The one question I get asked more than any other

I get asked one question more than any other: "What should I name my cleaning business?" My answer is so simple that people do not believe it can possibly be that easy.

Where people go wrong with names

There is the person who already loves their name and wants me to affirm it. It has nothing to do with their location, nothing to do with the keywords that matter, and half the time they spelled cleaning with a K. You would be shocked how often we see "klean," as if Google prefers klean over clean (hint: it does not!).

Then there is the big thinker: "I might expand to 50 locations one day, so I picked something generic because I might franchise this." Google never finds them, they get no traction in the one city they are in, and they quit before they ever had a chance to even consider the franchise route.

Jen and I like it simple

Jen and I like simple and easy, because it works. We have worked hard our whole lives, and a cleaning business just needs to pay the bills so we can spend our time on what matters more.

We now teach how to name your business so Google and AI search recommend you fast. It is stupidly simple, and people still veer off it. The eager entrepreneurial brain reaches for something cute, and cute does nothing to get you found.

How Dana made $8K in her first month

A couple of months ago I met Dana. She is in NYC, works a demanding full-time job, and had named her company something that meant a lot to her and nothing to her clients. She missed the part that matters most: the geography.

She had not launched yet. Her website, booking, pricing, and crew were all still ahead of her, so she had time to fix the name fast.

NYC is huge and competitive. The best cleaning owners there started over a decade ago, built multi-million dollar companies, and they answer the phone. Outside NYC, about 70% of cleaning companies never answer the first call, and only a third return a voicemail. New Yorkers answer, because they are hungry and paying $4K a month to live in a shoebox.

So to stand out in NYC, the fastest way is to be hyper-local and dominate your local search area. Someone in NYC types "cleaning services" and Google and AI search show them the results closest to them, the ones that say what they do and where they do it. Yes, it IS that simple. And bonus: people deeply care about supporting local these days, so let them support your local business.

When Dana shared her name and the sweet story behind it, she asked for my feedback. I asked her where in the city she actually lives, and to get specific. She said Hudson Yards.

We dug into the area together. Bougie enough that people outsource their cleaning, not so bougie that they have live-in housekeepers. A clear yes.

Dana pivoted fast and named her company Hudson Yards Clean. In her first month she made $8,000. That is four times what Jen and I made in our first month, and she did it simply by naming her company right.

Is she missing out by not going after all of New York City? Nope. You only need 100 recurring clients to make half a million a year.

Want $1 million? Find 200 clients who book biweekly cleaning. Two hundred clients, not two thousand.

That kind of scale takes years to build, and trust me, you do not want it with a simple cleaning business. Will you franchise one day? You can absolutely do that when you want to. Let us get you your first success and pivot to that conversation when the timing is right.

So stop trying to be like Amazon, going after everyone. Focus on one area and own it. Follow the formula, because it works, and get out of your own way.

The tool I built

I built a tool that runs on one formula: location plus keywords equals your business name. It is here, and yes, it is free: namemycleaningcompany.com.

You type in your location. If you are in a big city like London, it pushes you to get specific, because Notting Hill beats London every time.

It reads the first page of Google for your area and pulls the competitors already ranking. It checks how many have online booking and transparent pricing. The site reads their business names too, so it only suggests names with an available domain in your area. If the obvious one is taken, it looks at similar demographics nearby and finds the openings that are wide open.

You get a demographics snapshot and a difficulty score: Tough, Moderate, or Strong. That tells you whether to go after the area or pick a smarter one.

Then it shows you three solid names for free, no email required. Want to go deeper? Add your email and get a PDF report with every name worth considering, the ones already taken, how many reviews your competitors have, and where your opening is.

It also shows the going rate for cleaning in your area. That is the second most frequent question we get: "But how much should I charge?" So we give it to you fast.

Try it now: namemycleaningcompany.com

Vic