How do you start a house cleaning business when you're a new mom
and you're new to house cleaning?
We're going to talk about that today.
Hi there, I'm Angela Brown and this is Ask a House Cleaner.
What kind of show is this?
Uhm, House Cleaner.
Yes.
It's a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question and then what happens?
I forgot.
I get to help you find an answer.
And today we're all going to help you find an answer.
How about that?
Yay!
We get to clean houses.
Yay! (clapping)
Awesome, Okay cool.
Hi Angela, I really, really love watching your videos on YouTube and just started expanding
to it right before the day before I had my son and I got everything started.
I got all my business licenses together and I read your book through and everything.
Now, when I had him, I got a C-section and so it's been a bid of delay trying to get up
and about to do things.
But my question is we really haven't started with the business and we plan to start November.
I want to know, what do you think are some of the tips for a new mom starting out?
Let me know, thank you so much.
Angela Brown: All right, what are some tips for new moms going back to business or getting
started in the business after you've just had a child.
All right, this is coming from a place of love and I have to be really honest with you,
to go back to work or to start a house cleaning business right after you've just had a child,
especially a caesarian, is raising the stakes of the game so high.
You're going to have to jump through so many hoops to make this work.
Now the good news is you're not the first person that has done this, there are lots
of moms that are house cleaners and housekeepers at hotels that have babies and then they come
right back to work.
Here are a couple of things to keep you going as you get started.
The very first thing that I want you to do, very first thing, very, very first thing is
I want you to block off on your calendar a date night with your husband.
You're going to say, "What does that have to do with house cleaning?"
But here's what it has to do.
As a mom, you have a new infant and so you've been spending a lot of time with the infant
and your husband who is your first priority, for however many years, is now suddenly on
the back, back, back burner.
So he feels not so needed and appreciated.
All right, having said that, now you're starting a new business and every business owner knows
that their spouse, the person they love the most in the world, that takes care of them
and believes in them when no one else does, including themselves, is now on the back,
back, back, back, back burner.
He doesn't want to be forgotten, so make a date night first and foremost for your spouse
so that the two of you can get away from your business and your child and spend some time
rekindling the flame and getting to know each other again and keep that bond close.
Because as a new business owner, you need that moral support, and number two as a new
mom, you need that moral support.
Having said that, that's going to be the ground foundation.
The next thing I want you to do is get a schedule.
You are going to need a schedule that gets you out of your house.
Now I'm unclear whether or not that you're going to do the cleaning yourself or whether
you're going to hire some cleaners.
I don't know which it is but my suggestion is get out of your house.
Right now you've been in your house for six, eight weeks, I don't know how long your maternity
leave has been and you've been running around in pajamas and maybe your hair is in a pigtail.
The routine is out of whack.
Now you're going to show up and you're going to be a professional business owner and you
have to have a routine.
Because if you follow the, "I'll just show up whenever I'm ready routine," it will never
happen.
You have to be incredibly strict about the routine part.
So what my suggestion is, is this.
Let's say that you're going to start your business back at the first of November, so
right now in October start right now with this routine.
Get your kid in daycare because I'm assuming they're not coming with you.
Kids don't come on house cleaning jobs, that's not cool, that never was cool, it never will
be cool.
You want to put your kid in daycare and you want to do that immediately, and my suggestion
is at least a week before you actually start cleaning houses.
This will get you up in the morning, it forces you to go through a couple of things that
we haven't thought of yet.
The things that we haven't thought of yet are these,
"How much does your kid eat every day?"
So you need to plan out the meals for your child.
Do they eat baby food?
Is it just formula right now?
Are you nursing?
What is the process that you're going through right now for your child?
You need to figure out how you're going to do that while you're house cleaning.
How are you going to feed your child?
Are you going to prepare the bottles the night before or are you going to use a breast pump?
What is the process you're going to use?
And then you need to get that into play right now.
How many blowouts a day does your kid have?
And you need to know that too because you need to know how many diapers and how many
outfits you need to pack to go to the daycare.
Then if we get the kid in daycare a week before you start cleaning houses, if something malfunctions
and you have to run over with an extra change of clothes or shoes or whatever, at least
you will have the understanding and the latitude to do that.
Once you start house cleaning you can't quit a customer's house and go running back to
the daycare to bring extra diapers and stuff.
So you want to get all those kinks worked out.
