Offline Marketing - Apartment Cleaning

We started our cleaning business 14 years ago in the rental industry. You need to go talk to apartment managers to get business. Some apartment communities hire cleaning in house with staff, and others contract it out. You aren't likely to get communities that hire in house to agree to contract it out.

Apartment cleaning is hard work and lower pay than you will get cleaning residential homes. Why? Because you're cleaning at wholesale and in quantity. You agree to clean the apartments as they become vacant to get them ready for the next tenant. Those apartments are often trashed because people don't care, and they are tough to clean. Some apartment managers are pickier than others, but you will learn where your standards need to be. Be prepared to clean ovens and refrigerators that have never been touched inside.

You will likely need a million dollar liability policy for many companies to hire you.

You don't need to sell yourself short and be the cheapest company out there. Just do what others don't and actually show up and do the freaking job. Service providers out there set the bar so low that if you can fog up a mirror and actually do what you say you'll do, you can get business. Be professional, not desperate, and learn along the way.

You will often find opportunities to make a bit better money on the ancillary cleaning required in apartment communities. Cleaning common hallways was good money for us, as was the cleaning of the community centers, offices, shared laundry areas, etc.

Do know that when an apartment community wants an apartment cleaned, they often want it done yesterday. And many leasing agents suck at coordinating you the cleaner with their painter and carpet cleaner and maintenance person. There are times where you're trying to clean and someone is in their working on something else, and you have to work around them. There are also times where you clean something and then the maintenance person goes in behind you and screws it all up. Know that the painters often use sprayers and are in a hurry because they're doing wholesale work too, and they will get overspray all over the place that you will need to scrub off as much as possible. As the cleaner, you get dumped on. The maintenance guy gets all the time he needs, the painter the same, and then you get stuck at the end when they're in crunch time and they need that apartment cleaned because someone is moving in this afternoon. If you don't hustle and get it done, they can find someone else. It is a hustler's world, and we got tired of the constant management turnover that resulted in loss of business for us. If manager A loves you but they leave the property and manager B comes in and has a company he loves already, you get the boot. You might be able to follow manager A to his/her new property.

We cleaned apartments for about 5 years. Had a six figure business and my dad and brother worked for me. We worked for the largest property management firm in town, and one day we walked in and found out that they sold all of their properties. In that moment we lost about 60% of our business. No notice, just showed up and found out that a deal had been done, and the new owners of all of those properties had cleaning done in house. I had to let my dad and brother go, and my wife and I scrambled to pick up the pieces. Don't put all of your eggs in one basket. Diversify as much as possible.

Shooting you a PM