Rome wasn’t built in a day and your janitorial service business won’t be built overnight. However, that’s not to say you can’t make money when you start out.

Many entrepreneurs hear about small businesses not turning a profit for their first year or their first five years. Forget that. Use these tips to avoid the hurdles to profitability.

Time is Money

If a client contracts you to perform a cleaning job and you estimate it will take 3 hours, you base your proposal on 3 hours of work, right?

Wrong. Think about how the time you took to talk with the client, inspect the facility, go over the details, and prepare an estimate. A lot of time goes into the sales process - not to mention the time for bookkeeping, equipment repair, and everything else that goes with a business.

If you’re  just starting out, consider sub-contracting to another cleaning service. Although you’ll be paid less, you’re saving the time it takes to chase after new clients. Plus, you can start making money right away, which you can invest in your business.

Flexible Costs vs. Fixed Costs

“A penny saved is a penny earned,” right? Profitability has two sides - income and expenses. If all you focus on is the income, like getting new sales, you’re missing half of the equation. You have to focus on the expenses too if you want to achieve profitability.

At the start of your business, don’t lock yourself into contracts and monthly payments (“fixed costs”). Try to stay as flexible as possible. Since you’re new, you don’t really know how stable your sales and income will be. If you lease a building or take out a loan for equipment, you have to make those payments every month - whether you’ve made a sale or not.

Don’t do the work and wait until the end of the month to figure out whether you’re making money or not. Try to make each project pay for itself completely. That way, when business is slow, you get to keep the money you would have spent on monthly payments.

Projects vs. Contracts

What would you do if someone handed you a blank résumé and said, “I don’t have much experience, but hire me for a guaranteed 40 hours a week and I’ll work hard.”

You’re putting your prospects in the same situation when you ask them to sign a monthly contract with your brand-new cleaning business. You’re asking them to pay you every month, and you haven’t really proven what you can do.

Instead of trying to land monthly contracts, consider going after projects instead. Projects could include being a sub-contractor for other cleaning services (as mentioned above), but more likely it would be going after smaller special events. For example, if your local Chamber of Commerce is throwing a gala, perhaps you can bid on cleaning up after that event. It’s a lot easier to convince someone to use you once than it is for them to agree to a recurring contract.

Another type of event is a disaster or an emergency. Think of fires, commercial realtors who need a property cleaned and ready to show, or apartment managers who evict a renter and want to rent the unit again as soon as possible.

The possibilities with a janitorial cleaning service are almost unlimited - and so are the ways to make, and keep, profit.

There is a ready market for cleaning services in your area.  The business has had tremendous growth in the recent past.  Everywhere you look businesses and institutions are outsourcing their cleaning services.  This also happens to be your field of operation.  You know you have entrepreneurial skills that you can put into practice.  You would like to own a business and run it with your cleaning skills in mind.  The only thing stopping you is the fact that you don't want to hang out your shingle as a totally unknown person.  You want to remove the uncertainty of striking out completely on your own but at the same time, you'd like to own the business.