Now the rest of your day also needs to be routinized, and what I mean by routinized
is can you leave your child at daycare long enough that when you are done cleaning houses
you can come home and either fix dinner or work out
before you pick up your child from daycare.
You want to add in enough extra space in your day that your day is not completely consumed
by either working cleaning houses or your child.
You need a little bit of mom time in between, so in the beginning you might sign your child
up for a full day of daycare and you may only clean houses for half of that day.
My suggestion is that you also do that maybe only four days a week.
So you put your kid in daycare for five days a week
and you only clean houses for four days.
That gives you one full day without your child, and I'm not knocking your child, we love children,
but as a new mom you're going to be exhausted all of the time and so you need to heal from
that and you need to recoup.
Starting a new business you also need business time and it's very difficult if you're running
in a bunch of different directions trying to do a bunch of different things and feed
and change and all these different things with the baby.
You need a day where you can focus on your social media and your business and putting
together an employee handbook and your hiring and firing policies and all of the things
that are about to happen as your business grows and expands.
If you have customer satisfaction and you have to go back and reclean a customer's house,
you need to factor that in as well.
There may be a day let's say that you only work Monday through Thursday but on Friday
is a day for you.
That's a day where you could go back and you can do customer satisfaction guarantees if
you have to do that.
It's also a day where, don't tell anyone, but if you need a three hour nap, nobody's
interrupting you, you don't have your baby during the day and you're able that you can
just lay down and take a rest and catch up on some sleep.
There are some things that you have to do to take care of yourself.
Now if I've said it once, I've said it a million times, you have to take care of yourself first
as a business owner because as the business owner you are your company's biggest asset.
Now the same rule applies to being a mom and so like I said this is a double whammy, there's
a lot of stuff going on.
You have to exercise every day even though you don't feel like it, and you're not going
to feel like it for several months.
Your hormones are going to be out of whack and so you might just start crying for no
reason, and there's nothing wrong, you're just going to start crying and feeling like
eating chocolate.
But what you really need to do is put on a pair of walking shoes and get out and go walking
because the healthier you are you're going to be a better mom and a better house cleaner.
It's really important to the success of your business and to your child that you take incredibly
good care of yourself.
If there's one person you take care of right now it's you, and I mean this from the love
in my heart.
Yes, it sounds selfish but you cannot take care of your child, you cannot take care of
your customers, you cannot take care of your husband unless you take care of yourself first.
Like I said, this comes from a place of love but you have to commit to you, you are the
most important person right now, you.
All right, now that I've said that, there's a very small window, please don't abuse this,
there's a very small window where you can go to your customers and you can say, "Hey,
I'm your new house cleaner and I'm just coming off of maternity leave.
I've got a brand new infant child and as I start cleaning your house, there are a couple
of things I should warn you about."
And then warn them about the hormones.
Now anybody who's ever been a parent before understands the hormones, "So listen, if you
come home and I'm cleaning your house and you just see me
sobbing for no reason, I'm okay.
The hormones are just out of whack
but that is not a good time for you to nitpick my house cleaning.
Save it for a different day."
Let them know, "I'm going to be a little on edge for a couple of months," and they'll
go, "Oh, okay."
They want you to succeed, they want you to clean their house and they want to support
a new mom and so they're going to give you a little bit of leeway.
I say don't take advantage of it, but let your customers know.
If you just show up and then you're hormonal and they don't know why, they're going to
think you're loopy or they're going to think you're like crazy or something.
You need to let them know I'm a brand new mom, I got hormones that don't belong, I'm
irritable for no good reason, I'm frustrated, I'm tired as all can be, I'm just exhausted
but I'm going to do the best job you've ever had to the best of my abilities.
So they will work with you, customers will work with you.
They're humans, they understand what you're going through but you have to explain it.
Those are a couple of tips right up front, a couple more tips and then I will let you
get back to your child and your day.
The nighttime routine is as important as your morning routine.
At nighttime, before you go to bed at night there are a couple of things you can do.
You have to do inventory for your cleaning supplies.
So inventory is important, you have to make sure that all of your supplies are clean,
that they are full, that all of your wash clothes and your towels are clean for the
following day, that your mops have proper mop heads, that your vacuum is emptied.
Anything that you use for your cleaning business must be ready the night before.
Now, again, with the stack in the deck so high, your diaper bag for your child has to
be packed the night before as well.
