Filthy Rich Cleaners Podcast E17: “They ALL Quit in One Day!” How She Rebuilt Her Business After a Mass Walkout

Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube

Introduction

Coming up next on the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast: “Where you’re like, oh my gosh, setting fire to this forest. Won’t that kill it? But it’s truly, actually what keeps it alive. And that’s literally like what I am thinking of with your story.”

From your first dollar to your first million, welcome to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast presented by ZenMaid. Join your host, Stephanie Pipkin, founder of Serene Clean as she shares proven tips, tricks and hard earned 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.

Meeting Michelle from Sparkling Homes

Stephanie: Hello everyone and welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I am your host, Stephanie Pipkin, and today’s wonderful guest is Michelle from Sparkling Homes Cleaning in Minnesota. And I’m so excited for you guys to hear Michelle’s story, as well as all of the questions I have about her story. It’s very inspiring guys, especially if you have had major setbacks in your own lives, I think you will find a lot of connection to be had with Michelle. So thank you so much, Michelle. I feel like we’ve known each other for a millennia, and now we’re finally meeting each other for the first time.

Michelle: I know, thank you so much for having me. This is – just getting to know you for these first couple of minutes has been so fantastic.

Stephanie: And as two northern girls as well, so being in Minnesota is super cool. We’re just a hop and a skip away. And must I say, I love that your guys’s titles are like, sparklers. Is that what you call your cleaners?

Michelle: Absolutely, yes.

Stephanie: I bet they love that. I mean, I would love it. Do you have male cleaners? Do they like that?

Michelle: We do have one male cleaner. I mean, we’ve had a couple throughout the years, but the one that we have now has been the most consistent. He’s been with us for a year now.

Stephanie: Yeah, I actually haven’t had many male house cleaners. They all just gravitate towards the janitorial but I’m like, gosh, if I called them sparklers…

Michelle: He has no problem with it. He’s like, I have five sisters, I have a wife, I have a daughter. No big deal.

Stephanie: Very, very confident. Yes. Will you be willing to share just, I mean, you guys, Michelle was an individual cleaner for like, forever, and which a lot of you can probably relate to. So I would love to hear what, how did that start? Where did it go? And how did that transition to you owning a business?

Starting in the Cleaning Industry

Michelle: So it’s kind of a long story, I guess. So when I was in college, I was a freshman at the University of Minnesota, and a friend had gotten a hold of me, saying that she had a post construction to do, and she needed, like, all hands on deck. So did I want to stay with her over the weekend and clean this post construction house?

So I stayed with her all weekend. And, I mean, we worked sun up till sundown, and it was just a horrible experience. Oh my gosh. It was so awful. And to have that be, you know, my very first experience for cleaning. But, you know, she, she picked me up, she paid for all my lunches. We got to bond the whole weekend. You know, it was a slumber party the whole time, and she dropped me back off at my dorm, and she was like, “So what do you think?” And I was like, “That was horrible. When can I come back?”

Stephanie: You like the pain?

Michelle: So I figured out how to get my car down to the University of Minnesota so that I could clean with her after that, and every semester after that, I figured out how to make my schedule so that I could clean as much as possible. And then, even after I graduated from college, I still tried to, I guess I tried to get out of the cleaning industry. I went into banking, I went into management, and then I continued. I continued to clean on weekends and nights. I also was serving to make as much money as possible, because banking and management still is not a lot of money.

Stephanie: I know, well, I mean, being a waitress of like, seven years before doing cleaning, it’s just like, there’s something like, it’s really hard to get away from, like, walking out with a wad of cash every day, like having to wait weeks at a time for pay. I’m just like…

Michelle: I remember getting my first actual paycheck and being like, that’s it.

Stephanie: That was a bank teller, actually. And I remember that same – I’m like, well, so you’re telling me I’m responsible for people’s money, and you’re paying me this…

Michelle: Millions of dollars passing through my hands every single day.

Transitioning to Business Ownership

Michelle: So I kept going back to cleaning, and then my friend and I kept going back with my friend, and she got to the point where she just got so busy that she kept sending me out. And was like, “You know, I don’t want to go clean this house. It’s too far away, you know, my schedule is too full, whatever.” So she kept sending me out, but she, like, wasn’t taking any of the cut.

So I was, you know, I was asking her, like, how do I price this? What do I do? And she was like, “Well, if that, if that house looks like that house, then price it like that one. And you know that person said, yes, so you know that one won.” I was like, okay, so that was how I did my pricing.

Stephanie: Great way to start out, because I think I mean, like, yeah, side note that’s pricing is so challenging for everybody, but especially when you’re starting out, because you’re like, What am I doing? And that’s a really good way to like, okay, am I making enough at that one? Well, this house is like, that one, and that’s kind of how we do commercial honestly. It’s like, well, this bank is like, this bank, and it takes us this long, and we’re making enough there, so there’s your price.

Michelle: And they said yes. So then these people are going to say yes, no. And then it was like, okay, but now I want to make a little bit more money. So then at the next one. So I’d be like, “Okay, well, I’m going to bump it up by, like, $25.”

Stephanie: No, that’s exactly how it goes. People get so, like, bent out of shape about, like, increasing prices, or, like, how do I do this? And it’s like, well, you just try on the next one. And if they take it, every time we did a price increase, I was abs – I mean, I, like, just pit in my stomach, like, we, like, nobody’s gonna take this. But we were so booked out that it’s like, we do not have the capability to take more clients. So if we’re gonna take them, they better be – just throw up prices to try to get them to say no, but then they wouldn’t say no, and it’s like, oh, I guess we’re charging 55 an hour now.

And if you told me five years ago that we could do that in rural Wisconsin, I would have been like, Who do you think you are? Like, nobody would pay that. They would laugh in my face. But that’s how price increases go.

