‘I was down to my last £25 with bailiffs at the door – now I make £8m a year’

Faye McCann was a new mum and down to her last £20 with bailiffs knocking at her door when she advertised as a cleaner on Facebook.

Now, she travels the world, teaching business leaders and is completely mortgagefree.

Faye, from Newcastle, had gone to university to train as a primary school teacher. She told the Express: “I come from a humble background, so my get out of jail card was to train as a teacher.”

After leaving university in Liverpool, Faye worked as a teacher for a few years before moving back to Newcastle.

She was living in a small two bed flat paying £400 a month rent when she found out she was pregnant.

She told Express.co.uk: “By the time my son was born I was down to the wire, we had bailiffs knocking at the door and I couldn’t afford nappies or milk.

“I was getting desperate, it goes without saying. So I thought what can I do to earn £50 a week – I just need £50 a week. To get things for my baby.”

Faye advertised on a local Facebook page, offering to do cleaning. Within hours she had her first contract, a four-hour job, for one week.

She added: “I had to go out and buy and £20 second hand vacuum and £5 worth of B&M cleaning products.”

Things took off quickly and she was soon able to employ other cleaners, after spending all her spare time learning how to market the business.

In 2019 Faye, by then employing a dozen other cleaners, clicked on a YouTube video.

“It was made by some US crime scene cleaners and I came across it by accident,” she said.

“These guys were saying how much money they made from biohazard and crime scene cleaning so did some research and realised there was nothing like this in the UK.

She added: “It was also unheard for a woman to do it. I thought, ‘I can do that’.”

Faye paid for a one day biohazard training course costing £1,000.

She said: “It was quite an investment and although I was starting to see some money, it was a lot for me to spend.”

After completing the course, McCann put a picture on Facebook and the next day got her first decomposition job.

It was a landlord who saw it. Someone had died in the flat and McCann was needed to help do a clean up job.

Faye, who is 33 and has sons Jett, nine and five-year-old Phoenix, is set to appear on TV next year. She said nothing could prepare her for her first job.

She added: “I had never been so scared of doing something in my life. It was absolutely terrifying.

“But it was worth £5,000 and I had to make the money back for paying for the course. I had no choice.”

Faye was briefed that the man had been dead for three months before his body was found.

She said: “In fact, his body had exploded and although most of it had been cleared away, there was a fly infestation and bits of him were coming through the ceiling.

“And to this day of all the things I’ve done that is the most scared I have ever been. You just have to do it.

Faye admitted: “After that first job I told people and let people know and it just went mad, people wanted to know what I was doing.”

She was then contacted by police, NHS, and she also got requests for clean ups from social services, and hotels which often reported cases of suicide. Her team also work with rail roperators to clean up where there has been a fatality on the line.

She also set up a Tik Tok account, and posted viral videos which gain millions of views.

She added: “People love a transformation and the most popular ones were the extreme before and after.”

Five years after doing her first biohazard clean, McCann employs 86 staff and makes around £8m a year from her company, Clean as a Whistle.

Her partner Chris Jones, 38, gave up his engineering to work as a director at the cleaning company.

She no longer does any of the cleaning and instead travels the world training others how to clean up crime scenes.

She said: “I am the only trainer in the world so I am the only person licensed to issue accreditations.”

Clean as a Whistle only operates in the UK, although McCann travels the world training other biohazard cleaners.

She added: “The worst work and the most upsetting is if a child has died.

“This can be upsetting for staff, so everyone that works for me gets unlimited free counselling.

“That’s really important because they are dealing with scenes that stay with them, often for life.”

Despite her wealth Faye does not live in a huge mansion.

She told the Express: “We live in a three-bedroom property with two bathrooms. But I own it outright, no mortgage.”