It’s a pretty unique and interesting story. I was watching Undercover Billionaire with my brother-in-law, and since we’re both entrepreneurs, we thought it would be fun to do a challenge similar to the show. We invited a few friends and set the ground rules: You have six weeks and $1,000 to build a new business from scratch, and whoever makes the most money at the end of the six weeks will win.

No one made any money after the first five weeks, but I still wanted to win. I saw a Tweet laying out the step-by-step process of starting a cleaning company, and in the last week of the competition, I decided to follow this plan. I set up a website and landed a $500 job two days later and won the competition. I thought, “holy cow, it took me two days to make $500 in revenue. It looks like I have a business.” One year later, we did $100k in revenue.

First, I would find cleaners by posting on every Facebook Group with “Airbnb Owners” or “VRBO Owners” in the title. If I were in Austin, Texas, I would find the Facebook Group called “Airbnb Owners in Austin.” Join the community and post that you’re looking for good cleaners. You’re going to get a ton of responses. Interview the cleaners you get referred to and lock down a few.

You’re going to make a lot of people mad with this, and I don’t do it today, but you have to get your foot in the door somehow, and this is how I did it. Go on Airbnb, look at all the houses in your area, and request to book reservations there. You’re not booking a reservation; your goal is to message the host saying that you’re starting a cleaning business and want to give them a quote. If you do this a few hundred times, most of them will cuss you out, but a few will listen, and you can get your first customers.

I started with Google Local Service Ads to grow my business early on. They made up about 80% of my business for a long time and helped us reach $100k in revenue. These ads used to cost about $25 per lead, but today, they cost closer to $60 per lead. We also did yard signs. I put yard signs on street corners, but they were less successful than I had hoped. We also tried Facebook and Google Search ads. We got a few customers but didn’t run them for long. The best bang for our buck was the Local Service Ads until they got super expensive.

Our process from lead to job is simple. We get a call from Google Local Service Ads, quote them, collect payment information, book the cleaning, send the cleaners out with a checklist, and charge the customer once it’s done. It’s not easy, but it’s simple.

Many early-stage entrepreneurs are afraid to tell people they're starting a business. They don’t talk about it. When I was starting it, I told a friend about Bonnie & A Broom, and that friend overheard a co-worker saying that they needed a cleaning service. Shortly after, that co-worker became one of my customers. My first customers came from friends like this. It’s not rocket science; tell people about your business.

Initially, we served primarily residential customers and a few odd jobs, like cleaning a motel and occasional Airbnbs. We would accept every job, but this wasn’t the best way to operate a business because we could never get really good at one thing.

I asked myself, “What do we want to be known for?” I looked at our best cleaners; they all have extensive experience cleaning Airbnbs. Then, I looked at my customers on a spreadsheet, and sure enough, my highest-paying customers were Airbnbs. I decided we would only do Airbnb cleans moving forward and stopped accepting every other type of job. It’s been an excellent decision for us, mainly because we are starting to be known as the go-to Airbnb cleaning company.

Residential cleaning is more transactional, while Airbnb cleaning is a long-term partnership. Airbnb owners are business owners, so they want to build a relationship and ensure that whoever they partner with will be a good fit. Residential customers will quickly move on to a new cleaner if they don’t like the work, but a lousy cleaning can be a big issue for an Airbnb owner. That inadequate cleaning can lead to bad reviews, which is bad for business.

When we get calls for Airbnb cleaning, we build relationships and trust before anything else. We visit their property, look at their listing, and get to know the property so that we can tailor our offering to that specific Airbnb. There’s more at stake with an Airbnb clean, so the sales process takes longer. We usually service residential customers twice per month, but with Airbnb customers, we might clean their property twice per week, so the relationship is much more important.

Airbnb cleaning is challenging because when guests walk into an Airbnb, they expect the home to be perfect. If you have one hair in the bathtub, the host will hear about it. Airbnb cleans are much higher stakes than residential cleaning, so we need to charge accordingly. Our customers own beautiful properties worth over a million dollars and have high-end guests come to stay, so they’re willing to pay for the lean to be perfect because they know the guests expect a particular experience.

We’re typically cleaning higher-end Airbnbs. We charge per square foot and have a $150 minimum. Our lowest cost per square foot is $0.85 / square foot for a really big house. We're telling the Airbnb owner that if you want us to come in, turn over this property, do all the laundry, refill all the supplies, and make it look like nobody else has ever stepped foot in this house, this will be the price.

We have a thorough process for hiring cleaners. We start with hiring sites like Indeed and Facebook Groups and get a ton of applicants. We do a background check, call references, and conduct a test clean. If they pass all those steps, we hire them. The average hourly rate for a cleaner in my area is around $20. I guarantee my cleaners $25 per hour; they often make nearly $30 per hour.

These jobs are thankless, and cleaners do not receive much praise and only hear about problems when they occur. We give bonuses based on quality control checks. We make our cleaners feel valued and have a very low turnover. We’ve had the same core cleaning team since the beginning.

My website is hosted on BookingKoala. I use an Excel sheet to calculate pricing and also use Excel as my CRM. I used OpenPhone for my phone, which is awesome. They have an automatic reply feature in case I miss a call or we’re closed. My software to manage Airbnb clients is called Breezeway. It’s made for property management companies, but I use it to create checklists and schedule cleans. It integrates with the Airbnb calendar, so I love it.

Every business has its issues. Airbnb cleaning is not the perfect business; it’s challenging. Regardless of the challenges, you must pick a lane and go as deep and far as possible. Everybody thinks they have to have it all figured out, and everything has to be perfect before they can start. They think the website, pricing, and offer have to be perfect. This is so far from the truth. I got my first customer two days after starting, and I had no idea how to price it, but it didn’t matter. I just started. People sit there spending weeks or months perfecting their website when all they need to do is start.