Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jessica Halley. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jessica , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

From the beginning I knew that success would come from a strong team and building that team was always the goal, I just didn’t really know how to get there. I had zero experience managing or interviewing people and really had no idea what I was doing – it’s always been a learn as you go process and I was always prepared to have failures and learn from them.

At first interviews were really simple and not well thought out at all… I was basically just looking for people who had done cleaning in the past. My thought process was that I just needed people to show up to do the cleaning and, by law of averages, the good ones would stick. Sure, most were good at the job but the problem was that no-one was connecting with each other. Call outs and people not showing up was an issue. Every day felt very drab like a job they “had to” do rather than a place they wanted to be, and that wasn’t what I wanted at all.

When you think about cleaning it’s not really a skill, it’s a work ethic and the qualities that make someone “good” at cleaning really don’t have much to do with cleaning itself. Sure you need to know what products to use, where and how to use them, systems for time management, safety measures.. but all of that can be taught. The skills that are harder to teach are the ones that develop over years – good work ethic, confidence, ability to work autonomously as well as on a team, leadership qualities, helpful nature, ability to take constructive criticism, the desire to grow and improve, and so on.

So I started to focus on these qualities rather than just looking for cleaners. I spent more time getting to know the people I was interviewing by making the interviews more conversational and asking open ended questions rather than cut and dry “yes or no” questions. I asked questions not only about their professional experience but about their life and goals as well.

I started to think of my team as a living breathing thing with a collective personality and looked for people who would fit in with that. Today it feels like we are a happy family and I can feel that these women want to be a part of it. They work hard and show up every day not because they “have to” but because they want to and that makes all the difference.

Sure there are still challenges and obstacles – team building is an ongoing process but with honesty and open communication we’re all able to share and talk about the good and bad and come up with solutions together.

Jessica , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I own Suzie Q Cleaning, a small cleaning company in Pinellas County, Florida. We make peoples lives easier by providing a fresh, clean space with a happy positive energy. We help our residential clients by taking the stress of cleaning off of their to do list. And for our vacation rental cleaning branch, we refresh and create a warm, welcoming space where families come to relax and forget about life for a while – a home away from home.

We focus a lot on the experience that we provide our clients, from the initial, personalized request for cleaning to the smiling faces coming into their home. From the quality of work that we are proud to perform, to the cards and small gifts congratulating our clients on big life moments or offering our condolences for anything not-so-exciting. We are the cleaners who truly care and that’s what sets us apart.

I didn’t intend to start a cleaning company. I moved to Florida a few years ago and started as a full time nanny for two sassy little girls. I never really thought of myself as someone who “enjoys” cleaning, but I have always been the kind of person who can’t leave something unfinished. The mother of the children I was a nanny for kept having trouble finding and keeping good housekeepers so I volunteered to take over the cleaning in addition to caring for the girls. I realized that I was actually “good” at this whole cleaning thing, that I did enjoy the challenge of it, and that I could teach it to others. I thought a lot about all of my past experience – I’ve always been a bit of a job hopper trying to figure it all out. And when I thought about it, every single place that I worked at and every single boss that I had in the past had really taught me so much that I could pull from to create something great.

Eventually I stepped away from being a nanny and focused solely on cleaning after acquiring a few more houses on the block. I spent a couple of months just researching and mapping out exactly what I would want my company to look like from the inside out. I literally wrote out every single job that I had in the past, what it taught me, and what I would have done differently had I been in a leadership position. I thought about my “bad bosses” and what they could have done differently. I thought about the things at each job that kept me around despite the challenges. Then, I took all of that and dove in head first.

Today, when I look back over the 2.5 years in business, I am most proud of the team that we’ve built so far. We have 10 amazing women that make up our team and each one works so hard and contributes something unique to the company. I really love seeing the friendships that have developed and the growth of each individual. It truly feels like a family that cares about each other and wants to do good in the world.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

We have our recurring clients on an email marketing campaign sending out one email per month. We make sure that these emails very subtly remind them how we are helping make their lives easier, and how happy that makes us. We also remind them of easy to forget things such as when it’s time to change their air filters, when it’s time to set clocks backwards or forwards.. We send preparation tips before hurricane season and other things like that just to show that we care about them. In those emails we also cheer on our local sports teams when seasons start and showcase any involvement that we have in the local community such as donating, volunteering, or collecting items for food drives, school supply drives and diaper drives.

The biggest part in fostering brand loyalty is our communication. Our goal is to make every client feel as if they are our most important client, and we never want to make any part of our relationship with them slow, difficult, or back and forth. The whole process should be a breeze from start to finish. We are available to clients by email, call or text and we always make sure to respond right away. Same with new client cleaning requests – we stop what we are doing and give them our full attention every time.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Aside from word of mouth, getting professional branded cars on the road has been huge in bringing in new clients. It shows them that we are professional and successful, it reminds them of our name over and over again, and it creates a bit of “Envy Marketing” for us – they see our car pull into their neighbor’s house and they want that for themselves. After all, cleaning is a luxury, not truly a necessity for most.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.suzieqcleaning.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/suzieqcleaning
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/suzieqcleaning