A Life-Changing Moment

Michelle: So then I, I was down to just house cleaning and serving at one point. And then my aunt passed away. She was like, she was my favorite aunt. And it was like the first death in the family in like, a really long time, like 25 years. So it was, and she was still very young. It was, you know, a horrible, like, a horrible death where she had cancer for a really long time, and it just like, shook up the family. And it was one of those situations that it made me look at my life and go, do I love what I’m doing.

At that point, I had also gone back to school, so I was going back to school to be a physician’s assistant, also an EMT so that I could get patient care experience to qualify for the physicians assistant program. So as I was determining, like, what is it about my life? Like I’m not feeling fulfilled, and I just had that feeling that even though as a physician assistant, like I was going to be saving lives, and as an EMT, I already was saving lives, but I just I had that feeling that that wasn’t it. It wasn’t going to be what was going to fulfill me.

So, like, I’d always had this plan, like I always wanted to travel the world. And like, one of my things is I wanted to visit all 50 states. And one of the things that my aunt had said that she regretted was that she didn’t see more of the world. So my, my now husband, and I were just dating back then we had decided, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna go travel. So we would go and travel somewhere until we ran out of money, and then come back and make enough to go travel again.

Building a Flexible Career

Michelle: So I, you know, was working at Buffalo Wild Wings. I was cleaning houses. The clients that I had, I only had a couple of house cleaning clients at that point, I had already kind of trimmed them down because I was going back to school and I had to do the EMT work too. The EMT that I was doing was mainly events. So I was doing like concerts and conventions and basketball games, stuff like that.

So and I got to choose which events that I wanted to work. So it’s super easy to build up my schedule. I’d worked at Buffalo Wild Wings for like 11 years, so it was super easy to just say, “Yeah, I want to work this day and not that day.” And then the clients that I had, I trimmed them down so much, and they were all like clients that I had had for like, 20 years. It was super easy for me to build the schedule that I wanted so that when we had enough money to go travel, I could say to my clients, “Hey, I’m taking off.”

The Friends Tour and Running Out of Money

Michelle: So our very last trip, we had done a friends tour, and that’s kind of what we called it. We called it the friends tour, and we traveled all over just visiting our friends. That was the point of our trip, is just to go see all the people that we haven’t seen in, like, a super long time, because they lived across the country.

And on our way back from Kentucky, we ran out of money and we couldn’t even – we stopped at McDonald’s, and we couldn’t even order off the value menu.

Stephanie: Oh my gosh. Not even the 10 piece, that’s what I–

Michelle: Not even some fries.

Stephanie: I don’t mean to laugh because that sounds horrific, and I’m sure it was, like, very stressful at the time, but I’m sure there’s a silver lining about to come.

Michelle: We’re like, how are we going to get home? I mean, we didn’t have money for a place to stay. We’re in Kentucky, you know, we just, like totally overshot our spending. And, you know, here, we thought that we’re going to be doing well, because we’re sitting with our friends the whole time and but we didn’t have any friends between Kentucky and home.

Stephanie: Gotta start making them friends.

The Birth of Sparkling Homes

Michelle: So, we decided, “You know what, we’re just we’ll skip dinner. You know, we can skip a meal. It’s okay. We’ll skip dinner, and we’ll just head home.” Fortunately, my husband had a Prius, so we’re getting like, 100 miles per gallon. It’s kind of plugs in. We made it home on fumes, and on our way home is when I decided, “You know what, I think this is it, and I’m going to start Sparkling Homes.”

So it was the very next day that I registered my business and I went, you know, I went crazy on just starting the business then, and I never looked back. And I like, I feel that this is definitely what I was meant to do.

Stephanie: You’re calling. I could still relate to that. Why do you think it took so much pain for you to make that decision, because it’s like, this whole time you’re cleaning, you’re seeing your friend do this, like, you know you love the schedule flexibility. Like, did it? Did it not cross your mind? Like, not in a judgmental way, but it’s like, it’s so cool, like, you need to be doing this. Like, this is clearly your calling, in hindsight. Yeah. And so why do you think it took that, like, incredible pain that you guys experienced.

Michelle: I, you know, I think it’s because I felt like I needed to always be doing the cleaning, and since it was my job in college, I felt like it wasn’t really, like it couldn’t have been that easy, you know. I went to college. I had a college degree. This – my college degree wasn’t in cleaning, you know, but it also wasn’t in business or business management or anything like that.

So I couldn’t figure out, how do I get myself from being the cleaner to the owner? And on the way home from that trip is finally, when I was like, I need to figure it out. That’s, that’s what I need to do, is I need to figure it out. And, you know, up until that point, I was always the cleaner, and, you know, I still, it still took me a couple more months that I was the cleaner, but I changed my mindset, and that was the huge thing.

So when I came back, I, you know, completely started studying, like, how to be the owner, how to be a leader, how to manage people. And I like, I’d been a manager before, like I knew how to – I felt like I knew how to manage people. But I mean, I’ve had the business now since 2017. I’m still learning how.

Managing Through Challenges

Stephanie: Especially when they throw crazy stuff at you. I mean, actually, just side note, in the past, I think week, we have had over 500 hours of call ins due to sickness, vehicles, breakdown. So that’s over $10,000 of billable hours that have been missed. So please tell me, everybody, how would you manage that?

Michelle: I actually just figured out our call out days, or, I guess not call out days, but it was like our total day or our absentee rate. And our total days that were taken off in 2024 and it was, like, 381. The cleaning techs that we have right now, like, I made the announcement that we’re gonna start hiring again, they’re like, “No, you’re gonna take the houses away from us.” I’m like, “I’m not taking the houses away from you. Like, we’re adding to the houses, you know.” But I need to, like, let them know, like, “You guys took off over a year amongst 2024.”

