Cleaning Business Diversification Angela Brown Ask a House Cleaner

Cleaning Business Diversification

Cleaning business diversification is where you offer more than just cleaning services. Maybe you do carpet cleaning or handyman work, landscaping, or window washing. Is cleaning business diversification a good idea or is it confusing to customers?

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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. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.

Is Your Cleaning Business Diversified

Cleaning Business Diversification, Man and Woman on ComputersDoes your cleaning business have diversification in the services that you offer? There’s a house cleaner that called in and asked this question.

I have a new cleaning business. Well, it’s not really new. I’ve been doing it since 2016, but I didn’t get my LLC until this year. Number one question for me would be, is that legally okay? I talked to my law firm and he said it was, but I don’t think he understood my question. My next most important question would be, me and my husband are thinking about adding handyman services to my cleaning business, and I was wondering if I’m allowed to add those services.

I’ve already done a couple of handyman services with my husband with my clients, but I just wanted to make sure that I can actually add it to some of the services that I do and the market for it. So I can get more business, even if people are just calling in for small or medium handyman services.”

Getting an LLC Right Away is Very Important

Cleaning Business Diversification, Frustrated Man on ComputersAll right. I love this question. Congratulations on getting your LLC set up. That is super awesome. And the fact that you did it now, rather than in a few years from now, that’s also awesome. That will help protect your assets if you expand your business. All right, so awesome.

Okay, the next part is about the handyman service. All right. So I want to stop for just a second and say, I love the fact that you want to expand your business and you want to expand the services that you offer because in house cleaning there are a lot of opportunities for handyman work.

Now, that said, I want to stop for a second, and I want to give you some very strong advice based on 30 years in the business and a whole bunch of experience working with different companies. Listen up on this one. Keep it two separate companies. Have a house cleaning business, have a handyman service.

Keep Your Two Companies Separate

Cleaning Business Diversification, House Cleaner and Handyman, Keep Your Businesses SeparateYou are in charge of the house cleaning service, let your husband be in charge of the handyman service. For this reason, when you hire people, you’re going to be hiring people that have cleaning skills or journeymen contractors that have their own set of tools, and their own set of skills, and their own learning, and their own experience for handyman work.

They are not the same set of skills. It is not the same business. They are two separate businesses. When people need a service for house cleaning, they’re going to go on the internet and they’re going to look for house cleaning. They’re not going to look for handyman service. They’re going to look for house cleaning.

When people need handyman service, they’re going to go look for a handyman service, not a house cleaning company. If my teenage kid punches a hole through the wall and I need drywall repair, I’m not going to hire a house cleaning service.

Keeping Businesses Diversified Shows Your Skills

Cleaning Business Diversification, Handyman and ClientWhat that sends is a message that says, “Whoa, these people do all kinds of different things. They’re probably not very good at any of them.” If you have two separate businesses, all they’re going to know about is the handyman service. And then when you have a customer, a house cleaning customer whose teenage kid punches a hole through the wall, you can recommend this company that you also own.

So there’s a lot of crossovers, but I want you to keep them separate. For this reason, lots of husband and wife teams don’t work out, period. They just don’t. This gives you the last say, as the boss, you get to be the king of the kingdom in the house cleaning business.

Your husband gets to be the king of the kingdom in the handyman service. So everything, all decisions, all conversations, hiring, firing, clients, whatever, you get the last say in the house cleaning business, he gets the last say in the handyman business.

Protect You and Your Business Against Divorce

Cleaning Business Diversification, Wedding Rings and Divorce PapersThis is really great for this reason, should you ever bust-up and go your separate ways, you have your business intact. He has his business intact. You both take your businesses, you go your merry way. No one was the wiser, okay?

Lots of businesses fall apart and crumble if there ever becomes a moment of disillusion between the relationship. You get a divorce and then everything just falls apart and nobody ends up with a business. This way, you each end up with your own businesses. Also, for search engine optimization. It’s a beautiful thing.

The search engine is going to always, going to always, this is true from now through infinity, it’s always going to provide the best user experience.

Keywords are Very Industry Specific

Cleaning Business Diversification, Man on Phone, KeywordsSo if a customer is looking for drywall repair, the search engine is going to say there’s a house cleaning company that also does handyman services. There’s a journeyman contractor over here who does handyman services, that specializes in drywall repair. Who am I going to send? They’re going to send that guy. The keywords that you use for your website are industry-specific.

So if the handyman has keywords like drywall, roofing leaks, repairs, brickwork, whatever it is, those are keywords that are going to boost that to the tops of the search engines. Over on the house cleaning side, you’re going to have a separate website that has keywords like cleaning and bi-weekly cleaning, and move-in/move-out cleaning, and those kinds of keywords, right?

They’re very different keywords. So what you want to do is register two separate domain names, which costs about 10 bucks a year. You’re going to do separate hosting packages, which is $3-5 a month. Not a lot of money.

Having Two Separate Businesses Will Make Life Easier

Cleaning Business Diversification, Man and Woman ArguingTo get started and to have two separate websites, two separate businesses, two separate sets of keywords, with two separate sets of services will make your life so much easier. And it will save you thousands, literally thousands of dollars per year in marketing, trying to just keep your businesses separate. It will save you so much money.

If you try to merge the two, you’ve got this weird mix of, the search engines don’t know what it is you offer, and you’re going to end up spending so much more money trying to become visible in the search engines. So don’t play that game, keep them two separate companies, make it easy on yourself. And even when you hire people, it will make it so much easier because your job descriptions will be different.

In the event that you have a house cleaner that does regular maintenance clean on a customer’s house, and they need some special repair work. You can send in someone from this company to help them that has the skills and it doesn’t take away a person off your frontline job. Does that make sense?

Keep Them Separate Even If You Own Both Businesses

Cleaning Business Diversification, Lawyer and Client Discuss PapersAnyway, lots of reasons to keep your businesses separate, even though you might own them both. I own four companies, I’ve got four LLCs. They all serve the same customers, but they all do different things.

And I need the different keywords and the different websites. Do you hear what I’m saying? All right, so that is my suggestion. I highly recommend keeping them separate for all of those reasons.

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