How soon can I hire other people for my cleaning business? What jobs can you outsource in your business, whether to a person or a software? Here is how to use the gig economy to your advantage in your business, and in life!
Listen: How Soon Can I Hire for My Cleaning Business?
Watch: How Soon Can I Hire for My Cleaning Business?
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.
When Can I Hire Someone Else to Run My Business?
When can I hire someone else to run my cleaning business? Somebody asked this question, “Hello, I am 57 years old, starting up a cleaning business. I’m in great shape. When do I know to start hiring someone else? Can I hire them on a 1099 or it has to be a W-2? Thank you.”
Welcome to the wonderful world of housecleaning! I’m super excited that you’re joining us. And the answer to your question is, you can start today, hiring people today to help you run the business. Now, I love the fact that you’re jumping in, and you’re already thinking in terms of how do I replace myself?
What Can You Outsource Today?
And so, my suggestion to you is, what can you outsource today? The cool thing is, we live in the gig economy. What that means is there are people all over the world that do little gigs. The little gigs are little tiny things. Maybe you’re not going to hire an employee to do a whole bunch of tasks, but you’re going to hire one person to do one little tiny task.
For example, I have this YouTube show, which is also a podcast. And there’s a program we use call Auphonic, and it balances the sound so that you don’t have to keep turning the sound up and down, and up and down when you switch from podcast to podcast. It’s industry standard. We pay Auphonic just to balance the sound of our podcast and our videos. That’s all we pay them for. That is the only money we give them, and they only do one task.
Now, once our video goes to YouTube, we have another company that does all the transcriptions. And they write out word-for-word what I’m saying to you, right now, and that becomes the closed captioning that can be read in 191 languages, at the bottom of this video, when you click on this CC button. You can read this video in 191 languages, and that is all we pay them to do. That is called a gig.
What Gigs Does Your Business Need?
What I want you to start thinking of is what gigs does your business need? Is it accounting? And is it a person you need to hire, or is it a piece of software? There’s software that can also perform a gig for you. For example, you can hire an accountant, or you could use something like QuickBooks, which is a software as a service.
It’s called SAAS. What that stands for is Software as a Service. You pay every single month and it provides a service for you. The cool thing is with QuickBooks online, for example, it helps you manage all of your money, and it replaces the gig of the bookkeeper. It’s super cool.
And QuickBooks, for example, also has a payroll program, where, if you do hire an independent contractor, or you do hire an employee, and you need payroll specialties, where it takes out the FICA and the federal taxes, and the social security, and all that stuff. It does it for you.
Instead of Hiring a Person, You Can Hire a Software
So instead of hiring a person, you can hire software that does the gig for you. My question is, how quickly can you outsource the different facets of your business? The cool part about starting a business is there’s going to be a lot of hats that you wear. Every hat that you put on, a social media hat, for example, because we have to get your business out to the world.
We got to let them know you run a cleaning service. When you put that social media hat on, I want you to ask this question: Am I the best person to be doing social media? And the answer might be, no, not at all.
That’s a gig. Who can help me run my social media? There’s somebody out there that knows Instagram. There’s somebody that knows Facebook. There’s somebody that knows Twitter, or whatever the platforms are that you’re on.
You Can Find People On Fiverr
What you do is you go to Fiverr, and then there will be somebody that says, “I specialize in sending out tweets for your business.” You’re going to go, “So cool,” and you’re not going to pay them to do lots of stuff. You’re going to pay them to do the one thing that they’re really good at. You pay them to do that gig. That is a 1099 person, or it’s just a service.
I know lots of our Fiverr people don’t even make enough money to get a 1099 from us. We just pay that as a service. But if somebody works for us, like I have contractors that are on Fiverr, and they work for me, like every week for years, so they are a contractor. They get a 1099 from me. They make enough money from me that we have to pay the taxes that way. But the cool thing is, they only do one thing for me.
They might work for me for an hour a day. That’s it. That’s it. They do one gig. And then there are other people that work for me for four hours a day on the gig economy. And there are other people that work for me for 10 minutes a day on the gig economy.
It Doesn’t Only Have to Be for House Cleaning
The cool thing is, it doesn’t just have to be house cleaning. It can be different areas of your business. And as you’re just getting started in the business, I want you to start thinking globally. What part of my business can I outsource right now? What part of my life can I outsource right now?
You might discover that it’s better for you to have somebody else to pick up your groceries and pick up your mail and bring those to you, then you do that yourself because you’re out running your business.
Now I’ve outsourced all my personal tasks because I’m not the best person anymore to do that. There’s somebody that just runs a few errands for me. Boom, they’re done. That’s it. And then there are people that do other tasks of the business.
You Can Outsource the Cleaning Part as Well
Now, when you get to the cleaning part, you can also outsource the cleaning part. And you can hire independent contractors to do contract jobs for you, or you can hire employees, at which point, employees are a little bit different because then you have to manage them and you’re responsible for their training.
You’re responsible for their performance and how they treat your customers. You’re responsible for the look and feel of their cleaning car, and their cleaning caddies, and their uniforms, and the brand that you’re trying to promote. It depends on how you want to go with the business. But I do want you to know this, you can start today outsourcing the different gigs of your business. And if you want to practice outsourcing the cleaning part, as well, because as you start outsourcing that, you’ll figure out the formula that works for you.
You Can Work With Independent Contractors for a Long Time
I’ve worked with a lot of independent contractors in the cleaning business over the years, and some of them used to work for me. Then when they left and they went and started their own companies, lo and behold, they already understood my company culture. They already know how we treat our customers. So then when I hire them back, and they’re off running their own business, I hire them back, and they’re like, “I got this all figured out. I know how this works,” and they come in.
And because I’m giving them new business, they know that they can count on me for regular business to fill in the gaps. They’re not going to try to steal my customers. They’re working with me as a partner. And when you have that relationship with an independent contractor, your business soars. It flourishes.
I want you to start thinking today, “Am I the best person to be wearing this hat?” Because, if the answer is no, figure out how quickly I can get rid of this and pay somebody to do this gig for me. The answer is you start today. You can do that today.
Resources
Auphonic for Sound Balancing – https://auphonic.com
Rev for transcriptions – https://Rev.com
Fiverr – Talent Marketplace – https://fvrr.co/3z712Aa
The Fiverr Master Class – https://amzn.to/3uRrBWu
How To Outsource: Outsourcing Business for Profit Explained – https://amzn.to/3uOxhAG
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