CLEANLINESS, they say, is next to godliness.

But, we may add that, today, cleanliness, may not just make you godly, it can make you wealthy. The work of making homes, offices and industries clean  may look menial, but when you build a business around it, you can end up literarily smiling to the bank.

Mr. Kemi Onaeko is the man behind Cherith Health, a business outfit that runs cleaning services at all levels -- home, office and industrial. However, he started small. Mr. Onaeko went to the university to study pharmacy. After graduating, he worked in a company but later lost his job. This happened at a time his pharmaceutical shop was also burgled, leaving him with next to nothing to fall  back on. So, how did Mr. Onaeko make the move to join cleaning services?

He said the idea came by paying attention to a discussion going on around him, where one of the parties involved in the discussion spoke about the cleaning business. He thought to himself, and after a while sat down to write a series of proposals on providing cleaning services.

His first client was NAL Merchant Bank, still in existence at the time. The job involved ensuring that the banking hall and all its offices were kept clean. This task, he said, did not take more than the regular cleaning tools one would use to carry out domestic cleaning. These included brooms/sweepers, mops and buckets, dust pans, dusters, detergents, liquid soap. Handling these tools requires little or no training save the experience one must have gathered cleaning the house one lives in.

Additional cleaning tools that may be needed are: glass cleaners and table varnish. Mr. Onaeko said the number of people needed for the job at this scale would be between three and four persons.

“You may spend N10,000 to  N20,000 procuring tools for your first job as you start out. Banks paid about N20,000 per cleaner. So with a staff of three, if you pay them N15,000 each, your profit would be marginal for the first month. But you will not have to buy a new set of tools for the following months. You would only spend money on the consumables such as the detergents, you will break even,” said Mr. Onaeko.

Gloria Charles is a Chemistry graduate from the University of Ibadan. She runs an outfit known as Clean Pin, which she started after several frustrating years of looking for a job all around, from Lagos to Port Harcourt. However, after some introspection, the idea of a cleaning business came to her mind. Presently, she has many clients across the city she is so busy now that she hardly has time to meet with friends. This is an example of how high the demand for cleaning services can get.

A few extras one could include to give your job a touch of quality. Include floor polish and air fresheners. Plan for how long your materials would last in order to make replacements when due without any difficulty. Mops have a lifetime of, say, two months of effective use, and sweepers about one month. Certain items may never be changed, for example the buckets.

“A good thing about the cleaning business is that you, as the business owner, are not the one who always have to be on site. You should appoint one of your workers as the head. This person would be the one to coordinate and supervise the work, and will be the person the others would report to in your absence. When you are not on site, use your time to seek out other places that may need your services. These may include schools,” Onaeko advised.

“Be ready to invest profit,” said Onaeko. “This is due to the fact that there are certain equipment you can buy to make the job faster and more effective. There exists equipment like vacuum cleaners and scrubbing machines that you should plan to get. Some establishments may require that you present such equipment for sighting if you want to win cleaning contract from them.”

Onaeko explained that after he spent some time spent  simple office cleaning jobs he expanded the business to the next level of industrial cleaning after he had purchased some of these equipment. He became the cleaning contractor for a multi-national company.

At this level, the job is more complex and requires in-depth knowledge of the cleaning agents suitable for certain stains and spills. To this end, the Cherith Health boss said an entrepreneur in this business must be attentive and quick to learn. He said that as rookie in industrial cleaning, he sought information from his equipment suppliers, books and other people involved in industrial cleaning.

Required tools, apart from the industrial vacuum cleaners and scrubbing machines, include safety boots for workers, overalls and facemasks. Your workers at this level will require proper training on how to handle equipment special cleaning agents, and information about safety procedures in an industrial work environment. Of course, you will certainly need more hands to engage in industrial cleaning. Expertise is gained over time, and then, no cleaning job will be too big for you.

Mr. Favour Nwaeze runs a cleaning business also. He has one the of the second generation federal universities as his client. He  said  that one of the major challenges his business has faced is delayed payments from clients. “For the university job, we often have to pay our cleaners their salaries out of our pockets, plus the money we spend on equipment and cleaning materials. But this turns out for me to be a form of ‘savings’ when the authorities eventually pay,” Mr. Nwaeze stated.

There are several services one could render as part of  the cleaning business. For office cleaning, you could include gardening as part of your services. Keeping the conveniences clean is another service you could charge extra for. Also, if you engage in industrial cleaning, you could rent out your equipment to those who need it, or even become a dealer in heavy duty cleaning equipment. This would require huge investment.

Note that companies hardly change their cleaning contractors. Once you have got it, you may not be removed. They would rarely change their cleaning contractors except something really terrible goes wrong. So once you are in, you can be there for years as their person for the job. They would only require you to improve over time.