The kid who mows my lawn asked me how to start a turnover cleaning company

He's nineteen, he does my yard and two of my neighbors', and in April he asked me over the fence how much a cleaning company charges to turn an apartment. I said it depends on the unit and where you are, but around here a two bedroom turnover runs a couple hundred and the manager cares more about whether you show up Thursday than what you charge.

So we did four Saturday mornings at my kitchen table. Not a course, I don't have a course. I showed him what an invoice looks like, what a supply cost sheet looks like, how to write an email to a property manager that doesn't sound like spam. He wrote everything on his phone. I told him twice that insurance and licensing rules for this kind of work are a state by state thing and he needed to call somebody licensed and confirm it in writing before he took a paid job, and to his credit he did.

In June he texted me a photo of a signed vendor agreement with a management company that runs about four hundred doors. He'd emailed nine of them. Two answered, one said yes.

Here's the part I didn't expect. He priced his two bedroom under mine. Not by a little. My office manager found out in August and was not delighted with me.

I'd do it again. Four Saturdays and a kid who was going to figure it out anyway, faster with the invoice template. But I understand now why people who teach this stuff draw a line somewhere, and I hadn't thought about where mine was until it walked past me.