Do you want to learn how to start a remote cleaning business? Remote cleaning businesses are a new way to run a cleaning company that’s flexible and easy to grow. Instead of cleaning homes yourself, you work with independent contractors who do the cleaning for you. This saves money and time, making it easier to…
Do you want to learn how to start a remote cleaning business?
Remote cleaning businesses are a new way to run a cleaning company that’s flexible and easy to grow. Instead of cleaning homes yourself, you work with independent contractors who do the cleaning for you. This saves money and time, making it easier to run your business from anywhere (this is a great online business idea!).
Today, I have a fun interview to share with you. It’s with Johnny Robinson from Home Service Academy, a successful entrepreneur who started his cleaning business with just $150 and scaled it to earn over $700,000 each year.
Johnny began his journey with a window cleaning business and eventually launched a thriving house cleaning business for his mom. In this interview, he shares how he built these businesses, the strategies he used to find clients, and why the remote cleaning business model is one of the most beginner-friendly options for new entrepreneurs.
In this interview, I ask Johnny questions about starting a remote cleaning business, including:
- What is a remote cleaning business, and how does it work?
- How much money can someone earn with a remote cleaning business?
- How can a remote cleaning business find customers?
- Is there room for new remote cleaning businesses?
If you’re looking for a flexible and profitable business idea, today’s interview is a must-read.
Also, you can click here to watch a free training on how to start your own remote cleaning business.
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Want to learn how to start a remote cleaning business? This free training will help you get started.
How To Start a Remote Cleaning Business
If you want to learn how to start a remote cleaning business, this interview is a great place to get started!
1. Tell me your story. Who are you, and what do you do?
My name is Johnny Robinson. I teach people how to start remote cleaning businesses. At 19 years old with only $150, I started a window cleaning business in Orange County, CA. It’s called Orange Window Cleaning. I started with my best friend from the 7th grade Sergio Silesky.
Over the course of 4.5 years, it became the biggest window cleaning company in Orange County. We sold it when we got to around $65,000-$70,000 per month in revenue. The business now does over $1,000,000 per year and is still the highest-rated residential & commercial window cleaning business in Orange County.
At the tail end of running this business, I switched from having our own W2 employees providing the service to having independent contractors who already had their own trucks, equipment, and crew to go out and service the jobs.
This saved us time and money on things like equipment, gas, payroll, tax, workers comp, etc. Allowing us to become more profitable and to run the business remote.
2. What is a remote cleaning business, and how does it work compared to a traditional cleaning business? Do you do any of the cleaning yourself?
Remote in this business model means that you don’t do any cleaning yourself, allowing you to run the business from anywhere in the world.
In a traditional house cleaning business, you would do the cleaning yourself or you would hire W2 employees. When you hire W2 employees, you are responsible for buying their equipment, paying for their gas, training/managing them, paying payroll taxes, paying workers comp. This adds a lot of unnecessary cost into the business.
In a remote cleaning business, you hire independent contractors to do the work. Hiring independent contractors allows you to not have to pay for any of those things.
The typical process goes something like this:
- A lead finds you via a local Facebook/Nextdoor group or a paid marketing channel like Google LSA.
- They call you for house cleaning services or inquire via your online booking tool.
- You talk with them, figure out their wants & needs, then book them for a cleaning
- You then assign the job to one of your onboarded cleaning providers.
- The provider will go to the customer’s home, do a good job, and then you will charge their card.
- Payment is processed through Bookingkoala.
3. Why did you decide to start a remote home cleaning business, and how did you get started?
I started my first cleaning business 8 years ago with my best friend Sergio. We were both 19 at the time and started it with $150. We built that business up over 5 years. At its peak we were doing $65k-$70k per month in revenue while only spending 5-10 hours/week.
We transitioned from hiring w2 employees to only hiring contractors. Allowing us to make more profit and free up most of our time.
We then took everything we learned and applied it to house cleaning. We started this business to create a full-time income for my then 63-year-old mom. She was driving Uber full-time to make ends meet. We launched that business on a credit card and took it to $12,000 in revenue the first month, with $4,000 in profit, and $20,000 in revenue the second month with $8,000 in profit.
She hasn’t driven Uber since and now does $35,000 per month with that business.
4. What inspired you to transition from hands-on window cleaning to a remote operation?
As we were growing the window cleaning business, we found ourselves consistently having to take cash out of the business to reinvest into growth.
We would have to purchase things like new trucks, new equipment, office space, etc. We were growing the business but profit was very low.
When we discovered that if we just hired contractors, we would save money on trucks, equipment, gas, payroll tax, and workers compensation. We also learned we would save time on having to train employees.
This one change boosted our profits up and took our time involvement in the day to day down. This way we could work on the business instead of in it.
5. Why are remote cleaning businesses important? What problems do they solve for customers compared to traditional cleaning businesses?
Remote cleaning businesses are important because they allow you to come into essentially any market and be able to out-compete traditional house cleaning businesses in the area.
This is because you can hire and staff up way faster using contractors instead of employees.
Buildings get dirty over and over again. Whether it be residential, commercial, new construction, or vacation rentals, cleaning will always need to be done.
People will pay companies to do stuff that they don’t want to do and cleaning is a massive one.
6. How did you find your first remote cleaning clients? Any tips for someone just starting out in the home cleaning industry?
We found our first remote cleaning clients through door to door. However, we just didn’t know what we were doing at the time.
When we launched the house cleaning business we found our first clients through paid ads (Google Local Service Ads) and local Nextdoor/Facebook groups.
We would make posts in the community subtly mentioning that we owned a house cleaning business. Anyone that would engage with those posts we would send a direct message and offer them 20% off their first clean with us. This would get our foot in the door and after that first clean we would book them for weekly, biweekly, and monthly recurring services.
