McLean House Sitting Service Seeks Advice from Entrepreneurial Peers

(Updated 12/13/19) Golden Rule, a housesitting service, began in 2018 and expanded to serve clientele in the Northern Virginia area, with a focus around McLean.

Today (Dec. 11), company founder Dan Lender stood in front of fellow entrepreneurs at the 1 Million Cups Fairfax event in Tysons and pitched his company to the room, seeking advice and recommendations on how to better serve his existing clients.

Currently, the company helps around 20 clients to watch their homes, property and occasionally apartments while they are gone for extended periods of time.

Feedback from the event included ways to target his ideal market and focus efforts on specific services.

The clients of Golden Rule consist primarily of people over 50 who spend several months out of the year away from their homes because of vacation or work, Lender said.

Golden Rule staff offer different services for almost every client in order to meet the individual needs, Lender told Tysons Reporter.

The group specializes in services that accompany security measures from larger companies like ADT. Instead of just monitoring the property, Golden Rule will send someone in-person to survey the property, take pictures of things that seem a miss and take care of various tasks.

“A Golden Rule Team Member will visit your home in Northern Virginia regularly to perform a comprehensive, top to bottom, interior and exterior check,” according to the company’s website. “At the conclusion of each check, you will receive a customized, time date and geo-location stamped electronic report with photos and details.”

After each visit from a Golden Rule representative, the company will send an email to the owner with updates.

“You still need eyes and ears on the street,” Lender said, adding that though ADT will call the police, they won’t send someone in person to take care of the property. Unlike other services, Lender said that Golden Rule employees do not stay and live at the house they watch.

The company’s name was inspired by the philosophy of the Golden Rule: “treat others like you’d want to be treated.”

Lender told Tysons Reporter that the company channels this philosophy into their work and treat every client’s home or property like it is their own.

In an attempt to cater to the individual needs of customers, Golden Rule even transported a car for a client and took care of a greenhouse.

When it comes to pricing for the service, it depends completely on what is requested by the client. Though they have basic price points for hourly service and a basic set up fe.

“A lot of our customers recognize the value and they don’t even ask price,” Lender said.

Going forward, Lender told said that although they want to expand, they also don’t want to scale too quickly and jeopardize the quality of the company’s services.

“We don’t cut any corners,” he said.  

Photo courtesy Dan Lender