Stephanie: Well, and that’s like, honestly, we’re – we just adjusted our whole attendance policy and stuff, because we’re like, okay, looking back and auditing our behavior. We do not punish for that. We don’t, and we don’t want to, because it’s like, honestly, like, we sell on flexibility.

And, I mean, if everybody’s vomiting in your house or your car breaks down, like, that’s it. That is what happens when you hire parents. But that’s my ideal employee. So it’s like, you know what? We’re changing this because we never actually stick to a write up system. We don’t write people up for this, but it will adjust. It will impact their potential for raises.

And that’s all we want it to do, because if you call out – I mean that, that’s the name of the game here. So like, I know that you guys are all like, “Oh, you got to be harder on them,” but it’s like, we’re not going to do that. No matter what we say. Looking at our behavior in Serene Clean, we’re not going to do it. So either, we’ll just take their hours away. Like, you can’t be consistent. So we’re going to give this to somebody who can be consistent, but we’re certainly not going to, like, start writing them up unless it’s like, how they call out, you know, if they do it wrong.

But yeah, we’re like, you know what? But yeah, this past week has been like, holy crap. $10,000 we lost because of the call outs and so, yeah, that hurts. That hurts, but what do you do? What do you do? You know, you’re gonna fire them up.

Michelle: I will say, though, that the flu is definitely going around around work, so for us–

Stephanie: Too. Yep, this is the worst sickness we have ever seen. I mean, people – and it’s like they’re not missing, they’re not calling out because they just want to, like, they’re legitimately sick. So it’s like you can’t do anything. You can’t do anything. It sucks. It just is what it is, and you just gotta roll with it. And so no matter what your financial – like, Yes, we had big financial goals for January, not going to hit them. Okay, like tomorrow’s February.

Michelle: Every month a new–

Stephanie: I always lay out like, this is what we’re going to do, and then we never hit it. Because – so I’m like, You need to lower that expectation and realize how many people call out.

Michelle: You know what, though, in all the years that I’ve been in business, there are only two years that I haven’t hit our financial goal. However, every single January I have not hit our financial–

Understanding the Seasonal Cycles

Stephanie: It’s for everybody listening, like, just so you know, guys like, this is the slow season. This is the slow season of the industry. Historically, it wasn’t for us the first couple years, because there was no slow season. But now we are seeing the ebbs and flows a lot more. Everybody’s broke. They haven’t gotten their tax returns yet. They really totally financially hung over from Christmas. And they’re also probably having a goal of budgeting. But luckily, those New Year’s resolutions are about to break and they will start hiring us again. Just like the gyms are going to clear out, they’re going to come back, right?

Michelle: I know at our at our last team meeting – we had a team meeting at, I think it was the beginning of January, like January 3 or something, I made the announcement. I was like, “Okay, guys, I didn’t warn you last year, and everybody freaked out. So I’m warning you this year. Like, we expect 10 clients to cancel this month. So, like, we know that we are anticipating that we are ramping up our marketing so that hopefully you can get 10 more to book with us” and like, everybody freaked out anyway. Well, 10 canceled.

Stephanie: That’s weird, right there. I mean, you track like, Okay, everybody listening. How does she know that? She tracked it. She tracked it from last year so that you can see patterns and then you can behave differently. So yeah, I hope that you get more clients then, and you guys been filling those spots?

Michelle: So we booked 14.

Stephanie: Look at that. Look at that. I hope you raised the price too.

Michelle: We sure did.

Stephanie: That’s such a good point too, like, once you have a good lead system in place, like, losing clients feels very painful, especially when it’s, like, finance related, because, like, especially when you know, every, like, the whole talk of like, the past year with a recession – that was real, and I was very concerned. Of like, you know, house cleaning is a luxury. Like, what are people going to do?

And we did start getting an uptick in cancelations due to budget, and it does make you kind of second guess, but then just paying attention to, like, the leads that were coming in, and having the follow up there, and, like, really focusing on client retention. Like, honestly, I’m happy that that started happening due to financial reasons, because it made me really, really hone in on, like, “Okay, how are we working on retaining clients?”

So it’s like, every time something seemingly bad happens – I mean, this is my overarching, like, philosophy on business. Every time something seemingly bad happens, there is something to learn from it, or there is a silver lining. So I’m curious, like, Okay, I want to hear about your whole walk off thing. Like, you have to tell this story – I have to have everybody hear this because it’s wild to me.

The Staff Walkout Story

Michelle: Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Well, do you want to hear about the walk off? Or do you want to hear about me firing everybody first?

Stephanie: Whatever was first in the timeline. So go there.

Michelle: Well, so I don’t even remember the years, but I guess a couple of years back, I – the main part of it that I actually remember, I don’t even necessarily remember firing everybody, but what I do remember is then the next group of hires I had, I had said, you know, I need to, like, make sure that I’m doing things right. So I started a monthly meeting.

And so I scheduled this monthly meeting, and I had everybody come over to my house for this monthly meeting, because we don’t have – we don’t have a space. Even still, we don’t have a space. So everybody still comes over to my house for these meetings.

And so this very first one after I hired this new group, well, they all met out in the in the driveway, because they were like, “Oh my gosh. What’s going on? Why are we here? Why is there a meeting?” And they come into the house, and the one that was like, you know, kind of the louder one of the group was like, “Oh yeah, we met out in the driveway, and we were all laughing, because we’re like, what’s she gonna do? Is she gonna fire us? She would never be able to do something like that.”

And I just dead panned. Said, “Why do you think that? That’s how you guys all have your job, because I fired everybody else.” And they’re all like [silent]. So I, “Don’t test me.”

