How did you get into Cleaning?

People always ask what made me start a cleaning business.

Well, I had just finished my MBA and had grown close to the neighbors who had helped us through the Chinese Drywall debacle. We had all decided to go into business together. I didn't want to go get a job and interview for jobs. I think the neighbor wife was looking for something better than being an hourly admin at the time, and her husband was hoping to find something to give him back his life. The guy worked 12 and 14 hour days routinely! They were good, hardworking people. My husband was going to be retiring in a year, which meant we finally knew that we were staying somewhere, and it was time to put down roots!

The four of us brainstormed many different business ideas. The most compelling was an indoor batting range. They had two sons in baseball and had to drive nearly an hour to the nearest indoor batting range. And they lived for little league baseball and travel ball. They even moved across town so their oldest could be in a 'baseball' district with a competitive school team. We mulled it over, worked up numbers and a business plan, even looked at spaces to rent and priced batting machines. In the end, we recognized that none of us had the capital to pull together to fund such a startup with no guarantee for success.

One day my neighbor quit her job, and so we needed to move fast to get the business up and running! I think that was probably March of 2012. In researching the topic of starting a business, I had always hear that one should start a business doing something they know about. At that time, I had a 4 and a 6 year old. As a stay at home mom of two little ones, I felt that I knew a lot about cleaning house. And my neighbor had had a house cleaner for years, so she actually knew a bit about being a house cleaning customer. It also seemed like a business concept that would be inexpensive and simple to start and quick to gin up so that we would have a going concern fast. And that is exactly how we got into cleaning.

We started a house cleaning business as a multi-member LLC. It was called Refresh Your Nest Cleaning Services. The partnership lasted one year. Thankfully we had gone to a lawyer already had a plan in place if anyone wanted out. Our neighbors got out in April of 2013. That was the same month that my husband retired from the Air Force. So then it was just the two of us, and we grew, and grew, and grew!