Case Study: How My Cleaning Business Grew from Side Hustle to Full-Time Job (Tripled Her Revenue to $13K in 3 Months)

Lali Gonzalez of Speedy Gonzali

Lali’s story is one of the most common ways to start a cleaning business. She started taking cleaning jobs on the side of her full-time job as a supervisor in an animal hospital. 

Soon, she had more work than she could handle on her days off. Lali took the leap, quit her job, and ran the business full-time.—but as a young college graduate, she had no experience running a business and wasn’t sure where to start. As she says:

 “I’m not a business person. I didn’t really think very much when it was starting out. I was just doing it as supplemental income.”

That’s why she signed up for Chris Mondragon’s 7-Figure Cleaning Business Blueprint in August, the month after she decided to take her business full-time. That knowledge and support catapulted her from a $4,390 revenue in July to more than $13,000 in November.

In less than a year, she grew Speedy Gonzali Professional Cleaning to a team of 5 employees who completed 78 cleans in November. That’s seven times the jobs she could take by herself!

Most impressively, she’s achieved this growth without spending a single dollar on paid advertising campaigns. Let’s unlock how she integrated Chris’ advice to grow her cleaning business quickly.

Lali’s Success in Summary

Lali learned three things that changed the path of her business::

1. How to create and implement systems effectively in a new cleaning business.
2. Hiring and managing cleaners.
3. Using add-on services to increase the revenue per check.

Armed with this knowledge, Lali started to implement changes that took Speedy Gonzali Professional Cleaning to the next level, including:

1. Setting up systems and automation to run her business more efficiently.
2. Hiring a team to do the cleaning so she can work on the business instead of in the business.
3. Getting a storage unit to keep her cleaning supplies organized and accessible for her team.
4. Adding window cleaning as an extra service for her customers.

Lali is still working to integrate Chris’ insights and use them to grow her business. It was a lot to take in all at once, leading to a kind of “information overload”: 

“I got a lot of really good information, but because I was getting so much info there was more added to my to-do list. This month, I’ve had to rewatch a lot of the videos. After I rewatched the video about the reviews I implemented it right away, but that was just one thing I wasn’t ready for the first time.” 

That’s Lali’s first lesson for other students: don’t feel like you need to do everything at once. The changes she’s already made have set Speedy Gonzali Professional Cleaning up for phenomenal early success, and as she integrates more advice from the course, it will propel her growth even further.

Here are more of her tips for other new cleaning entrepreneurs who are ready to grow their business to the next level.

My Tips for Quick Cleaning Business Growth

Now that you’ve seen the steps that Lali took to grow her cleaning business revenue, here are some tips from her on how to grow your new business fast. 

Tip 1: Set up systems and automate processes as soon as possible.

Lali isn’t a big tech-oriented person so she put off setting up systems and automation for her business. In hindsight, she thinks this was a mistake:

“For me, it was a little bit intimidating having to deal with a computer more than I ever have in my life. I wish I would have been just a little bit more open right away to doing some of the technology stuff.”

Eventually, she says, “I just took a leap of faith and learned a lot of things along the way.” And taking that leap proved to be a smart move, saving her a ton of time taking care of the day-to-day of her business. This, in turn, helped to boost her revenue because she could take on more jobs without overloading her schedule.

Lali now uses two platforms to help run the business: Slack and Booking Koala. Between them, she’s now able to:

• Keep track of team communication easily
• Schedule jobs efficiently
• Track and communicate with clients efficiently
• Automate time-keeping and streamline payroll
• Manage and organize their cleaning supply storage unit

This has all saved Lali a ton of time. Before adding these systems, she was manually booking jobs through Google Calendar and doing payroll by hand, something that could take hours. She would also need to personally restock their supply storage unit when it ran out of product, sometimes at the last minute, since her team didn’t always let her know things were running low in advance. Now: 

“We have a system in Slack where people can go for almost anything. If we’re running low on product, they’ll put a note in that channel, and whoever is going to grab it responds to that message.”

She didn’t just implement these systems exactly the way Chris uses them, either—she adjusted them to meet the needs of her business. For instance, she has the cleaners post their photos of completed jobs on Booking Koala, instead of Slack, to keep all the information about a client in one place. 

Lali’s cleaners also work in some areas where the internet connection is weak, which means they can’t clock in through Booking Koala. To compensate for this, she’s created a dedicated Slack channel for cleaners to report their clock-in times when there’s no internet connection. As Lali says, “There’s all these backups that we’re trying to set up and be over-prepared.”

Tip 2: Offer add-on services to boost revenue.

Initially, Lali focused only on interior cleaning of residential homes. After taking Chris’ course, she saw there were opportunities to expand through add-on services: 

“We work with some realtors and a lot of them were asking if I can do windows along with cleaning inside. We ended up doing window cleaning and had a lot of success from it. Adding that allowed us to capture more revenue instead of having to book a second job to meet our goals.” 

Tip 3: Build word-of-mouth referrals with better service.

