A Qualified Business Strategist & Coach

Hiya! I’m Kelly 👋🏽

I created Maid In Business for cleaning and service-based business owners like YOU…and well, me. 

Ultimately, I aim to develop a growing library of resources that I wish I had when I started in 2008. Here, I’ll answer others’ questions, interview others to learn from them (check out the YouTube “Interviews and Views” Playlist) and explore marketing and operational ideas with other business owners, to continually add fresh content and keep business-focused cleaning-entrepreneurs up to date with new ideas and practices in the cleaning industry.

After a few years of trading, I was often asked how I managed to do it…

How did I get started?

How did I grow a big team?

How and where did I get my clients?

How did I open another branch?

And so, waaaaaay back in 2013, I started helping and working with other business owners whenever asked to.

After answering the same type of questions a few times, I decided to record videos of things that had really helped me. I thought that if a few people I know share the same issues or thoughts in their business, I bet many others do too. To reach as many people as possible, the Maid In Business YouTube channel was born.

To begin with, Maid In Business was something I did in between running my businesses and was never a business in its own right.

Saying that, once upon a time, my cleaning round was never intended to be a business either.

I started cleaning to fit around my then-young family after some life-changing circumstances. I initially planned to clean for about six months or so, then return to the corporate world.

I had been working in sales and business development roles since I was 18, but due to a life change, I needed to find a way to balance the needs of my family at the time.

I was a decent housekeeper, keeping on top of my home and laundry (and career) with three kids, one baby, and a builder husband. So, I decided that is what I would do.  I placed an ad in the local newspapers’ trade pages and started cleaning houses the very next week, and then collecting people’s laundry to do in the evening. It turns out that there was a gap in the local market for my services, and my business grew rapidly.

Many years of business hilarity, success, failure, growth, regression, and what-in-the-f*ckness moments (both good and bad) occurred in the years that came and passed. I learned a lot. Loved it and hated it. Some days, I wanted to grow it and take over the world; some days, I wanted to burn it all to the ground.  I will forever be glad and grateful that I did it, met all the people I met, served all the people I served, and employed all the people I employed. It was a wild ride.

I took it very seriously as well. I completed courses and NVQs in cleaning techniques, including speed cleaning, deep cleaning, infection control, surgical cleaning, COSHH, and many more. I am always looking to learn and improve whatever I do.

However, it was my background in business development and understanding the steps to take in building a database of repeat clients that enabled me to launch and grow my business quickly.

As Maid In Business, I see many people who are great cleaners or technicians in their craft or trade, but are unsure and perhaps need a little help with the business and sales aspects, or with building and leading a team.

Your skills and professional knowledge + My business knowledge and experience = A match made in heaven 🧼💷🫶🏽

Anyhoo, after a health crisis that began in 2022 (and is still ongoing as of 2025 😭 it’s a very long and grim story for another day), I was forced to pause my cleaning businesses. And not in the most gracious of ways.

For now, let me take you back in time slightly, with the highlight reel – get to know me. a little.

The Making of a Cleaning Business Owner

I had my first child at the age of 17.

I had dropped out of college to have her, and when she was six months old, I started working, waiting tables at a local family-style restaurant.

No direction or plan. I loved the work, though; it gave me a new confidence, and I met some awesome people, some of whom are still my friends to this day.

By the time I turned 18, I had been given a council house in a not-so-glamorous part of town. I moved out with my child into my first ‘grown-up’ home. I got a job working behind a bar close to where I now lived, and it was there that I met the chap who would become my first sales manager.

A man I will forever be fond of, Mr Frank Lavery.

I was serving Frank and his team at a lunch gathering, at the pub I worked in,  for someone’s birthday. As he came to settle the bill, he asked if I had ever thought of going into sales and handed me his business card. He said to give him a call, as he thought I had potential…

After calling the number on the card, I attended an in-person interview and was offered the job as a sales support to the account managers. It was great as a first ‘professional’ job, but not what I wanted long-term.  I very much enjoyed working in an office, though, wearing nice clothes and having clean hair, it made a nice change from the pub work (people could still smoke in pubs in those days! 😳). It was very lovely to mingle with what were ‘posh’ people at the time to me. It opened my eyes a lot to what could be possible.

