Self-motivation is tough for any business owner, especially those in house cleaning. Self-motivation doesn’t matter if you have business strategies that motivate scheduling.
Today on Ask a House Cleaner we see a savvy cleaner knows how to set a schedule, and work with flexible schedules. It’s a simple rule of house cleaner training, maid service training and business 101.
Self-motivation is not just for go-getters or housekeeper’s crazy about self-help. Angela Brown, The House Cleaning Guru has tips to help you get started and going every day.
Listen: Self-Motivation For House Cleaners Who Have None
Watch: Self-Motivation For House Cleaners Who Have None
Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer.
Question: Self-Motivation For House Cleaners Who Have None
Self-motivation is one of the hardest things for any small business owner to try to muster up every day. And that’s what we’re going to talk about.
Today’s question comes from a woman who’s been a house cleaner for many years. She’s just moving into owning her own house cleaning business. And she wants to know, “How do I find the self-motivation to get up and get started every day? In the past I worked for another company and I had to be at a certain place at a certain time. But now that I work on my own I don’t have the self-motivation? What do I do?”
Answer: Self-Motivation For House Cleaners Who Have None
All right, that’s an awesome question. And my answer is this: If you don’t have the self-motivation, get out of the business immediately. Go back to working for another company. Because they will give you a set schedule in order for you to show up every day.
Your First Schedule
Now let’s go back to the beginning of our youth. When you’re a baby, your parents put you on a feeding and sleep schedule. They made sure to feed you every few hours, change your diapers and bathe you. They even schedule play dates with other kids. And when you got a little bigger, they took you to daycare.
Schedules Through The Years
The daycare has set hours, so your parents wake you up, get you ready, feed you and drop you off. All this happens within a particular window of time. Once you’re at daycare, you have scheduled times to snack, play and take a nap. It’s a schedule.
This schedule continues throughout your elementary years. Your parents wake you up, you go to school and come back home at a certain time. Then at night, it’s bath time, story time and then bedtime. You’re on a tight schedule created by other people.
As you get older, you finish up school and go out into the workforce. But this is okay because you will still have a schedule that other people created for you. You will have to get up and go to work every day, and this is a work schedule that your job and you have created.
Self-Motivation to Create a Schedule
But what happens when you decide you’re going to be the boss and you’re on your own? No one has created the schedule for you and you just don’t know how to create one.
So, you wake up and you’re like, “Well, I’m not self-motivated.” Maybe it’s not that you’re not self-motivated at all. Maybe it’s just that you don’t know how to set a schedule because setting a schedule is easy. Once your schedule is set, following it will be a breeze.
It will be like all the rest of your years. You have a certain place to be so you show up. It has nothing to do with self-motivation. It has everything to do with you being where you’re supposed to be, at the time you’re supposed to be there.
Time Scheduling
Now, this all depends on how many houses you’re going to clean in the course of a day. Are you cleaning two or three? You can figure out the time depending on the size of the house, the location and how close they are to where you live.
Let’s say that you’re going to clean three houses in the course of a day and that each will take you three hours. This means that you’re going to work for nine hours.
To make this easier we’re going to say that all the homes are in the same neighborhood. So your commute time might be 1-3 minutes. That’s time for you to get to your car, grab your cleaning supplies and get to the next house.
Now, you’re going to block in the 9 hours, plus 5 or 10 minutes before and after each appointment time slot. This way you have time to grab what to need and get to the next house on time.
Don’t Accept a Range of Time
So now you have a schedule and you know that it has nothing to do with self-motivation. But that it has everything to do with you being at the next house on time when your customer is expecting you.
The worst thing that happens in the house cleaning business is when people give a range of time. A customer will say, “I will be home somewhere between 8:00 and 12:00.” The house cleaner hears this and thinks, “Wow, I have a range.”
When you accept this, you just removed the schedule and the motivation along with it. This time range makes it harder for you to show up at the next house as scheduled.
You try to do other things like run errands and try to get to the customer’s house within the range given. This may work for some house cleaners, but not for others.
Stick to The Schedule
There are usually lots of problems that come around not having a tight schedule. But if you have a schedule, it builds in your boundaries.
If a customer says, “Can you do these extra things?” If you’re working on a time range, yeah you can. This makes it harder to say, “I can’t. I don’t have the time today, but let’s schedule that for next time.” When you can charge them more money. It forces you to have boundaries.
Again, it has nothing to do with self-motivation. It has everything to do with being on a schedule.
So, set a schedule because it removes last-minute problems that customers throw at you. And it removes the possibility of you staying longer.
If you’re contracted for a certain particular job, you have to finish in that window of time. Why? Because you have another house and because that’s your schedule.
Your Schedule, Your Choice
All right, so when I talk about self-motivation, there are a couple of things you can do every day. The real motivation part comes in knowing that this is probably the best job you’re ever going to have. It has the most flexible schedule. And you can decide when you’re going to work and when you’re not.
If you decide you’re going to take a vacation, you can do so and you don’t have to clear it with any supervisors. You get to decide on your days off. If you want to work weekends or evenings and pick up some commercial accounts, you get to decide that. It’s one of the best jobs you’ll ever have and the pay is pretty good if you bill correctly.
Your Reasons Are Your Motivation
So, when it comes to self-motivation why are you doing this? If you’re doing it to support your family, that’s awesome. If you’re doing it to pay off bills or because you want to buy something nice for yourself, that’s great! There are so many different reasons why you get to have a house cleaning business.
But when you get up in the morning and you decide to go to work, your reasons why, are your motivation. If you follow a schedule, even on days that you don’t feel motivated, remember that you will still be on track. This will keep you moving forward to follow through on all your dreams and ambitions.
So that’s it for self-motivation. Until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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Resources For This Episode
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