Coming up next on the Filthy Rich Cleaners Podcast. I was in a place where I was ready for a new opportunity. That was not an MLM or a pyramid scheme. This is a legitimate thing I could do that could make me money. From your first dollar to your first million, welcome to the Filthy Rich Cleaners Podcast, presented by ZenMade. Join your host Stephanie Pippin, founder of Serene Clean, as she shares proven tips, tricks, and harder in lessons. Whether you're just starting out or ready to scale, get ready to discover how to build your own cleaning empire. Let's roll up our sleeves and dive in. Hello everyone and welcome to the Filthy Rich Cleaners Podcast. I'm your host Stephanie Pippin. And this first episode is going to be a little history of myself, of my company Serene Clean. And kind of what my goals are for this podcast to help you, my fellow cleaning business owner. So I hope you are ready and excited to hear. So my back story, how I have built my business from zero at 22 years old to now I'm 28 and the company is over 1.4 million dollars in revenue. And I live in Savannah, Georgia and my business runs in Wisconsin. I actually just got back late last night. I had flown up for a week for Christmas time to see my employees, my family, and we had a great Christmas party last Friday for the team. It was fabulous. A ton of fun, a little bit of drinking, some games. It was a delight. I love seeing my team. I am an amazing team and we'll definitely talk about that more so as we get into the history as you kind of hear how things develop. So all of that to say before we get into my history that only a cleaning business has changed my life. And I know it can change all of yours. Hopefully for the better. There was a lot of challenges and that's something I really want to share in this podcast is my challenges, other leaders in the industries challenges to hopefully make you feel not so alone because it's a very lonely road business ownership and it's something that only other business owners can relate to oftentimes. So very excited to just share a lot, share with you guys and make you feel like you have a friend here which you do in me. So with a further ado, let's talk about me. I want to talk about me. I want to talk about my little toe of the Keith for you. So I am from rural western Wisconsin. I went to a little high school called Melrose Mendoro. I graduated with 44 children kids in my class including the foreign exchange students. So very rural and I didn't even grow up in town. I was out in the boonies in the woods at my parents house. So super duper small community. And I out of high school immediately went to western technical college and lacrosse Wisconsin for an associate in marketing degree. I knew I just wanted to get an associate at least right away and not go into a bunch of student debt. And honestly I didn't know really what I wanted to do but I figured you know marketing that just kind of fit to me. I never had any desire to do anything like be a nurse or any a lot of like a teacher. All of the things kind of my classmates wanted to do. I had no interest in those things. So I was like, ah, business like a kind of general business. But not really with the intention of opening a business down the line. Just marketing is good and generic, right? So backtracking at around 14 or 15 I started weight racing. That was my first job in weight racing. Actually it kept me going through. Gosh, till I was 20. Well, 22 I suppose. No, yeah, 22 because I stopped weight racing about six months prior to starting the cleaning business. So I loved weight racing. I was good at weight racing and it taught me a ton of customer service skills. And being able to manage a lot of, you know, pots or what is it? What is that saying? Like plate plates in the air. I had a lot of plates in the air when it came to weight racing, which anybody who has done a restaurant service job totally can relate to. I'm sure anybody listening right now, if you've been a weight-trace R by a tender, you become incredibly good at fast paced and moving quickly and problem-solving. So never let anybody talk badly about that because it's such a skill and I would not have had that without, you know, serving and waiting tables. So I, you know, pay my way through college through a technical school, I suppose. By weight racing, I also did a stint as a teller at a credit union, which I was terrible at and I hated that job. So that lasted about six months, but I just continued weight racing. So I had those two jobs. And then once I graduated from Western TC, I went on to work at my parents company, which is a manufacturing facility and they asked me to be their office manager. So for the following three years, I both weight-rest and I was their office manager. And I learned a lot of the back end of business ownership, which that looks like all of the boring stuff. So the bookkeeping, answering emails, administrative tasks, keeping up on paying the bills, like, you know, the boring stuff, basically. The not exciting things that keeps the day to day of a business running. So that combined with my weight-racing skills, I think really was a beautiful combination that kind of led to a lot of the early success that Serene Clean had, even though I was just a kid or, you know, well, I was only as year-only ever as old as you are in this moment. So right now I feel super old because this is all the stuff I've ever been. So at that age, I thought I was the most mature adult person that had ever existed. And now I look back at that child and they're like, oh, you sweet summer child. So any who I had stopped weight-resuming because I moved to a town about half an hour away, which was Black River Falls, which is like 15 minutes from where I grew up at my parents house. In long story long, I wanted to make more money and there was no good restaurants in Black River Falls to wait for that. So I instead thought about what other things I enjoyed and I've always liked cleaning. So I was like, I will just clean houses on nice and weekends. I put a, I made a flyer and I put it up at my local community center and lo and behold nobody called, not a single call. And I'm like, well, this isn't working clearly because I literally just said, you know, made a poster of myself and it's like, I'm trustworthy and reliable. Call me and it didn't work. So that kind of stumped me and very serendipitously, I really feel like this was meant to be I stumbled across a YouTube video, which I have always been a YouTube lover, social media obviously being a younger person. Although these young kids now are throwing me for a loop. I will tell you what with all of their slogans and slangs and things like that. I try to stay hip and with it. I'm already getting old. It feels like so I saw this YouTube channel and it's been one I've been following for a while. It's called Clean My Space and it's from a woman named Melissa Maker who owns a large cleaning company in Toronto, Canada. And she puts out cleaning content basically, you know, how