Stop Charging the Market Rate for Your Cleaning Business

The Pricing Trap That Keeps Cleaners Broke

Most cleaning businesses in any given city are underpriced. Not because the owners are nice people. Because those owners are paying themselves nothing and calling it a business.

If you base your prices on what the competition charges, you're using underpriced operators as your benchmark. That's how you stay broke.

The Fix: Stop Asking the Wrong Question

Wrong question: "What are people charging around here?"

Right question: "What does my math require?"

Those are two different businesses. The second one pays you.

The Real Pricing Formula

Real pricing has three inputs:

1. Your cost per cleaner-hour (wage + taxes + insurance + supplies + vehicle + overhead allocation)
2. Your target profit margin (20-30% net is the floor)
3. The time the job actually takes (not your best time — your average time)

Price = (cost per cleaner-hour × hours) ÷ (1 − target margin)

If a 3-hour house costs you $75 of cleaner time + $10 of overhead = $85, and you want 25% margin — you charge $113.30 minimum. Not $90 because "that's what the lady down the road charges."

Why This Matters for Scale

The cleaning business owner making $3k/mo at "market rate" isn't running a real business. They're renting themselves to their customers at sub-minimum-wage, after expenses.

The cleaning business owner making $25k/mo with the same number of weekly cleans is pricing based on the math. She builds profit into every invoice. She can afford to hire, train, take time off, pay taxes.

Same work. Different math. Different life.

Your Next Step

Pull up your last 10 invoices. For each one, back out:

• Total cleaner labor cost
• Supplies allocated
• Your target margin (20% floor, 30% goal)

If your invoice is below (labor + supplies) ÷ (1 − margin), you're losing money on that job. Not "making less" — literally losing.

Raise prices on your next quote. The best clients won't flinch. The ones who do aren't the clients you want.

The Blueprint Has the Full System

Module 3 of The Blueprint is the entire pricing system — including the exact spreadsheet I use to build every quote in 90 seconds and the scripts for handling the "that seems high" pushback.

Ten founding spots at $497. When they're full, it's $997.

— Sarah