In the Home Service Academy by Johnny Robinson and Sergio Silesky, you learn how to start a remote home cleaning business. They show you how to set up your business, how to find contractors to outsource work to, and how to generate window & home cleaning leads. In this Home Service Academy review, we'll talk about 5 unforeseen headaches of a remote cleaning business, who Johnny and Sergio are, how they got started in this business, what exactly you learn in this program, the pros and cons of owning a physical business, and how the popular local lead generation business model can benefit a Remote Home Service Academy business.
Pros
Johnny and Sergio have grown their business to over $1.3 million in revenue
Outsourcing is the best way to run your business and scale easily; you're not worrying about things like truck maintenance, training employees, etc.
Simple business model where you don't have to do any work; (Similar to Uber & Airbnb)
Cons
Running paid ads is expensive and will cut into your profits if you're not experienced
Working with various subcontractors can get complicated and some may not stay long, which will force you to always look for more of them, which can be a stressful process
Price:
The Remote Home Service Academy costs $2,600
Refund Policy:
If you don't make $10K per month in 90 days, you continue getting support and don't have to pay extra. Not really a refund policy.
Training:
90 days of 1 on 1 training
Origin:
They started the Home Service Academy in 2021.
Group:
Forum-style community
Reputation:
There aren't many reviews online about Johnny and Sergio, but looking at their YouTube and Twitter comments, you can tell they don't have a poor reputation. Their Orange Window Cleaning business has received over 400 positive review further adding to their excellent reputation.
What is a remote home service company?
A remote home service company is a business where you generate leads for any type of home service (window cleaning, home cleaning, landscaping, etc.) and have subcontractors do the work. All you do is pair customers with subcontractors. Johnny and Sergio do this in their business and only work 5 hours per week. This type of business is much easier to do than what Desmond Acha teaches in his USA Contract Solutions program, where you find subcontractors to do the work the government contracts you to do.
5 Unforeseen Headaches with a Remote Cleaning Business
1. Hiring a team
Hiring a team can take some time. It might be easy to call a subcontractor and tell them you have work for them. The hard part is finding someone who provides high-quality results. Someone who is responsive, that is disciplined and who has good communication with you and the leads. This can be one of the most difficult things you have to do because if you do all the work yourself, you won't really be profitable. Also, your subcontractors might decide to stop working with you, putting you again in the position of having to find another subcontractor and vetting them.
2. Getting customers
Something that every business owner needs to know how to do is get customers. If you don't get any leads, you won't be in business. There are many ways to accomplish generating leads. You've got paid traffic methods where you run ads (expensive) and organic traffic methods. It's wise to use each of these methods to your advantage without putting all of your eggs in one basket. Getting customers can take time, but it can give you real headaches if you don't have a good marketing plan in place. Even if you do, many customers are shopping around for prices. You'll answer many phone calls from customers who want an estimate. It's on you to sell your services and close them.
3. Unhappy Customers
Every business will at one point or another end up with an unhappy customer. They'll either be the type of person who is always unhappy about life, or your subcontractor did not do a good job. This is something that you're going to have to deal with, which can lead you to get negative reviews or complaints. If your subcontractor damaged your customer's property, you're now going to pay expensive legal fees to protect yourself.
4. Not enough time
As a contractor, you may find yourself without enough time to take on all the leads you get. Even if you agree to take on all the work, you're going to have to keep hiring more help so that you can stay on schedule. As we already mentioned, it takes time to find someone who is reliable. If you don't hire more help, your revenue and profit will be unscalable.
5. Finding the right CRM
If you're going to run a remote cleaning business and manage all the moving parts, a CRM (Customer relationship management) software is a great option to help you keep your business organized. The problem is that there are a variety of CRMs and it can take some time before you find the right solution for you. Trying different CRMs can give you a headache because each time you try out a new one, there will be a learning curve which can slow you down a bit.
Who are Johnny Robinson and Sergio Silesky?
Johnny Robinson and Sergio Silesky have been best friends since the 7th grade.
