Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems
Almost had $20k in revenue last month. I am getting semi-consistent leads, but I have been holding the business back from its full potential.
Every week (at this point it’s more when I feel like it), I send out a newsletter with an update on my journey from 0 to 100k per month. I share my successes, failures, and lessons along the way. I hope you’ll consider subscribing (if not already) and sharing this post with others who find entrepreneurship and businesses fun and interesting.
(3 minute read)
I know it’s been awhile since the last newsletter and there has been a significant increase in subscribers so as a reminder, my name is Edwin and I am building a cleaning business in Seattle, WA. I recently graduated from UW with a degree in Computer Science.
This newsletter is focused on my entrepreneurial journey. For now, this means focusing on my cleaning business, but in the future it will include other ventures I pursue as well.
May Monthly Revenue (collected + receivables + booked cleans): $19,595.70
June Monthly Revenue (collected + receivables + booked cleans so far): $11,640.25
Growing Pains
May and June’s revenue looks crazy considering I started this cleaning business back in January of this year, especially considering my April revenue was “only” $5,566.35.
However, it’s not what it seems…
Did I almost generate 20K in sales last month? Yes. This resulted in a profit of around $6k.
However, the vast majority of it was from one time customers for move out cleans.
On one hand, this is great since I have their information and can re-market to them. However, it is almost a turn and burn situation when I have to keep finding new leads.
In a low ticket service business, the only way to become profitable is to have recurring clients and/or free leads.
One time low ticket services like move out cleans pad the bottom line but do not sustain it long term.
In addition, labor has been tough to deal with at times, but is the most vital part of this business.
Above all else, good labor is the most important part of this type of service business, full stop.
That being said, good labor is difficult to find. Finding staff that communicate well, do good work, are honest, and reliable seem like finding a needle in a haystack.
At the start of the business, I had a massive pipeline of applicants and was interviewing constantly. However, that has been on pause for the past 2 months and it has been a mistake.
Reigniting The Fire
A few weeks ago, I hired a virtual assistant and tried to have them take care of everything: The day-to-day management, the client follow ups, inbound calls etc. without me spending much time to properly train them.
It was a mistake bringing them on and expecting the world from them without much input from myself.
I became lazy. Heck, I am still lazy. Complacent, even. And it’s cost me dearly from customer complaints to not being able to book some leads due to being understaffed.
As stated before, labor is the most important part of this business. This cannot be understated.
I have been lazy in hiring and quick to delegate sales and fulfillment. Both are 100% my fault. I would probably have a larger pool of great labor had I spent more time on hiring.
So this is what my days are going to start looking like: Sifting through applications on Indeed from potential cleaners, calling and reaching out to cleaners on Facebook groups, Nextdoor post comments, etc. All that + following up with leads in my crm.
With hiring labor being the most important aspect of my business, I cannot delegate it out.
At this point, I have a good amount of leads coming from SEO, Realtors, and FB ads. What I worry about isn’t “will I get jobs?”, but rather “will I be able to fulfill them well?”
With this said, I know that Edwin from a few months ago would be overjoyed at almost hitting 20K in one month. I try to keep this in mind and realize that I am actually not doing too bad.
Parting Thoughts
I know I skipped A LOT in this edition to keep it brief. I also wanted to show the reality of the current state of the business instead of pretending like everything was going smoothly.
Being real holds me accountable for my actions.
With that said, what do you, as the reader, want me to write about next? I have a few ideas I wasn’t able to get around to this time:
My process of getting leads from Realtors and cold emailing brokers (which is how I am about to land a $3,599 job soon, if my bid gets accepted)
Breaking down my SEO strategy that has gotten me results like this (plus a $4,249 job I am personally going to help out with):
How I am working on almost automating my lead follow up
My results and findings with running FB ads for cleaning (cheaper leads doesn’t mean better)
Something else?
Let me know by replying to this email or commenting on Substack. Either way, thank you for reading this far! For those who have been reading since day 1, I appreciate you and sorry I haven’t been writing as frequently as I should have.
For new subscribers, thank you for joining me on this journey, welcome!
> With this said, I know that Edwin from a few months ago would be overjoyed at almost hitting 20K in one month.
Exactly. You're doing so well! 🎉
> labor is the most important part of this business. This cannot be understated.
I'm curious whether you've considered offering above-market pay and/or profit sharing or phantom equity?
I.e. if you want to recruit "staff that communicate well, do good work, are honest, and reliable", what incentives can you offer to make your recruiting easy?
Inspiring! I'm interested to hear about all those marketing tactics (so 1, 2, 4) but also about how much time you you put into these (and the rest of ops) per day and week. And, do you like/love every bit of it? or do some parts, sometimes or always, feel like a grind?