Hired by friends and family.
Should you take the job?
Oh, we're going to talk about that today.
Hi 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.
Now, today's show is brought to us by HouseCleaning360.com
which is a 360 view of the perfect home.
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Okay, on to today's show, which is about being hired by family and friends.
Alright. We're going to have this conversation.
A house cleaner writes in and she wants to know if she should take a job because she's
been hired by family and friends.
My answer is no.
Don't take the job.
Here's the reason why.
Family and friends are too close to us.
They're too comfortable and they break all of our rules.
For some reason, they don't think the rules apply to them.
If you decide that you're going to take a job because you've been hired by friends and
family or family and friends, make sure that you get paid up front and make sure that you
have a scheduled time on your calendar that starts at a particular time and it ends at
a particular time.
Then don't come over and visit beforehand and don't stay and visit when it's over.
Come over during the middle of a calendar day when you're actually working cleaning houses
so you can say, "Listen, I can come over and I can work from 9 until 12, and then
I have another house."
It forces you to get in, clean the house, and get out.
If, if you decide you want to work for family and friends, make you get paid up front because
family and friends often say, "Oh, well, you know I'm good for it, so I'll just catch you
on pay day on Friday," and then you may never see the money, which is very typical in the industry.
Now, here's what most of the time happens and one of the reasons why I say
just flat out don't do it.
When you're working for family and friends, there's a tendency to get distracted.
So, if you have a normal routine you do when you come to someone's house and you bring
all your cleaning supplies and your caddy and all your stuff in and you start at one
particular side of the house and you power through, what happens is you get halfway through
and they're like, "Hey, I'm carrying this mattress out to the car.
Can you help me?"
Because you're family and friends, you're like, "Well, okay," and you stop your cleaning
and you help them carry the mattress out because it needs an extra set of hands.
Then, while you're doing that, you get distracted, and they're like, "Hey, can I get you a drink
while I'm out at the garage?"
And you're like, "Yeah," so they open the fridge from the garage and they get you a drink.
The next thing you know, you're having drinks and you're not cleaning the house.
Another thing is, they start adding tasks on.
"Oh, hey.
I was wondering if you could just throw this in the wash for me."
Or "Hey, we're going to have lunch.
Do you want to stop and have something to eat with us?"
There are all these weird distractions that suddenly your three hour window turned into
a five hour window and you can't bill for five hours of time because you know and
they know you did not work the whole amount of time.
Now they're going to try to cut you on price
and they're going to ask for a friends and family discount.
This is not a business transaction.
If you want to help your family, go over and help them for free.
If you're helping them for free, my suggestion is to get them involved.
Say, "Hey, listen.
Everyone else pays me for my service and I'm going to come over and help you for free.
But in exchange, I need you to help me back.
So, be ready at 9 o'clock when I get there.
I will bring the cleaning supplies.
And you and me will tag team the house.
I'll start on the upstairs, you start on the downstairs, and we'll be done with the entire
house by, say, 11 o'clock."
That way, you can have them help you.
Now, another thing to think about is what is the big picture?
I had an extended family member that wanted my service to come over and fill in the gaps,
is what they said.
It's like somebody calling and asking if they can pick your brain because they don't want
to pay for consulting.
The fill in the gaps was when you have a cancellation and you haven't sold that time, can you come
over and clean my house for free?
I had to be very clear with this particular extended family member and say no.
As it turns out, there's an adult child that lives at your house that's never lifted a finger.
That adult child can be shown how to empty the dishwasher and how to bring groceries
in from the car and how to vacuum and to sweep and mop and maintain your house.
If what you need is help, I will help you with something else, but I will not help you
with house cleaning because we've just enabled this grown adult child not to ever learn how
to clean up after themselves.
Since that is the situation, and you can always defer it to the teenagers and the adults and
the grown children, the bigger children that are actually capable of doing some work.
Kids are able to do work at very small ages.
We all had chores when we five, six, eight years old.
Even from a very young age, you can clean the house and have chores around the house.
When family and friends are asking you, "Can you come clean my house?"
Ha.
My suggestion is always no.
Don't mix that business with your business, okay?
Because that business that is the family, and the entertainment, and the drama, and
the chaos, and the rule breaking, and the exceptions, and all these other things.
It doesn't really fit in to what you're doing for a business.
I know that it's easy to ask for a friends and family discount, and if that's the case,
then you need to have a friends and family discount that is printed on your packet of
information or printed on your website and you need to say, "These are the hours, these
are the rules and regulations," and have it be a business transaction.
So that you show up at a particular time and
that you leave at a particular time and that you get paid up front.
But there will always be hiccups in that arena.
My suggestion to you is don't go down that road.
It is such a punishment to yourself and it's really a punishment to the family and friends
as well because you're not going to do a very good job.
They will distract you and then they will think you did a crappy job.
Then they will tell all the other family members that you're crappy at your business.
I've seen so many bad situations.
When they ask for your help, say no and say that your schedule is full, and then go somewhere
else where you're going to get paid and you have people that respect and honor your rules
and regulations.
That's my two cents.
All right.
Until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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