Why on Earth Would You Want to Help Your Competition? House Cleaning

The Ask a House Cleaner Show and Podcast with Angela Brown

Should you help your competition or should you keep all your cleaning secrets to yourself? And what if the people you are helping are competing relatives?

Why on earth would you want to help your competition? It’s a house cleaning FAQ and it’s rooted in the fear of competition. But there are reasons to help your competition.

“I’m trying to grow my cleaning company and my employee wants to start a cleaning business…” or “My co-worker is leaving to start her own maid service.”

Relax, there is enough work for us all. You can help your competition and collaborate not compete. There’s lots of house cleaning and Airbnb cleaning to do.

Listen: Why on Earth Would You Want to Help Your Competition? House Cleaning

Watch: Why on Earth Would You Want to Help Your Competition? House Cleaning

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.

Why on Earth Would You Want to Help Your Competition?

If you have a customer or an employee interested in starting their own business, you should help them. You might question this and think, “Why would you want to help your competition?”

If someone is going to spin out underneath you, why would you want to help them?

Let’s get started and get the answers to these questions.

Why Help The Competition

There are several reasons why you would want to help them. And it goes back to the fact that there are many houses to clean. There are billions of people on the planet and most of them live in homes.

They live in apartments, condos, RV’s, they live somewhere. And regardless of where they live, those places need to get cleaned. In addition to regular cleaning of single-family homes, there are also Airbnb’s. And the Airbnb industry is exploding.

School Teacher Impact

Some school teachers are empty nesters. Their kids have moved out, moved away from home and they still have two or three kid’s bedrooms in their home. Since the rooms are not in use, they have turned them into rentals. Where people can come and stay, instead of going to a hotel.

School teachers have had a big impact on the Air BNB industry.

There’s an Airbnb article about school teachers bringing in 160 million dollars. And that’s all in one year in the Airbnb industry. 160 million dollars! That’s more revenue that they put back into their salaries. Money that they did not make teaching.

Extra Space More Opportunity

Many people are not utilizing the extra space that they have in their home as a rental space. So between each cleaning, each turnover, you have to have a cleaning. Let’s say that you have three people come in one week and they each stay for two nights.

That’s three times you have to clean that house and get it ready for your new guests. It’s not just house cleaning for a single-family home that’s just going to have you come back every other week.

Now there are people who have homes that they need to be cleaned three times in one week.

Reason to Help the Competition

Here’s the reason you want to help your competition. Think of it this way, how many houses can you clean all by yourself? When you look at all the homes around you, in reality, you can only clean a few. Right? You are just one person and need all the help you can get.

So if someone comes into your business just to learn from you, let them. This is a beautiful opportunity for you.

Practice Being a Leader to Your Competition

Number one it gives you the chance and practice of being a leader. You get to manage someone else who is managing your business. You can put this person in charge. And you can start moving away from the daily grind.

As you manage this person, they are managing the daily grind. They are learning from you. You’re teaching them. And as you teach them you will refine the different programs and systems that you have in place.

As they put them in place, they may come up with a couple of different ideas or suggestions. Some that will also help you, because maybe it’s a view or a vision you did not have. It’s a way for you to learn from them as well. Additionally, if they learn how you operate your business and live nearby, it’s a plus for you. Since they have learned from you, you can call this person as a backup.

You Can Train Your Backup

You can say “hey Amy, I know that you’ve been in my company for a couple of years. I know you know how we run things and I’m short-staffed this weekend. I could pay you to work this weekend and you come in as an independent contractor. And you help me out with this particular series of projects.”

There’s nobody that understands your business better than Amy. Yes, she’s a competitor. And she has her own business, but as you’ve set it up, you could also set it up as a franchise, for example.

You can say, “I will give you leads and I get 10% of everything that you earn. And so you have your own little franchise program going on. Where you spin people out on their own and they can still come back to you for consulting.” For help, to spin ideas off of, and ask questions about employees and customers and all these things. And you get to take a percentage of everything that you send them. So there are a lot of opportunities in the fire.

Once Candle is Not Enough

Think of it as one candle. One candle is not enough to light up everything. It cannot light the whole world, right? It has a limited scope in its range of light. But if there are lots of candles all over, you can create quite an illumination.

Don’t take and use all your precious energy as a resource to focus on the competition. Or to try to knock out the competition. How exhausting is that? What do you get out of doing that?

Competitor Tries Harder

You only get a competitor that tries harder to compete with you. And each then you have to work harder because you’ve created this weird competition. But if you’re trying to help and elevate everyone else, they, in turn, are trying to help and elevate you. It’s a completely different currency.

If you’re thinking about competing or collaborating, collaborating is much better. Especially when it comes to the energy, time, resources spent, and the results that you get at the end. It’s like everyone’s candles working together to light up the world.

All better than competition where people are backstabbing and bad-mouthing. And trying to outdo each other on social media and all these other things. It’s just two completely separate currencies.

It Costs You Nothing

You either buy into this one or you buy into that one. It costs you nothing extra. If you’re going to hire somebody you don’t know, that is going to go off and start their own business. You can have them sign a non-compete agreement, and you can have all your rules and regulations in place. And if that’s who you are that’s fine.

There’s nothing wrong with that. You then have to enforce that. That might mean going to court, and again it’s spending a bunch of time and money. Plus resources and energy, for what? This person knows your business better than anyone else.

If You Need Help

And in the event that you ever need help, they’re there. There may be times where they are working for you. Let’s say somebody works for you for two years.

At the end of the two years, the intention was for them to go out on their own. They might be entrepreneurial enough that was their vision.

And they might be lazy enough that now that they see what’s involved, they don’t want to do that. They’re just content being there as your manager. And then if you can motivate them with raises they may never leave your company.

As a leader, you get to motivate these people to want to stay. Keep in mind that many people will come with the intention of spinning out on their own only to find out they didn’t have what it takes.

Later they’re like, no, this is way too much responsibility. I just want to come in and get my paycheck and go home at the end of the day. And you’re like thank you very much. But you’ve trained them to do all the tasks that you do. And now you’re working on your business and not in your business.

So these are the reasons you may want to consider when it comes to helping your competition.