About a month ago, a young woman reached out to us. She was a solo cleaner, an expectant mother, and she needed to get out of the business. She wasn’t asking for anything. She was just looking for other cleaning companies to refer her clients to once she officially closed up shop.
She was thinking about her clients. Not herself. Just her clients.
That told us everything we needed to know about her.
Stephanie and I talked about it and we turned to our prior experience trying to close our real estate businesses in another state. It was a struggle; there were a lot of moving parts. The people we turned to were not interested in helping, so we eventually got it done by ourselves. This mom-to-be did not have that option. She needed a clean break from the business so she could turn all of her attention to a much higher priority.
So we slowed down. We asked questions. We tried to understand the full picture. What did her clients need? What did she need? It was our concern that just saying “sure, send them over” would not lead to a clean resolution for her or her clients. We asked ourselves: How do we make this transition feel seamless for the families involved, rather than disruptive?
We approached her with a proposed game plan: We’ll work with you on getting your final cleanings done, at our time and expense, and simply introduce ourselves to the clients as a great option to continue providing the same service they had been experiencing, without interruption. We offered to pay her a referral fee. Not because she asked, but because she earned it. The relationships she built had value, and she deserved to be compensated for that.
In addition, she would receive free assistance at a time when she physically would not be at 100%, her clients would get an opportunity to try our service at no additional cost, and our employees would receive additional hours. Yes, of course our benefit is the potential of growing the company with additional clients. But that’s the only benefit in this scenario that is speculative. Everyone else we put before ourselves had already received their benefits.
We thought about her first. Then her clients. Then our employees. Then, maybe, hopefully, ourselves. That’s just the order things go in for us.
What Happens When You Put People Before Profit?
Will this work out for Diamond House Cleaning in the long run? Honestly, we don’t know. We’re entrepreneurs. We take risks. We know that not every decision, even with good intentions, turns into a great outcome for us personally. But that’s not why we did it.
We did it because we want to be the solution for as many people as possible. We had an opportunity to help a colleague wrap up her affairs, to help people in need of quality cleaning services avoid the long, arduous task of interviewing and trying out a bunch of random companies, and we brought more income opportunities for our employees. She deserved this opportunity to make things a little easier for herself. Her clients deserved a transition that felt thoughtful, not just thrown together. Our employees deserve every opportunity to grow their hours and their income.
The reward for us is in doing the right thing. Whatever comes after that, we’ll figure out.
What Diamond House Cleaning Is Actually Building
That’s what we’re building here. Not just a cleaning company. A business that when you come into contact with it, whether you’re a client, a partner, another business owner, or someone who just needed a soft landing, you walk away better off. That’s the goal. Every single time.
If you are reading this and find yourself in a situation where you need someone in your corner, you know where to find us.