I landed the client!! This has been a 1.5 month process and I have my first client! They spoke so highly of my professionalism and it just made me want to deliver exceedingly above their expectation! So now, I need to hire someone or do I go and do the cleaning myself.

Hi everyone! I just wanted to share something that I hope encourages you. In addition to building my cleaning business, I also hold a real estate license and work another part-time job in the evenings. Recently, I made the decision to put my real estate license into a holding company. While it was a bit of a letdown—because I do enjoy that field—both businesses require a tremendous amount of time and financial commitment, which became a strain. When I called my association to start the process, a woman I know there reminded me of their affiliate program. She checked their database and noticed they didn’t have any cleaning companies as affiliate partners. We decided to sign up as a partner, and she mentioned that an email will be sent to all association members on Monday, introducing us as a new affiliate partner and providing our contact information. This came about from simply answering a question she asked me: “So, Tracey, what are you going to be doing now that you’re pausing your real estate business?” I replied, “I’m growing my cleaning company.” Even though I know this is the right decision, I still felt a little down about stepping away from real estate. But I made sure to approach the phone call with a positive attitude, and I believe she picked up on that energy. What initially felt like a step backward has, I believe, turned into two steps forward.

I'm new to this business and currently operating from my home office. For now, I schedule in-person interviews at a neutral, public location—the shared parking lot of the local police department and public library, and then conduct the interviews in the library hall. Before scheduling, I always ask candidates to let me know in advance if they can’t make it, so I don’t make the trip unnecessarily. Today, I scheduled three in-person interviews after initial phone screenings. One candidate texted me early in the morning to cancel, which was great. However, the second didn’t show up and, when I reached out, he said he changed his mind because meeting in a parking lot/library seemed odd without a formal office. The third candidate also didn’t show and didn’t respond to my messages. I’m considering switching to a local coffee shop or renting an office space by the hour to make the process more professional. My frustration isn’t about candidates changing their minds—I understand that happens—but it’s about the lack of basic courtesy to send a simple text if they decide not to show up, especially when I specifically ask for that heads-up. Any thoughts or advice on handling this would be appreciated! In particular, I am interested how did you handle this when you did not have an office and was interviewing candidates!!

Quick question, I'm curious what is standard and how y'all manage this. In our contracts we have Holiday's listed that we do not work on. When a cleaning day falls on a holiday do y'all schedule the clean for a different day that week, or just skip it all together?

I’ve divided the cleaning tasks for my largest client into weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and quarterly categories. When I handle everything myself, tracking is manageable. However, now that I have a team, I’m unsure of the most effective, easy, and time-efficient way to track these tasks to ensure nothing gets missed. What would be the best approach? How do you track?