I’ve been running my business remotely for about nine years now and have been able to travel for about seven years since I quit my day job.
How?
By having a stellar tech stack that allows me to automate the majority of my biz.
I’ve talked a lot about this on the blog and the podcast and I wanted to go over the exact tech stack that we use at my residential cleaning company MaidThis.
I use this exact tech stack and I currently work about five hours a week — simply because I’m able to automate most things.
Let’s dive into it.
Core Software
First, you need to find your core pieces of software. This is what you’ll use to take bookings, dispatch crews, and manage a lot of the inflow and outflow of your business. In other words, the core software is what you need to have to actually run your business.
At MaidThis we use a software system called Launch27. It’s a cleaning-specific software system. I know some people in other industries who use it as well, but for the most part, I would recommend using it if you want to get into residential home cleaning.
The key characteristics that I love are its online booking form and the ability to charge customers through the booking CRM. It’s also super easy to use and the interface is very user-friendly. When I onboard a new team member they usually “get it” immediately.
In short, it makes our lives easier and that’s why I love it.
I wanted to share some alternatives too:
- BookingKoala: They focus on a few different niches but a large portion of their audience is geared toward remote local models in the home service industry, like residential cleaning and mobile car detailing. The main benefits are the same as Launch27.
- ZenMaid: This one is geared toward maid services specifically and is very similar to Launch27 and BookingKoala. The main difference is that because it’s made for cleaning services a lot of the features are specifically for that target audience — which may not work well with other industries.
The next two pieces of core software are more industry-agnostic, meaning they are a bit more versatile:
- Jobber: One of the most well-known software in the home service game. You can create custom booking forms and their scheduling tool is awesome.
- Housecall Pro: Another software with a great scheduling tool that is highly customizable.
Spoke Software
Once you have the core, or "hub" piece down, then you can move onto what I call "spoke" software systems — these are things that you can use to make running your biz on auto-pilot easier and help to scale without having to hire a bunch of bodies.
I like to think of these as our “can’t live without" software systems.
My number one is Slack, an online chat tool. The cool part about this software is that you can push a lot of information into it from different software systems. For example, I can connect Launch27 to it so that my team gets notified every time there’s a booking. It makes managing a team a lot easier.
More "spoke" software to consider:
- Zapier: Software that let’s other pieces of software talk to each other. It makes integrating effortless and is super simple to use.
- Active Campaign: A CRM that sends emails to our list of contacts. When we get an inquiry, we push it into the software. It automatically sends out an email sequence that will hopefully lead them to make a booking.
- Google Workspace: Formally known as G-Suite, Google’s suite of services provides things like email, Google Meets, Google Drive, and Google Calendar. It’s super affordable and is an easy way to make sure that anyone who signs up with the company has access to all the tools they need to get going.
- VOIP system: This software allows you to take phone calls no matter where you are in the world. VOIP stands for Voice Over IP, which means you can use your computer to receive phone calls. After a lot of trial and error, we use Dialpad.
This tech stack lets me have a business that runs on autopilot from anywhere in the world. My hope is that you can use this as a case study for what software systems you can use to do the same!
Photo by John Tuesday on Unsplash
This article was written by Neel from MaidThis Franchise, a remote-local franchise opportunity for people looking to escape the rate race and reach financial freedom. Learn more here.