7. How much money can someone realistically earn with a remote cleaning business?
Standard margins in this business are between 30-40% net. As an example, Mary And A Mop does $35,000 per month at a 40% net profit margin. Meaning $14,000 per month in profit (give or take).
Across the 2000+ cleaning companies we have helped start, we see an average student at $2,000 of recurring revenue by the end of 4 months.
We also see the average time to make the first sale is around 21 days.
8. What skills, qualifications, or tools do you think are needed to succeed in this field?
The beauty of this business is that there is little to no marketing, sales, or tech skills required. If you have those skills, it certainly can help but it’s a very beginner friendly business with a high ceiling.
As far as software, all you need to get started is BookingKoala, OpenPhone, Gsuite, Quickbooks, and liability insurance.
BookingKoala to store all of your customer information and manage the leads. Openphone so you can have a business phone number. You don’t want to be mixing your personal phone number with business. Gsuite for a business email. Quickbooks so you can track your profit and expenses. And last but not least general liability insurance from Next or Thimble in the case that something goes wrong on the job. You will rarely if ever use the insurance because you will send cleaners out that have their own, but in a rare case it’s better to be safe than sorry.
9. What equipment or technology does someone need to get started with a remote cleaning business?
Google local service ads and Thumbtack are your best friends for paid marketing. These platforms will send you leads already searching for cleaning services. This is helpful because these are going to be leads with very high intent. You should be able to close these leads at 50%.
Google Business Profile is a free tool you can sign up for. This is what shows up when you search for “XYZ Service Near Me”. It will showcase your work and your reviews. The long term play is to ask every customer for a review on here so you can start to rank on Google. This is essentially free real estate for your business if you can get enough reviews and allow you to start getting leads for free.
10. What does a typical day look like for you running this business remotely? How many hours do you work each week, and how flexible is your schedule?
10-15 hours a week is all it takes to run this business and starts to taper down as you build out your team.
When you first start the business your time will be spent answering a few inbound phone calls from potential cleaning customers. You will also spend time interviewing cleaners. That’s about it.
Then you will hire an overseas virtual assistant who will take that stuff off your plate. They will answer phone calls, handle customer complaints, hire the cleaners, and basically run the whole business so your job becomes making sure they are doing what they need to do and then maybe turning some dials on the marketing.
11. Is there room for new entrepreneurs in the remote cleaning industry?
Yes, house cleaning is one of the most fragmented industries in the entire world. It’s one of the few industries where no single company owns more than 1% of the market share.
Meaning thousands of new cleaning businesses can start every single month and not impact your ability to produce revenue at all.
There are millions of buildings everywhere and they continue to get dirty over and over again. Meaning there’s always room to acquire new customers.
12. What are some challenges you’ve faced in running a remote cleaning business?
Hiring is the biggest challenge. When you are dealing with cleaners, they can call out, no show, ask you for more money, mess up a clean, the list goes on.
That way to deal with this is to always be recruiting. You should always have a solid bench of cleaners just like a sports team. If your star player goes down (cleaner quits on you) you should have a good back up that can go in and put up points.
13. Can you list the steps someone should take to start a remote cleaning business?
Here are the steps:
- File an LLC in your state
- Open up a business bank account
- Purchase all your tools: BookingKoala, Openphone, liability insurance, Gsuite, and Quickbooks.
- Bookingkoala will allow you to store customer data
- Openphone will allow you to have a business phone number so you don’t have to advertise your personal number on the internet.
- Liability insurance covers you in the case your cleaner doesn’t want to go through their insurance. (This rarely, if ever happens).
- Sign up for all free business directories – Google Business Profile, Facebook page, and Yelp page. All are free and you will ask your customers to post their 5-star reviews of your business here.
- Sign up for an Indeed for Employers account
- Make a job posting to recruit cleaners
- Sign up for Google Local Service ads and ask your friends/family to leave you a review so you can get approved faster.
- Onboard a cleaner. (Keep in mind you’re going to pay them 40-45% of any job you book)
- Example: If you book a job for $300 – you would pay a cleaner $120-$135/hr
14. What are your best tips for someone who wants to start a remote cleaning business?
Always be closing and always be cruitin’ (recruiting).
This is one of my favorite sayings because if you’re always making sales and always looking for quality talent, your business will grow every month because people will want to book with you for weekly, biweekly, and recurring cleans.
15. How can someone scale a cleaning business to a remote model and beyond?
Your day-to-day at the beginning of your remote cleaning business is going to be spent answering phone calls from potential cleaning clients.
On top of this, you’ll want to be going through your Indeed job posting weekly and scheduling new cleaners for interviews.
Your whole goal is to build a rockstar bench of cleaners that you can plug in, in the case that one of your cleaners calls out or starts to get picky with the jobs that you give them.
16. What can a person learn from your course, Home Service Academy? Can you tell us about some of the people who have successfully taken it?
We have helped over 2,000+ people start a cleaning business all over the United States & Canada. We even have a few in the UK and Australia.
Don’t think of Home Service Academy as a course and instead think of it as a low cost alternative to a franchise. Our team will hold your hand throughout the whole process of getting your business launched in 21 days or less and scaled to however big you would like to take it.
We have helped Skyler Sullivan reach $100,000 per month with his remote cleaning business. That is just one example of thousands. We even just had a live event with 60+ remote cleaning business owners ranging from $20,000 per month to $100,000 per month.
Today, over 2,000 cleaning businesses have been launched with Home Service Academy, making it North America’s largest cleaning business consultancy. In 2024, our students generated over $40 million in revenue.
You can also check out our testimonials here and TrustPilot reviews here.
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Want to learn how to start a remote cleaning business? This free training will help you get started.
Are you interested in starting a remote cleaning business? What other questions do you have?
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