to clean your house better. Just very much for the homeowner, not necessarily for other cleaning company owners. This is like to learn from a professional cleaner and like tips and tricks, basically how to maintain a clean house and do a faster do it more efficiently. And so for me, I've always been a fan of I guess you could call it like body doubling. So turning on a video of somebody working helps me do work. And that really, really applies for cleaning and doing household tasks. So if I need to clean my house, I like to put on a video of somebody cleaning their house. So if you ever like search up clean with me content, like I eat that stuff off, I find it just it feels like I'm not alone in my in my work then I'm working alongside somebody. So it works really well for me. So that's what I had always followed Melissa's channel for. Anywho. So she dropped a video at the same time where I had been contemplating cleaning houses. And it was introducing her business course called The Decision Makers, which spoiler alert she does not do this anymore. So don't go looking for the course. I'm sorry. It was great. Maybe someday I will make a course for you guys. And in part, my wisdom on it as well. But I will say it was an eight week course and it really set me up for success. And some of the foundational skills I'll talk about a little bit later in this episode. It taught me a lot. And though no matter what you have to jump in feet first into business ownership, these foundational things put me in the right place. And I really think that's why I got so much momentum. And I'll definitely share some of those things that I did right away that helped build that momentum, got sales immediately, etc. So all of this to say I bit the bullet. I was like, you know what? I'm going to take it. It was $2,000 I believe, which was a ton of money. I was broke as a joke. But I did not have any debt. So it was I was in a place where I was ready for a new opportunity. That was not, you know, an MLM or a pyramid scheme. Not that I've ever done that, but that seems to be when you look for that type of thing of supplementary income. A lot of that type of stuff comes up, which not a fan of. So this is a legitimate, you know, thing I could do. That could make me money. And I never really had in the intention of it growing super big. I always thought maybe at the most I'd have a few part-time cleaners just based off of taking Melissa's course. But really it was always I was going to be physically doing the work maybe with some helpers or employees as we tend to think of them in the beginning as opposed to like a full team.
So I took the course and that started in February of 2019 and that meant that the eight weeks was up. And I was ready to announce my business April 1st, 2019 and that is the day at Serine Clean was born, but it was born as Black River Falls cleaning services. So in hindsight, being 2020, do not name your business after your town unless you are in a big giant city, I was not Black River Falls is a town of 5,000 people. So naming it that I just I seriously had such a small frame of reference of what this thing could be, never know, million years would I imagine it would even be a fraction of what it was or what it is today I should say. So I named a Black River Falls cleaning services because I was not creative and it just seemed very obvious to me. So I did that, I built my own website on WordPress, which it looks pretty good. I will say it looks pretty darn good again. I did have an associate in marketing, but a lot of this was just shooting from a hip type of stuff of like what do I think looks good. So I announced in April of 2019 and things quickly began to grow. I pretty much had to start hiring immediately because I was cleaning nice and weekends for residential clients and you know, light bulb moment is people don't like you cleaning their house on nights and weekends. I just didn't I didn't have a lot of availability around my full-time schedule. I did not have a lot of flexibility that I could offer to the clients when it came to you know they wanted daytime cleaning not somebody cleaning their house while they're trying to make their kids do it right. So I pretty much started hiring right away in June of 2019 I think is when I hired my first employee. And so I just posted a jobs on Facebook on indeed and I didn't have an office obviously. This was all running out of my two bedroom apartment and so I did interviews at the local coffee shop and the very first person I offered a job, Alyssa, you know who you are, did not even show up to my apartment to train. She ghosted me and I remember crying that night and being so upset by it and I'm so grateful that I did not take that as like a don't keep going sign like this is a bad idea and I think especially in the beginning the smallest little hiccup will do realist because we have no belief in ourselves we're embarrassed by this whole thing because there's just so much pressure like are you gonna fail and as soon as you start to hit those snags it's like I shouldn't do this and and side note when I told my parents I waited until pretty much the last minute so right before I announced they heavily encouraged me not to open the business so good thing I did not listen to them or none of this would exist and so all of that to say there will be naysayers and there will be people who good nature and coming from a good place of wanting to protect you from what they see as inevitable failure and humiliation they're trying to protect you don't listen to them okay this is your dream and this is your purpose in life which this is my purpose in my life to think that that could have just never existed because I let somebody talk me out of trying something that just it makes me so grateful that at 22 I stood my ground and I just did the thing because at the end of the day what's the worst thing that could happen you could fail right you could fail and you have to go get another job but the potential reward is so incredibly worth it again I had no absolutely no inkling of what syring clean was going to turn into black profiles cleaning services at the time I had no idea and so if this is you listening and you just started out please hear my words is just keep going just keep going and you may decide that this is not for you and that you want to go get a more traditional type of work and that's totally fine but the hang hang ups and setbacks that you are going to experience are universal I guarantee I have experience darn me everything that you are going through right now the struggles that you are having because there are two struggles that you could be having employees are customers those are the only two things that could happen I suppose the IRS and insurance and all of that as well but the big ones you're going to deal with are going to be employees and customers so you're not alone and you may feel alone but just take comfort in the fact that we have all gone through some horrific things and that's one of the