For the past several episodes, I have focused in on the current crisis of COVID-19 in hopes of helping you through it. It's May and spring is in the air. States are beginning their reacclamation to the world. I felt it was time to catch you up on my own solo cleaning business and get back to the show format that I began. Before I go backward, let me share an awesome story. In "Local Heroes", Ellen Johnston of Above & Beyond Housekeeping in Reading, PA was ecstatic as her company's video clip on the news of passing out free sanitizer to her community was picked up in a video by musical superstar Alicia Keys. Ellen's very own Cary Extraordinary (my nickname) is featured at the 53-sec mark in Alicia's new song "Good Job" music video! So cool!

Let's go back in time as I would like to catch you up on my own solo cleaning company before COVID-19. My aim is to show you how this crisis affected me personally and then tease out lessons from each episode to help you with your solo cleaning business going forward. The last Carfagno Cleaning update was "Know Your Numbers", where I explained the mindset behind a $50 client referral. If you missed that episode, check it out!

I was tracking the leads from my housecleaning client Erika. She posted a testimonial in our local mom's group. This kindness generated eight leads and one hired me! Here's the mindset, so you can follow along. I built a strong cleaning profile on FB. My wife joined the FB mom's group and participated in the group. She saw a mom's post who was searching for a cleaner and private messaged Erika. Erika called me and we set up an estimate, followed by a proposal, and I was hired! I worked with excellence to impress my new client, which I did for 2 months. Erika wrote a follow up post on the mom's group that she asked for a cleaning recommendation a few months ago and found a great one. This post generated 8 leads. Kim contacted me and ultimately hired me. I paid Erika a $50 referral credit as a thank you. I now needed to impress Kim to repeat the cycle of excellence, trust, and more referrals.

I did exactly that. In my first visit, I did part 1 of an initial deep cleaning of Kim's house. It looked awesome and Kim noticed right away. She was so happy with the master bathroom especially. While I was there, we had a conversation that lead to two breakthroughs:

Read the rest of this article at the Solo Cleaning School website