Michael runs Complete Exterior Cleaning, a Melbourne-based business offering window cleaning, pressure washing, gutter cleaning, soft washing and solar panel cleaning for homes and commercial properties. After 17 years in hospitality, he started the business with $50 spent on basic window-cleaning gear from Bunnings and built it by knocking on doors around his own neighbourhood.
That door-knocking approach set the tone for how Michael still runs things today. There was no big loan, no fleet of vans on day one, just a bucket, a squeegee and a willingness to ask. Every job done well led to the next, and slowly the equipment improved, the client list grew, and the business took shape.
Word of mouth remains one of his strongest sources of work, alongside the jobs that come through ServiceSeeking. "ServiceSeeking has become a great stream of new and recurring cleans for our business," Michael says. It's also where he landed the biggest job of his career so far.
The client was a data centre operator. The brief was to clean the exterior windows of a building three storeys high and just over 100 metres long, almost entirely glass. Michael had to obtain his high-risk licence for the job, track down a 25-metre scissor lift, which wasn't easy to find, and bring on two support workers to keep the day running smoothly. The clean went well enough that it turned into an ongoing contract. The client is now building nine more data centres, each requiring a service clean every six months.
Michael puts much of his success down to how he treats people, both on the tools and in conversation. "Communication, honesty and a thorough clean. We do it right the first time," he says of what keeps clients coming back.
That approach played out in a job Michael still thinks about. An elderly couple booked him for window cleaning while preparing to sell their home and downsize, partly because life on a pension had become harder to manage. After the job, they made him a coffee and the three of them ended up talking for a while. Michael told them the clean was on the house. "You should've seen the look on their face," he says. "That honestly made my day. I still think about that job from time to time."
Running a cleaning business at this scale means investing in the right equipment. Michael's team uses a commercial-grade pressure washer, a full set of hand tools for window cleaning, and a water-fed pole system to reach higher windows without ladders. He'd recommend it to anyone starting out. "Spend good money on the right tools," he says, looking back on what he wishes he'd known earlier.
Growth hasn't come without setbacks. Michael describes working his way up gradually, learning as much from the tools as from the jobs. "Respect the tools and every item as a specific job," he says. "With the right expertise, any difficult clean becomes easy." He's also learned some harder lessons the practical way, including the value of solid insurance and the importance of staying upfront with clients when things don't go to plan. "We are all humans at the end of the day," he says.
Melbourne traffic is the part of the job Michael finds hardest to manage, so he now builds his schedule around it, timing jobs to avoid peak hours when he can. He keeps separate calendars for work and personal life, updated daily, right down to blocking out time for dinner plans. On the numbers side, he tracks revenue and job counts month to month and year on year through a simple spreadsheet, which gives him a clear read on how the business is tracking.
Looking ahead, Michael's ambitions go well beyond Melbourne. He hopes to eventually run Complete Exterior Cleaning as a franchise across Australia, building on the same reputation for a thorough, honest clean that got him started with a bucket and a squeegee outside his own front door.