Johnny is from Orange, California. He grew up with his single mother and his father passed away when he was a sophomore in high school. In 2017, he was working as a lifeguard at a water park but had to deal with terrible managers. This made him not want to work for anyone else again.
Sergio Silesky is also from Orange, California. While father worked as a self-employed truck driver, his mother raised him and his 9 siblings. Growing up, he always thought that the way to become successful was to go to college, get a degree, and get a job. It didn't take long for him to change his mind completely.
One day, Johnny and Sergio skipped school together and started talking about starting a business. They started the Orange Window Cleaning business with only $150 and would go door to door selling window cleaning services for $10 to $20. As time passed, it all felt like a job.
Still, Sergio went to college at the California State Polytechnic University - Pomona for a degree in civil engineering. While in college, he worked as an engineer intern during the summer of 2019. In summer 2020, he worked as a Project Engineer and landed a job after graduating. Sergio barely lasted 2 months and Johnny quit after 3 weeks at his job. Being employees was not what they envisioned for themselves.
In 2021, Johnny and Sergio left everything behind and went full time with the window cleaning business. This time around, instead of doing all the work themselves, they started using subcontractors instead of employees because subcontractors are more self-sufficient. Orange Window Cleaning eventually grew to $60K-70K in revenue per month. In time, they generated over $1.3 million in sales.
The guys also tried other online business models, such as dropshipping, Amazon FBA, and affiliate marketing, but none of them stuck. Subcontracting window cleaning jobs was more lucrative, so they focused on that.
This is what they teach you to do in the Remote Home Service Academy. On the Johnny & Sergio YouTube channel, they post YouTube shorts almost everyday talking about how to make money by creating a remote cleaning business.
They also post the same type of content on their TikTok account where they have over 30.4K followers.
Steps to Starting a Remote Home Service Company with Johnny & Sergio
Step 2 is all about finding independent contractors ready to on any work you send them. The key is to find candidates with proven experience so that you don't have to worry about always finding a new contractor.
Johnny and Sergio also provide you with their entire sourcing and hiring process. You're even provided with contractual agreement templates that were put together by their lawyers for you to implement with your subcontractors. This way you are always running your business legally and you're protected from any unnecessary issues.
The last step is getting clients. Without leads, you have no business. Johnny and Sergio teach you all the paid and organic methods of generating leads so that you always have an influx of leads coming in. The different ways to get leads are with...
- Facebook Ads
- Google Local Service Ads (LSA)
- Yelp Ads
- Email Marketing
- Angie's List, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack
- Direct mail
- Yard signs
You'll also learn how to sell your services and how to handle any objections.
Pros and Cons of Owning a Physical Business
Pros
You own a physical property
Customers get to see your products in person; chance for immediate sales
Easier to build customer loyalty because they get to interact with you in person
Increase in business if you're in an optimal location
Cons
Lots of moving parts
Higher operating costs (Rent or mortgage on a physical property, utilities, maintenance, marketing)
Health risks
You have to deal with employees (hiring, firing, scheduling, payroll)
Home Service Academy Success Stories
Home Service Academy doesn't share any success stories on their sales page, but I found few successful students who shared their story on YouTube.
Tyler Made $25K in the First 6 Weeks with Home Service Academy
Tyler's Background and Story
Tyler joined the Home Service Academy (HSA) to have another income source aside from his regular job. He made it clear that his goal is not to replace his 9-to-5, but to add a side business he can do while working. He is not new to entrepreneurship. Tyler owned and sold two businesses in the past. Although the cleaning business was new to him, he was confident that his business background was enough for him to succeed.
How Tyler's Business is Doing Today
Tyler did really well in the Home Service Academy. He made $7,000 in his first two weeks and he grew it to $25,000 by his sixth week. By the end of April, he was already making $35,000, and continues to work hard to reach his $100,000 goal. He maintains a 60% profit margin.
Tyler's Top Business Challenges and Lessons
Diverse Sales Experience:Tyler's biggest challenge is handling customers with different backgrounds and personalities. He learned the importance of assessing customer needs over the phone. This has helped him build strong client relationships and close deals.