things I want to talk about with guests in the future side note there's going to be a lot of really cool guests on this podcast and so one of the things I really want to get into is like the horror stories because I love a good horror story and it definitely makes you just feel better about the terrible things that employees or customers have done to you to screw you over so I'll be sharing some of mine for sure in this podcast so if you haven't subscribed hit that thanks subscribe button I know it's the first episode but I'm promising you a lot of juicy stuff or I can be very candid so all of that to say thank goodness I did not listen to my parents thank goodness I persevered and kept going and despite first person not showing up second person who actually I hired Gabby you also know who you are okay she she was who would do see that's actually my only one star review is from my first employee who actually showed up is that's our only one star review isn't that crazy or I think yeah one of two maybe one of two over the past six years so any who she ended up trying to I guess game the system in a really bizarre way she clocked into her appointment on Zenmay the Zenmay app because I had Zenmay from day one when it was just when it was just me because I knew I wanted to get employees and I knew it would help me manage the you know schedule in the business and look professional to clients and it was super affordable obviously the bang for the buck was definitely there and so she was trying to game the system and she clocked in at the client's house sat in the driveway for the four hours that's the appointment was scheduled and then she clocked out and didn't clean the house at all which is just like I mean clearly she just was ready to be done but I just don't even I don't even understand it so that was my very first employee who showed up so now I'm you know two for two you know zero losing scenarios so those are my first two and yes again I could have just quit right there and at that point I had paying customers right so the first couple of months I grew steadily I was getting a ton of residential within the first month commercial started calling and so serene clean and commercial have been like this from day one as well it's not just a residential story and we'll definitely in future episodes talk a lot about commercial but commercial is a huge part of the growth and success of serene clean especially once COVID hit so I started hiring people started ended up you know sticking around everybody was very part time and I you know but I was having a lot of employee churn I did not have an office I ended up getting an office fairly early on within the first six months because I got a large commercial account very early on it was a manufacturing facility I think we started that in September and that gave us an instant like two grand a month like two or three grand a month I believe like high profit margin account uh and we were able to then afford a small office right downtown downtown black river which is like a street uh and that allowed me to be taken a lot more seriously by customers by employees etc so anyway we're going along steadily this first year um I ended up hitting I think $7,000 a month in revenue and I thought I remember I um Melissa actually interviewed me as a success story from the decision makers course so that she could use me as kind of a testimonial and I just I remember so clearly that that feeling I had talking to her that pride of it I could have never imagined that it could get any better than that because I'm like $7,000 a month like are you kidding me are you kidding me people are paying me that and I'm making money off of other people's work like it just blew my mind uh little did I know that you know less than five years down the road from there I was going to be doing you know $1,2,000 $3,000 a month um so it just it really is it's uh it's wild to think about honestly and sometimes I I need to take a step back and like appreciate it because it's just been kind of a whirlwind honestly and you just kind of even with success it's just like oh that happened that happened that happened and I can be very dismissive of it um and so I have a feeling this podcast is going to help me reflect a little bit and and take a little bit more pride because a lot of times I just take it as like yeah that just that just happened you know it just it just happened as if it didn't have a lot of work and I I look back with rose colored glasses um and you know even just describing this first year to you guys are this you know April 2019 to December 2019 or you know beginning of 2020 um it was horrendous because I was still working my full-time job I was managing employees they were quitting they were doing shady stuff um poor quality trying to you know get up a good reputation early on it just it was so stressful and it was every single day working late into the night because it was you know work full-time job eight hours go clean at night potentially
dealing with employees the whole time and then also doing you know the invoicing the marketing all like all of that It's you it's you there's nobody else and a lot of you listening right now are exactly where I was in that moment And I know what hell it is so I feel for you Like I know exactly what you're going through because it was horrific I just I don't I don't I don't know how I did it It was total survival mode of just day-to-day Couldn't even like you know hardly I take care of myself or feed myself It felt like just because it was so so busy in whirlwind and and the success was good meaning like I was getting clients I was getting clients, but it was like holy crap like I can't get staff and then that's kind of always been the over our To theme of serene clean is getting staff and maintaining the staff That's that's the hardest part I think for all of us cleaning company orders I was everybody that I talked to is Getting good staff and having them stick around especially when you have nothing to offer because I started out at paying $12 an hour, right? so All of that to say I'll kind of visit through from first year done to now just for in the in the name of brevity so March of 2020 rolls around and as we all know what happened then COVID hit and so I was not you know I was just shy of a year old with COVID hit and so that was a year old a year into business. I should say the business was a year old and it was Superstressal because nobody knew what to do. We didn't know how serious this thing was going to be how long it was going to take that was kind of the worst part is like the not knowing So we shut down residential I think for a month and that was super Superstressal because I was like I don't have hours, but for my staff what are we going to do and I actually had an employee at that time he Told everybody like how great it would be to Everybody to be on an unemployment right now even though I did have work so That was my first in subordination fire, I guess It was it was Chocking