And I say from both because most cleaning companies forget that their cleaners are their greatest source of inspiration for other cleaners to wanna work with you. So you can ask your cleaners to write you a review, and that can either go on your Google My Business profile or Yelp or whatever.

But we put it just on Indeed, 'cause that's what you use to hire. So when somebody looks at our Indeed ads, they also see the reviews from other cleaners talking about what it's like to work with us. That's a hot tip. Use that one. Most people don't. And then also obviously reviews from your clients. I think everybody knows that one.

Always be getting reviews. You're gonna communicate clearly, you're gonna create templates for what you repeat at this phase. You know what you do over and over again, what you say over and over again. So you can now create templates for, this is how I respond to this question, here's the text I send. So here's a quote from Destiny.

Once I stopped answering every client text myself and started using templates and an autoresponder, I got my weekends back. The business didn't have to suffer. It actually got better. And she's spot on. So once you pass into the boring phase, this is phase three. After you reach 25K month, approximately to around 50K month, this is where you might start getting a little bored.

And I say that with love because that was the goal in building this cleaning business. Boring is the goal, and suddenly it actually does feel boring. So your systems are working without you in them. Your cleaners know what to do. Clients rebook because they know how to do it. It's so easy for them. Once they've booked once, they're like, oh, I'm gonna book again.

No big deal. Revenue is consistent month over month, and you're checking in on things rather than running them yourself. So the boring phase is the most wonderful phase of all. It's where everything starts paying off. This is also usually when people quit their day jobs, by the way. With our profit margins of between about 28 and 32% on average, you can do the math yourself.

That usually replaces most people's incomes, and so they don't need to be working their jobs anymore. And all of a sudden they have free time on their hands. And as an adult, you probably haven't experienced having this much free time on your hands ever before. So it can be a little uncomfortable to suddenly have so much time. So this is also the most dangerous phase.

Here's where we see people adding more locations, and it's because they're bored. And so they think, I'm gonna add another location and that's gonna grow my revenue tenfold. Well, actually it's not, because a new location sets you back to stage one at that location, and so it doesn't make it easier. It makes it harder. And the thing I want you to remember here is that 10% of people hire cleaning companies.

And I can almost guarantee that if you're in the boring phase between 25 and 50K month, you probably haven't even reached 1% of that population yet. You don't need to expand to another location to grow. You need to focus on where you are. And that's it. So this whole, I need to expand to 20 different locations, and we've seen other coaches in this space doing that, and we get so many people coming to us going, I'm so burnt out.

You know why? You're constantly in phase one. So enjoy the boring phase. Do not add more locations. You don't need to. You're just creating busy work 'cause you're bored. The second mistake is very similar to the first: diversifying what you offer. So here people will add, and I've done it, trust me. By the way, in the first phase, we added a new location three times before I learned that lesson, and every single time we scaled back.

So this is coming from personal experience. I can tell you the mistakes we've made. So, diversifying what you offer, same thing. I added car detailing. Okay, just 'cause I was like, oh, that's a cool thing, I'll add that on. And then I had to interview car detailing companies, get contracts with them, try to convince our clients, hey, do you need car detailing?

We've got somebody. And all of it was just busy work and none of it actually worked. You can also add organization services. Same thing. You've gotta talk to professional organizers. Or now all of a sudden you've got short-term rental companies that are like, hey, can you manage all of our Airbnb properties? And now you're into property management and none of that is helping you.

So all of that is just busy work in order to feel worthy, and you don't need to. You built this business so that you could free up your time and your life. Do not add more to it. You don't need to. It also dilutes your brand, and so just focus on what you do and do it really well.

The third thing, and this is so common in this phase, is to try to outsource everything to a virtual assistant, thinking I'm just gonna pay somebody five, six bucks an hour in another country and they're gonna know how to do everything. And trust me, I know this one. We did it twice. Two full-time VAs, thinking that was the only way to grow our business. Then we ran the numbers and realized our revenue was dropping, our costs were increasing, and my time spent managing virtual assistants was just ridiculous.

Like, all I did for a whole year was manage VAs. And then we dialed it back, we went back to basics. Our revenue started growing again. Our profit margins increased and my time was back to being my time. So there's really no need to outsource this to a VA. I do wanna say that's also about timing.

AI is pretty incredible at doing most of the things that a virtual assistant could do. So this is where, now that you have free time, you can learn how to use AI and use it at a very high level. So you're not producing AI slop, you're actually doing better quality customer service, query handling. It's elevating your brand, not reducing it to just a crappy AI response to things.

We can tell the difference. We all can. And then again, go back to that answer the phone thing. It's only a couple calls a day. It's not a lot. I know sometimes people are annoying, and I gotta admit, at this phase, this is when I stopped answering the phone as much. But at this phase we have a lot of reviews, and those reviews are doing the explaining to customers that we are the real deal.

And so at this phase, we can start answering the phone a little less, letting the autoresponder reply, hey, please book online, if you have questions here are frequently asked questions. Most of the time those people do actually book online, so it's at this phase that can start to happen. Not in phase one and two, though. I wanna be clear, you gotta answer the phone in phase one and two, but in phase three and four, you can probably dial that back a bit. They will start booking online.