You're going to want to do an inventory for the diaper bag.
You're going to want to pull everything out and go through everything and make sure there
are plenty of diapers, there are plenty of clothes, there are plenty of ... I don't know
what you use, salve or Vaseline, diaper rash, ointment, I don't know what you use, but you
need all that extra stuff in there.
If there's any medication, if there's a thermometer, if there are toys, if there's a little squeezy
doll, I don't know what your kid uses but whatever the kids need, you need to have it
and you need to have plenty of it so that you're not stopping the job to go back to
the daycare during the day.
The other thing that I might recommend is the meals that you have at your house.
There are easy ways to prepare meals and what I recommend is at my house I cook one day
a month and I love this routine, it's worked for me for years but because I'm always gone
and for years I've cleaned houses, this has been a system that has always worked for me.
I have nine crockpots.
I know, it sounds obsessive, it sounds like I'm hoarding them but I cook all of my meals
one day a month.
So I go to Costco and I buy all the groceries and I bring it home and I cut up all the potatoes
in this pot and all the carrots might go in three different pots, asparagus might go in
four different pots depending on the recipes but I make all of the food at once.
Then I repackage them in small freezer size containers and they go inside of the refrigerator
in the freezers so that we can prepare and pack meals on the go.
This saves so much time because as a new mom when your kid comes back from the daycare
you're going to want to spend time with your child, not spending time cooking.
You're still responsible, like I said, for your health and so having healthy meals prepared
in advance will keep you from going through the drive through and eating junk food which
will just perpetuates that not feeling good all the time.
If you have a chance at nighttime prepare your meals for the day before, pull out of
the freezer the food that you need thought out,
get ready your smoothies for the next day.
If you're nursing and you've got to prepare the bottles for the next day, prepare the
bottles for the next day for your child.
You just want to make sure that you are ready for your job and for your baby the next day.
A note on dropping the baby off, you've got to have rules and boundaries just like we
do when we go to customer's houses.
As you drop your child off at the daycare, you want to get in and get out.
Now when we go to a customer's house we have a 60-second rule.
The same rule applies when you drop your kid off at daycare, and I'm not trying to be ugly
because you're going to spend a lot of time getting to know the daycare provider.
But the daycare provider is a person too with a family, so you don't want to go in and chit
chat and spend 20 minutes to a half an hour picking up your kid.
You want to go in, pick up your kid and leave.
You're going to see them again tomorrow morning, you're going to see them again tomorrow night.
Every day for the next however many years your kid is in daycare.
You will get to know these people over time and you will become friends but keep it to
just a minute or two, don't go in and drag out your whole evening and waste a bunch of
time chit chatting and whatever.
The daycare service provider, they're trained, they're licensed, they're bonded and insured
and all these things, they've got it figured out.
Your kid is in good hands, let it be.
Drop your kid off and go and then go cry in the car.
Don't sit here and try to fuss.
All right, one more thing that I would recommend is take advantage of things like Amazon Prime.
Amazon Prime is what 115 bucks a year or something, I forget the exact price, but it allows free
shipping for products that you need.
Order all of your cleaning supplies, order your food, order your vitamins, order whatever
it is you need, the diapers, stuff for your kid, whatever you need, order it on Amazon
and have it drop shipped to you.
That will keep you from every day running to the store to buy new cleaning supplies
and things that you've run out of and whatever.
It's great to get out of the house but when you get out of the house it needs to be on purpose.
Go to mommy and me events, go to new mom events, go to meet ups, go to things that are supportive
of you, go to entrepreneur meetings, go to BNI meetings, go to things that support your
business.
Don't fritter away all of your time doing things like wandering around the Walmart looking
for cleaning supplies.
Your time is of better use building your business and spending time with your new family.
Those would be my suggestions starting out, it is going to be tough.
Starting a new business is tough, starting a new family is tough.
Like I said, there are a bunch of people that have done it, you can do it, I believe in you.
You've got the guts to do it so you can do it.
But be easy on yourself and just say, "Hey, listen, I'm only human, there's only so much
I can do," and pace yourself so that you don't burn out."
But like I said, the most important thing you can do right now is to take care of you
so that all these other puzzle pieces can fit together.
I'm so excited that you had a baby, congratulations, and I hope that this works for you.
I want you to keep me posted because I want to hear all the details.
Alrighty, until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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