because yeah, you put it out in the group chat like hey This is a good time to be unemployed like hey Stephanie like will you just lay us off so we can get unemployment? And no obviously so I get like they're like I'll go into all of these stories a lot more as as Episodes go on but let me just say I've had I've had the whole run around from every single angle when it comes to Employees and the Tom Fuluri that they can do sometimes so Any who so COVID started after the shutdown so for us that lasted I think a month and COVID turned out to be incredibly lucrative for us and because commercial accounts needed us more than ever Because they were deemed essential businesses. They needed more disinfecting to make their employees feel confident So several of our accounts we were doing twice a day is five days a week So that kind of exploded a lot of things for us. It had a lot of challenges obviously because dealing with Cleaners who had been exposed in the quarantine periods and all of that stuff as well as people I'd even had Fraud happening from employees during that time where they were claiming that they Had COVID but and you know said I went to this this clinic and I got the Thing and we called the clinic and they'd be like no they didn't do it because of the of the COVID pay that they were trying to get Basically, and so it kind of brought out the worst than a lot of people however I do try to look at it from the bright side it brought out the best in a lot of people too We were very lucky I applied to get the ppp the paycheck protection program grant early on and I didn't even know It's gonna be a grant but it turned out to be a grant. We didn't have to pay it back So I was able to cover payroll. I think I got $17,000 for that so for us that was you know a crap kind of money both anybody's it's a lot of money But for us at that time is a lot of money. So I had I was able to pay everybody Regardless of how many appointments we actually had but I'm just not a fan of paying people and they not work So what I did was reach out to every local Business in the area that was shut down and every church in the area that was shut down and it offered For our staff to do deep cleanings for free so that they were ready to go when they were able to open up So that was one of kind of those like initial big marketing ideas and it was just the right thing to do of course Of like kind of passing on the That the good the good vibes if you will because we got that money So I was like, you know, let's let's do something good in our community everybody is really struggling and a lot of small businesses did not survive COVID So to this day that helped us in a lot of ways because Small town people talk in both ways good and bad. So that was really good for our reputation So I know when it comes to that type of thing. I had a lot of I guess Ideas in the beginning like That that has served us very well from a community standpoint and it's really shaped my vision for syring clean Being that from an early stage, I think two months into business I did pretty much as soon as I had Employee so September of 2019 was the very first time we did this which was an employee chosen local nonprofit Organization that we would donate to meaning the business would donate to so that started The habit of now five years later we have every single month donated to a local nonprofit and an employee gets to choose What that nonprofit is going to be so that's been kind of a habit in our virtual tradition now that has just been a part of syring clean And again has shaped us into like the giving and service aspect of the business that is so important to me and has really Yeah, just just honed what what do I want this thing to be and it's it's to be a huge impact in employees In our communities lives and our clients lives and obviously now with my involvement with like content creation and educational stuff is Enmade impacting others lives by teaching so all of that to say COVID kind of like died down and we were doing really well and we Things started to get a little boring and was running well. I had my first two office staff kind of start and they both started as part-time cleaners So over this kind of year period they slowly transitioned into Part-time office part-time cleaner and those are crystal and April and they are still with me today They are two of the management team that I have now Crystal is my HR manager And April does all our payroll administration and then she does all of the inventory management as well And they all obviously do a lot more than that, but those are kind of the titles there So they're still with me to this day and I have cleaner as who are with me to this day from that time period as well So I it just I was very lucky with some of the people I got that saw what I was trying to do and stuff with it So as especially when I did not was not able to pay them very much so That is a definitely a key factor of my success that I have some very long-term employees who have stuff by my side as things have evolved and grown And that has a lot to do which is continually rewarding them and and making good on my promise of I'm I'm going to reward your loyalty and your hard work and keep Making this workplace a better a better place for them so that they wouldn't want to leave so I started you know back like backing off at my parents business because I just could not maintain But I think it was a full like year to year and a half before I finally left there to focus on serene clean And that was because I did not want to leave until I could replace my full income from there with the cleaning business Both from obviously me physically cleaning and then me taking Money from the the cleaning himself or from the business being able to pay myself So I know profit first that is my Number one suggestion for how to run your business finances if you have not read that book or listen to it Go download that after this podcast. It's a great one Well listen to any other episodes first and then go listen to pop profit first if you haven't it's a great money management system for Your business so that you are always paying yourself from day one so any who I You know, I had the girls start in the office. I was now done at my parents company Or was there like once once a week or something as they replaced me and And yeah, it was going well and I kind of got the feeling that we were hitting our Some capacity limits in black river falls because the population is so small Lead started trickling down a little bit at least from that area and I was like we need to open another location So the second location we opened was sparta and I think that was in 2021 it really 2021 and Before that obviously we're black or false cleaning services So we need to go through a name change So we went through the entire name change process which was a nightmare With the government and the state in doing all of that correctly in IRS like I said So we changed from black or false cleaning services to now syring clean Which