1. Please describe your job! What does a founder do?
As the Co-founder, initially I was responsible for setting up the website, Launch27 POS, QuickBooks for accounting and ofcourse for hiring the right set of people.
Now the role is primarily focussed on hiring, talking to customers and servicing them. Although I have clear process to attend to customers, but I still answer customer calls as it helps to learn more about them and build relationships with them.
As far as managing day to day operations is concerned, I have an employee who helps manage the cleaners. This helps me spend my time mostly focussing on sales and marketing.
2. Tell us about a typical working day in detail. How does it start and end? What do you use VA’s for the most?
The overall booking process is that people place an order online for a cleaning service and they get an automated welcome email. That is followed by going into Launch27 and manually confirming the order. We get in touch with them only if we feel there is a need to.
Since we get a lot of orders both from the website and on calls, most of my day goes in handling customer calls.
Apart from handling customer calls (business as usual). I have a work calendar set up which helps define things that need to be done, for example, Marketing, Sales, Accounting.
The calendar has defined days for each activity. One day for sales, one for marketing and so on. Each day involves working on a specific problem and considering it like a projects. It is hard to follow but I try to stick to it.
3. What kind of goals do you have? What are the most useful metrics and KPIs for measuring success?
Goals:
Profit and Loss: Tracked inside Quickbooks.
Email Engagement: Tracked inside Mailchimp
Net New Bookings: Tracked inside Launch27
Monthly/Quarterly and Yearly Sales Metrics
4. What problems do you face in your daily routine related to work and how do you tackle it or plan to tackle it?
Problems: The biggest problem is just time management especially when you are handling all aspects of the business yourself. We do have people taking care of specific things but still, I like overseeing everything. I am not ready for a VA yet but will be looking at hiring them eventually. I need to be prepared to hire a VA so that I am not being taken for a ride. Hence, for now, I first want to keep myself educated and ensure I know all aspects of my business well before letting it into others’ hands.
5. What do you love about your job?
Love: I love speaking to the clients, building customer relationships, getting all the good reviews on Google: its a sign that we are keeping our customers happy.
Dont Love: Getting into the accounting aspect cause I am not an accountant or having accounting knowledge. I love numbers but accounting is a new language for me. My strengths lie on the creative side.
6. How did you get started in this business?
About 10 years ago my brother and I spoke about building a cleaning company. He had his own company and I was in the fashion industry. I worked for over 20 years in fashion. It was time for a change and that’s when my brother reminded me about my previous dream of building a cleaning company. It’s family business as I run it with help from family.
We realized most cleaning services in our area were inefficient. They have bad websites that are not responsive. That’s when I thought there is a gap and we could definitely do better. I started to think about how would I like to get served from a cleaning company and that’s how we should offer a service to customers. Being from a sales and marketing background I knew how important it is to be customer-centric.
Another thing I realized was staff was not well compensated at other cleaning companies and that’s when I felt there is a huge gap. Which ultimately lead me to build this business.
7. How do you keep yourself updated with what’s new in this business? Do you read or watch any content that is related to your business?
I do a lot of research generally before buying software or making any business decisions. For example, when we had to purchase a POS, I read review websites like Capterra and started looking at scheduling platforms. One of Capterra’s sales rep mentioned Launch27 to us.
Apart from that, I love to read Forbes, Fast Company and anything that has to do with technology, consumer lifestyle and trends. I love reading about marketing as well.
8. What is your take on voice as a channel to make a booking or schedule an appointment?
Today the first thing people do is search for things on google. More and more people are now ordering things online, even services like home cleaning. It would definitely be much easier as products and services get voice recognition and voice-enabled. So when that happens, it would be a great time to get into it. But there are still some challenges today and I am going to wait before investing into voice.
9 Any advice for people getting into this business?
Just a few things to take away:
- Keep an open mind and don’t follow what everybody else is doing.
- You can read and learn from others. Learn from others mistakes and do things differently
- Don’t sell at a lower price just because others are doing that
- Focus on the quality of the service.
About Rosie Cleans:
Rosie Cleans is the leading residential and commercial cleaning company committed to delivering high-quality housekeeping services. We pride ourselves in providing sustainable employment with fair wages for our cleaning professionals. Being US Veteran owned and operated, we are dedicated to excellence, outstanding values, and principles of respect, integrity, and honor. Our main service area is in and around Morris County, New Jersey.
About Cecilia:
As a Fashion Institute of Technology graduate, Cecilia Oliva Gilbreath possesses over 20 years of experience in the fashion industry. She was the Director of Sales & Marketing one of the world’s top global online fashion forecasting agency based in New York City.
As an avid world traveler, she spends her free time doing missionary work serving impoverished communities focusing on areas such as the empowerment of women through production and sustainability.
Starting Rosie Cleans was a family idea, one she took as a project to develop it from the ground up to what it is today. It has grown to become a profitable company by operating responsibly, caring about both clients and cleaning teams, paying fair wages, while serving the local community.
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