My employees were not properly trained and I lost 10 clients.

Creating routes will fix that.

There may not be a more important post on this website than this one.

2 months ago, as of writing this article, I began losing clients. By losing, I mean they fired us because the cleaners weren’t doing a good enough job.

We had 25 clients and by the time the “Great Firing” was done, we had 14 or 15 clients left. In fact, we almost lost another customer right at the end. I offered him a lower price to keep trying us while I fixed the problem.

What was the problem? Poor employee training.

I did an absolutely horrid job in training the people that worked for me. I assumed that with the training I did, that everyone was going to do the same job as me. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

It’s horrible that this affected everyone that worked for me. The only thing I can do now is to accept responsibility and change how I train.

What I am going to do, is to use routes as described by this cleaning business owner: https://www.housecleaninguniversity.com/. Routes will allow me to train my cleaners more extensively.

(By the way, the ad to your right or at the bottom of the page if you’re on a cell phone is the link to House Cleaning University.)

Routes and how they work and why they help in training

  1.  A route is a (recuring) set of homes that the employees clean every two weeks. They clean a certain number of these homes each day. Same homes, same cleaners everytime. 

  2.  Two cleaners clean the homes on the route.

  3.  To start a route, the owner of House Cleaning University mentioned starting by yourself and building the route until you have to hire someone to help. Don’t get nervous. I couldn’t physically do this either, so I’ll have an employee working with me.

  4.  TRAINING:  While building the route, the owner extensively trains the cleaning apprentice she hired. (Notice that I am now using cleaning apprentice. This puts a new spin on how we look at training. I’ll write more about this later.)

  5.  When the route is full, the business owner would hire another person to replace her on that route. She would do training of the new person and by the first cleaner. Once the second cleaner completes the training, she assigns both cleaners to do the route on their own..

6.  Now she would start another route, grow it, hire another cleaner, etc. Rinse and repeat, growing the business one route at a time.

So, why create a route?

*  Much better training for new employees.

*  Much better income to the owner without harming the income of the cleaners. This is because the owner is working in the field.

Route income numbers

She mentioned some income numbers per route. Below is my idea of the numbers.

*  The numbers are based on you being able to clean part time.

* Also assumed is the business being able to get two new, every other week clients per week who pay an average of $125 per cleaning. Average cleaning takes two cleaners 1.5 hours.

*  At $19.25/hour, employees would earn about $29 per cleaning.

*  If two new clients per week sounds too ambitious, make it one new client per week and double the time to start route two. Results are the same, it just takes longer.

  To start: zero homes and one employee.

  Month two:  16 cleanings = less than one cleaning per day. Gross income $2,000/month: $464 to the employee and $1536 to you.

  Month three:  32 cleanings per month or 1.5 cleaning per day. Gross income of $4,000/month: $928 for the employee and $3072 for you.

  Month 4:  48 cleanings per month or 2+ cleanings per day. Gross income $6,000: $1,392 for employees and $4,600 for you. (You’re now making $50,000 per year)

  Month 5:  64 cleanings per month or 3 cleanings per day. Gross income: $8,000: $1856 for the employees, $6144 to you.

  Month 6: Hire a new cleaner to replace you in Route 1 at month 8. It now takes 1 hour to clean a home. 80 cleanings per month or 3.75 cleanings per day. Gross income $10,000: (2 employees) $3080 for the employees, $6920 for you.

  Month 7: Hire a new cleaner. 96 cleanings per month. It now takes 45 minutes to clean a home. 4.5 homes cleaned per day. Gross income: $12,000. Three employees get paid $8352. $3648 is for you.

  Month 8: You take yourself and the new hire from month 7 out of the first route. Continuing gross income from the first route with 96 cleanings/month: $12,000/month: $5568 for employees and $6432/month to you.

  Beginning of month 8: Start route #2.  

Benefits of route work:

This method provides a considerable amount of apprenticeship training. It simplifies the house cleaning business growth and helps the business owner earn more.

An added benefit is that working in the field will keep you in good shape, too.

Sounds good to me. How ‘bout you?