is what we are now Definitely rolls off the tongue more gives the impression that we want to a kind of luxury and the feeling we're trying to give our clients Which is that of syrenity and calm and peace in their spaces So syring clean was officially I guess reborn and We yeah, just kept growing adding sparta really helped because then we could have an office there have a Google my business location there And sparta's only about half an hour from black or false so when I say locations they are all managed from the same Central office our employees can go to any of them get supplies from any of them We just want to have employees who tend to stick to a certain area for obviously paying them travel and convenience So that kind of opened up our service range a lot and that was in August of 2021 I got a call to go take a look at our local military base for a cleaning project except I have no idea what that project was going to be Because I didn't watch the news you know I'm pretty stuck in my my day to day of managing the business etc. It was all going well and
So what that call was about was 15,000 Afghan refugees were about to be dropped at Fort McCoy, which is 10 minutes from my then house. And we got asked to be one of the local subcontractors to help manage the janitorial side of that project, which was basically cleaning 318 buildings twice a day with 212 of them, if I'm recalling correctly, being barracks that 50 people were living in upstairs and downstairs. And so that started a six month long seven day a week project that I was at. And it was truly the first and ultimate test of Kensereen Clean run without Stephanie in the day to day management, because I was pretty much completely absent. My managers had to defend for themselves and thank goodness we had them. And so I know, you know, Crystal went on maternity leave. I believe in December of 21 or was it earlier? How long does she have her baby? Crystal if you're watching this, I'm sorry, I can't remember when Zadom was born. I can't remember what year it was, but she was on maternity leave. It might have been in that fall. So I believe she was out during this time. So it was like my two managers, if I'm recalling correctly, April and Katie, who really managed everything. So the goal for the normal side of the business was just maintain. Keep it going. Well, Stephanie is out at McQuay making the business a lot of money. But I was that was some of the hardest work I've ever done. Again, looking back, I don't know how I managed it. It was literally like 10 to 12 hour days, seven days a week. And it took over 100 janitorial staff a day to take care of those cleanings. So it was just the sheer management. And literally from day one, I was running myself. I was running in between these barracks, cleaning them because we just didn't have enough staff and thousands of people were pouring in every day. And it was just, it was such a wild project. And I can do a whole episode on that actual project. But it was crazy. The disease situations were crazy and exposing cleaners to things like tuberculosis and chicken pots and COVID was at least of our worries, but it was it was wild. That's all I can say. So that kind of deserves its own, like I feel like a little, a little episode on that. But it ended up ending in February of 2022. And that ended up being I think just over a million dollars in revenue from that one project. So it was kind of, I honestly felt almost like emotionally hung over after that project of like now what I felt kind of almost a depression. Because once you start seeing those numbers and then you go back to what your normal is because Serene Clean was still doing very, very well. It was a bit of a mind F if you will. So it was good that it ended though. And I could then just focus on Serene Clean and getting back into that. We did transition some of the staff from Fort McCoy to Serene Clean's normal operations in Haley who has been with me now for over, gosh, was that three years now? She just had her three year work anniversary. She started with me at McCoy and she is a killer residential cleaner and truly a joy to have on the team. So something very good came out of that outside of just the money, of course. And that money definitely introduced a lot of challenges because once you have a workers comp audit on that type of payroll, and you owe $80,000 dollars that you didn't expect, it's just giant chunks of money flying off the door too. So it was a huge learning opportunity. And I won't go on more about it because that deserves its own episode. And even how I got it, they found me on Google. There's so much guys. The whole history of Serene Clean is so much and I definitely can chop it up and talk about certain segments and lessons because it's hard for me to even reflect and not go into all of these side tangents because it's been kind of a wild ride. So anyway, from there we're like, let's add another location because Sparta was doing well and we were getting a lot of quote requests from the LaCrosse and I'll ask the area which is another half an hour away from Sparta. And it's kind of, LaCrosse is right on the border of Minnesota so it bots up to the Mississippi River. Again, we're very western Wisconsin. And so we were getting a ton of quote requests from that direction and we're like, we really would like to get a Google My Business location there so we can start getting reviews and showing up better there. And that is a town or area of like 50,000 people with lots of kind of suburbs around it. Which again, a lot of you guys are in Giant City so you're probably still thinking, oh my gosh, that's such a like a small town. And yeah, you're right. So as a reminder, if I could do it in that city, you can darn well do it in a big city. So there is absolutely hope for all of us and if it can be done in a super rural area, cities have so much more money available, more people who can afford these types of services. So keep that in mind, there's a lot of competition in those bigger areas of course. So you have to stand out even more. And obviously we will talk about standing out to competition in future episodes because I have so many thoughts on that. Anyhow, so we open LaCrosse or I don't ask for whatever you want to call it, that location, we started out in cleaners there. Pretty much from there, it's just, it's been slowly and steadily growing, kind of focusing on more this past year, especially has been so internally focused on just processes training, just honing it beautifully, making sure everything is correct before we try to do kind of a big growth push this next year and focusing even more heavily on commercial. Not that we're not like obviously taking on clients right now, that's not what I'm talking about. It's more like we are not paying or attempting to take on any like or go get more clients right now. They're just kind of coming because of our Google presence, our branding at this point. We have hundreds of five star reviews that do a bunch of the legwork for us. We