Why I'm switching to W-2 cleaners and Week 6 results

For the past 3 years, I’ve worked exclusively with contractors to clean for our clients. Using contractors is great, until it isn’t. Their perks are your nightmare

“Accept or decline whatever jobs you want” sounds great but is stunting your growth. As I said recently to one contractor: “it’s really hard to run a business when you don’t know who’s available.”

We’ve built a cleaning business up to nearly $500k/yr using solely contractors and I don’t think I would have done it any other way. There is a lot of risk to bring on W-2 cleaners (insurance, supplies, payroll taxes, etc.) and starting out with W-2 and no revenue isn’t what I would sign up for.

Given our massive goals this year to reach $1M in sales, and future goals of $5M in revenue over the next 3 years, I decided to make a switch and hire W-2 cleaners for our residential clients.

For the foreseeable future, we will continue to use contractors on the Airbnb side because of the scheduling unpredictability.

When you hire W-2 cleaners, you get to set the tone for how your business is run. Things that you don’t typically think about when it comes to cleaning but are crucial if you’re trying to grow a big business

Things like:

You might not think this matters when you’re just trying to scratch out a living. But if you want to grow a business to 7-figures, I think this matters more than you would think.

This morning was our first all-hands meeting as a company with W-2 cleaners. We’ve hired 2 to start and will continue to supplement with contractors for the time being.

We spent our 7:30am morning meeting talking about core values, what makes our company special, and providing some training on how to ask for 5-star reviews and convert one-time customers to recurring.

After the meeting, we presented our cleaners with brand new supplies and caddies. I feel more confident sending W-2 cleaners into client homes knowing they will represent our brand in the way we’ve taught.

Working with contractors, sometimes it felt like a gamble. You never really knew what you were going to get. Sure, you can do test cleans (and you should) but training is taboo and you never know how they’re going to arrive at the client site. Working with W-2 cleaners, while it still isn’t perfect, at least we can (legally) have some say in how they perform the job.

W-2 cleaners also provide stability for scheduling and ideally stick around longer as they are bought into shared vision of the company. I never really felt like our contractors cared about our core values and I’d be naive to think our W-2 employees will care as much as I do. But it’s a step in the right direction!