And then finally the last thing, fine tuning so much you stop talking to people. Oh, listen to me, I just said you don't have to talk to people so much. So you can see that is my inclination as well. But remember to use humans to help the humans, and allow the software and all of the systems you put in place to automate what needs to be automated.

But keep the human side. This is also where your SEO is gonna get serious. So you've laid the foundation in stage one and stage two, and now in stage three, you've got more time to really push yourself with learning how SEO works. Let low maintenance clients find you online. This is one of the smartest things we ever did.

It took us three years to learn that. And you don't need to waste that much time. You can learn all of it on our channel now. So it's all free. It's all here for you, telling you exactly what to focus on and what not to focus on, so you can find it in the channel.

So really, stage three, get out of your own way. This is the dangerous part 'cause your entrepreneurial brain wants to take over and make problems that don't exist. So don't let it. Once you get to stage four, this is where you're generating 50K month in revenue. This is the sweet spot. This is the other side, and what this actually looks like.

So in our case, I spend less than two hours a day on Oak Bay Clean. So does my sister. For her, it's probably more like one hour. And the rest of my time, I now spend on Cleaning Company Blueprint, this channel, and this community. I go to the gym every day, and my passion projects. So again, just for the math, 'cause I know a lot of you are thinking about this in your head, like what does that actually mean?

Profit wise, it's usually 28 to 32% if you're following our model. So you can do the math against your own salary, but it means you can pay the bills. You're not worried about groceries anymore. I never think about the price of avocados. I just buy them, and let me tell you, the teacher me of a few years ago, that was not the case.

I would look at the cost of milk, the cost of avocados, the cost of gas, the cost of rent, all of those things. And now I can just live my life. I'm not rich, I'm not loaded, but I can live my life the way I want to, and that is worth all of the hardship that I went through in phase one and two and three, and now four. So what this phase actually looks like, in my case, I started a garden. And then I realized I didn't actually love gardening all day, every day.

I really had it in my head, like, I need a greenhouse, I need all these veggie boxes. I went all in, you guys. And it turns out that was really boring for me. Then I convinced my sister we should do the YouTube channel. And it turns out teaching, which is what I used to be, beats weeding.

It absolutely does. So I'd rather do this, and spend my time with you. Together, we built this channel, but my sister Jen is able to write full-time. So that's her stage four passion project. When you're a creative person and you suddenly have time without worrying about the bills, your creative work can just elevate so much.

It is amazing to be able to see what my sister's producing now at this level compared to just a few years ago, when it was much harder for her to carve out the time, between being a single mom and trying to write and pay the bills and everything else. And then in this phase we also decided to start Oak Bay Lawns. So this is another version of the exact same business model as our cleaning company, but applied to lawn care. So we're in stage one in our lawn care business.

This is our second season and we're just gearing up now to get ready for the busy season in our area for lawn care. We've gone through a lot. In stage one, we learned how to hire landscapers, what to watch out for, how to let clients go, which clients are the right fit for us. So we've learned a lot, but we still have lots more to learn, and that's okay. So in phase four, you can start working on other things in your life.

Here's the danger at this phase: forgetting why you started this in the first place. So you did start this to have free time, and once you have it, your brain again is gonna try to fill you with busy work, and you really don't need to. Just enjoy what you've built. Or start another one like we have. I've got ADHD. I can't handle having all this free time. I'm not complaining about it, but I am meant to be building.

So my sister, not so much. She's meant to be writing, and so this is a frustrating thing for her, but she puts up with me and she lets me build another business here, and this is the right time to do it. Now, here's what's coming up. We have a live workshop happening on March 23rd at 4:00 PM PST. It's free to attend.

We're gonna be going deep with the community about what these four phases are actually like. So we're gonna have people that are in those stages there, and they're gonna be mentoring people. We're gonna have breakout rooms. So you'll actually get to go into a Zoom breakout room with people that are at your revenue stage. And there'll be one person that has just graduated from that stage, that is one level above you.

And so that person will be there to keep the conversation on track and to help guide you on what you actually need to be focused on in your stage, so that you're not getting distracted, you're not getting overwhelmed, and they're gonna be holding you accountable. And then we'll be announcing the next thing that we're building that we've been working on for the last few months. So stinking excited about it. So please do come to the workshop on March 23rd. There'll be a link below.

And even if you can't attend it live, do register, 'cause I will send the recording to everybody that registers. The only thing with that, though, is the magic happens in the breakout rooms. And in the breakout rooms, we are not recording. It's important that everybody who's in there feels safe, like they can talk about how it's really going for them.

And so we will not be recording the breakout rooms. So really be there live if you can. And I apologize to our followers in the UK and Australia and New Zealand and beyond. I know I've chosen a time that is probably really bad for you. But do please register, and then you can get access to the other stuff we're announcing, and that'll be a better time for you to be able to participate as well.

If you're still here, you watched this entire video, and that tells me something about you. You're serious about your cleaning business. You are our kind of people. If you're ready to start your cleaning business and you wanna know exactly what to do each step along the way, in just one hour a day, watch this video next. Click below.

We've got the 22 days to launch checklist that will keep you on track. And if you already have a cleaning business but you're looking for some inspiration, watch this video next.

*Figure as of the March 2026 recording. Oak Bay Clean has since passed $2.8M in sales as of July 2026.