Stephanie: That’s such a good point of like, I think people, it’s my whole concept of like, employees are like kids, and they will, they will toe the line wherever it is. And they thought that you were – I mean, you are, like, super duper Midwest nice as I’m like, meaning, like, just, we’re very cheerful, we’re very easy going seeming people, and that means that it looks like we are probably pushovers. And I mean, I have been a pushover in the past. But why did you fire everybody? Was it just total, you know…

Michelle: Like, that one was so long ago, and I feel like there’s been so much in between, that I don’t even remember. I think each one was, like, an individual reason, and it was just kind of like, you know, this one, like, I think it was just kind of like, you know, maybe there was a week in between, and it was just kind of, I don’t even know.

Stephanie: But did you go clean yourself then? You cleaned all the houses?

Michelle: I – and it was like, I still, we still had, like, a manageable amount of clients at that point, but, but then what had happened was so COVID happened. We closed down. And then in 2021, we had, you know, the great resignation happen, right? So at that point, everything was so, everything was running, you know, everything was running without me. We had our virtual assistant that did our day to day stuff, you know, I did, you know, like our payroll and our marketing and that kind of stuff.

Stephanie: What were you at, revenue wise, before this happened?

Michelle: I want to – well, we had 80 clients. I remember, we had 80 clients. So we had to have been somewhere around like 50,000. So yeah, probably around 50,000 a month. So we’re at the point where, like my time frame didn’t matter, like I could do things, you know, late at night or whatever.

Well, my friend actually that I used to clean with, she was, she was in a position where she needed help. So she had called me and was like, “Michelle, I need your help, you know, can you come and help me clean for like, a couple of weeks?” And I was like, “Why not?” We’re kind of, like, in, you know, the valley of despair for our financials. So I was kind of like, you know, if I can take money, you know, cleaning with her, then I can keep the money in the business, and that’s definitely help, right?

So I felt like that was a that was a great opportunity for me. So it was like, I don’t know, maybe a week, week and a half, I was cleaning with her, but I was still kind of struggling with the employees that I did have, where they just had, like, bad attitudes, and I was trying, like, I was doing my best to, you know, help change their attitudes and, you know, get things flowing in a manner that it needed to be.

Stephanie: Can you give an example of what you tried to do? Because I’m sure a lot of people have experienced this, and it’s just like, just throw the whole person out a lot of times. Is the better solution. But it sounds like you were trying to change the direction of the boat, like, what were the types of things that you were trying to do?

Dealing with Attitude Problems

Michelle: So a lot of the things I – a lot of the things were like, the, you know, clients were having complaints, so I was trying to do extra training with them. They didn’t want to, they didn’t want to do the things that I was suggesting. You know, they felt that the client was wrong, or they felt that I was wrong in the things that I wanted them to do.

At this point, actually, I do admit that we were still washing the floors on our hands and knees. So and I was not budging on that, we have since budged and went to mops.

There were like – they didn’t want to work. So we do a pay for performance. So, you know, once the job is done, they’re done for the day. They didn’t want to help each other out. So if some person was working a little bit later, but they were done at like two, they wouldn’t – they weren’t going to help each other, you know. So I was trying to facilitate some of that. It was that kind of stuff.

Stephanie: No, like, that’s a good way to put it, as attitude problems. And I know exactly what you mean. And that’s very difficult to – it is super challenging. So I can, I can relate to that.

Michelle: And, you know, I – there it was – I do feel like it was bad apples. And it was, yeah, there were bad apples. Some of the apples were good and the apples that were good were being tarnished by the bad.

So while I was cleaning with my friend, which, you know, she is, like, an hour and a half away from where I live, but I was like, I don’t care. Like, I’ll take this extra money. So I’m working with her one day. And like, just employee after employee kept calling me, and was like, “This needs to change, and you didn’t change it fast enough. I told you, this needed to change. You didn’t change it fast enough.”

And I’m like, “This isn’t on me. I’ve been trying to change it. This is like a ship that needs to be turned around. And this is not all on me, like I am trying to turn this ship, but it is so slow to turn a ship. You guys are not understanding it.” So just one after the other, they were calling me and quitting.

Stephanie: Wow.

The Phoenix Moment

Michelle: So I was like, I am not entirely sure what to do. And so I, you know, unfortunately, I had to leave my friend then too. And I was like, I am so sorry. I have to go home for my clients. You have like, 10 clients. I have like 80.

So I had one employee that did stay with me, and she’s still with me today. And I made it my mission to not let any of my clients know what was going on. And so what I tried to do then was, you know, any of our bi-weekly clients, they were not going to get skipped twice in a row. Same with our weekly clients. Our monthly clients weren’t gonna get skipped at all.

I was gonna, I was gonna clean three, four houses. Our businesses were gonna – the businesses that we did, that we did clean, we’re gonna get cleaned after our regular clients. The one employee that did stay with me, if she wanted time off, she was going to get it. I was not going to burn her out. So anything that she needed she was going to get.

I still had my VA. And basically what we did then was we completely transformed our hiring process, because at that point, I was the one doing the hiring where I sat in a coffee shop all day long to, you know, wait for people to show up. And you know, that never works.

So we automated as much of our hiring process as possible, and then did everything over zoom, because my VA is in Missouri, I’m in Minnesota, and so we automated as much as possible, and then had her doing all the interviews over zoom, and then the ones that she – the ones she really liked, she hired if they were questionable. That’s when I did watch them. If she was like, “Nope, you don’t even have to worry about it” she automatically rejected them.

So I went – so instead of, like, doing all of the interviews, I only had to watch like, you know, maybe three of them, because they were the ones that she was like, you know, maybe could, I could go either way on them. So we completely streamlined everything, and like we still use the streamlined way to this day, which is seriously amazing, and we’re able to hire everybody that we have today, still, we hired 11 people, something like that.