One thing that surprised Lali immensely when she started: the response from her community. She lives in an area that’s very supportive of small businesses, and that support has been a huge help in growing her business so far:

“I searched for clients a little bit when I first started, just through friends or family friends. Once I told them I was going to start doing this, they referred other people and it spread like wildfire.” 

As of yet, Lali still hasn’t needed to pay for any advertising—and her client list continues to grow, largely through word-of-mouth advertising and referrals.

While the supportive nature of her local area is a factor here, the quality of their cleaning and service is part of this picture, too. Speedy Gonzali is incredibly thorough in their cleaning. Because of this, they’ve enticed some clients away from other cleaners who wouldn’t go under or behind furnishings. 

And that’s what set them apart.

The rule of thumb at Speedy Gonzali: if it’s too heavy for one person to move alone, they won’t move it to prevent injuries. Otherwise, though, they’ll get under and behind all the furnishings. And for heavy furniture, if the client moves it in advance, they’ll happily clean behind it. That attention to detail has helped to build their reputation.

Customer service is also a big part of their success in word-of-mouth referrals. Hiring the right people for her team helps Lali maintain this high standard: 

“Friendliness is one thing I look for when I’m recruiting. I know you can teach someone this skill, but you can’t teach someone to be friendly.”

Tip 4: Invest in your people (and delegate to them smartly).

When Lali first started, she was taking cleaning jobs on her days off from her full-time job at the animal hospital, and that was hard to manage. She remembers: 

“It was just me doing the admin work. I didn’t have the other person that was helping me clean. By July, I was booked for the entire month and people were still reaching out. I had to turn people away and they ended up going somewhere else because they want a cleaning within a certain time frame.”

Quitting her job to focus on the business full-time helped with that, but she still couldn’t do everything on her own. Building her team got her over this hurdle to continue her growth. One of her biggest pieces of advice for other cleaning business owners: 

“Invest in your people and respect your time. Time is everything. Even in the day-to-day operations of the business, if you can figure out how to effectively use your time, and maybe even shorten times for any tasks you’re doing, it helps a lot.”

She now delegates a lot of responsibility to her growing team because she knows that she’s not superwoman. “I always tell my employees, if there’s any more responsibility that you want, anything you want to learn, there’s opportunity for you. It helps build people, but it also helps you.” 

Tip 5: Be kind to yourself when you make mistakes.

During the first three months of the business, Lali was very hard on herself whenever she made a mistake. What she’s realized as she’s grown:

“Mistakes are normal, so don’t be too hard on yourself when it happens. In fact, be thankful when the mistakes happen and figure out how you’re going to be able to learn from it.” 

The truth is, it takes time to master any new skill—and there are a ton of new skills that you have to learn as a new business owner. Lali’s new philosophy: “Just believe in yourself and be nice to yourself in the process.”

Lali is still figuring a lot of things out about her business. Right now, they’re focused on investing more into commercial cleaning contracts to build on the five offices they clean currently. She’s also working on new strategies to reinvest her profits into the business as they grow. 

The bottom line is, Lali’s business isn’t done growing yet—and she’s confident that, between her dedication and the knowledge she gained from Chris’ course, the next 10 months will bring even greater things for her and her business.

Your Cleaning Business Success Blueprint

Lali’s business has already outpaced her expectations. As she says, “I’m just really surprised about how profitable it is and how huge the growth can be if you’re putting in the work.” 

That’s ultimately the key: you get out of a business what you put into it. Lali has been putting in the time and effort, and it’s paid off in a big way.

Are you ready to do the same thing with a cleaning business of your own? Taking the 7-Figure Cleaning Business Blueprint can help you get started on the right path and skip some of the growing pains that Lali went through early on. 

Before I enrolled in the 7-Figure Cleaning Blueprint course, I already had a cleaning business, but my growth had stagnated. I only had two employees and kept making the same $112k per year over and over. I didn’t know how to hire, optimize processes, and expand. Joining the course gave me a step-by-step formula that I modified to apply to my own situation. This enabled me to follow the plan while incorporating things that worked into my current business.

I discovered that it’s a mistake to work in your business instead of on your business. Now, my business is growing, I’m seeing results, and plan to add a second team soon! This will enable me to focus on improving systems efficiency, refining my hiring process, and generating more leads. My advice is to learn more about pricing structure in the course and resist the urge to lower your prices to get baseline clients.

Jose Martinez Gracida
The Tidy Team

I was just starting to think about creating a cleaning business. The first big thing I needed was a step-by-step plan to solve the concrete aspects involved in starting a business. That’s when I found the Cleaning Blueprint. During the course, I watched the videos and hopped on the live calls, which offered a lot of updated information. The course answered so many of my questions about how to run a business! Right away, I started getting results. Now, I’m ready to hire my first employee.

My advice is to watch the whole course, get a pen and paper and write down the steps you need, and then apply the information to become successful.

Juan Nunez
UpFlip Academy Member