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This is a classic case of removing purchase friction. There is a market that wants to hire cleaners. There are cleaners who want to be hired. The traditional wa
by orangethirty 14y ago
This is a classic case of removing purchase friction. There is a market that wants to hire cleaners. There are cleaners who want to be hired. The traditional way of hiring a cleaner or finding a cleaning job requires a lot of effort on both parties. myclean.com goes ahead and reduces that friction with a website. They allow both parties to meet without issue. No wonder they are doing well.
Now, can you do this too? Yes. Yes, you can. Go and research markets where there is a lot of interest in a service or product, but there is a lot of friction is purchase. Remove that friction and allow people to interact easily. No need to do much else, but market it directly (which is rather simple). You can even launch this without writing any code. A simple Wordpress blog with a free theme and some manual labor. That's it.
Edit:
Why does your logo link to your blog!?
- skizm 14y agoseamless does this pretty well
- mesozoic 14y agoAnother example of a company that successfully did this is uShip
- larrys 14y agouship doesn't handle the actual shipping with their trucks and employees. The cleaning services employees the people who do the cleaning. uship is probably more of the concept that the parent commenter was referring to that I replied to though as an example of reducing friction.
- clientbiller 14y agoLogo links to the blog because that is the blog your reading. I clicked it too thinking it would take me to the site.
- mkbrody 14y agoSorry clientbiller, here's the site: https://www.myclean.com/ https://www.myclean.com/
- larrys 14y ago"myclean.com goes ahead and reduces that friction with a website." Not a new concept at all. A few examples: http://www.maidpro.com/ http://www.maidpro.com/ http://www.mollymaid.com/ http://www.mollymaid.com/ http://www.merrymaids.com/ http://www.merrymaids.com/ And others. The hard part of this business isn't "reducing the friction". It's hiring people that you can trust, that show up for work, that you can get at a price and still make a profit. Obviously many people run mom and pop 1 or 3 person cleaning services in local markets and that's been going on forever. What you typically do is get a suggestion from a friend, see an ad or respond to a flyer put in your mailbox or door. "The traditional way of hiring a cleaner or finding a cleaning job requires a lot of effort on both parties." Finding a cleaning job is actually pretty easy. If you are good you can get a job doing this getting hired by an established company. Or, as many have done simply put flyers in peoples doors in neighborhoods that you want to work in (or in office buildings for that matter). In short this is not a web or technology play at all. It is simply running a business (and that part is fine obviously) the secret sauce of something like this is managing people and quality control. If you can handle that there are a multitude of business opportunities where you can make money. But that part is not easy at all to do. Plus if you are competing with larger companies that offer an upward path to employees starting at the lower level and have economies of scale.
- mkbrody 14y agoThanks for the post larrys. You make some excellent points and the companies you have pointed out are all excellent companies. The large national franchise model is slightly different form our tech oriented urban based model however. We plan to expand soon and want to continue to contribute positively to the economy through job creation and opportunities for growth and advancement for our employee's.
- jeremyarussell 14y agoHopefully they'll fix the blog thing when they roll out the new site. You're right though, linking to the main site is generally what someone naturally expects a logo to do.
- mkbrody 14y agoHello Jeremyarussell, all of this will be fixed on the new site. Launching in just a few weeks!
- nilkn 14y agoYour comment confused me a bit. Do they actually hire full-time cleaners, or do they just act as a middleman where cleaners, acting as independent contractors, can find cleaning jobs?
- MattGrommes 14y agoHe says they started out with contractors and moved to in-house people because of a lack of quality.
- mkbrody 14y agoYou're right MattGrommes, thanks for the post.
- mkbrody 14y agoHello nilkn, MyClean does not contract cleaners. All of our employee's are W-2 employee's of our company.
- medell 14y agoThanks for sharing what worked and what didn't, especially the part about bringing on in-house cleaners. My friend's cleaners are all word of mouth immigrants who likely aren't insured or bonded, but your service solves a problem. Way to hustle and use tech in a non-glamorous industry to solve a make people's lives easier!
- mkbrody 14y agoYou're welcome Medell. If your friends live in the NYC area we'd love to clean for them! Our rates are competitive with certain "off the books" cleaners and we are fully insured and bonded. We'd be happy to offer a $25 first time credit as well. Have them reach out to us at contact@myclean.com.