Stephanie: Okay, tell me tactically. How did you handle the training? How did you handle it during that time when it was a total, literal shit show.

Rebuilding Through Peer Training

Michelle: Oh, yeah, it was a show. They all trained each other. So my, the cleaning tech that did stay with me, her and I trained the first couple of people, and then they worked a couple of weeks. And then, you know, hired a couple more. And, like, they train – so they all kind of trained each other.

But then also it gave us the opportunity then too. So that whole, that whole process, gave us the opportunity to fire the clients that were kind of a pain in the butt, because why keep them on? It also gave us the opportunity to raise the prices on the people that were, you know, taking way too long, or, you know, had trashed houses or whatever.

But it also gave me the opportunity to be back out in the field, because at that point, I mean, other than helping my friend clean, who had a completely different way of cleaning than I did at that point. I hadn’t been out in the field for like, probably two years, so it gave me the opportunity to help streamline everything and be back out to see, like, what – like, what are the experiences that everybody is having? And then, who are these clients? Because I don’t know these clients anymore.

Stephanie: I don’t even know my new employees anymore. I don’t know any new clients.

Michelle: So it – like it gave me so many more opportunities, and it was really a great experience. So it was, like, it was a good experience, like, even though I don’t want to do it again, it was a good experience. And, you know, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today if that didn’t happen, because it, it got rid of the toxic people. It got rid of the people that were only doing like half the job, and got me the people that are the A players that are so amazing, that are still with me. Like that happened in 2021 and these people are still with me. Like, not a single one of them left.

The Forest Fire Analogy

Stephanie: That’s, that’s amazing, all that – like, what’s standing out to me is like the word Renaissance or rebirth, but it reminds me of, if you guys are not familiar with how they clear out forests to allow for space for new trees to grow, is they set fire to it. So they literally do controlled burns in forests in order to clear away all the ground scruff and things that are in the way, so that new trees can have the space to take root and flourish and not be crowded out by all the junk, basically.

And though you’re like, “Oh my gosh, setting fire to this forest, won’t that kill it?” But it’s truly, actually what keeps it alive, and that’s literally, like, what I am thinking of with your story is, like, the whole thing had to be burned away so that, like, the Phoenix of Michelle can emerge, like you’re a Phoenix, like, this is amazing. Like, horrific things can happen, and how you handle that, and like you just – the way you took control of the situation. You’re like, “The clients aren’t going to know,” because the clients don’t give a shit, guys, they don’t care. You’re just cleaning their house. Man, they may have empathy. That doesn’t mean they’re not going to go find somebody else.

So I love that strategy of really looking at each client’s schedule and being like, “Okay, biweeklies aren’t going to get skipped more than once. Monthlies aren’t going to get skipped at all.” And same with weeklies, like, we’re like, and being very strategic, and that’s how we do it, too, when we’re deciding, like, okay, in the past week, all these – like, you know, there’s only so much we can cover with our with their call on call, person and etc, etc. So who do we skip? Who do we skip? And you look at each client individually and say, well, we skipped on them twice already. They are a psycho. Don’t skip on them. We have to get it. She’s having a party. Can’t skip on her. Like, you have to do that in order to make sure everybody’s kept happy, you know, and really analyzing what to do.

And then, as you said, like, Who can we cancel on? Who can we raise prices on? Like, it was exactly what you needed. And it’s like, I’m sure it was so painful. But as you said, like, those are the moments that teach us. You can’t learn in perfect conditions, like, you won’t learn anything when everything goes perfectly, like, because, like, nothing’s challenging you. Like, the worst things to happen to me were exactly what I needed and why it’s like, it’s so easy for me to talk about, oh, this is what you do. This is what you do. Because it’s like, I had some something horrific happen that caused me to know what to do.

Michelle: I know and like, so then, like, we ended up, we ended up hiring way more people than we needed. Like, we lost, like, when everybody left us, I think we, I think we lost four or five, but then we hired, like, 11, but it was just like-

Stephanie: So…

Michelle: Many amazing people kept stepping up. And I was like, we, we can’t say no. Like, these people are so amazing. And like, a super fantastic thing ended up happening is, you know, because I knew that they – like we needed them, like we needed them because they were amazing, not because we had the work for them. So I needed to get the work for them.

Stephanie: Yep.

Building a Stronger Business Through Challenge

Michelle: And they helped me get it. So I had them – so we went to all the events. We did door hangers together. We scheduled them to, like, do these things together. And it created this – like none of them knew each other ahead of this. And what ended up happening is that they created this family.

I mean, I always wanted Sparkling Homes to be family in the first place, but they created it kind of themselves with my help, of course, because, you know, we needed to grow in order to get everybody work. But they helped grow the business. So now they kind of, they have this ownership in Sparkling Homes because they helped me grow Sparkling Homes.

So this isn’t just my business. This is our business together. And like this is, it’s such an incredible thing, and this isn’t – and even the one, you know, the Ashley who stayed with me through this whole thing, like it’s so fun, like we do client appreciation events and like we do, you know, different things together. And actually today we are going on a retreat together. So we’re actually going away for the entire weekend. We’re going to Wisconsin.

Stephanie: Exactly!

Michelle: But we’re renting an Airbnb, and everybody but two people are able to come and even our virtual assistants. So I have two virtual assistants, one in Chicago, one in Missouri, even they are coming and meeting up with us, and we have a house that has a pool table, ping pong table, air hockey, a hot tub.

Stephanie: And it’s amazing, right?

Michelle: But like, Ashley and I will, like, step aside and just like, look at everything and be like, we built this together.

Building Relationships with Your Team

Stephanie: I can, like, so relate, because that’s how like I feel with all of my managers. Because, I mean, they’ve been, they’re my longest employees as my managers, and they have, they’ve, like, gone through all of these challenges with me, and it’s like, you have, like, we have such a close bond because of it, because they’ve been there every step of the way through all of the shit. Like, and so yeah, like that, you know.

