Rachael Flanagan

Flanagan got a U (a fail) in her business A-Level while at college. She has said this was probably the most defining moment of her life: had she got a C she might have gone to university, and people telling her she would only ever be a cleaner and never a businesswoman fired her determination to prove them wrong.⁠[1][1][1][1]

In 2005, aged 18, she founded the cleaning company Mrs Buckét (pronounced “Bouquet”) in Swansea, starting with just £20 of black-and-white flyers. In the early days she cleaned for 50 hours a week herself, did the bookkeeping on Saturdays, priced up jobs in the evenings and handed out flyers on Sundays; about a year in she began hiring staff, and by the age of 21 she had 20 employees. She later won a UK Young Entrepreneur Award from a field of 1,400 entrants and resolved to stop cleaning herself so she could grow the business.⁠[2][2][1][3][1][1][1][1]

She later recalled that a few years after the company was founded she nearly went bankrupt because she was not keeping an eye on money coming in and going out, and had to borrow money from her family to pay wages.⁠[4][4][4]

In April 2019 Mrs Buckét was named Business of the Year at the inaugural Welsh Women’s Awards in Cardiff. By 2018 the company had 140 daily commercial clients across Wales and Bristol, including Brains Brewery, schools, warehouses and offices; at the time it had 280 staff.⁠[1][1][1][1]

The company sold its domestic cleaning arm to focus solely on commercial clients, bought new premises in Swansea and formed a new management board. In January 2020 Flanagan, then founder and managing director, announced more than 130 new jobs for that year, with a target of £8 million turnover by 2025; she said Mrs Buckét was more than a cleaning business and that she wanted to challenge perceptions of the industry. The company also received FairPlay Employer status from the Welsh gender equality charity Chwarae Teg.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][5]

By 2020 she had built a management team to run the business day to day, allowing her to work on the business rather than in it and to mentor other entrepreneurs and small business owners; that year the company employed more than 250 people across Wales and south-west England.⁠[3][3][6]

In September 2022 Mrs Buckét announced a push for clients across the UK, aiming to take turnover past £10 million; it then had 330 employees, and its clients included Panasonic, Sony, CBRE and the Wales Millennium Centre. As a Real Living Wage employer, she said all staff were paid at least the Real Living Wage, and that she wanted to correct the mistaken belief that cleaners are poorly educated and poorly paid.⁠[2][2][2][2][2]

In October 2024 Mrs Buckét won cleaning contracts with seven schools in South Wales, including Dylan Thomas Community School and Ysgol Gyfun Gŵyr; the company then had more than 400 staff, a turnover of £8 million and a training academy for its employees.⁠[7][7][7][7]

In November 2025 the Welsh law firm Hugh James appointed Mrs Buckét to clean its 100,000 sq ft headquarters in Central Square, Cardiff, under a three-year contract.⁠[8][8][8]

In December 2025 she wrote a column for Business News Wales marking the company’s 20th anniversary. She wrote that the company then employed around 500 people, had left the domestic market and focused on commercial cleaning in education, manufacturing, offices and warehouses; the lessons she shared included leading from the front, valuing marketing, watching cashflow, being different and investing in the team.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4][4]

On March 10, 2026, The Venture RoomThe Venture RoomThe Venture Room is a UK entrepreneurial media brand centered on the YouTube channel @theventureroom. Through long-form interviews with founders and street interviews such as “Asking Millionaires How They Got Rich?”, it presents entrepreneurs’ stories and advice to aspiring business owners, and runs an entrepreneur community and brand partnerships.Open the full entry published a street-interview video filmed in Knightsbridge, London; she appears at 2:36. Asked how she made her first million, she said it was by starting a cleaning business, and said that the company had grown from £20 to £12 million. She said she started at 18, fresh out of college, and that her first customers came from black-and-white flyers bought with £20 and aimed at time-poor people such as doctors and teachers. She said the service sector is overlooked, citing it as a £52 billion industry in the UK.⁠[9][9][9][9][9][9][9]

She also said that in the early years she visited target customers’ receptions every Friday with branded cupcakes and handwritten notes, estimating each site’s cleaning needs by counting the cars in industrial park car parks; she said it once took her seven years to win a large plant as a client.⁠[9][9][9][9]

In April 2026 Mrs Buckét announced that Kate Ablett had been promoted to managing director, with Flanagan serving as CEO and focusing on the company’s strategy. On May 8, 2026, at the IoD Wales Director of the Year Awards held at ICC Wales in Newport, she won the Medium to Large Business (over 50 employees) category. The judges praised her strategic focus, strong governance and people-first culture. The company then employed more than 500 people, and in 2025 its business performance grew 30% and it won 30 new clients.⁠[10][10][10][10][10][11][10][10][10]

Asked how she would reach £10,000 a month within 30 days, she gave three steps: “Step one, focus on who my exact client avatar is.” Step two, know exactly where those people spend their time and go after them, combining online marketing with old-school methods such as door knocking; step three, give them a really strong, time-limited offer so that they commit within that timeframe. (at 3:21 in the video)⁠[9][9][9][9]

“It was all about being the purple cow in your marketplace.” She said she doubled her business in the year she read about this idea 16 years earlier: in a field of cows, you have to pop and be remembered. (at 4:02 in the video)⁠[9][9][9]

“Following them up on a Monday, ’cause that’s what people don’t do.” She believes many people do lots of marketing but never follow up with customers. (at 5:07 in the video)⁠[9][9]

“Our biggest challenge of this generation is time poverty.” She suggests targeting time-poor customers and offering one customer several services, such as dog walking, car washing, window cleaning and home cleaning; those customers spend time with other time-poor people, who then hear about you and send referrals. (at 5:34 in the video)⁠[9][9][9]

Mrs Buckét: Official website: https://www.mrs-bucket.co.uk/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]