Reddit Post Inspires Airbnb Cleaning Service

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Inspired by a post on Reddit, a Los Angeles man picks up the knowledge to start his own cleaning service. Because, you know, how hard can it be? All right, well, I'm not saying it's easy, but for a lot of traditional businesses, there is a pretty clear path to follow. And while I'm normally all about encouraging people to chart their own course, you know, be a pioneer, do it your own way, ultimately everything comes down to your goals. So the guy in this story, he wanted to create a sustainable income to support his parents and eventually allow him to travel the world.

So that's exactly what he did. Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. What are your goals? What are your next steps for those goals?

And as we look to the new year, what actions will you take to get closer to your ultimate objective? My hope is that everything we do on this podcast will be helpful and inspiring to you, perhaps get you thinking about an idea or perhaps give you some encouragement for an idea you're already working on. And if you're like me and it's the end of 2020 and you're like, I'm ready for the new year, well, I understand that too. So let's do what we can to create a good environment to move forward with a better 2021. All right, this story is called Reddit Post Inspires Airbnb Cleaning Service.

The story is coming up after this quick message from our sponsor. Thanks, sponsor. [Music]

For Neil Perick, the decision to start a side business wasn't just so he could quit his day job and travel the world while still having an income. And that was part of it, but it was also a decision guided by his desire to provide for his parents. You see, for 32 years, his parents owned video rental stores.

Do you remember those? Of course, the industry was on its way out and this was the mid 2010s, whatever you call that decade, the mid 2010s. I'm not sure, but those stores weren't doing well. And around this time, Neil, who was working 50 to 60 hours a week, decided he wanted to start a service to help his parents as well as himself. He tried a number of paths as he tried different side hustles, creating an e-commerce site, blogging about pet hair vacuums and more before stumbling across a post on Reddit from someone who started a cleaning company.

In that post, the author laid out the detailed steps he'd taken to get going. And after reading through the post carefully, Neil decided to give it a try himself. In early 2013, he established Made This in Los Angeles, a cleaning service that specializes in Airbnb and residential cleanings. His first step in doing so was creating a website, a tall task as he had no technical background. Neil bought a template for about $100, researched how to host a website and published what he said was initially a pretty crappy looking site.

Hey, we've all been there. He also needed to determine how much to charge for cleaning services and find the cleaners themselves. He started by contacting local people with existing companies and asking them how much they charged and what their cleaning packages were. By looking at the competition, he was able to make sure there was enough margin built into his service to ensure he could operate successfully. As he puts it, from the Reddit post to the pricing scale, he essentially started Made This by copying what other companies were doing, at least as a way of getting things up and running.

Although he had software to charge customers, Neil didn't know how to pay the cleaners at first. So after they got done with an appointment, he would have them come to his office where he'd run downstairs, get cash out of an ATM and hand it to them. Eventually he figured out a better way. Overall, it took two months to get up and running. To find customers, Neil focused on digital marketing.

He says local marketing is a hidden gem because you're competing against local businesses only, not the entire world. So it's a bit easier to manage and it also costs less. His first customer came about in July 2013, which he remembers because he snuck outside from his full-time job and started dancing. Another advantage to local markets is that there are many third-party platforms, like Angie's List or Thumbtack, and Neil would charge a low price at first to attract initial customers. He also tried posting flyers and using social media.

Although he says that wasn't an especially useful marketing tool for him, since people don't usually buy cleaning services that way. These days, Made This mostly generates sales from a combination of SEO, Yelp and paid digital ads. Because he wanted to eventually quit his full-time job and travel, Neil established Made This so that it could be operated by a fully remote team of employees, which includes his parents. Total investment cost was around $1,000, which included his website, those digital marketing ads, and advertising for cleaners. He operated the business as a part-time gig for two years.

By 2015, the business was doing around $30,000 in monthly sales with a 20% profit margin, so $6,000 in monthly profit. With his success, Neil quit his job and booked a one-way flight to Columbia. The business doubled that year, and he's since traveled to more than 35 countries, while scaling what was once his side hustle. Looking to the future, Neil is aiming to be the millennial franchise, disrupting the old-school cleaning franchise industry. [Music]

Listen, when I say how hard can it be, I did at the introduction to this episode, not completely exaggerating.

Like I don't want to make light of all the hard work that goes into starting any kind of project like this, especially one that scales to the point where you can quit your job and travel the world. Like it takes a lot of work. But when I say, you know, how hard can it be? How easy is it? What I'm talking about is, for a business like this, there is a replicable process.

There are steps you can follow. You're not the first person to start a cleaning business. And so therefore, there are best practices. And you can follow those best practices. You can probably also improve upon some of them just because you are an outsider.

You don't have the experience, which can be a benefit, but also a handicap. You know, so the whole point is you take what works, you add your own spin to it, but it doesn't have to be that complicated. And if you think, well, how does it scale, you know, to the $30,000 a month and then the $60,000 a month and whatever it grew to after that, you don't necessarily have to have that answer right away. All the answers that you need are, what are my first steps? How do I establish this?

How can I make a pretty crappy website like Neil did, like I did, you know, 20 years ago or probably more than that now? So there is a path to follow. There is something you can do. And as we are winding down the year, you know, I just want to encourage you, let's work together, you know, for the rest of this year and next year, let's figure out what is that thing. Okay, and if you've already got your thing, that's awesome.

What are you gonna do to improve it? What's next? Like, how are you gonna next level it? And my hope is to always support you in that, whatever we do. So I thank you first of all for listening.

And I encourage you, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes are at www.sidehustleschool.com/1452. I hope you'll take care of yourself during this holiday season. And I hope you'll continue to join me. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host of Side Hustle School.

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From the Onward Project.