don't have to do a lot of paid advertising, but in 2025, in this new year, we're going to be focusing on getting more clients and actually really trying to get the perfect clients for us and not taking just anybody and just honing what is the ideal client to us in saying no if they are not that, both on the residential and commercial side. Inside no that whole topic will be really interesting to talk about in my next episode. If you again, have a subscribe, subscribe now because that is going to be with Simone and she is over in Australia and she has some really great ideas and we're going to have a bunch of great conversation just on saying no because I think a lot of us have such a people pleasing tendency that we just want to help everybody and not everybody as your customer. That is a lesson I had to learn the hard way many, many times and I'll definitely talk about some of those examples with my conversation with her and that's where my managers have came in and been very helpful because they are much better at saying no to non-ideal customers than me. Whereas I'm just like, "Oh, we'll clean your gutters, we'll paint." I literally was having my cleaners paint apartments like touch up paint for turnover clutings. What? I've embarrassed even say that. I can't answer those. I'm not allowed to talk to customers anymore because I will get us into problematic situations. That will be really fun to talk about with Simone. Definitely tune in for that episode. It should be already dropped by the time you're watching this. Overall, it's been a whirlwind and within two years we had been at 800K. We hit a million. I think that the third year, obviously we were giant because of that formal quite job. That artificially inflated the numbers. Now it's just been slowly and steadily increasing, not just revenue, but profit has been obviously very important and just workplace stuff and benefits. We've added a million benefits this past year, especially it seems like. Has been such a revelation for me early on was just how much pride and purpose I would get from being a great boss. I've been at workplaces where I have not been treated with respect. I have been basically taken for granted, especially if you are an excellent worker. Having the most amazing workplace culture and having the best place to work possible for my staff, that's really my biggest focus. Taking care of them and just being psychotic about quality, and they take care of the clients then. That's been our secret sauce. Even there, really, it's just when it comes to why you're watching me or how you even heard about this. I reached out earlier this year while you may be watching this in 25. In 2024 January, I reached out to a mar, the CEO of ZenMade and said, "Hey, you guys had me further made summit talks. If you've never seen my made summit talks, go check out their YouTube." Those did really well and I really enjoyed them. I would love to make more educational content because, again, when I think about purpose and what I enjoy, it's really, really having conversations with other owners and especially newbies. If you're within the first couple of years or even less than 10 cleaners, really wherever you are, I mean, I love connecting, but it's so rewarding to me to help people avoid the mistakes that I made over the past five and a half years. What a lot of this podcast is about and where Filthy Rich Cleaners came from. You may be wondering about that title and obviously the initial thought is like money. Of course, I want you guys to make so much money. I want you to make money to do whatever it is that you want to do. That's how I see money and that's why that title really spoke to me. was because money is a tool to a
obtain your dreams to get time freedom to be able to give absolutely stupidly generously. And that is what I love to do. I love to give to my staff. I love to give to my community, make huge donations. If I feel called to give money or to help somebody out, I can do that. And that is one of the most beautiful things about building a successful business is it gives you the leverage to make a bigger impact. And that's really how I want us all to treat and frame our thoughts around money is that one obviously to take care of you and your family and all of your goals and dreams. But then what money can do for us to to help others. And it's it's okay for you to say I want to make a lot of money. And I think when I first started and I was 22, the growth that has come of like I don't even hardly recognize that girl because I have had to change so much. The growth that I have had to go through personally and that every single one of you have to go through personally or probably already have gone through personally because of owning a business it changes you. And I wanted to change us all for the better and not make us cynical crabby jerks because that can happen too. So it's very easy to become cynical when people constantly screw you over. And we're going to talk a lot about that too in this podcast of like how do you maintain that positive attitude and and the sheer amount of disappointment we're all going to face because of how challenging this business is. And there's a reason that so many businesses fail. It is not for the faint of heart. It is not for everybody and most people are going to fail. And I want every single one of you listeners. Even if there's just like 12 of you right now, we'll see you 12 listeners. I want you to never fail. I want you to grow your business to exactly what you want it to be. And for me, that is not a number I've hit like my income goals, you know, a couple of years ago. Now it's just like everything else is icing on the cake of meaning I can live comfortably do what I want to travel do live where I want to live. That is what that looks like. And so all of our numbers are going to be different what that looks like. And so I want you to hit that and then I want you to far far far exceed it. And I want us all to be not just rich in money. I want us to be rich in wisdom, which owning a business will definitely give you wisdom if you take the time to learn from the lessons. And that's something I want to talk about a lot is learning from our lessons and even, you know, going back to I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, how I set myself up for success from day one of learning from others lessons. I went and learned from Melissa. I went to YouTube and watched other owners. I went to books and I was constantly listening to business books and success books. I was listening to all sorts of business content and how to run a successful business. And it's not just cleaning industry specific. Obviously this is for us cleaning company owners, but in general, good business practices are good business practices, especially service service based businesses. We all kind of have the same things. Like if you can nail it on quality and get people to show up, you're going to be miles ahead of the competition. So it's actually not that I mean standing