And you know, I know they say, like, “Don’t friendship and work.” It’s like, please tell me how you don’t become friends with the people you spend the most time with. Like, please tell me how that’s supposed to happen. So it’s like, yeah, it’s okay to be friends with your staff, even if you’re the boss.

Like, I do feel that way, but it’s kind of a more like, no matter what, you’re still the boss, but it’s this mutual respect thing of, like, I respect them so much, even though technically I am, like, above – it’s like, I just don’t see it that way at all. Like, if they’re like, “Stephanie, this is a shitty idea.” I’m gonna not be like, “Well, I think it’s a good idea, so we’re gonna do it.” Like, I almost never, if ever, pull that card. Like, ever.

Michelle: I know I actually, I just told the story to somebody else, but, like, kind of a long time ago, there was somebody else that had worked for me that was telling me a story about – she was talking to her mom and saying, “You know my boss? This my boss that” and I was like, “Oh, who’s your boss? Do I know who they are?” And she was like, “You, you are my boss.” And I was like, “Oh, yeah, I am.”

Stephanie: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. I literally think of my managers, like, well meaning sisters that give me shit because it’s like, they’re all older than me too, so it’s very much not like – they’re like, “Yeah, my older sisters, it’s okay.” It’s a cool feeling.

And like, again, like, it takes a – I like, I know everybody’s like, “Well, it must, must be nice to have a great workplace culture,” guys, you build it like you build your culture. And you can write the ship. You can change things.

And one of the best team meetings, spending time together and being firm and always tying back to like, the why – like, I can’t tell you how much purpose like inspires people. It’s your job to be inspirational like you are the – you gotta be the cheerleader. Man, I am the ultimate hype man. I can make anybody feel like they’re a God. All right, that’s my – but that’s your job – like you were, like, you gotta rally the troops, right?

Michelle: My most important job in my business is to make everybody else’s job as easy as possible. I strongly believe that.

Leading with Authenticity

Stephanie: That’s that’s a really good mentality to have, and if you come at it from that direction, like you’re never going to do something like – intentionally wrong, because you have good intentions, and, you know, you may make mistakes and you may get it wrong, but it’s not like you are wrong because you’re trying to, you’re trying to do something good, and they’re gonna sense that too, because it comes across so authentically and like, if you actually care, if you actually, you know, like, give a damn.

Because I, you know, I do a lot of consulting now, and there’s a lot of people flooding into our industry, who they’re here only because they’re like, this is, this could be good passive income, and this is, this will make me money. And obviously, guys, this is Filthy Rich Cleaners, we’re here to make that coin. That’s why we’re here, is to make money and to be wealthy in our time freedom, just like you.

You know, you kind of put in for Michelle, before we talked about, like, being greedy. Like, like, yeah, be greedy. But like, can you explain what you mean by that? Be Greedy. I forgot.

Michelle: I forgot what I put in there. I know that. I know that it made sense when I wrote it, but I forgot what I did.

Stephanie: You’re like, being greedy in the fact that you want the absolute best clients. You want the absolute best for your team. Like, do not, like, Don’t falter in-

Being Selective About Clients

Michelle: Yeah, absolutely I am so, like, we we don’t play games with our with our clients. Like, if our client is – if our client is horrible, we fire them immediately if they are disrespectful to our cleaning texts. It is no questions asked. They are gone.

It is not like – I definitely understand there are, you know, personality differences, so you know, and I also understand that, you know, some people may enjoy cleaning a house, a type of house that somebody else doesn’t. So if those are the types of situations, you know, we’ll definitely switch people up. And sometimes we have to switch people up, like five, six times.

But if somebody is being disrespectful, if a client is being disrespectful, it is immediate. No questions asked. You are gone. I will not tolerate any of that for my – I am like, I am such a mama bear.

Stephanie: Oh my gosh, that’s literally the phrase I use. I was like, once she stopped talking, I’m gonna be like, “Mama Bear.” Because that’s like, that is how I see myself. Of like, this is my – this is my flock, and I must tend to them, and you ain’t gonna come in and with your wolfiness. And, like, get my full analogies today. What’s going on.

Michelle: Absolutely, I mean, like, the cleaning techs that we have, they are seriously, like the sweetest people ever, and the majority of them are introverted. So, I mean, they won’t even say boo unless you talk to them first. So I can, I can just about guarantee they are not going to talk back to you in any way whatsoever. So, like, if you’re coming at them, no, I’m gonna have it.

Protecting Your Team

Stephanie: Oh, yeah. And I’m sure you’ve had situations like, hopefully, you know, obviously I’ve the whole SOS thing with ZenMaid that just came out. So safety is, like, really, really top of mind for me. I mean, it always is, but now it’s coming, like, out more publicly, which I’m super excited about, but like, yeah, we’ve had plenty of plenty of situations where the disrespect both in – just like seeing us as beneath, but also in, like, dangerous terms, because of the industry even we are in.

It’s like people, people feel a certain way about cleaners, just like they do to servers. They think a lot of people think that they can treat us disrespectfully. And I, I just want to implore everybody listening that it – you are a steward of your staff, and that is like part of the reward of business ownership is that you’re making money off of other people’s labor, but that means that it is your sole responsibility to be like their protector, and like you gotta take that seriously, of like they are trusting you with their income and their families, you know, taking care of their families and all of this stuff.

And I know that that sounds like, maybe eye roll, but it’s like, that’s how seriously I take it, and it’s like that means that you need to protect them, and that means protecting like their honor, and standing up for them, and not letting clients be bullies. Because, yeah, they they’ll try it sometimes, and for the most part, I mean, 99% of people are fabulous, but it’s the one percents that like stand out so strongly. Do you have any that really stand out to you? Of people being like, “Oh, hell no, you ain’t gonna do that,” like, anything like that?