Structuring the Business: Learning this new business was challenging for Tyler. He had to adapt his existing business knowledge to the specific demands of the home service industry, which was a new field for him.
Importance of Margin: Tyler emphasized the importance of maintaining a good profit margin. He said it's important for entrepreneurs to not just focus on gross revenue but on the overall profitability of the business.
What's not mentioned in the interview: Home cleaning service businesses have low barriers to entry. This means there are lots of small, competitive players in the market. According to 2023 statistics reported by IBIS World, the United States alone has 345,690 cleaning service companies.
Home Service Academy Alternative
Home Service Launch is a course by Oliver and Josh Lester that teaches you how to start a window cleaning business and make over $1,000 per day by going door-to-door and pitching homeowners on the spot. This is a 6-week training program that touches on how to clean windows, how to sell your service to homeowners, and how to manage a team of workers so you can take on more jobs per day. After you join the program, they invite you into their private Discord community and if you don't make $1,000 per day within 6 weeks, they give you your money back.
Price: Home Service Launch costs $7,500
More Info: Home Service Launch Review
How local lead generation can benefit a remote Home service company
The local lead generation business model is quite similar to Johnny and Sergio's business model because you're generating leads and outsourcing them to a local service provider.
With local lead generation, you simply build out websites that offer any kind of phone driven service like pool cleaning, tree care, limousine rental, and even window cleaning.
Once you've built your site, you then take the time to rank it atop local Google search results. After you rank your site, leads will start flowing in. At that point, you send those leads exclusively to a local business owner who is looking to take on more work each month. They'll schedule the appointment and do all the work while all you do is collect your commission check and check up on your site to make sure everything is ok. You can even listen to the phone calls when your leads call your call tracking number that you place on your site. That way you can make sure your subcontractor is responsive and polite.
Johnny and Sergio generate leads using several paid traffic methods which are expensive, such as Facebook, ads, Google ads, Yelp ads, and more. To be profitable with paid traffic, you need to spend money split testing to see what converts well, which is a challenge. In the time it takes to find an ad that works well, you may have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with no results to show for it in a matter of days. It's also worth nothing that if people are searching for the service you provide on Google, it means they want to spend money. With paid ads, you're just showing your ads to anyone in a certain demographic without knowing if they want your product at that moment.
Johnny and Sergio also show you how to use HomeAdvisor to get more leads. This is not a trustworthy or efficient way to get leads anymore. They sued HomeAdvisor for fraud because many contractors claimed they'd send fake leads and charge too much. Not only that, they share the same leads with a handful of local contractors and charge everyone, even if no one lands the job. HomeAdvisor is an expensive problem, which is probably why Angie's List and HomeAdvisor merged. I'd still stay away and make sure my sites were all organically ranked.
With local lead generation, you don't have to worry about none of that. As long as your sites are atop the search results, they'll generate leads. Everyone goes to the top of page 1 whenever they're looking for a service. Also, you aren't sharing your leads to several contractors, only one. This allows you to grow with your client and keep the peace.
A remote home service company will benefit from local lead generation because you're not having a company like HomeAdvisor share your leads and you don't rely on paid traffic to grow.
Working with one local business owner per niche, per town, is a great way to not compete with your results and scale your business faster.
Final Thoughts
Local lead generation is a lucrative business model that allows you to be in control of every aspect. You choose what niche to get into, who to work with, how much you're going to charge them, and how often you'll get paid.
I built this tree care site over 7 years ago and I still receive a payment of $2,000 per month.
When you land a client, you can help grow their company with these skills by expanding into other towns or cities.
Over 7400 students are building their lead generation websites. The goal is to rank and rent them every month while not having to deal with employees, payroll, and not doing any of the work. After they rank their sites, there is very little maintenance that they need. This allows you to earn a recurring, passive income every month.
To learn how you to implement local lead generation in your remote home service business, check out the local lead generation training program.
The cost is incorrect. When I was presented the training. They were asking close to seven thousand dollars for it. Nowhere near $2,600. I can’t say how good the program is bc I didn’t take it.
I am paying $10000 for the course and my net profit so far is -$11500