out against the terrible, terrible quality services that are out there already and the lack of professionalism in the industry and all of the things. That's what we're going to talk about this in this podcast and sprinkle along lots and lots of fun stories that I have experienced as well as the people that I talk to have experienced. And so all of that to say, what are you going to get out of this podcast? It is going to be actionable advice. I want to tell you things like, okay from the beginning I have used cleaning checklist. We left them behind at Client's House Item Beautiful website. I wore a polo shirt from day one. I used ZenMade, a scheduling software from day one that I could show the clients. I invested in software like QuickBooks to keep all my bookkeeping straight. I had client guidelines that were signed from day one. I had employee guidelines that were signed from day one. So all of these things like I had some very good foundational things and that was because the Melissa's course and I wish I could you know still offer you guys that course. But I want to teach you these similar lessons of like any of those couple things I just mentioned. Those would be the good places to start of what needs to be done for a foundational good business that can provide a quality service. And then just being really psychotic about proper communication and professional communication. Even things as simple as having a work email, not sending it from
[email protected]. Like all sorts of those types of things. I want to give you those tips and tools to utilize and what do I think is worth investing your hard money in what do I not think is like for example, you know, I don't spend a bunch of my own advertisements. One of the first things I did before I announced and the thing that Melissa suggested and I cannot tell you how important this was is I did a bunch of free cleanings. I did 10 free house cleanings to I guess you could call them influencers in our area which were like you know, Ritzy stay at home moms and they talked and they gave me a Facebook review in exchange for the free cleaning and then they told their friends about me. And so when I announced and I like opened my business Facebook which was I guess the only form of social media I had at the time for the business other than I guess the website that doesn't really social media. I had 10 five star reviews from influencers in our area who would have used me and that trajectory meant I immediately started getting leads and I started getting customers. And so those free cleanings taught me so much to about time management, about like how to do the cleanings inside. No, you know I already had a really good knack for cleaning. So for some of you watching who have never been a good cleaner I would suggest start practicing or taking a course or watching YouTube videos on those types of things first because at the end of the day we can put the pretty shade of lipstick on the pig of poor service your business is going to fail. So if your cleaners cannot clean well if you cannot clean well there is only so much sales tactics you can do to get around that. So at the end of the day quality is king or quality is queen and that's the number one focus. It should be on providing a quality service and treating people well and having good strong boundaries. So we're going to talk about all of these things in this podcast and I'm just I'm kind of sick of really vague advice from I guess people in various industries when they are trying to do consulting or coaching or teaching or mentoring or whatever and like I tell you my story and I'm sure well maybe some of you are inspired by it or inspired by me or whatever but I really want to teach you. I don't want to just motivate you. I want to teach you because motivation feels really good right now while you're listening to something and it gets you all jazzed up it's like reading a Tony Robbins book right. It gets you all like rah-rah'd about positive mental attitude and you know you're at your power and all of that stuff but it's like well once you leave that book or that motivational speech then what what do you do then you know it's going to wear off because motivation always wears off and we can't rely on that and that's why I suggest you know listening to podcasts listening to books to keep getting that motivation I would do it while I was cleaning and just always listening to stuff to keep me to keep me focused and learning but you have to build that resilience muscle so that you don't quit when your first employee goes you or they try to steal time or you know try to sleep with one of your clients or doing appropriate things at a workplace or steal gas like oh you know I've just got a million stories that we're gonna tell of all of the crazy things that have happened or clients that have just drove a new up a wall or you know complain about something that's totally unreasonable or whatever you need to have that resilience and so I want to teach you how to go about handling these situations and we're gonna talk a lot about specific problems that we all face in the cleaning industry as well as specific problems that may only be for that guest and I really want to hear that but I have a feeling that most problems are universal and as I mentioned before this is a really lonely path at times and that's the beauty of you know the internet sometimes I just wonder at it of even like the Zenmade Facebook group community the Zenmade Mastermind like I joined that really early on and I I felt less alone because of it because I could see other people who were on the same path as me and just in different areas and and learn from them so I love that there's so much free content out there and that is what taught me how to how to run this business obviously I had some good instincts but I was constantly learning so I applaud you for listening and making it through this rambly episode because that is that is the thing is you need to keep learning you need to keep growing your mindset because as soon as you stagnant things start to die you know your business will start to die if you do not start stop growing and at every single stage of business and we'll break all of it down over future episodes I face different problems and the problems I face today I could not fathom five years ago I couldn't even imagine right like we just got a $30,000 bill for a workers comp audit from a claim from 2020 when I had an employee roll her car in between jobs and I thought that claim was closed and I just like this is right now we are paying that bill by the end
