A-Team Cleaning Takes the Time to Tackle the Grime
Ashley Graham is as detail-oriented with growing her business as she is with her clients' properties.
- published: 2024/01/02
- contact: NBDC Communications - Nebraska Business Development Center
- phone: 402.554.6256
- email: kjefferson@unomaha.edu
Lincoln, Nebraska – Ashley Graham was so busy with work that she once hired a cleaning company to come to her home. But only once.
“I’m really picky when it comes to cleaning,” Graham says.
That’s good news for her clients because Graham is the owner of A-Team Cleaning LLC in Lincoln. She says her residential and commercial customers appreciate her team’s attention to details. Running her own cleaning company, Graham says, “means I get to do it my way.”
Graham originally launched A-Team Cleaning in 2019 as a side job. The mother of three children wanted more flexibility in her schedule, so she ultimately made A-Team Cleaning her full-time business. She has since added three employees “and my revenue has quadrupled,” she says.
The COVID-19 pandemic that began in early 2020 actually helped grow her business, Graham says. “There were still lots of businesses up and running, and they wanted an even more thorough cleaning than pre-pandemic,” she says. “We also gained residential customers who wanted our professional services.”
To help grow her business, Graham has utilized the resources of the Nebraska Business Development Center (NBDC). Craig Boesch, Lincoln center director for America’s SBDC – Nebraska, a program of the NBDC, assisted Graham in forming a limited liability company (LLC) and in developing hiring practices.
Most recently, Graham has taken steps to pursue government contracts. Quentin Farley, NBDC consultant with the APEX Accelerator program, a no-cost program that helps business owners navigate growing their organizations through government contracting, helped Graham with her company’s System for Awards Management (SAM) registration - a critical step for getting started. He also has advised Graham in the bid-submittal process. The effort recently helped secure a contract cleaning the Lincoln Fire & Rescue headquarters building.
“I also have spent time with Ashley doing market research on state and local opportunities,” Farley says. “We walked through current contracts held to give her an idea of pricing and how to respond when an opportunity came up. We have also explored certifying A-Team Cleaning as a Women-Owned Small Business for WOSB Federal Contract program.”
Graham says her regular clients include landlords who want move in/move out cleaning for their rental properties.
One of the biggest challenges, she says, is hiring reliable employees. “It’s not easy to find people who not only show up for work but also want to work hard to do a really good job,” she says.
Cleaning is a process, she says, and she has a roster of cleaning products and methods she prefers. “We start upstairs and work our way down,” she says.
There are times she has to work late when an employee doesn’t show up for work or if a job comes in last minute. But overall, she says, owning A-Team Cleaning has given her more flexibility to be with her children when they need her.
“Overall, I am much happier now than I was,” she says. “I love waking up in the morning and going to work, which might sound odd because a lot of people say they hate to clean. I like what we do, because our clients know what it was like before and can see how much better it is when we’re done.”