Family Support for House Cleaning Biz Owners

The Ask a House Cleaner Show and Podcast with Angela Brown

Family support is crucial to the success of any business. But how do you get family support as a house cleaning business owner? We Ask a House Cleaner about moral support, communication, sharing, and encouragement. Angela Brown, The House Cleaning Guru says family support starts at home. The key to prosperity lies your family understanding your maid service and having a belief in you. A savvy cleaner will help their success by caring for family and doing their own housekeeping. Make your own family feel as important as your clients.

Family support is crucial to the success of any business.

But how do you get family support as a house cleaning business owner? We Ask a House Cleaner about moral support, communication, sharing, and encouragement.

Angela Brown, The House Cleaning Guru says family support starts at home. The key to prosperity lies your family understanding your maid service and having a belief in you.

A savvy cleaner will help their success by caring for family and doing their own housekeeping. Make your own family feel as important as your clients.

Listen: Family Support for House Cleaning Biz Owners

Watch: Family Support for House Cleaning Biz Owners

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: Family Support for House Cleaning Biz Owners

Family support is so crucial to the success of any business. And we’re going to talk about that today.

Now today’s question comes from a brand spanking new house cleaner. She’s just getting involved in the business, and she wants to know, “How do I get family support?”

Answer: Family Support for House Cleaning Biz Owners

Okay, that’s an excellent question. Because in any business, especially the house cleaning business, you need family support. There are people that you live with, that you come home to every day and want to share your day with.

Share Your Day To Get Family Support

You’ll want to share stuff about your customers. It’s could be about the way that you cleaned their house or something that happened at the house.

You’ll want to spew that information about your day to your family. Your family doesn’t understand because they weren’t there. It’s like when your kid tells you something that happened at school.

You love your kid, so you listen, but you weren’t there, so you don’t know how bad it was.

You try to understand, but something gets lost in the translation.

Get Friend Support

All right, so we do have a private Facebook group that is for professional house cleaners.

If you own a house cleaning company or if you work for a house cleaning company, come on over.

There are 4,800 people there that know what you’re going through, we feel your pain. When you say, “Oh my goodness, this happened at a house.” We’re like, “We’ve been there, we got your back, we know what you’re talking about.”

Get Family Support

Your family doesn’t understand your job.

When I got involved in the house cleaning business 25 years ago, I didn’t have a Facebook group.

I didn’t have a network of people to talk to, and when I would try to share my stories with people, nobody understood.

My sister that lives in Bend, Oregon, is a professional organizer, she understood. I would call her on the phone, I’m like, “Help! This just happened at a house, what do I do?”

And she’d say, “Okay, well let’s think through this.”

And she was my sounding board to share ideas with and help spin ideas so that we could come up with solutions.

You Need a Sounding Board

Now you need support from your family.

You’re going to be gone a lot. And there are times when there are emergency cleanings. A customer might say, “Oh my goodness, my house just flooded.

The flooding crew is coming in to do all the restoration. But there’s a bunch of other stuff in my house that I need you to come help clean.”

You’re like, “Okay, let me drop what I’m doing, and I will come right over.”

What Just Happened to Your Family?

So, you leave your family behind while you run over to take care of someone else’s house and family.

So, there’s a little bit of jealousy that goes on like, “Hey, Mom or Dad likes them better than us.”

That’s not the case at all.

So, to get family support, you have to ask for it. And you have to make your stories understandable. So the people that you live with, understand they come first.

Your Family Comes First

The family that you’re helping comes second. Your family comes first.

I know this seems like an emergency to help the other family, but the real emergency is you have bills to pay.

You need to work to pay your bills to take care your own family.

When you ask for help, and you explain what you need, your family can help you.

Your family will understand your absence if when you’re home, you are 100% present.

Tired is Not an Excuse

House cleaning is a demanding job and you will come home tired.

You don’t want to come home and go take a nap. If you do, you need to explain why. Explaining why will help your family support you.

To be present with your family you need to pace yourself.

Reserve enough energy so that when you come home you can still be a spouse or a Mom, or a Dad.

Show Up In Your Relationships

When I say show up in the relationship, that also means bring opinions. You can’t show up in a relationship and sit there like a bump on a log and have no opinions.

If someone is trying to share information with you, you need to have something to share back.

It’s like a ping-pong game. If I throw an idea at you, you throw an idea back, that’s what’s we call a conversation. If you show up and sit there like a bump on a log because you’re burned out from cleaning, you did something wrong.

Don’t Take Your Exhaustion Out On Your Family

Puking your day and your problems on your family does not build family support.

So, if family support is what you need, you need to explain to your family what you need.

It could be saying something like, “I have five houses to clean this week. Every one of those houses is going to take four hours. When I get home I will need a 30-minute nap. At the end of the nap, the rest of my afternoon and evening is yours.”

Your Family Knows What Comes Next

Because you explained yourself, your family knows what to expect.

When you get home they will let you have your nap, because they know after that your time is theirs.

If you are running a cleaning business, you need family support.

You need people who understand what you’re going through. House cleaning is a tough business on your mind and your body.

There Will Be Challenges

Customers will micromanage you. There will be cancellations and some won’t pay on time. There are lots of weird nuances with a house cleaning business.

So, to get family support, ask for what you need.
When you are at home, be present.
If emergencies arise, give everybody a “heads up.”

Alright, that’s my two cents for today. And until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.

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