Filtering Out Problem Clients

Michelle: For the most part, I will say Misty, the RVA that does our sales, she is excellent at filtering. She is so good at catching any of that. I mean, if there are any red flags whatsoever in the phone calls that she’s taking, she’s like, “You know what? I don’t think we’re a good fit for you.” Or, you know, she’ll be like, “Oh, we’re on a wait that’s like, five months long.”

Stephanie: Way less availability.

Michelle: So she is, I will say that she is so fantastic about, about filtering all that out. You know, sometimes, unfortunately, something does, you know, come through, though, generally, I feel that when something does come through, I feel like they end up showing their true colors before our cleaning texts even get there.

Stephanie: The emailing, it’s in how they speak and like. So I’m sure everybody’s wondering, “Well, I don’t have that skill yet. How do I how do I filter? What do I look for?” And so actually, I just had a consulting client, Hey, Amy in Australia, this morning that we had a call, and she she wanted, like, she got this email she shared with me from, like, somebody wanting pricing. And she was like, “I don’t even know how to deal with this.” I’m like, “Girl, just say you don’t have availability. Like, that’s a no,” because it was so clear with how they wrote it.

They were like, “I’ll have you for two and a half hours, and that’s how long it’ll take to clean the house, and I’ll pay like” – and it was just like, the client, or the prospective client, was like, telling them how long it was going to take to – they had all this stuff. And, like, she’s talked about other people who wrote a novel, and it’s like, usually, if it’s really, like particular, and they’re, like, listing all this stuff out, guys, it’s not a problem. If clients are particular, you know, they’re paying for house cleaning, but you can just, you got this spidey sense of like, this is a Karen, and she gonna act like it, right?

Michelle: Especially, they’re gonna dictate how much time you’re spending there.

Stephanie: Yeah, we’re the ones – we’re going to tell you how long.

Michelle: I’ve been cleaning houses for 20 years. Let me tell you, I never spent the exact same amount of time in the same house twice.

Stephanie: Yep. Is there anything else that that Misty looks for to help filter? Like, any suggestions we have for our listeners that they can look for to help filter from the front end of like, this isn’t going to be a good client.

Michelle: I think a lot of it is just like, how how they treat her. You know, especially since she’s not the owner, one thing that I’ve been told a lot by both her and my cleaning text is they get treated much differently than I do. So a lot of times, you know, I’ll be like, “Oh my gosh, this client is so great,” and they’re like, “No, they are terrible.” And then I have to go and have this conversation with this person. Be like, “So I heard that” – is never a good conversation.

But you know, being that Misty is not the owner, but what’s really funny is being that her name is Misty, and being that she’s answering the phones and doing the office work. A lot of people think that she is the owner. A lot of people think that she is me, and that Misty is my nickname.

Stephanie: Oh, yeah. So then…

Michelle: It’s really funny too. When I go to do like, quality checks or anything, or, you know, stop by, you know, just like a lot of times, I’ll stop by and just like, drop off a coffee, or I’ll stop by to bring, like, a birthday gift or an anniversary gift or something like that. And the client will be there, and they’ll be like, “Oh my gosh, Misty, it’s so great that I finally get to meet you.” And I’m like, “No, I’m Michelle, I’m the owner.” And they’re like, “Well, Misty is the owner?” Nope, I’m the owner.

So it is kind of funny, and then, you know, that kind of gives me a little bit of an idea too. Then, like, how are they – how are they treating me? Can I see how they’re treating the cleaning texts, you know, kind of things like that. Are they treating Misty any differently after they find out that she’s not me?

But I, you know, I guess, I guess a lot of the things too, that she looks for is like, how demanding are they, you know? Are they saying, you know, these are the things that I would like to have done, or are they saying, like, “I expect these things to be done”? You know, if things are not on your scope of work, and they’re like, “Well, they better be done.” You know, obviously that’s a red flag.

So, you know, things like that. Another thing too, you know, even when we were cleaning the floors on our hands and knees, if somebody said, “I want you to clean the floors on your hands and knees,” automatically wouldn’t take them, even though that’s how we cleaned our floors.

Setting Clear Boundaries with Clients

Stephanie: Wow, that’s such a good like point of like them demanding how it gets done, as opposed to it just getting done well, because that’s the thing is, like, you know, people who don’t do this professionally, they would expect like, even like the products you use, because they’re house owners and they’re marketed to by, you know, cleaning product companies, that doesn’t mean we’re going to use that, like, Mop and Glow, I can’t tell, or something along those lines.

Or they’re like, “I want you to use this.” And I’m like, “Heck, no, we’re not using that on your floors. Like, no, like, and we will not use this.” Or they want us to put oil all over their wood banisters and things like that. Or put oil like, make things look good, but in the long run, is going to turn to build up.

And, like, you know, everybody has their different philosophies on this, and I’m not saying that that’s necessarily wrong. And if that, if that’s how you want to cater to clients, but clients don’t get to tell us what products we use, all right, there’s a reason we clean the way we clean, and you either take it or leave it.

We don’t use bleach, and we will not use bleach in any capacity, in any product, and that’s for a variety of reasons, both from a health perspective, from but a lot of times a liability perspective, because I can’t tell you how many times my spray bottle has gotten caught and dumped all over carpet, right? Because it’s only Dawn and water and a little bit of essential oil for scent, no harm, no foul. I’m not replacing somebody’s carpet because there was bleach in that product. So there’s a lot of reasons we do things in the manner that we do. And if a client’s like, “No, you’re going to use this product and this product blah, blah, blah,” it’s like, you don’t get to tell me that. Like, it’s my company.

