We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lillie Desir. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lillie below.
Lillie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So, let’s imagine that you were advising someone who wanted to start something similar to you and they asked you what you would do differently in the startup-process knowing what you know now. How would you respond?
Something I’ve started that I would’ve started earlier is networking. We had our social media marketing and even door to door introductions to market ourselves to businesses. I’ve learned along the way that being a cleaning company we are essential to every other company out there! Going to non-cleaning networking conventions I was able to find specific needs of companies without directly trying to “sell” myself to them. I was able to create relationships where other business owners wanted to use my company instead of strictly trying to sell to them.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I married into the industry and hit the pavement hard! I have a military, medical, and employee relations background so my disciplines brought an administrative quality to my husband’s already growing business. I’m proud of bringing up new ideas for marketing, as well as ideas on how to grab customers attention and future employees attention. Being a former employee myself, it has always been extremely important to me to have my employees know their worth and how much their hard work means to the company. I’m proud that we have a low turn over rate and in turn our employees treat this company as if it were their own. This keeps our customers more than happy and that’s all I could ask for as an owner!
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
At the baby stage of our company my husband/business partner and I were our own employees. We juggled our regular jobs, military, being parents and still making time for each other. To be 100% transparent this was not an easy task. We weren’t making a lot from the company, but new investing in it and hitting the pavement hard we would eventually see the fruit of our labor. We had clients that loved our work, but would run into obstacles such as a business HOA hiring their own cleaning company or a company pausing our services because they’re renovating. There wasn’t a job too small or too big we wouldn’t take on. If we didn’t know how to do it we would do our research, save up, become efficient and excel at it. This took time especially buying equipment which was another obstacle that we eventually jumped. It took a lot of savings and sacrifices. I always wanted to make sure my family never felt as though they were on the back burner. They are what I do it for so they come first! Thankfully they knew the importance of the business and how it was for the benefit of all of us.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
Funding our business initially started with a lot of self investment and having to save our coins for the business. We did this by making a spreadsheet of our regular debt and income. We put to the side minimum 30% of our non business income to our business savings, and the income from our business directly into our business account. We treated this Money like it wasn’t ours and only used it for equipment. Eventually with this growth we were able to hire our first employees and purchase a truck which led to us being able to grow that much faster!
Contact Info:
- Website: Desiredwayofcleaning.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/desiredwayofcleaning
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/desiredwayofcleaning/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willie-desir-6ba294256
- Yelp: https://m.yelp.com/biz/desired-way-of-cleaning-orlando