of 2024. So that's a challenge I don't think I ever could have imagined back then and right that I would have been in tears. Right. And so my ability to manage stress and see a problem for what it is of unless I physically am on fire or the building is on fire, it all can be handled. Right. Employees quit all the time. Every employee you have is going to leave eventually. Every single one of them, it just as a matter of when. Every single customer is going to give you a problem. You're going to run into crazy things and say if you cannot wrap your brain around that and work through those problems and yeah, it's not the right job for you. You need to go find something else where that's other people's problems. But we cannot get the rich rewards of business ownership without the challenges. You don't get to eat the cake without putting, you know, getting going and getting all the ingredients and dealing with the nightmare that is. So, you know, I think a lot of gurus will teach you how to get to 100k or whatever, especially, you know, the whole remote business thing. Like obviously I'm remote now, but I was physically doing the cleanings and just there's, I want you to feel that this is going to be the real deal for you and listening to this and learning from the people who are the real deal and have gone through the challenges themselves. That's who you should be learning from is people who are, you know, still in the thick of it. I'm still running serene clean. I'm still incredibly involved in the business. I mean, heck, my weekly operations meetings with my managers tend to be three to four hours long where we're literally breaking down every single thing and working through them to the point of even, like getting new mop buckets. We just introduced new mop buckets last week, like something we should have done a long time ago. I just never even, like, little things like that. I've been proving the process. Side note, I forgot to mention in my history that we did introduce Hannah, who has been a long term cleaner for me. She has been one of the best, I mean, like, if I could clone Hannah, I would be a multi-millionaire. Well, if I could clone all of them, honestly, I would be a multi-millionaire like that because I could, I could run this country with cleaning businesses where I had them there. They're that much over rock stars. But anyway, Hannah is our field development and quality assurance specialist now. And so she's been in that position for only two months, I think, and holy crap, holy, explicative, explicative crap, what that has done for Serine Clean. So I can't wait to get into all of that as well of just, like, the development that's happened, the quality that's happened. For example, you know, over the past, I think I've been tracking for four years now our complaints rates. And on average, we have, you know, 170 to 180 appointments a week currently. And we have a less than.07, yeah,.07 complaint rate,.7 complaint rate, less than 1% for sure, less than 1% complaint rate over the past four years on average, right? So we're talking at most, you know, one, may, two complaints a week is like a big deal. Most weeks are zero complaints over, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and thousands of appointments every single month. And that just, that, that is one of the reasons Serine Clean has done what it's done because I've been a psycho about quality from day one and that the customer needs to get what they're paying for. And that having those super high standards has just made everybody level up and also respect what we're trying to do here in the mission we're trying to do. So I know we're coming up onto, you know, like an hour in this episode. And I'm not trying to make it super duper long. But anyways, I, I really hope you subscribe and I would love, you know, potentially if you feel like you would be a good fit or even if you have some some specific problems that maybe we could help talk through, I think that would be really fun. So I know I do individual consulting and I already know several of my consulting clients who are real life cleaning company owners all over the world. And I'm like, oh, I really hope that they would, they would like to be a guest on the show because I just, I love learning from others and even like, talking, you know, I'll be talking to Simone tomorrow. I'm so excited to talk to her and she's in Australia. And like that's so fascinating to me of the specific challenges that she has. But also the universal challenges that we all face as well as her story is going to be really inspiring. And and you may not resonate with, you know, 22 year old Stephanie from, you know, Wisconsin, rural Wisconsin starting her business from zero and growing it to what it is now. You may not resonate with that. But I guarantee you're going to resonate with somebody's story on this podcast. So I urge you to just click on the ones that seem interesting to you and let us know what you think obviously on whatever listening app that you use. So I know definitely go subscribe to the YouTube channel. If you don't, I do make lots of content, tons of educational content there. That's a little less convoluted and all over the place in this first episode. I promise I'll be more concise in the future. It just, I'm really excited about this and I just, I'm really looking forward to learning from others and helping you guys learn and just kind of being your friend, your friend in the business and, you know, as our slogan is, from your first toilet to your first million end beyond. There's a reason I love that so much is because that's truly what, what happened to me and I want to help you achieve that as well. And it's a very difficult journey, but it is so worth it on the other side. And whatever challenges you're going through, like I've probably been there and I want to help you work through it and get through to the other side because it is very, very sweet and the things I can do with my life now and with helping others now is truly remarkable and it's beyond my wildest dreams. And that's what I want for you. I want you to reach beyond your wildest dreams and accomplish them. And it is 100% possible for every single one of us if we just have the tools and the wherewithal and the guts to apply them frankly. All right, you've got to have some grit and I know if you're listening to this, you probably have that grit and I'm excited to hear from you in any way. You so choose. So definitely leave comments guys down below any episodes that you're particularly interested in. Really, we're going to talk about everything. So definitely feel free if you want to hear about a specific thing or even if you want to describe a challenge that you have and we can talk about those. I'll be doing solo episodes as well. That'll be a little bit shorter every single week. We'll be releasing at least one long form or one short form video so that you can listen to them. Whatever you do and clean and drive it, etc. So that there's a bunch of variety for you. So anyway, as I always say, long story long. I will see you guys in the next episode and thanks so much for listening. Bye. If you enjoyed this episode of the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast, please be sure to leave us a five-star review so we can reach more cleaners like you. Until next time, keep your work clean and your business, filthy rich.
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