Michelle: We haven’t – we do have them sign a liability waiver if they do want us to use–

Stephanie: Good suggestion.

Michelle: We also have them sign a liability waiver if they want us to use their own vacuum.

Stephanie: Oh, okay. And what is, uh, what exactly does that entail? Because we, for the most part, always use our own unless it’s like a cross contamination, big concern, like they’re super allergic or something. So what does that entail? Basically, that if it gets damaged, it’s not your guys’s fault?

Michelle: Either the vacuum gets damaged or any of their items. So we know how our vacuums work. We don’t know how their vacuum works. So like – that’s one of the big reasons that we don’t use our clients vacuums. Like I would, I would love to not have to supply vacuums. And, oh–

The Vacuum Struggle

Stephanie: Yeah, oh my gosh. We have like, a whole, like, again, like a whole herd of vacuums, like, grazing in our office, like cows or something. And, like, a lot of times when you gotta put one down, it’s like, we’ve tried – it’s thick. It’s very thick.

April does all of the vacuum – my manager, April does all of the vacuum repairs. And, like, she just has this whole, like, bucket of parts that she just grabs from – vacuum repairs. Like, yeah, vacuums are so the bane of our existence, because they treat them like crap. They throw them around like it’s a WWE and like, but what can you do? So we use Sharks, actually, side note, everybody asked about vacuums. What vacuums do you guys use?

Michelle: We actually use Carpet Pro.

Stephanie: Like, what is that?

Michelle: They’re very difficult to find now because they have gone out of business.

Stephanie: Vintage.

Michelle: They’re like, a generic brand of Simplicity or Riccar. So they’re super heavy duty. They are – they are meant for commercial cleaning. So they are meant to be running for nine hours a day. So, I mean, it is very, very, very rare that, you know, our vacuums die.

We do have, actually, I have lucked out so amazingly. And shout out to John, because, John, you are amazing. John probably won’t watch this, but–

Stephanie: He’s gonna watch – everybody watch this. What are you talking about?

The Vacuum Repair Hero

Michelle: I have – so John is our vacuum repair specialist. So we have – so, like I had mentioned, we don’t have an office space, but we have a storage unit. And John is the husband of one of our previous office staff. And he was like, “You know, I would love to be the one to fix your vacuums.”

So even when his wife went on to work at another job, he was like, “I still want to be your vacuum specialist.” So we set up automations because, you know, I love automations so that when a cleaning tech has a vacuum that needs servicing, they drop it off at the storage unit, they fill out a form. They say, what’s wrong with it, and as soon as they hit, send it messages John.

So then John can go to the storage unit, because he has his own key, and he can pick it up to fix the vacuum. He has his own Sparkling Homes credit card so he can order any of the parts that he needs to fix them. And I think we’ve, I mean, in, you know, since 2017 I think we’ve only trashed, I don’t know, maybe five vacuums.

Stephanie: And then, wow. So can you let us know what John’s address is, so we can all send our vacuums?

Michelle: I know it is like, I don’t know how I lucked out, but this is seriously, like, the most amazing setup ever.

Stephanie: No, that is amazing, and especially the the automation and workaround. Considering you guys don’t have an in person office, and it’s like, you know, I can’t – there’s so many ways to skin the cat guys of this business, and you gotta do what works for you.

Of like, we have an office, and April does all the vacuum stuff. So we have a little form that when they dump their vacuum, they gotta fill out what’s wrong with it, so she’s not just guessing. And all of our vacuums are numbered and assigned to each cleaner, and we have a vacuum tracker and, of like, who belongs to what, and that has increased the accountability for how they how they behave with the vacuums.

But like that, that’s a perfect example of like, if we like, if we didn’t have an in person office, that solution makes perfect sense. And you know, if you don’t have a John, you might have a Bob. You know, Bob might like it. So like, like, talk to your, talk to the spouses and boyfriends of your, of your cleaners, and maybe, like, they, they would want to do something like that. Because, yeah, people, some people love to tinker, and it would be a fun job for them, especially if you pay them for it.

Michelle: Exactly. So, I mean, it is such a perfect setup. I love it.

Wrapping Up

Stephanie: Oh my gosh. I know we haven’t talked about automations at all, and we’re – we will have to have a part two, because Michelle is such a pro on automations, guys, and especially, like we haven’t talked about, like, Rescue My Maid Service at all, and our love for Courtney Wisely. And that will have to come in a part two.

So if you guys have any questions about that, leave that in the comments, because clearly me and Michelle could talk for literal hours, but we’ll put a pin in that and do a part two, because I have so many questions when it comes to that. But I mean, this has been so fun, Michelle, I’m so glad we finally been able to meet, and hopefully, maybe if you do your little road trip for your honeymoon coming up, you can meander down to Savannah, and we can have lunch or something.

Michelle: I would love that. That would be so amazing.

Stephanie: Me too. Well. Thank you so much, and thank you guys for listening. Michelle, if anybody wanted to follow you or follow your business, where would they find you?

Michelle: I’m definitely on Facebook. I don’t do much on Instagram, but yeah, I am under Michelle Allegrezza Schulac. Because I just recently got married. I didn’t, I didn’t officially change my name, but I did add Schulac on Facebook. Otherwise, you can find us at sparklinghomescleaning.com. So, and we’re fairly active on both Facebook and Instagram, because I have somebody else doing–

Stephanie: Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you, Michelle. This has been a delight, and we will have to continue this conversation for sure, and until next time, guys, this has been Filthy Rich Cleaners. Give this a like. Give this a subscribe and share this with your friends who would have a good time listening to us and see you next time. 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.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• ZenMaid
• Sparkling Homes Cleaning
• Rescue My Maid Service
• SOS feature in ZenMaid