Dave Kowalski has known me for twenty-three years. We met at a five-a-side league in Neasden when we were both young enough to think we were better at football than we were, and somewhere between the bad tackles and the post-match pints, we became proper friends. The kind of friends who can say the unsayable to each other without it causing permanent damage.
Dave works in logistics. He’s built, over the years, a small but apparently solid operation – a few vans, a couple of contracts, two full-time staff and a part-timer on Thursdays. He did it entirely from scratch, starting with one van and one client, and he is insufferably sensible about money in a way that I have always found both admirable and slightly irritating.
He came round last month to help me look at a damp patch that had appeared on my kitchen ceiling – turned out to be nothing serious, which is the only kind of damp patch you want – and he stayed for dinner, as Dave tends to do. Somewhere between the pasta and the second can of lager, he said the thing that’s been rattling around in my head ever since.
“Pete,” he said, in the tone he uses when he’s been building up to something, “have you actually thought about what you’ve already got here?”
Dave Makes His Case
I’ll give Dave credit – he came prepared. He hadn’t just come to fix a ceiling and eat my food. He’d clearly been thinking about this, possibly for a while.
He pointed out, methodically and with the enthusiasm of a man who genuinely enjoys a spreadsheet, that I had been cleaning professionally for a few years now. That I had built, without really planning to, a client list of regulars who rebooked consistently and who had started recommending me to other people. That I had a van, equipment, a growing understanding of what different jobs required, and a reputation – his words – for turning up on time and doing what I’d said I’d do.
“That’s a business,” he said. “You’re just not treating it like one.”
I told him it was a means to an end. He nodded in the way that people nod when they disagree with you but are tactful enough not to say so immediately.
“Right,” he said. “And how long until the end?”
I told him about the unit on the side street off Neasden Lane, about the sums I’d done in the notepad, about the eighty thousand pounds sitting at the bottom of the page like an accusation. He listened properly, which is one of Dave’s better qualities.
Then he said, “So what if the cleaning was the thing? Not the means to the thing – the actual thing?”
He laid it out in practical terms. Hire one person, he said – even part-time to begin with – and you immediately double your capacity. You can take on more clients without stretching yourself thin. You start earning from someone else’s hours as well as your own. You build systems, routines, a proper rate card. You think about branding, about whether you want to specialise – end-of-tenancy, commercial, domestic – and you go after that work deliberately rather than just taking whatever comes your way. Give it three years of proper focus, he reckoned, and you’d have something genuinely worth owning.
“You’d also,” he added, pouring the last of his lager with the air of a man delivering a conclusion, “have a lot more than ten years’ worth of savings.”
I didn’t have a great answer to that. Which is unusual for me.
The Uncomfortable Truth About What I’m Actually Good At
Here’s something I’ve been reluctant to admit, and I’m going to admit it here because this blog has always been the place where I try to be straight with myself.
I am, apparently, quite good at this.
Not just competent – actually good. I have a client who told me last year that I was the fourth cleaner she’d tried in three years and the only one she intended to keep. I have a letting agent who puts my number forward specifically when landlords want end-of-tenancy work done properly rather than just rushed through. I had a woman ring me last month to ask if I could clean her mother’s house in preparation for it going on the market, and she found me because a neighbour had described me as “the best cleaner in Neasden,” which I found equal parts flattering and slightly alarming.
The thing is, I approach it the way Gerry taught me to approach boxing. You study it. You learn the details – what products work on what surfaces, how to tackle a kitchen that hasn’t been properly cleaned in six months, how to leave a bathroom looking like something from a hotel without spending four hours on it. You develop standards and you stick to them even when you’re tired or the job is thankless or the client is, to put it diplomatically, a bit difficult. You take pride in the outcome regardless.
Those habits didn’t come from cleaning. They came from the ring. But they translate. And apparently, they show.
Dave’s point, when I sat with it properly, was this: I haven’t stumbled into cleaning and tolerated it. I’ve actually built something, quietly and without fully noticing. Something small, yes – but solid. And there’s a version of the future where I build on that foundation deliberately, and it becomes something I’d be proud of in its own right, not just as a stepping stone.
That thought is both exciting and deeply confusing.
What Would Big Pete’s Cleaning Services Actually Look Like?
Against my better judgement, I found myself thinking it through. Not replacing the boxing club dream – I wasn’t ready to go that far – but just letting the idea exist alongside it for a bit, the way you might let two possible routes sit on the map before you’ve decided which one to take.
I’ve got a name already, which made me laugh when I realised it. Branding’s sorted, at least.
Realistically, the first step would be going from sole trader to something with a bit more structure. A proper limited company, a business account, actual invoicing software instead of the slightly chaotic system I currently operate where I write things down in a notebook and hope for the best. Dave said this with a pained expression, having apparently seen the notebook.
Then one hire – someone reliable, someone I could trust to represent the standard I’ve built. Not easy to find, but not impossible. I know people in the area who work hard and need steady income. I know what to look for, because I’ve worked alongside enough people in different contexts to understand the difference between someone who takes pride in their work and someone who’s just going through the motions.
From there, it’s a question of focus. Dave suggested end-of-tenancy cleaning as a specialism worth pursuing – there’s consistent demand for it in this part of London, the jobs tend to be well-defined in terms of what’s expected, and lettings agents are the kind of clients who, once they trust you, send regular work your way without much additional effort on your part. It’s not glamorous, he conceded, but it’s reliable. And reliable, in business, is worth a great deal.
I asked him how long before something like that started to feel substantial.
“Eighteen months,” he said, without hesitating. “If you commit to it properly.”
Eighteen months. Versus ten years. That’s not a trivial difference.
The Part I’m Still Working Through
I’ve gone back and forth on this more times in the past few weeks than I’d care to admit.
And I want to be honest about why it’s complicated, because I don’t think it’s really about the money or the timelines or any of the practical stuff, even though all of that matters. The honest version is this: the boxing club means something to me that a cleaning business, however successful, doesn’t quite reach. It connects to who I was, to what the sport gave me, to those lads on the street with the football and the nowhere particular to be. It’s personal in a way that feels important.
But Dave said something else, almost as an afterthought as he was putting his jacket on to leave, that I keep turning over.
“It doesn’t have to be either-or, Pete. Build the business. Make the money. Then build the club. One funds the other.”
I stood in the doorway and watched him walk to his car, and I thought about that for a long time after his tail lights disappeared around the corner. Because he’s right, obviously. He’s annoyingly, straightforwardly right. The question is whether I’ve got the patience to take the long road when the thing I actually want is already mapped out in my head in full detail, complete with heavy bags and a reception desk and a photo of Gerry on the wall.
Whether I’m built for the sensible path, in other words.
Jury’s still out. But I’ve started looking at invoicing software, which probably tells you something.