Hello, my name is Colin Sharpe, and I am the owner and CEO of a Lewisham tenancy cleaning startup. My first post will serve mainly as an introduction, and I will try to explain why. I went back and forth on the idea of writing a blog about all the new experiences and challenges of starting a cleaning company in South East London. The cons were formidable – I already had too much on my plate, the business was growing well, and I cherished my Internet anonymity. But the pros prevailed – my friends and colleagues encouraged me to express my thoughts, and I have never been the kind of guy who thinks sharing knowledge only helps the competition.
I am the kind of guy, however, who likes to do his homework. I wanted to check some of the most successful and popular London cleaning blogs – to gather some good ideas and even find additional inspiration. And I did – some of the posts I read were fantastic and hit very close to home. But to my surprise, I found a common feature in many of them – they lacked a basic introduction. People went straight to giving cleaning advice without bothering to present their background or credentials. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to know what your expertise is based upon and how much weight your arguments carry. The more I looked, the less I saw. I decided there and then that if I were to write a blog, I would not make the same mistake (with all due respect to my fellow bloggers).
I was born and raised and Lewisham, but my fascination with cleaning came from my maternal grandmother. After fleeing from Czechoslovakia in the late 30s, she first settled in East Sheen. After the war, she met my grandfather, and they moved to East London, where my mother was born. Grandma Helena worked on the cleaning staff of Claridge’s for over thirty years, and I’ve never known a person who was more proud of their work than her. She would tell my cousins and me countless funny stories about all types of messy rooms, dirty toilets and washing the open windows on the 10th floor, doing a circus-like balancing act. It was from her that I got my respect for the cleaning work and the appreciation of its importance.
Fast forward a few years, and you would find me at my first cleaning job – sort of. It was my last summer holiday in high school, and I was helping a local carpet cleaner load and unload his equipment on house visits. It might have been the most incredible learning experience in my life! Not cleaning-related – I didn’t learn a thing. But I observed how he interacted with customers and colleagues, managed his time and planned his day down to the minute. Even back then, in my seventeen-year-old mind, I was telling myself: “You can do this.”
Of course, I didn’t know it, but this “summer internship” was going to serve as my stepping stone into the cleaning industry. But that will be the topic of my next post.