Starting a Cleaning Service - First Steps

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I Did It - So Can You!

Recently, I made a post where I was writing about my wife's business, Queen Bee Cleaning LLC and how we had done a power washing job. @audigital read this post and made a comment about how I should write about starting the company and the steps we had taken to get where we were. I thought to myself that that was a great idea and maybe I could help someone else to get started as well!

What's In A Name?

For my wife and I, the prompt to start a business came when we were laid off from our jobs during the beginning of Covid. We both worked at a local community college and I realized that we might not get called back right away, so I started thinking about what we could do to make ends meet. My wife @queenbee1977 had been doing several side jobs cleaning houses, so I broached the idea of starting a cleaning company, and she thought it was a good idea. She had gotten me a honey bee hive for my birthday that year, so almost jokingly I said "How about Queen Bee Cleaning?" She liked the idea, so we went with it!

Got A Name - Now What?

Now here is where the actually thinking comes in, you see when you start a business, you have to always be thinking ahead as far as branding, image, marketing, and advertising. This goes for a name as well. Think about it, "Joe's Handyman Service" sounds great, but what are your long term goals? If the goal is to dominate your local market, then this name may be fine, but if the idea of franchising or growing beyond local is in your mindset, then you need to realize that the name "Joe" is not going to have meaning outside of local word of mouth. The same goes for a logo...

What Do You Mean I Can't Just Use Clipart?

Again, when you start developing your business idea, you have to use original concepts, think about it, you can't just start a soda company and call it Coke, unless you want to be in court! So make sure you develop a unique name, and then start thinking about your logo. This can get tricky because down the road, you will want to trademark it if you plan on any kind of growth at all. Also, "intellectual property" is highly valuable if you ever decide to sell your business. Logos, trademarks, websites, musical "jingles," and Facebook and Google profiles with good reviews can be worth a lot of money to the right investor. My advice when it comes to a logo is, unless you are an artist, have a graphic designer develop an original logo for you, and have them certify that it is original!

Name, Logo, Now What?

Now that you have your name and logo for your business, you need to address what kind of business you are going to have. I do not mean what goods or services you are going to provide here, I mean what kind of business entity you plan on running. Now here I can only speak to my local area, which is in the United States in Michigan. Here we have the option of Sole Proprietor, Partnership, Limited Liability Company, and then the various Corporations, S-Corp and C-Corp. There is also the option of starting a non-profit, or 501C3, which contrary to what you may think, does not mean the business does not make money, just that it never shows profit at the end of the year.

What We Did...

When we started, we started as a sole proprietor with my wife as the owner. This was so that we could take advantage of the benefits of having a "Woman Owned Business," and also to be honest, cause there is a stigma in the cleaning business where people really do not want men in their homes. I know it sounds crazy but it really is true. After about six months, we started the process of becoming a Limited Liability Company, which protects the assets of the business against lawsuits. When we did this we also put ten percent of the company in my name, and what this did was took the companies credit from being ran on my wife's social security number to giving the company it's own "credit profile." There is a little more to it than that, but for this post I am keeping it simple.

What Is Next?

This is just an introduction post to the first steps to consider if you want to start a cleaning company, or any business. In my next post I am going to cover things like acquiring business license and a tax identification number. I will also cover the market analysis and how we went about doing that as well. I will also cover basic supplies you will need to get started, and easy ways to grow a cleaning business beyond just residential cleaning. I hope you will look for and read that post as well!

As Always, Thank You For Reading!