After a few months in the sales support role, I was itchy. I wanted to become an account manager, so I approached Frank.

At first, he said no, as I was training and would get there eventually.

I asked again and said that I’d stay in my role as sales support, but to give me an old database, a financial target, and 3 months. If I haven’t hit the target by then, I’d shut up and wait my turn.

Luckily, he gave that plucky 18-year-old a shot and allowed me to work on an old database of lapsed clients.

I cold-called like a Mother Fluffer™ every day in between sales-support stuff. My efforts eventually paid off, and from a cold call, I nurtured and developed a relationship that would go on to become the largest new business account in the company.

I was made an Account Manager, and a career in sales and business development was born! I loved that you could make money talking to people on the phone!.🤯

The good times rolled. I earned enough money one month to put down a deposit and pay advance rent on a new-build two-bedroom home in a nicer part of town for my daughter and me. The month after I bought the carpets, a fridge, and a cooker, all the trimmings at Ikea (I felt like Rockefeller at the age of 19 and 20 😂). It was a steep learning curve, sometimes both personally and professionally, but a great time nonetheless.

In 1999, after many years of having “stomach issues”, I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis. This particular episode that brought the diagnosis to light was quite an aggressive flare, to the point that by March of 2000, I had to have an emergency surgery to remove my bowel. I was 3 weeks away from turning 21, with a 3-year-old in tow.

This was the first time I nearly died.

The surgeons left 8 inches of colon, as they planned to create an internal pouch. The disease had other plans.

After recovering and returning to work, with my new ileostomy bag, I had another flare in that remaining 8 inches.

I really thought that time I was a goner – I lost a lot of blood, I lost consciousness, and it was my sweet and bright 4-year-old who called an ambulance and my best friend on speed dial, to tell them to come quickly as Mummy was poorly on the floor. My Georgia saved my life.

What followed was another emergency surgery in November 2000 to remove my rectum and the remaining colon – I now have a permanent ileostomy and am what’s known as a “Barbie butt” – y’know, smooth all the way round! 😂

After my surgeries and recovery, I moved into external sales (on the road). The first highlight was being employed at 21 by a company that didn’t normally employ people under the age of 25, which required them to amend their insurance. The next chapter of life began. I’ve managed teams, worked towards large sales targets, and been fortunate to have some of the best training and personal development going. You can learn about my past lives/career(s) by connecting with me on LinkedIn.

Fast forward to 2003, when I met my wonderful husband. I say ‘met’ because we were already friends, but 2003 is when we became a couple. Craig had two children from a previous relationship, I had one, and years later, we had one together after we married, making four.

Transitioning from caring for one small person to four was incompatible with the business manager role I was in at the time.  As a result, I started to think about what I could do about it while on maternity leave with my youngest daughter.

I operated my businesses from 2008 to 2022. I then went into a massive flare that made operating it impossible at the time. Over the following years, I’ve been hospitalised many times (hey, near-death experience number 3 in June 2024 from an intestinal blockage!)

So, bed-bound, flaring and without a business to think about, my brain got itchy. To kill time, I completed 21 courses in the first year and 19 in the following year. I hold qualifications in many areas. 🤓

During my journey to keep my noodle active, I stumbled across coaching and really liked the approach of using questions and thought exercises to change and transform someone’s mindset and actions. 

And guess what I did? Yup, you guessed it – I started training as a coach, and I am still working towards the next level of accreditation, and building on my skills. #alwayslearning

And to wrap up many years of experience to this point, you arrive here at Maid In Business, the result of skills, experience, knowledge, and a variety of best business practices theories, and a mission to help raise the respect levels and professionalism of the cleaning industry – join me?

What I Bring To The Party!

The Maid In Business Mission

What Does It Take To Be The Boss?